Devotional Materials. Week Commencing Sunday 11th September 2022
Call to worship
‘As the deer pants for the streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Where can I go and meet with God? Psalm 42:1, 2
There is strong desire in David to worship God here, and we have even more reason to want to worship Him given all that He has brought about for us in Christ
Hymn
‘At the name of Jesus’ MP41 (Piano)
Caroline Maria Noel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI2rKRCWmOU
Reading. John 13:31-38- 14:1-4
The Lord loved His disciples, but that did not mean they would walk ‘flower strewn pathways’ throughout their lives. They would soon face heartache, and they would all fail the Lord. But Jesus assures them beforehand. There is promise and hope in what He says. Implicit in His own words is His own Resurrection when they will see Him again, and He is explicit about their future resurrection. So ultimately all will be well. The Lord is in complete control and a good outcome for them is destined by Him. They will in time remember what He has told them here and His words will give them assurance and hope.
And these promises give us an assurance and hope. The Lord Jesus has taken our brother Ron Lander to be with Him in our Father’s house. And we too- who believe in Him- will also join him there, either when our life is over, or when Christ returns a second time as He has promised to do.
Hymns
‘There’s a place where the streets shine’ MP 1011 (Guitar)
Paul Oakley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xyf8YdJRRQ
‘There is a Redeemer’ MP 673 (Piano)
Melody Green
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PgrDSlpoSI
Prayers
Lord, we thank you for your love for us. We cannot measure your love or count all your blessings. We thank you for all your goodness. In our weakness you make us strong. In our darkness you give us light and in our sorrows you bring comfort and peace. You are our Redeemer, friend and brother.
Lord, you have so loved us. Help us then to love you with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. Strengthen us to love our neighbour as ourselves. To love one another as you have loved us. Keep us single minded, undistracted by lesser things. In Your mercy strengthen us and move our hearts to do your will.
(From ‘Glimpses of Glory’ David Adam). Lord, we rejoice that we abide in you and in your great love; you accept us when we find it hard to accept ourselves or each other. We pray that you will strengthen the fellowship of your people, that you will sustain us in our unity and help us to know we are one in you. We pray for all who are working to realise the unity you have given to your church. We pray for relationships between churches that help to break down barriers.
Lord, we remember before you all areas of ethnic violence and racial hatred, for all places where there is division, strife and animosity. We pray for the United Nations and for all who work for peace and unity, for all peoples that work for the building up of community and fellowship. We remember all who are scorned, rejected or belittled by others.
We give thanks for our own homes and their love. We pray for homes of strife and discord, homes where there is neglect, abuse or violence. We remember homes where there is no love or where love is betrayed. We pray for all families suffering from a breakdown in their relationships
We pray for all who suffer from schizophrenia, for those whose lives are torn apart by memories or fears. We pray for all who have suffered from any form of breakdown. We ask your blessing on loved ones and friends who are suffering at this time. (Quiet)
We look forward to the day when we will share fully in the communion your people, when we will be one in the Spirit and one in the Lord. We thank you for loved ones departed, for all who have gone before us in the faith, and for the day when we will share with them in your kingdom.
Lord, lead us from despair to hope and to wholeness. Amen
Hymn
‘Make me a channel of your peace’ MP 456
Sebastian Temple
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkgDdlpB4EA
Sermon.
Text. “A new commandment I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another”
Jesus gives us here the command to love. Notice it is a command ‘A new commandment I give to you…’ It’s not something optional, that we only do when we feel like it. In our culture love is perceived as something emotional and self- gratifying. Biblical agape love can involve emotion; compassion for example can be deeply felt, but biblical love is not reliant on emotion. It comes from the will.- ‘I will love the other’ and works for the good of the other- regardless of their attitude towards me.
This love is shown in what we do. Its concrete, practical. It can be shown in a myriad ways- in the way we use the gifts, time and money God has given us to benefit others.
Loving one another is a command; we are responsible. The language of command reminds us that Christ is our Lord and Master. We follow what He says. His command to us is ‘love one another’
Jesus was speaking to His disciples, His followers. They had known from their own experience His extra ordinary love. His love embraced everyone- lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors, Roman soldiers. But He also had a special love for His followers. He calls them, at the end of His life, to love one another.
It was so important that Jesus said it three times on the night before He died:
‘My command is this ‘love each other as I have loved you’ John 15:12
‘This is my command; love each other’ John 15:17
Something we all think about I’m sure is how we would want to be remembered in this life.
Sidney Poitier died on 6th January this year aged 94. He is remembered as a black acting pioneer who paved the way for other black performers
Mikhail Gorbachev died on the 30th August this year age 91. the former Soviet president who won the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the Cold War by removing the iron Curtain between Russia and the West. Less well known is his meeting with the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church in April 1988 where he made the admission that the Soviet State had made tragic mistakes in its past treatment of Christians. He pledged under Perestroika or restructuring (social and economic reforms) to grant Christians freedom of conscience.
Jesus’ last wish and greatest desire on the night before He died was that Christians remember the scale and depth of His love for us and have this love for one another
This leads on, secondly, to the standard for love. ‘A new commandment I give you: love one another. As I have loved you so must you love one another.’
Christ tells us Christians to love each other in the same way, and to the same extent that He loves us.
How has Jesus loved us?
This was spoken on the night before He died. Jesus was still aware of what He was about to go through. Judas’ treachery, the disciples all forsaking Him, the brutality of the Roman soldiers, the malicious envy of Caiaphas and the Jewish court. The further injustice and cowardice he experienced at the hands of Pilate and Herod. The slander and fickleness of the crowds. And further violence and torture culminating in the agony of the cross.
The biblical witness is that He went through all this- for us. ’Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
That is the love He asks us to show one another.
Lord Shaftsbury sought to live by this standard. Cardinal Manning, an eminent Victorian described Shaftsbury like this: ‘He took human suffering and human sorrow, and the helplessness of childhood, and the poor, as the end for which he was to live. He spent and was spent for it, and his own life was a suffering life like the Man of Sorrows going about doing good. Shaftsbury was determined to give his whole life to love as Christ had loved him.
He suffered opposition and slander from those with vested interests who scorned his crusade to reform factory laws and who opposed his efforts to eradicate the practice of using children as chimney sweeps. Others also hated him because of his stand against the coal mines- full of children, boys and girls and women. He threatened their worship of Money- Mammon.
But Shaftsbury, by God’s enabling- was successful. He saw the reform of factory laws, the Chimney Sweeps Act and the Mines Bill. He brought about much good for children, young persons and women through this legislation.
He was involved with many other lesser known programmes for social good. Fifty years of hard work in psychiatric reform as Chairman of the Commissions in Lunacy for example or the pioneering of laws that made council housing possible. He was President of the ragged schools and pioneered the London City Mission.
As Manning said of him, Shaftsbury’s life was spent- and he was spent for it- going about doing good. Loving others as Christ loved him.
At his funeral the roads from his home in Grosvenor Square to Westminster Abbey were lined with deputations from all the societies he had so long served. Their banners were inscribed ‘Naked and ye clothed me’, ‘a stranger and ye took me in’
“A new commandment I give you, love one another. As I have loved you, love one another.’
This same standard of love, Christ gives to all Christians. There is great challenge in these words. How much do we sacrifice for others? Are we prepared to give up our comfort/pleasures for the sake of others? It’s a question I must ask myself.
Perhaps the greatest challenge here is to show this love even when the other has let us down. Jesus knows that Peter will let Him down ‘Will you really lay down your life for me? I tell you the truth, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times (13:38). But Jesus continues to love Peter and later re instates Peter to lead and care for the Church.
Indeed, Jesus has shown this grace- this ‘undeserved favour’ to all of us. While we were sinners Christ died for us. Such is Jesus love that He is the friend of sinners.
You feel let down by someone in your family, or someone here has not lived up to your expectations. Jesus calls you to love the other. Just as He has loved you.
Melanie Chitwood has written a devotional thought entitled ‘When people let you down’ she starts the thought with Psalm 62:8 "Trust in Him at all times, O people; Pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us." (NASB). There she includes these words:
“One morning in my quiet time I was pouring out my sadness, anger and disappointment about a close relationship. As the tears slipped down my face, I begged God to show up. What do I do with all this? Show me and I'll do it because what I've been doing is not working.
Clear as a bell ringing in my spirit, Jesus said, Grieve.
Really? I questioned. I remembered that Jesus knew all about disappointment – Peter's denial, Judas' betrayal, and the disciples falling asleep during His anguish before His crucifixion (Matthew 26). I remembered people in the Bible who were well acquainted with people they loved letting them down, such as Joseph or Job. I felt reassured that Jesus wouldn't misunderstand my sadness as a lack of faith.
So I cried, feeling every ounce of the disappointment. I told God all the things I wish were different about this relationship, all the things I thought this person had done wrong, and what I wish this person would do differently.
After the winds of grief subsided, I was done. Grieving was the bridge I had to cross to move beyond the disappointment. On the other side I found myself in a place where I could embrace the relationship for what it is, not what it's not. Chitwood closes with this prayer:
Dear Lord, I'm so thankful that when it feels like no one else understands, You do. You understand about being disappointed in people but You loved them in the midst of that. Lord, I want to follow Your example. I'm thankful You know this sadness is a part of healing from the pain of disappointment. Give me guidance in handling this -I trust that You can bring good out of this. In Jesus' Name, Amen.
(https://proverbs31.org/read/devotions/full-post/2010/09/02/when-people-let-you-down)
‘Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.’
Thirdly Jesus speaks about the impact of such Christian love
Verse 35: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
If you had read verse 34 by itself you would have thought that Jesus was teaching His disciples to be inward looking- to love each other and to forget everyone else.
Jesus’ command that we love one another is part of God’s love for the world. Earlier in John’s Gospel we have Jesus’ famous words “God so loved the world…”
But how are people to believe in Christ?
Jesus says they will believe on Him by seeing the extraordinary love Christians have for each other.
Notice He does not say- by your reaching out to other people, and so they are seeing your love for them. Good though that is. No, it’s by the love Christians have for one another. That will prove to them that Christians are genuine followers of Jesus. That’s what will show the truth of the Christian Faith. It turns out our love for one another is the greatest evangelistic means at our disposal “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
This strong love of Christians for one another has always been good evidence for the Christian Faith.
Tertullian wrote of the early Church: ‘it is our care for the helpless, our practice of loving kindness that brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents. ‘Look! They say. “How they love one another! Look, how they are prepared to die for one another’
Jesus teaches us our main witness, our most effective evangelism in reaching the world, is in them seeing our love for each other.
Paul said to the church ‘You love one another, now continue to deepen in your love for one another’
Conclusion
The statue of Eros in London’s Piccadilly is a fitting memorial of Lord Shaftesbury’s life. There these words, written by then Prime Minister William Gladstone, are inscribed: ‘During a public life of half a century he devoted the influence of his station, the strong sympathies of his heart, and the great powers of his mind, to honouring God by serving his fellow men, an example of his order, a blessing to his people, and a name to be by them ever gratefully remembered.’
What is a fitting memorial for the Christ who died for us, yet still lives with us?
Jesus made it very clear what He wanted on His last evening on earth. That His children; men and women and children should grow in a family of love. Not bickering or squabbling; quick to judge one another rather than praise or encourage- that only gives Christ pain.
But it gives Him joy when we seek to obey His new commandment- this very highest standard that He has given us which in turn will impact our fellowship together and the unbelieving world around us:
‘Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’
Hymn
‘In Christ Alone’ MP 1072 (Piano)
Stuart Townend
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCeSOY5tisI
Blessing
‘Praise to the Father, praise to the Son, praise to the Spirit. The three in one.
May He give us light to guide us, courage to support us and love to unite us, now and for evermore.’ Amen
David Barnes 7/9/22