Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Always a grace word and a law word to us. 1 Timothy 1: “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope, unto Timothy, mine own in the faith. Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge large some that they teach no other doctrine, neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies which minister questions rather than godly edifying which is in faith.

So do now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart and of a good conscience and of faith unfeigned from which some having swerved have turned aside into vain jangling desiring to be teachers of the law understanding neither what they say nor whereof they speak.

Let us pray. Father, we thank you that our lives are lives evidencing the grace of your Holy Spirit given to us on the basis of our Savior’s work in conformity to the Father’s will. We thank you, Lord God, for the indwelling Spirit. And we pray that He may indwell us individually and corporately as well, particularly at this point in time as we consider your Holy Word.

We know, Lord God, that this is not a word that can be understood intellectually only, or even primarily, but rather must be taught to us by your Spirit. And we pray, Lord God, we would be dependent upon His instruction of us of this book—from this book—which is unlike every other book.

Illumine us, Lord God. Light our hearts, light our path with these words that we may take great joy in them and be encouraged to further faithfulness. And we pray the same thing for those Sabbath school teachers who’ll be instructing the children whose parents desire them to go to the Sabbath school to hear instruction from your scriptures at a level they can understand, that they may be encouraged and strengthened in the Lord Jesus Christ, that they might be more faithful in their walk.

In Jesus’s name we pray and for the sake of His kingdom. Amen.

Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord to you, sons of God, beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is how Paul opens his epistle to Timothy. And as you probably are aware, this is essentially the same way—at the addition of one word—how he opens almost all of his epistles. Grace and mercy to the churches he wrote.

This is a benediction. And now we’re used to hearing the benediction at the end of the service. But liturgically, many churches have used this form or a similar form of benediction at the beginning of a service as well. You know, we sometimes you feel a little funny and you start calling our Sabbath school “Sunday school,” and why do we call it Sabbath school and isn’t that Old Testament and, you know, all that stuff.

But the Sabbath—the use of the term Sabbath—is a good one for us to remember. It’s a biblical term. Sunday isn’t, unless you put S-O-N-D-A-Y. The Sabbath is where we begin. We don’t work to attain blessings in Jesus Christ. They are given us on the basis of His work. See, our Sabbath is not what we lead up to. We don’t work our way to the seventh day of the week. They didn’t either back then. The first day of Adam’s life was the seventh day of the week.

You begin in Sabbath rest. You begin with God’s grace upon us in the Lord Jesus Christ. And then you’re encouraged to work. And so, it’s a good reminder to us when we talk about Sabbath schools, Sabbath adult Sabbath school classes. It’s a reminder to us we meet in rest—in the work of our Savior. He is the Sabbath, and we move from that rest into the work we’re called to do in the context of the week. It’s all grace given from Him.

And so it’s good to remind ourselves at the beginning of this epistle, at the beginning of this talk, that our blessing is in the Lord Jesus.

I want to do two things today. One, I want to have you have a deep assurance that grace, mercy, and peace are yours and will be multiplied unto you for the rest of your life, for the rest of your existence. I want to do that. And then, second, I want to go to what Paul reminded Timothy of in terms of the charge to him—that the end of the commandment, or the charge we receive in this state of blessed rest in the work of Christ, the commandments and charge we receive is an encouragement to us to do some things: to keep our heart pure and to keep our conscience good and to keep our faith unhypocritical.

Okay. So there’s work. I want to bless you in the name of God with that first portion. And then I want to encourage you that you might exercise love toward God and toward your neighbor through those three things—a pure heart, a good conscience, and faith unfeigned.

We use the words of the King James Version in this epistle to Timothy that we read all of last week. That was fun, wasn’t it? I like that. I liked reading the entire epistle before we begin to preach on it last week. This epistle, I’ve entitled the whole series “How to Behave in God’s House,” because Paul tells Timothy in chapter three: “You know, if I don’t make it to you real quick, if I don’t make it, I want to come see you. If I don’t make it, I wrote these things that you might know how to behave yourself in the house of God.” Okay? The temple of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth. That’s what the church is. It’s that—certainly in terms of flowing through the earth—but it’s that in an institutional sense when we gather as well.

How do you behave in God’s house? And the first thing we know, the way this epistle flows, is that the first way you behave in God’s house is passively. You receive blessing from God, not as a result of works, lest any man should boast. We are sovereignly called by God. And that doesn’t make us automatons. That makes us passive receptors of God’s grace, but it makes us respond to that with great love and affection for our Savior who brings us to an acknowledgement of our sin, who might bring us to an acknowledgement of His blessings upon us.

How to behave in God’s house? Well, the first thing is to recognize and have a deep assurance of God’s benediction upon you. And then it’s to say, “Well, now there’s some things you got to do on the basis of that.” He gives Timothy a charge. He says, “Now I’m going to tell you again, just like I told you before, to charge these guys.” And in verse 18, Paul refers to it as a charge to Timothy as well. There’s a double charge.

But he’s charging Timothy to charge these guys not to teach any other doctrine. Okay? To not teach false doctrine, vain janglings, myths, Jewish fables, Greek fables, whatever it is—stop that stuff because it doesn’t edify. He gives them a charge. That’s how you behave in God’s house: you control your tongue. And through the control of your tongue, you also are led then into love. The end of that charge, the goal of the commandment, the goal of the charge is love.

And the streams of love get blocked up when we get off from the pure biblical doctrine of the scriptures and get off into vain janglings and myths and genealogy. There’s other ways our tongues can block that love up, too, which we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes. So, that’s where we’re going.

I want to start then by emphasizing again that this is a benediction. You say, “Well, maybe it’s a benediction, Dennis, but it doesn’t say it’s a benediction. It just says, you know, well, grace, mercy, and peace from God and from Jesus. It’s all it says.” But understand that this particular phrasing is repeated in other portions of the scriptures. And I won’t get into the Greek terms or anything, but if you look at the way this is translated, if you look at the way this phrase is played out by other men who wrote other epistles as well, you’ll see that really it is a benediction.

It’s not just some sort of hope or I wish this would happen to you.

It is a benediction. In 1 Peter 1:13, we read: “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the verses 1-3 rather. Peter to the elect, grace to you and peace be multiplied.” There’s going to be a multiplication of this. There’s an ongoing process. And then in Ephesians 1:3, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father.” Now the verb is not here in this particular version, but it is implied by the way this phrase is used here and in other places in the epistles that are written.

Okay. The particular tense used here is the tense that has the verb implied in the context of the phrase. So it’s not mere wishing. It’s what we know as the ironic blessing, which is obviously a benediction upon the army of God—not in, you know, Islamic jihad sense, but we’re the army of God. We’re organized. Numbers is about the ordering of the army of God for conquest—the way we’re organized every Lord’s day for the conquest of the earth through the preaching of the Gospel of Christ, not through the sword.

Well, in Numbers, the ironic benediction—it’s translated into the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament. It’s the same verb tense. “Optative” is the word that’s used. And that tense of that phrase is the same thing that’s going on here. It is tied to the ironic benediction. It is not simply a desire or a wish for you. It is rather, I believe, an imposition of God’s grace and mercy upon Timothy and then upon the church that Timothy’s epistle be read in the context of.

And so, it is a benediction from God.

Numbers 6:24-26. Immediately after the words the ironic benediction are read, now, remember, we do this every Lord’s day. You know, you put the children of Israel, and God says, “I will bless them.” Remember, we read that part. Why do we read that part? The benediction is only read. It stops at the end of those words, and I go on to read the next verse in Numbers where God says, “That you put My name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them.”

And I believe that’s the way we’re to think of these beginning greetings of Paul in his epistles: “I will bless them. Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us.” That is a proper way to translate 2 John, verse 3: “Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us. Okay? It is a pronouncement from God. It’s not simply a wish.

To quote from a commentator—W. Hayden in his book on liturgy. He says, “If the salutation is a declaration of God, that He dwelleth in the midst of the congregation in order to bless it with His grace and peace.” Kuyper wrote in a book on the same topic. He said, “It’s not the cordial wish of the man in the pulpit who prays that whatever is good—including grace and peace—may come your way, but rather it is God triune who pronounces His grace and peace upon you and who for that purpose uses His servant.”

This grace and peace and mercy that Paul writes about, he doesn’t say it’s from him. He says grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, he identifies in verse one that he is an apostle of God. And the ministers minister to God and they speak for God to the congregation. And so when I tell you, as I did at the beginning of this service, “Grace, mercy, and peace be upon you,” that’s not my prayer. It’s not my wish. It is the imposition on the congregation of those realities.

Now, it is only upon those who will respond accordingly and accept the blessing, so to speak, and rest in the state of grace through Christ our Savior. But to those, it is upon them, and it will be multiplied.

Grace, mercy, and peace is always on us. Well, that’s true. But the ironic benediction was always on God’s people in the Old Testament. And yet, there were times at which it was to be pronounced. And He said that He would bless them. We read from the epistles that the grace and peace will be multiplied unto God’s people. There is a growth in the blessings of God that occur.

Now, let’s talk a little bit about the context of this benediction and that we see at the beginning of this epistle.

Grace, mercy, peace. Grace—that’s a common theme, of course, in scripture; one of the great themes in scripture. You know, we read. We know, of course, most people, you probably most of you, if I ask you what grace is, the definition you would give me is: “It’s unmerited favor.”

Unmerited favor. And that’s a good working definition. It certainly is that. Grace means it’s put in opposition in the scriptures to works. It’s very important to recognize that it’s not of works. It’s of grace. Noah according to Genesis 6:8 found grace—or favor—in the eyes of the Lord. In 2 Corinthians 8:9, we read: “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor.”

Now, let’s just stop there. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. What this verse tells us is that yes, grace is unmerited favor, but it sort of flows out from the statement I just read from the commentator about the liturgical blessing. The blessing says God is in the midst of you, and these things are poured out to you. God is grace. You know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is grace. That’s who He is.

And so is in the context of you. Grace, that unmerited favor, flows from the character of God Himself. It is said that God is grace, and as a result, His actions toward His elect people in Christ are gracious actions. Okay. So it’s important to know that it is unmerited favor, but recognize that grace flows out from the person of God.

We tend to always take these things abstractly. Grace is unmerited favor. Well, grace is the flowing out of God’s communicable attributes to His people. Okay? It’s a truth, not a principle. It comes from a truthgiver. We use “principle” in the sense of first things. It’s important. It is a principle. But you see what I’m saying? It’s not an abstracted principle. It flows from the person of God.

And you should rest in the full assurance of God’s presence in your life. And that presence with you is the flowing out of His grace toward you in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. That God’s grace flows to you, it refers to your deliverance from guilt. That’s certainly true. But if you understand that it flows from the presence of God, it means the flowing out of all His actions and attitudes towards you—of love, in everything.

That unmerited favor doesn’t simply refer to the point at which you became a Christian. It refers to how your lives move through now. That grace is upon you. It’s flowing to you all the time from God. Okay? So grace is part of this heavenly benediction. It is the sum total of the blessings of salvation. It can be said to be the sum total—all the blessings of salvation are wrapped up in God’s grace to you, and they flow forth from His person.

Now, closely related to this is the second term: mercy. And what does mercy mean? Well, mercy has a connotation that is somewhat different than grace. The connotation is that mercy is particularly exhibited to those in terms of people who are in trouble. When you’re in deep distress or really need help, there is commiseration. There’s mercy. There’s loving kindness, tender mercies. Those would be other words, synonyms for the word mercy here. Loving kindness flows to you to help you out of a real difficult situation.

Mercy has that connotation to it, which grace does not necessarily. Grace refers to the state of all who have been brought into Christ. And mercy refers specifically in some situations to when you’re in deep distress, in particular difficulties. You know, so you know that in all your life you have grace ministered unto you. And then there are difficult times. Some of you had a good week this last week. Some of you had a bad week. Some of you had a neutral week. And those of you who had a really bad week, know that God is being merciful to you in the context of this service.

And as blessings to you flow to you, it’s mercy, in the sense of bringing you up out of the pit of despair. Okay. So grace and mercy—has that kind of connotation to it. But there’s a sense in which, of course, this extends to all believers and can always be said to be the case, because it applies to all of us as children of God. In other words, God doesn’t declare us forgiven in Christ graciously, and then treat us in the context of that. He is merciful and loving kindness and exercises loving kindness toward us as His attributes flow out to us and His blessings are upon us.

And so mercy kind of accelerates the sense of grace in the context of this benediction. It is said by some rather that grace pardons while mercy commiserates. Grace is God’s love toward the guilty. Mercy is love toward the wretched or pitiable. Grace concerns the state. Mercy emphasizes more the condition of those who are receptive—the receivers of God’s blame grace. It talks about extending help to those in misery.

It’s used in the story of the Good Samaritan, in that there was grace or mercy rather put upon the man in the context of the Good Samaritan. In Luke 10:37, he said that he showed mercy on him. Okay. So mercy, as opposed to grace, is the fact that the Good Samaritan was in deep trouble—beaten up, et cetera.

Isaiah 54:7: God says, “For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee in. In little wrath I hid My face from thee for a moment, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer.” So the idea is that you’re in deeper distress. Now it’s not simple the position of state of grace. Now you’re in deep distress from the absence of God’s presence. And yet He’s going to show you mercy and kindness.

In the context of that, Romans 9:23 extends this to all of the elect in Christ, all Christians. We read that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy. Vessels of mercy. God says that He shows mercy on the thousands of them that love Him and keep His commandments. And He says that the elect are chosen sovereignly by God in Romans 9 for the purpose of being vessels of mercy.

And so when you go through difficult times, recognize that one of the reasons for that is that God might make known His mercy and loving kindness to you. You never miss the water till the well runs dry. And when your well runs dry in your life, it’s that you might know the mercy and loving kindness of God—to know that all your life you are to be a vessel of mercy chosen by God sovereignly.

So grace and mercy upon the people of God are pronounced in the context of this benediction. You can think of mercy as warm affection from God.

Now, before I go on to peace, I’ll note here that mercy is not normally in that initial benediction of God that He pronounces through the Apostle Paul in the epistles. As Paul writes to the churches, it’s always grace and peace. But when Paul writes to Timothy and to Titus—two epistles to Timothy, one to Titus—he says grace, mercy, and peace.

Now, why is that? Well, some people say the pastors need a lot more mercy. Matthew Henry says this in his commentary. He says that ministers need more grace than others to discharge their duty faithfully, and they need more mercy than others to pardon what is amiss in them. And if Timothy, so eminent a minister, must be indebted to the mercy of God and needed the increase and continuance of it, how much more do we ministers in these times who have so little of his excellent spirit.

So ministers, because of their particular calling, some people say, need more mercy because of their failings. And I think another thing to keep in mind is, remember we talked last week about the whole point of this epistle and how frequently throughout 1 and 2 Timothy you read both of them. God is always building Timothy up. He’s trying to bolster him. He’s saying, “Get going here now. Stiffen yourself up for the task. Tell these guys not to do this.” You know, we all know that verse in 2 Timothy: “You know that God didn’t give us a spirit of timidity or fear, but of love and strength.” That verse is given to Timothy. You think of it usually in terms of your kids or people that have tough times. But that’s written to Timothy in the first place, to bolster him up to do what was required.

Timothy was in trying circumstances. He had a lot of opposition apparently, a lot of bad elder wannabes, as I talked about last week. And because of that particular problem, perhaps that’s why Paul inserted the term mercy here as well. We don’t know, but we do know that the end result of it is that we know that God’s mercy is upon all vessels sovereignly chosen in Jesus Christ.

And then the third part of this benediction is peace. Grace, mercy, and peace. And peace certainly refers, as we think of it in terms of, peace with God—that’s certainly important to recognize. But peace has as its origin, the particular Greek term that’s used, that which has been bound together again after having been separated. The verb means to bind together that which has been separated or broken.

Hamlet, Shakespeare wrote in his mouth—put into the mouth of Hamlet—these words: “The times are out of joint. O cursed spite that I was ever born to set them right.” That is, as one commentator cites this: When things become disjointed and separated, there is no feeling of tranquility, comfort, or well-being. The latter come as a result of binding together things that have become separated.

We live in times that are where the times are out of joint—when things are broken apart. And I won’t go through the whole litany. You know it probably as well or better than I do in terms of the difficulties that are faced. I will mention one example. The times are out of joint.

We have Rob Stone called me this week. He is a county commissioner I believe in Yamhill County, chairman of the county commissioners. He’s been in a lot of hot water lately because he’s been leading the county commission, beginning their meetings with prayer—Christian prayer—and they don’t like that. And the AP has picked it up: big controversy. They’re going to sue him. So Rob will probably stop praying publicly, but he will continue to state in the context of city council decisions that he’s doing his stuff based on the scriptures. And he’s taken a lot of flack for it.

On the other hand, we have a communist featured on the front page of the metro section I think of the Oregonian who sits on, I think, the Eugene city council. Now he’s in some controversy too, but he has pretty much free reign to do whatever he wants as a communist. There, so the times are kind of out of joint here. There’s warfare going on between the two seeds, as they’re pictured for us—this county commissioner and this city councilman—and, you know, the rest of the stories you know.

Last Sunday the Oregonian on the front page: homosexuality sensitivity training going on in the schools. You know, I think Lane Middle School and Grant High or something like that in Portland, a couple schools, pilot program. They’re going to train all teachers. Don’t use the words “married.” Don’t use the words “boyfriend” or “girlfriend.” You make those homosexuals and lesbians feel bad, and they’re not going to do well in school.

Times are out of joint. There’s no peace.

Peace is “shalom” in the Old Testament term. It’s all of God’s blessings again. And the orderliness, the binding together, the reconciliation of all things which occurs through the preaching of the Gospel of Christ and in the context of the church. We want to see ourselves as messengers from God to go out into the world to bring that peace, to affect that order, to affect God’s shalom in the context of our world through the preaching of the Gospel.

But know, Christian, that peace—that binding together of what things are broken apart in your life—flows to you today from the throne of God. Yet it is placed upon you. God says He will bless you and is blessing you and has blessed you with grace, with mercy, and with peace. And these things will be multiplied to you.

Rest—at the beginning half of this sermon, the second half won’t take so long, hopefully. Rest at the beginning portion of this sermon in the knowledge that God’s person, His communicable attributes, are flowed out into your life. And you receive those things now and they will be multiplied unto you. Put all those cares and trials and tribulations—whatever it is—in a position of very relative small things compared to the greatness of God’s grace and His mercy and His peace.

And know that even those small things will be cared for by God tenderly with loving kindness for you, His beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, this day, this week, this month, this year, this millennium, and next millennium. Your lives will be filled with increasing grace to you, increasing mercy and demonstrations of loving kindness, and increasing peace from Him to you and the ordering of your world.

That’s yours through the work of our Savior. That which has been broken will be made whole and be bound up by grace, the grace of God. Those things are yours in Jesus Christ our Savior.

Paul can be said to say then that may you have a fresh discovery of His love and free favor and an increase of grace and the gifts of His Spirit. May you have a fresh application of His pardoning mercy of God through Christ. And may you have peace of heart and conscience through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Matthew Henry says that we could ask from our dearly beloved friends rather that they may have grace to help them in times of need, mercy to pardon what is amiss, and so we may have peace with God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

All of those things are ours in Christ.

Now, now recognize that he doesn’t stop there. He goes on immediately after giving Timothy that deep-seated assurance to remind him of the charge—to teach some, not to teach other doctrines. There is a charge committed here.

Ministers of the Gospel are to preach and teach the sound doctrine of God, and they are to teach nothing but that sound doctrine. In our reformed churches—Christian Reformed, the Dutch Reformed churches—their secondary standard says that whatever is in the confessions and creeds of the church, you must teach those things and you must agree not to teach anything contrary to those doctrines.

That, by the way, is where Arminianism started. Jacobus Arminius, the father of Arminianism, began to teach things outside of or against the teachings of the reformed creeds. Now, if he thought they were wrong, he had an obligation to go to the church and hash it out the proper way. But what he did instead was to fill university students’ heads with things that were contrary to the sound doctrine of the church as expressed in its creeds and confessions.

And as a result, he was brought up and examined and died in the middle of it. Couldn’t take the pressure—because he had, I think, because he had a guilty conscience. You see, if he thought it was wrong, fine. Go to the church. Work it out the right way. Ministers have to, cannot be allowed to teach contrary doctrine to the doctrine of the scriptures.

It cannot be allowed to do that. If that’s what the doctrine has been settled as the church is being and understood from Scripture, that is what we must teach. And we must teach nothing but that. And so Timothy was charged to not allow false teachers in the context of the church to teach other things.

Now, that’s a strong thing here, isn’t it? That’s a strong thing. Well, you have to tell some guys to shut up is what Paul is saying. Knock that stuff off. And you got to tell them to knock it off. And if they won’t knock it off, you got to discipline them. You got to separate from them, have nothing to do with them. If need be, excommunicate them. That’s what the scriptures teach.

Now, that doesn’t sound very loving. But Paul says right after he tells Timothy this, that the goal—in King James, the “end”—telos, the end, the goal—of this whole thing, this charge. The word used is not the word for commandment, intent, in the sense of the Ten Commandments. It’s used rather of the charge to Timothy and the charge he was supposed to give to these men.

The goal of that kind of nouthetic work—to go to people about difficulties in their life that are out of sync with the scriptures. The goal of that whole thing is love, charity. It’s the way the King James translates it. You see, now I’m going to get to the rest of the stuff right now, but I want you to understand that the purpose of this is love.

By implication, what I get from that in the scriptures is that if you’re going to have love flow from member to member and member to God—love toward God and toward our neighbor—it’s defined in the law. If you’re going to have that flow, you’ve got to be in the context of a church that does have standards, that has doctrinal standards and has a discipline that says to people, “I’m sorry, but for your love, for the sake of your love and ministry to others, them ministering to you, God to you, and you to God.” You cannot do that in the context of the body of Christ if you have people who approach you about difficulties in your life.

You know, recognize that the end of that charge may well be the improvement of your love and the improvement of the flow of love in the context of the body.

On the other hand, if you think there are things in people’s lives—your children, your wife, your husband, your friends, your covenant family here at Reformation Covenant Church, that friends outside of the church—that you need to help them address, recognize that the goal of what you’re doing is not simple orthodoxy in the sense of getting the army lined up right. The end of what you’re trying to accomplish must be, if it’s in accordance with the scriptures and the Word of God, the goal of what you’re doing must be love.

And if you keep that in mind as you go to your brothers and sisters in the Lord, see, then you’re going to approach them a little differently, perhaps. Yes, Timothy has to be firm with these guys. But the goal of being firm is love. And if the goal is love, then we know as well that the whole thing must be bathed in the context of that love. People have to know that’s what you’re doing.

I know most of you, you know me. When people come to us, we get nervous and we get defensive and we don’t think they’re being very loving. Well, I want you to know that they are being loving most of the time. And I want you, if you go to someone else, to recognize you’re going to have to go out of your way to make sure they know you love them if you’re going to bring them some criticism. Okay?

So, what I’m trying to say here is that this whole idea—and this church, you know, we’ve talked about this, and frankly, we’ve taken some heat for doing this in the context of the church, for saying there does got to be some order. This is not you know a commune. This is an order. This is the city of God, this is the house of God. And how do we behave? We behave carefully with our tongues.

You know, it’s not just in terms of doctrine. We can stop up the love of the church when we use our tongues to slander other people, to spread untruths about them. But what do we do about that?

Well, we just, you know, we recognize, hey, we’re all like that. Everybody likes to do that kind of stuff. We’re no different ourselves. We’ve all have those common feelings. And what we want to do is help remind each other to build each other up in love. Don’t stop the outflowing of love. We’re going to talk about coins and fellowship at family camp this year.

Don’t put stoppages in that fountain of love by having tongues that aren’t trained according to God’s Word and His law. This doesn’t say the word “law,” but Romans does. In Romans, it says the end of the law, the commandments, the Ten Commandments, is love. And it doesn’t mean that love puts an end to the Ten Commandments. It means you know, peace. Law and love fit together like a glove. This verse says in the context of charges. Romans tells us that in the context of God’s commandments, we have to have our tongues disciplined by the commandments of God.

And then we got to have the courage to go to each other to seek growth in love. We move the blockages to love. And we got to have courage to hear that from other people, that the blockages to our love might be pulled out of the way.

Real quickly—I know I’m going a little long—real quickly, what is it? How does it block up love? Well, Paul, you know, he goes on to say, by the way, 1 Corinthians 13: “Love is patient and love is kind.” And I think that if you look at those things that are said there, that long list in 1 Corinthians 13, that is a great way to look at the positive side. What are the two attributes? If your love’s being blocked up, how do you know it? Well, if you’re impatient with people and you failed to do deeds of kindness to people, that’s how you know your love’s blocked up. That’s how you know you got to take some steps to correct it.

Love is patient. It doesn’t suffer. It suffers long when wronged. It bears up with all things. It endures all things. Those are three demonstrations of patience on the part of the believer when other people are doing things wrong to you.

Love is kind. It serves others. It believes all things. It hopes all things. It actively works kindly toward other people with deeds of kindness and it has thoughts of kindness—not believing the first negative thought that comes to our mind about somebody.

Patience and kindness is the description in 1 Corinthians 13 of love, and then it’s contrasted, of course, with hostility. Instead of being patient when people, you know, people and fallen creatures, you can get hostile toward them, and that’s what you don’t want to do. That blocks love. It’s not loving. And love, the kindness that 1 Corinthians says we got to have, is blocked up by self-interest.

See, it’s not puffed up. It isn’t self-seeking. It isn’t unseemly in conduct. It’s not conceited. It’s not arrogant. It’s not jealous. Those are all measured by self-interest. So, you got patience as opposed to hostility. And you’ve got kindness as opposed to self-interest as the definition of love.

And Timothy is told by Paul that the three things you got to work at and work hard at is having a pure heart. That means pure in the sense of God’s love in your heart, God’s truth in your heart, and not impurified by love of the world. Okay? Your heart can be messed up. Your heart can get unclean with impure thoughts or actions or deeds. You got to get rid of those and put on a pure heart that we’re given in Christ, but then you’re supposed to purify your hearts as well.

A pure heart at the center of your being, a good conscience. Remember Paul in Acts 24:16, I believe, he said, “I work hard. I labor to have a good conscience.” The conscience is your ethical part of you that makes evaluations and judgments. And I might get more into it next week, but recognize that it is related to the law of God as your standard by which you judge your actions. Your conscience is supposed to be good, which means that you’re supposed to apply yourself to having a good conscience before God, before man. It doesn’t just happen as a result of your position in Christ.

What happens is the habits you’ve learned prior to regeneration go over and pollute your conscience. And you have to work hard, as Paul did, to have a good conscience toward God and men. And then you have to have a faith unfeigned—no hypocrisy. No masks when you come to church. Scriptures talk about unfeigned love for the brethren. You know, you don’t want to pretend by doing acts of kindness and patience toward believers. That’s the plot of a pure heart. God says that our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and our conscience relative to our actions to God and men, and then our hearts—the purity of our hearts.

Those are the things that we must have to usher forth this stream of love in the context of which we then issue and receive admonitions from other members of the body of Christ.

Well, we’ve been given several things here. We’ve been given, first of all, an assurance by God that your lives are in His hands. And every Lord’s day, if no other time in your life, you should remember and know that God’s blessing, His grace, His mercy, and His peace is being multiplied in your life.

And on the basis of that solidity, on the basis of that Sabbath rest in our Savior, you’re to be encouraged then to remove stoppages to love in yourself, remove stoppages to love in your fellow believer in the context of the church. And that the imposition of admonitions and rebukes, helpful words, encouragements—those are all part of the way that love is allowed to free flow in the context of the church.

And a church that doesn’t have admonitions, rebukes, encouragements going on is a church where love has probably died long before.

So go to your brother in that context. Receive admonition in that context, and work that your love might flow by having a pure heart, a good conscience, and a non-hypocritical faith. That’s what God calls us to. He blesses us and He calls us to do some things. And we say, “Yes, Lord. You’ve given us strength to do just those very things.” And we’ll apply ourselves to it.

Let’s pray.

Father, help us, Lord God, to teach our children these things. Help us, Lord God, to remind them that their conscience—their conscience—that is, can be harmed by their improper attitudes toward authority. We know, Lord God, that You told us we’re to obey the authorities that are ordained by You for conscience’s sake. And we know, Father, that our children muddy and pollute their good conscience when they’re rebellious against their parents.

And we know, Oh Lord God, that the wives in this congregation can have not good but bad consciences by rejecting the authority of their husbands. And we know that husbands can have bad consciences by rejecting the joint submission to their wives and listening to their counsel, and by failure to bow the knee to Your ordained authorities in the church, the state, and the workplace.

Lord God, if there be grumbling in the context of any of these relationships that we all have—one to the other, and to our superiors and inferiors in the context of our various callings—root them out, God. We know that improper consciences will block up that love, block up the effective administration of Your law as well in the context of developing love in us.

Help us, Father, to have good consciences. Help us to have pure hearts. Keep us, Lord God, from those sinful actions and attitudes this very week, or this very day, that we’re tempted to fall into, particularly in this sin-repent world that we live in, in the context of a city, Lord God, as You know, that has over I don’t know hundreds of sex shops. Los Angeles only has five. Help us, Lord God, to remove these temptations to the application of Your faith in the political arena. But in the meantime, help us, help our children, and help the extended church of Jesus Christ not to fall into sinful actions or sinful thoughts that will muddy our hearts up, remove the purity of them.

Keep us, Lord God, from an impure love for things of this world that may be proper when used correctly, such as money, jobs, security, et cetera. You know, those things also can give us impure hearts, as they did with these men that Timothy and Paul were addressing. Later on, Father, you know, we read about how they who want to be rich fall into a snare and a trap, because they become impure in their heart and they then engage in practices which defile their conscience, and they see themselves eventually with a faith that is hypocritical.

Their whole lives being washed away through an impure heart and a bad conscience. Keep us, Lord God, from that. Keep us individually and corporately with pure hearts, good consciences, and with faith that is not hypocritical. We know, Lord God, that this is impossible for us. But we know also that it’s not our job ultimately, that You flow Your grace, mercy, and peace to us to enable us to have the strength of the Spirit to do these things.

And so continue in the blessing that You have given to us once for all through Jesus our Savior. We thank You, Lord God, for all these things—not as we ought, but as we are—in Christ’s name we pray. Amen.