Dennis Tuuri

Listen, O Israel, unto me. The Lord hath called me from the womb. And he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword, and made me a polished shaft and said unto me, “Thou art my servant, O Israel.” Then I said, “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nought and vanity before God. And he said, it is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob. I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles. Thus saith the Lord, to him whom man despiseth, to him, to a servant of rulers, kings shall see and arise because of the Lord that is faithful and he shall choose thee.

And Mary said, “My soul doth magnify the Lord, for he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. For he that is mighty hath done to me great things and holy is his name and his mercy is on them that fear him. He hath shown strength with his arm. He hath put down the mighty from their seats. He hath filled the hungry with good things. He hath helped his servant Israel. As he spake to our fathers to Abraham. The sermon scripture is 1 Thessalonians 1:1-3.

Let’s pray. Almighty God, we thank you for your scriptures. We thank you that they are the source of faith for us. Help us to understand these words. May your Holy Spirit illumine our hearts to their truth and convict us of our own sinfulness and failure to obey them and give us power to obey them with knowledge and understanding. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.

1 Thessalonians 1:1-3. Paul and Silvanus and Timothy, unto the church of the Thessalonians which is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of God and our Father.

Our topic today for the three short talks that I’ll be giving interspersed with responsive readings and songs is Christmas and the labor of love.

I apologize for no outlines being available. My printer failed to function this week and I didn’t get it fixed, and so I’ve got to get it fixed next week and so we don’t have an outline. But these are short talks and hopefully you’ll be able to keep up with them. Okay, Christmas is a wonderful time of year. I greatly enjoy it. But I’ve had some problems these past weeks. As I said, it is a wonderful time of year.

And I was thinking last night of how glorious a thing it is this time of year to be focused upon the great themes that we’ve been thinking of for the last few weeks with the book of First Thessalonians. Here during Christmas time with Christmas music playing and Christmas spirit filling our hearts and much of the environment around us and our covenant community. The joy of the season is a wonderful thing to be meditating this week on God’s great love for us. It’s a positive thing.

There’s a couple of problems with such a series of sermons as well. First, these topics that we’re considering—grace, peace, faith, love, and next week, hope—these are huge topics. They are the essentials of the Christian faith. And sometimes I feel like I’m kind of drowning in the midst of some of these topics. They’re so large, so all-comprehensive, so indicative of the person of God. And it’s a kind of struggle for me.

Really the whole of Scripture speaks to these great themes. Any place you turn in the Bible, any page you look at, you’ll find these themes basically repeated and emphasized. And to try to do a summary teaching on these is very difficult. We’ll be returning to these themes as we go through the book of First Thessalonians and showing more direct application. What we’ve tried to do is give kind of a basic definition as we get started going over these attributes of God, which are to then also be attributes of the Christian in his life.

So first of all my problem has been that these are huge themes. And secondly we come to these scriptures—all of us do, I do—with the world’s view of these things being drilled into our heads for many years. The world’s view is a basic misconception of the basic elements of the Christian faith. We were watching a Christmas special last night on TV. I’m sure some of you have watched other Christmas specials and you wonder what are some of these people celebrating exactly?

A lot of celebrating going on across the United States, across the world at Christmas time. But what is it that they’re celebrating? Well, they use some of the same words that we’ve been talking about for the last few weeks. Grace, peace, faith, love, hope. These are the things they’re celebrating in the world. But a different context is poured into these phrases and these words. The meaning is radically different from the biblical meaning of these things.

For instance, with grace, most of the world of course sees grace with no connection to the shed blood of our Savior Jesus Christ. So it’s grace without blood. Even many of the churches have a concept of grace where God somehow sort of winks the eye at sin. They pit grace versus God’s law instead of seeing that God sent his son Jesus to obey that law and to pay the penalty for that law. And so they fail to recognize the grace of law as David talked about in Psalm 119.

Antinomian grace dots the church landscape—lawless grace. Really the sort of grace to which Paul, in discussing this sort of thing, said horrors, no. He said, “Well, shall we sin the more that grace might abound?” And he says, “May it never be.” And one of the translations I think says, “Horrors, no! May that never be the case.” So we have a concept in the world of celebration of grace at Christmas that is cheap grace.

Peace is celebrated, but the peace that’s celebrated is not God’s peace. It’s the absence or cessation of hostilities. It’s the peace that is not necessarily God’s order or not at all God’s order, but rather simply the absence of war, the absence of conflict. It is really an attempt to see peace that would be the worst kind of all worlds—the worst sort of all worlds to live in, I think, would be a place where there is peace without God being the basis and God’s order being the definition of that peace.

To go along with cheap grace, the world in its celebration of Christmas celebrates the peace of the graveyard and not the peace of God’s order.

Faith is celebrated today and here in the world means something far different by that term than what the Scriptures teach us. We were even chastised these last few months by various Christian political activists for a lack of faith in some of our political activities, various members of this church. And that goes a long way to understanding and helping to see the alien presupposition—the alien definition of faith that all too many Christians share as well.

It’s kind of a wishful thinking faith. It’s kind of a wish upon the star. And the focus isn’t so much on God’s revealed truth. The focus is on working up enough belief and enough faith and enough wishing in ourselves that what we wish for will actually come to pass.

To go along with cheap grace and the peace of the graveyard, I call this worldly view of faith—and all too many Christian view of faith as well—”Jiminy Cricket faith,” Jiminy Cricket faith, when you wish upon a star.

And so with our topic of love, we’ll begin today. And as I said, we’ll build on these concepts once we get into the new year. Love is either seen in terms of the world as libido love, lustful love, or in terms again of all too many Christians, a love of emotions, a love of feelings.

One songwriter said that some love is just a lie of the heart. The cold remains what began at the passion at the start. And if our love is essentially passion, feeling, and emotion, then indeed it does burn cold and burns out, as it were, and leaves us with a cold relationship. But it’s not really indicative of biblical love at all. It is, as one other songwriter, Bob Dylan, wrote, watered down love—that we have watered down love.

So we have cheap grace, the peace of the graveyard, Jiminy Cricket faith, and watered down love. Well, these are the things that the church is not called to focus on, but the world does focus on. And so that is a problem as we approach the Scriptures when we read a simple statement such as we just read. We’ve read it several times now from First Thessalonians—that Paul greets them saying grace and peace and then gives thanks remembering their hope, their labor of love, and their work of faith.

It’s so easy to push in these pagan definitions that plague us, particularly at Christmas time.

Again, with all this Christmas emphasis on these four delusive misconceptions of these wonderful Christian terms, it’s no wonder that there’s so much suicide at this time of year. Historically, it’s been a time of more suicides than ever. And with such pagan notions of these things, it’s easy to understand that. For us, the great biblical texts of Christmas are not simply a corrective to these notions, but rather also a tremendous source of joy for our true Christian celebration.

Now, this is only true if we allow God’s word to change these pagan presuppositions that we bring to it. Faith essentially is placing ultimate reliance upon God’s word instead of whatever we think we know about that word going into it. So faith is what changes our presuppositions. Many of us have had discussions over how do you change presuppositions? How do you take the sunglasses through which we see things, as it were, off? Well, you do it by reading the Scriptures and God grants you faith in those Scriptures through the Holy Spirit. And so we change our understanding of these definitions.

To comprehend the joy of biblical Christmas, the biblical meaning of these phrases that we’ve talked about, we must root out these false notions and acknowledge them to be what they are. They’re not simply a misconception on the part of the world or of us as to what these terms really mean. They are sin.

To take faith as defined by God, his person, and his word, and to twist it into Jiminy Cricket faith on our part is sin and rebellion and disobedience to God, who says that faith is based upon the sureness of who he is and the sureness of his revealed word.

To take the peace that God says is the result of his order in the world and to twist it into the peace of the graveyard or the peace of cessation of all hostilities and effort—that again is not simply a misconception. It’s disobedience, intellectual disobedience to the word of God. And if we’re going to be altered in our presuppositions of what these words mean, we must confess this sin. We must repent of the same.

If we take those alien notions of these terms into the biblical text, we walk away confirmed in our rebellion to God’s word. But if instead we look to God’s text and let it tell us what these words mean, then we come away built up in faith and in the truth and in obedience to God and in blessing.

Now, it’s very easy, as I said, to get these terms confused living in the context of a real, rebellious nation as we do, and particularly if we see verses in isolation and just read 1 Thessalonians 1:1-3 and don’t think about these words very much. But a simple glance at some very basic text—Christmas text as well—show us a correct perspective on these things.

Just turn back to that responsive reading we just read in the Magnificat and the corresponding text in the Old Testament and we see good material to review what we’ve been saying about grace. Mary says in verse 48, “He hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. For he that is mighty hath done great things, and holy is his name.” God’s grace is a gracious gift to somebody. And remember, we said the difference between grace and mercy is grace emphasizes the lack of worthiness on the part of the recipient. There’s nothing we can do to merit these things.

So Mary acknowledges her low estate and God’s mightiness. And she acknowledges God’s mercy extended toward her. Yet remember, “He hath showed strength with his arm. He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.” And verse 54, “He hath helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy.”

Emphasizing more the fact that Israel needs gracious work from God, but also the mercy means that we have actually merited God’s disfavor as opposed to God’s favor. “My judgment is with the Lord.” That’s what verse 4 of Isaiah 49 reads. Judgment refers to—not cheap grace, but the judgment of God’s law. Grace and law are tied together.

So the same thing is true of the correctives of this text relating to peace. We see in verses 51-53 the great reversal portrayed—the establishment of God’s order with the coming of the Savior. “He hath shown strength with his arm. He hath scattered the proud imagination of their heart. He hath put down the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich he hath sent empty away.”

God, by the establishment of the coming of Jesus Christ, the establishment of his order, takes those men who have not used their possessions and consecrated them to the purposes of God’s kingdom and removes them from him and gives them to the poor. He takes those who are puffed up with knowledge, a false view of themselves in relationship to God, who are prideful, and sends them away empty-handed, as it were, puts them down and brings judgment upon them. He takes those who rule not for King Jesus and over time supplants them with those who rule in favor of King Jesus based upon his statute book in the Scriptures.

And so God’s peace is described here. Christmas peace is described as a nativity that brings forth God’s order in all things, the prophetic, the priestly, and the kingly aspects of mankind.

And faith is demonstrated in this passage. You notice that Mary says he hath accomplished these things. Now, nothing has happened yet, right? The Son has become incarnate, but there’s no—it seems like she’s being a bit optimistic. But she’s not.

That is the nature of faith. God has said it. His word has come forth to his people and his people see that word as the definition of reality, as the determiner of history. And that’s what faith is all about. And so Mary speaks with the voice of faith. He hath done these things. And that’s the faith that God wants us to take into the world at Christmas time.

He doesn’t want us to say somehow this is just sort of wishful thinking, Jiminy Cricket faith. It is faith based upon the sure word of the Lord. Verse 7, “Thus saith the Lord.” Because God says it, it is established, and it comes to pass. God is faithful, and God’s word is faithful, truth, and verity, and totally to be trusted by us. For these are things of substance, and hence they are things of great joy.

Christmas joy of the world and of all too many Christians is ethereal. It is vague. It is amorphous. It’s just sort of in the ethos somewhere. It either embraces the present world order and its sin or it totally attempts to transcend it. The faith of the world and the peace of—as I said—all too many Christians today either rejoices in the world’s unrighteousness or completely denies the importance of the world and the happenings on planet earth and their significance.

Not so the Christmas joy of the Scriptures and the Christmas joy of the definition of faith, mercy and grace, peace and ultimately love that we find in the Magnificat. Christmas joy of the Bible sees that God, the God of creation, has taken upon himself human flesh. He has come to earth for a purpose, and that purpose—as the text tells us so clearly—is salvation.

Salvation is another word which we have alien concepts about. Again, at the best, simply salvation from sin. But the Scriptures are replete with references to salvation being the effecting of a new world order under King Jesus. Salvation from sin, salvation from death, salvation from men who seek to abuse the people of God and seek to put down God’s reign in the earth.

The peace and the joy of Christmas for biblical Christians is not existential. For the light has been given to the Gentiles. It is pegged to this reality and it sees this reality through the eyes of faith.

All these things really come to us as the gift of God’s great love. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. And so all these things come to pass as the gift of God’s love to us. And that’s the source of Christmas joy.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your Scriptures. We thank you that they’re a corrective to our sin. Forgive us, Lord God, for failing to comprehend and failing to come to obedience to what the Scriptures tell us about faith and hope and grace and peace and love and joy. Forgive us, Lord God, for all the times that we rejoice in what the world rejoices in—some sort of escape from reality or some sort of rejoicing in the sinful aspects of it.

We thank you, Lord God, for your Scriptures. We thank you that they cleanse away alien presuppositions and they bring us into righteousness. They give us the content of these terms, and that content is real and it is fixed reality, the reality that is found in Jesus our Savior. We thank you, Lord God, for the meaning of Christmas joy found in all these things. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

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How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that bringeth good tidings of good. That saith unto Zion, Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice, for they shall see eye to eye. Break forth into joy. For the Lord hath comforted his people. The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations. Depart ye, depart ye. Go ye out from hence, touch no unclean thing. For ye shall not go out with haste, for the Lord will go before you. Behold, my servant shall deal prudently. As many were astonished at thee, my visage was so marred more than any man. So shall he sprinkle many nations. For that which had not been told them shall they see.

And the tender mercies of God hath raised up a horn of salvation for us. As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, that we should be saved from our enemies and to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, the oath which he swore to our father Abraham, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear. And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the highest, to give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

We’ve talked about the correction that the Scriptures give to the alien concepts of grace, peace, faith, and love. The starting place of the correction that the Scriptures give us is the necessary reference to God in all these terms.

God is gracious. His word is a grace word to us, as well as a law word. God is ordered. He is a God of order and his word is an order word to us. It is a peace word. Shalom, the Old Testament term for peace, is the nearness of God, whose nearness brings blessing, peace, and his order to us. And so God’s word is also a peace word in effecting that.

God is faithful. He is sure. He is truth. He is verity. He can be relied upon. And hence his word is faithful and true to us.

And so it is with love. When Paul commends the Thessalonians remembering their labor of love, they understand that the necessary starting place to build a biblical concept of love is the phrase that we find in First John 4, that indeed God is love. That is an attribute of his. As grace, verity, peace are all essential aspects of God, so is love an essential aspect of our heavenly Father.

In this regard, the Scriptures teach us first that love is an essential aspect or attribute of God. Secondly, the Scriptures teach that the Father loves the Son and he has loved the Son from all eternity. And so love occurs in the context of the Trinity from all eternity. Jesus said in John 17, “For thou didst love me from before the foundations of the world.”

The term “Beloved” is used to refer to the Father’s relationship to the Son eight times or more in the Gospels. The Son is the Beloved Son.

Third, the Son’s Beloved status in relationship to the Father in the context of the Trinity is important for us to know. Those eight times occur in the context first of Jesus’s baptism, when the voice comes and says, “This is my Beloved Son.” And then on the mount of transfiguration, “This is my Beloved Son. Hear him. Attend to him.”

And then in Luke 20:13, where Jesus tells the parable of the vineyard, with the owner of the vineyard eventually sending his son to the vineyard to take care of it, and his servants then killing the Beloved Son. And the term “Beloved Son” is used there obviously in reference to the Father in heaven sending Jesus to the vineyard.

“For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son.” As we know, the Scriptures teach us the importance of that doctrine. To appreciate the love of God that gave a gift of Jesus that first Christmas, we are told by God, “He is my Beloved Son.” And so it is important that God repeats that again and again in Scripture in the context of people to attend to him. He is a Beloved gift I have given to you to affect righteousness in the world.

In Genesis 22:2, these same concepts of love and the only son are referred to Abraham. Genesis 22:2 we read: God instructs Abraham, “Take now thy son, thy only son whom thou lovest, Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.”

So God’s love for his son is important for us to know.

Fourth, action and work are integral to God’s love. The concept is very rarely given in an abstract and is always related to a specific activity of God. And so when Paul commends the Thessalonians for their labor of love, he refers to an action. So action and work are essential to God’s love.

Now, I mentioned Abraham, and I was listening to Dave H.’s sermon this week, and how Abraham sent his son to obtain a bride for that son because of his great love for him—that which we just read about from God’s own voice, prophetically. Abraham loved his son, and as work based upon his love for his son, he sought a bride for that son.

The Benedictus has reference to John the Baptist, who like Eliezer comes to prepare a people—a bride, as it were—for the Beloved Son. John the Baptist comes to prepare a people for the Lord, the bride of Christ. Ephesians clearly points out the relationship of Christ to the Church, being the Bridegroom to the bride.

So God’s love for his son is action, and that action sent his son to the world, and then sent John the Baptist to prepare a bride for that son. So God’s love for the Son in all eternity takes shape and action in the giving of a bride, the Church, to the Son. And I might add there that Douglas Kelly in his book *Why Pray?* has an excellent section on this particular truth.

Secondly, though, God’s love for the world also moves him to send the Son to the world. We are told that God loves the world and as a result gave his only begotten Son. And so the giving of the Son to effect the salvation of the world is a result of God’s love for the world. And so again God’s love is tied to action and work.

I might add here that as Doug Wilson said in the latest issue of *Antithesis*, Jesus did not come to give the old college try to save the world. When we read in the Scriptures that God so loved the world that Jesus came to save the world, indeed we can take that with an eschatological sureness to it. Over time the world will be Christianized and one as the bride of Jesus Christ. So God gave his son, his only begotten son, to the Church.

Now there’s a deep mystery in this and I don’t want to go too far in terms of what I’m going to say next. But I think it’s very important that when we think of God giving his son and particularly of God giving his son to die on the cross for the sins of the Church, for the bride, because of his love for us, I think it is important that we not treat God the Father as some sort of assured bystander in this process.

I just referenced Abraham, and God told Abraham to take his son that he loved, his only son, and to give him on Mount Moriah. And we can imagine the emotions that are connected with Abraham’s gift—his giving of the son in obedience to God’s command. Obviously, what we see here is a picture of Jesus, but we also see a picture, I think, of God the Father and his gift of his son because of the great love that he has for us, to die for our sins.

Again, with Jacob, who sends Joseph to the rest of his brothers—he again goes, as it were, to the vineyard. Joseph goes on to where the brothers are working. And what happens to him in the vineyard? Well, he dies. Well, he doesn’t really die, but he is beaten up. And the Father believes he is dead. And so it is again a picture obviously of Jesus, but it’s also a picture of the great love that Jacob had for Joseph.

Again, Joseph is referred to in the Old Testament as being the Beloved Son of Jacob, particular aspect of his love. And so it is important that as we perceive the love of God sending his Son to us and to die for our sins, to remember these Old Testament pictures of the work of the Father in all of this.

The labor of love in First Thessalonians—the term labor is more than just work. It is work that demands sacrifice, that is costly to the person doing the work. It is perpetual, ongoing, hard work. And so the Father in his labor of love performs a strong action, an action that costs him sacrificially, to give his Son to die on the cross for the sake of us whom he loves.

There’s the old story of the boy who is sitting in the park with the girl. He says, “I love you. I love you so much. I would face death for you.” And then a dog comes up and starts barking at them, and the boy climbs the tree. The girl’s sitting down there and she says, “I thought you’d face death for me.” And the boy says, “Well, that dog’s not dead yet.”

Well, God isn’t loving us in that way. God demonstrates his love for us. Romans 5 tells us that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Christ did face death and went through death—and that death of the cross, the death that took upon himself the full curse of God for us.

And we were not as virtuous an object to be loved as that girl sitting on the park bench next to the boy. The boy is there because he sees something in the girl that he likes. He’s responding to something in her. But God’s love sees nothing in us that moves him toward that love. God’s love is election on his part. It seeks us not based upon any quality in us.

The Scriptures are clear that we were yet sinners. Christ died for us. Ephesians 2: “God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us. The great love with which he loved us. Don’t read these words lightly. While we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ.”

Now, this is impossible for us to comprehend—how the God of all creation can have that great love for us when we are yet dead in our transgressions and sins, ethical rebels spitting at God. God crucifying his son, and yet he reaches out to us and loves us. Tremendous truth. Nothing worthy—dead in our transgressions. And that’s biblical love. That’s the love the Father shows to us.

Love that sacrifices for the sake of the object, based not on the merit of the object, the person being loved, based upon the love of God that overflows to us. This is the love we celebrate at Christmas time.

Christmas is indeed a love story, but it is a biblical love story. It’s the love story of God loving the Son and sending him to earth and then effecting the coming of John the Baptist to prepare a people. And when we go out and preach the gospel, that’s what we do. We seek another member of the bride, as it were, for the Savior. God’s love for his Son seeks a bride for that Son. God’s love for the world sends a Savior to that world and gives us a Bridegroom.

And the Son’s love for the Church leads to his death and of course to his victorious resurrection.

Biblical love as demonstrated in the Christmas coming of Jesus and all that Christ’s life pertains to is love that labors, that works and works hard for the well-being of another. No merit on our part, on the part of the one being loved. No loveliness within us. But God selects us. God comes to us and he gives us the great gift of Jesus to die for our sins, to be our Bridegroom.

Now, that’s cause for Christmas joy.

Let’s pray. Father, we rejoice in the great gift you’ve given us in Jesus, our Savior. We thank you, Lord God, for your great love toward us, that while we were yet dead in our transgressions and sins, yet you loved us and sent your Son to be our Savior. We thank you for the love that exists within the Trinity. We thank you for your love for the Son as revealed in the Scriptures.

We thank you, Lord God, that love led you to seek a bride, a gift for him, that we are that part of that bride of the Church. We thank you for the love of our Savior that did indeed face death for us and more than that, more than we could ever comprehend, because of his great love.

Help us, Lord God, having our minds cleansed, as it were, with your word of false, pagan conceptions of love, watered down love. Help us, Lord God, as we hold to the biblical teaching of love, to rejoice in it. We thank you, Lord God, that love is more than we so often see it pictured in our society. We thank you for the depth of the love that led you to send your Son, Jesus, to die for our sins. We rejoice in that love now. In his name we pray. Amen.

Please stand.

And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. And he shall be of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord. And he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, but with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins.

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together. And the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the suckling child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Please be seated.

Another problem with having my printer broken is I’ve got to read my own writing. Then of course I have to write in such big letters—feel like John Loftton, you know, using these big pens.

Notice in these New Testament titles that we’ve just been reading responsively—the Magnificat, the Benedictus, the Gloria in Excelsis—you know, these are the names the Church has used, based on the Latin phrases, to indicate these three songs. And there is a fourth we’ll be using at the end of communion found in the Gospels in the book of Luke in relationship to the coming of Messiah in his nativity.

These three titles—the Magnificat, the Benedictus, the Gloria in Excelsis—they come from words. The Magnificat: the phrase being “My soul magnifies the Lord”—Magnificat, magnifies the Lord. Benedictus: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel”—Benedictus, blessing. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel. Gloria in Excelsis: “Glory to God in the highest”—Excelsis.

These are songs of response to the great truths that are revealed to these people. They are songs of response to a great God. Remember the Thessalonians as a church that responds to the great God who had brought them away from idols to worship him. Paul remembers the Thessalonians as a church that responds antiphonally to God, in kind, as it were.

He responds to their love because that is an antiphonal response to God’s love, to their faith because it’s an antiphonal response to God’s faithfulness and sureness, then to their hope by worshipping the God of hope.

Now the phrase “labor of love” that we’re considering specifically in some measure today is found again in 1 Thessalonians 2:9. There we read, “For ye remember, brethren, our labor and travail: for laboring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God.”

The same term that’s used for labor, the labor of love, is found here in Paul’s labor for the Thessalonians. And so we turn to the book itself to define that for us. What was Paul’s labor of love?

Well, it’s a labor of love for God first and foremost. It’s a response to God. It magnifies God and it’s a love for God. Paul’s love for God led him to labor for the Thessalonians. What did he labor in doing?

“We would not be chargeable.” So they worked, labored night and day. He didn’t want to get in the way of the gospel by having them think that he’s doing this to receive money somehow. He took away a stumbling block of theirs, as it were, by working night and day in his vocational calling and also by preaching night and day to them.

So Paul—and this is a very frequent thing for Paul to do. He didn’t want to be chargeable to them, and so he labored for them. That was a labor of love to God. It was a labor that sought to put the gospel in the finest context as possible. The preaching of the gospel is the very valuableness, the source of all value found in the gospel itself.

And Paul wanted to give that pearl, as it were, of the gospel, the finest setting that he could put it in the context of, because he loved God and he loved the people that God had sent him to minister to. And so Paul went out of his way to put the gospel in as good a context as possible.

Now, that’s a call for response on our part as we see Paul doing this. We see God doing that for us and sending his Son to die for our sins. And so when we preach the gospel to other people, we should attempt to do that same. That’s part of our labor of love. Our response to the God of love is to put the preaching of the gospel in the best possible context, removing potential stumbling blocks.

If people want to reject the gospel, we want them rejecting the gospel and not the setting that we’ve put it in.

Hebrews 6:10 talks about another labor of love. You can turn to that passage. Hebrews 6, verse 10: “For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love which ye have showed toward his name in that ye have ministered to the saints and do minister.”

Very interesting. We read here of a labor of love that is ministry to the saints, to serve the saints. But it is the labor of love which you have showed toward his name. It is again identified as being a labor of love—love for God in terms of what they do and not first and foremost the love of their fellow man.

We are commanded that the first great commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul and mind, and secondly to love our neighbor as ourselves. And so here the labor of love is a labor of love that they have for God and it reveals itself in ministry to the saints. To minister to the saints is to show love for God.

Romans 5 tells us that God hath shed his love abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. So we’re able to respond, as the Thessalonians did, to the great message of God’s love at Christmas time, with the response of love, because God, as part of his love for us, gives us the Holy Spirit who sheds abroad his gift of love in our hearts. And so our hearts, like God’s heart, is filled with love, then which can then reach out to other people.

In First John we have a tremendous section relating to the love of God and stressing this great truth of love for God and love for the neighbor over and over again. Turn to First John and we’ll get some more definition to what this love is.

1 John 2: We read in 1 John 2:4-5: “He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him.”

This Scripture quite obviously—as many others in First John—links love to the keeping of God’s law. Love is defined in terms of the actions. Remember we said that God’s love is an acting, self-sacrificial love. Those actions are defined by God’s law.

Now if it’s any—if we have a problem by identifying the source of that law, we find in verse 6 the definition of what that law is. “He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.”

Well, how did our Savior walk? Our Savior walked in obedience to the revealed law of God as found in the Scriptures. And so law and love are linked in the Scriptures. The labor that we find required of us as Christians to demonstrate the love of God in our hearts is a labor that is defined by how—by exe—