1 Peter 4:8,9
The Power of Love

Intro: Brothers and Sisters, we are in the last days. We've been in them for almost 2000 years.

Jude says so: "These are grumblers, complainers, walking according to their own lusts; and they mouth great swelling words, flattering people to gain advantage. 17But you, beloved, remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ: 18how they told you that there would be mockers in the last time who would walk according to their own ungodly lusts. 19These are sensual persons, who cause divisions, not having the Spirit."

John agrees: "Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour."

And Peter said so earlier in this letter: "He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you"

Paul told us that in the last days perilous times would come, full of ungodliness and persecution of the church (2 Timothy 3:1). These are the last days. And they have been since Peter's time.

Peter writes to persecuted Christians, surrounded by ungodliness, telling them how they must live in these last days. You are in those days as well, and so this writing comes to you also upon whom the ends of the ages have come.

Since "the end of all things is at hand" the church is surrounded by the ungodly who taunt and persecute. Their enemy, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. In such dire times—which are your times as well—they need to know how they may escape this enemy and his surrounding army. Peter tells them they have three recourses: Prayer, love, and the gifts.

We covered prayer last week. And, briefly, I beg you again to become a people of prayer, recognizing the peril that surrounds you and the closeness of the end. If you lived your life this week as though this world would go on forever, snap out of it! Believe that the end is near, that the curtain might come down at any moment and, without warning, the show will be over. Pray that you may not enter into temptation and fall away from Christ.

But Peter leaves them and you with more. In such dire peril, he turns them not only to prayer in dependence on God, but to loving one another that they may present a united front, and to the use of the gifts God has given which are powerful to preserve the church by his grace until our Lord and Savior comes again.

1. Judgment Day is near so be serious for the purpose of prayer.
   1. Judgment Day is near
   2. Therefore be serious for the purpose of prayer
2. Above all, love one another.
   1. In general, because love covers over sins
      1. Proverbs 10:12 "Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sins."
      2. Love does the opposite of stirring up strife
         1. When we do not love each other, how often we suspect one another of working against us.
         2. How quick we are to judge one another's motives! And how desperately we need each other's love for our own motives are impure and if we broke relations after 1 sin or 10 or 100, none of us would be sitting together in this room now except a few of you who hadn't met everyone else yet.
         3. Chance comments that we insist on taking the wrong way — "I know what he meant by that statement...."
            1. But Christ, who searches the heart, knows our brother's sin better than we do who only hear his words. And Christ loves him. So must we.
            2. Indeed Christ loves you as well as your brother though he knows the blackness of your sins and how often your hearts have been deceitful and your tongues have gossiped and slandered and your feet have turned to do evil.
         4. We refuse to give our brothers the benefit of the doubt — "He says he didn't mean to exclude me but I find that hard to believe."
         5. We become like Satan, whose name means "the Accuser", accusing one another and doing the devil's work for him.
         6. But the love of Christ is patient, kind, not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
         7. This is the love he has given us and we must give each other or the church will dissolve in an instant and we will go our separate ways.
      3. How necessary when the church needs a united front
         1. With the world against you, will you turn against each other as well?
         2. The world wants us to fail that Christ may be exposed as a fraud and they left to pursue their own godless desires in peace.
         3. Will we assist them in this, exposing one another's sins and denying by our speech and attitudes the love of Christ and the unity of his Church.
         4. When a brother or sister is tempted by the devil or frightened by the world, will that one come running into the bosom of the church for protection and prayer? Only if we love one another with this love that Christ gave us, even being willing to lay down our lives for one another.
      4. Love covers over a multitude of sins
         1. Over "all" sins according to Proverbs 10:12
         2. It does so not by pretending they don't exist, but by forgiving them.
            1. God did not simply overlook our sins and neither should we overlook each other's.
            2. Indeed God, by his Holy Spirit often convicts us of sin and so for us as well, when we see each other falling into sin, we go to one another pleading the peril of sin and the grace of Christ that the sinner may be turned back.
            3. James says as much, using this very concept: "Brethren, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, and someone turns him back, 2let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins." (5:19,20)
            4. I could spend all day giving you guidelines for when to chase someone down over this and when to leave it alone... and still not anticipate a situation you might find yourself in in a week's time.
            5. I will be content to say this, love must drive you to it. Oh, seek the Lord that love and only love sends you to a brother, reluctantly mentioning your concern that sin has overtaken him.
            6. And to you who have been chased down in this fashion by someone you felt was over-zealous, misguided, and misinformed—you too have this overwhelmingly sweet and abundant love of Christ at your disposal that you may impute the best possible motives and forgive and bury the incident without ever needing to know whether you were sinned against or not.
            7. For the love of Christ covers not only the sins we confess but our hidden faults as well; and so must we do for one another.
         3. Matthew 18—Peter offers to forgive his brother a generous 7 times. Our Savior, ready to die for the sin of the world, is unimpressed. 70 times 7, he says, or more than you can count even with your shoes off so don't keep track. Love doesn't keep a record of wrongs.
         4. Has not God forgiven you 70 times seven in Christ.
         5. When the coming Judge has cleared you of guilt, will you still judge your brother whose guilt is also cleared?
      5. How necessary when our sins are many
         1. Who is there who has not received such abundant love and covering of sin from God in Christ?
         2. Who is there who lacks this love to give to his brother? No, the love of Christ indwells and compels you.
         3. Who is there who does not need such love from his brothers?
      6. Therefore, be fervent in your love.
         1. Again as before in this letter, Peter insists that love is not simply a matter of the right actions. It is a matter of the heart and there is a fervency, a depth, to the love to which he calls us.
            1. For Peter, as for Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, love is not an action but a direction of the heart without which all action is meaningless.
            2. We must, from the heart, desire our brother's good fervently, i.e. as much as we desire our own.
            3. We must rejoice as much in his blessings as in our own, with genuine gladness of heart.
            4. We must mourn as much his sufferings as our own, feeling the trouble keenly.
            5. This is beyond anything we can "decide" to do. Such love comes from Christ alone, flowing freely from the abundance of his fervent love for us, a love so fervent that he spent the night of his betrayal and arrest not only praying for himself but for his disciples and for us (for all who would believe).
            6. What greater love is there? In the midst of his own suffering he took pity on us and prayed for ours.
            7. This is the love he now gives us from heaven. Come and take it for free by believing that he has loved you thus and meditating on its height and depth and length and breadth—it's fervency—until you know that which surpasses knowledge.
            8. And knowing it, you will have it to give.
         2. This is not abstract but concrete. Peter's talking about the person on your left and on your right, in front of and behind you. Think of those people. Name names silently to yourself.
         3. These are the ones you are called to love with this deep and heartfelt that only comes from Christ.
         4. What temptations would overtake us if we had such a deep love for each other. We would run to each other's rescue. When a brother fell into sin we would agonize in prayer before God as though it were our own child. We would plead with him with unfeigned tears to be rid of the sin that so easily entangles and wars against his soul.
         5. Think of those from whom you've been estranged though they also are children of God. There is tension between you and you have deemed it wiser to cease contact with them or to take the relationship to a less intimate level. Oh, children! let none of this spring from a coldness of heart! But long fervently for the restoration of those bonds of love which have been strained or broken to their peril and yours.
         6. Go to them with this love of Christ which knows no pride but only the anguish of the body of Christ being unnecessarily dismembered.
         7. Can you come to this Table if you have purposed any less and sought any lesser love from Christ? The table would become a mockery, the breaking of the bread a symbol of Christ's body the church being broken by your unwillingness to reconcile, indeed to seek reconciliation with all your heart.
         8. Come and take this broken bread, rather, as a symbol of the body of Christ broken once for all, that we might be united forever in his love.
   2. Specifically, by being hospitable
      1. In Peter's day, they would have been grateful for a Motel 6. There were few inns, and those that existed might very well be disreputable. You might be robbed. Sleeping in the open square was hardly better.
         1. And yet here they were, a fledgling religion, filled with itinerant missionaries and preachers spreading the good news and needing lodging.
         2. And as well, there were those believers driven from their homelands by persecution and those whose goods were confiscated and they left with nothing.
         3. All such depended on the mercy of their fellow Christians to extend their limited resources to provide food and shelter.
         4. Understand the situation: They were poor.
            1. Food for a stranger often meant they went a bit hungry.
            2. They did not have 4 bedroom houses with guest rooms. They had four walls and a roof. An extra body sleeping in such quarters meant you couldn't roll over in bed without getting acquainted.
         5. How easy to say, "Oh, I really can't; it's just not feasible. You know, if I had an extra room, I'd be happy to let you use it. And if there were enough food on the table I'd gladly share it, but things are tight right now."
         6. Alternatively, they could recognize their obligation, but pursue it as a burden, with cheerless grumbling.
            1. "How long is this fellow going to stay? Doesn't he know we're all going hungry because of him?"
            2. This would be the opposite of the fervent love that Peter commends and Christ offers.
      2. Peter commends to them and to you, a sacrificial love, a fervent love that expresses itself in action even at cost to yourself
         1. Again, is this not the love of Christ who sacrificed himself on our behalf?
         2. This is the love that constrains us and enables us.
         3. This is the love in which we count our brother's needs as more important than our own.
            1. Catch this vision for a moment. What would the church be like if your brother was more concerned that you needed a new car than that he did? He would work for your good, knowing that the Lord had called him to serve you.
            2. "OK, you go first"
            3. But Christ already went first.
         4. What an embarrassment of riches we have in this world! How able we are to give to one another without grumbling or making excuses.
         5. In two weeks we will be taking a special offering for foreign missions
            1. Think about this and let your love overflow for these brothers and sisters in other parts of the world that they might not be denied the preaching of the gospel
            2. Must we not long for their salvation as much as we do for our own?
            3. Must we not provide for them out of this embarrassment of riches?
            4. Will not the world and the devil be defeated in their attempt to overthrow the church when we are united throughout the world like this?
         6. Seek this fervent love which comes from Christ and it will constrain you to shower one another with the goodness that God bestows on you and we shall all be cared for.
   3. And by exercising gifts for the common good
3. That God may be glorified in Christ
   1. So God may receive all the glory
   2. Because to Him belong eternal glory and dominion

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