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Text: Colossians 1:4
Paul is grateful after hearing of the Colossians faith, love, and hope. Tonight we’ll look at love for the saints. God’s people love God’s people. This is one of those defining characteristics. Love can have feelings, but it is not a feeling. It is support of someone else; wanting to improve their life whatever way you can.
Brother Andrew
One of the most loved Brother Andrew stories recounts a risky incident from early in his ministry. On this occasion, Brother Andrew approached the Romanian border in his car—which was packed with illegal Bibles. He could only hope the border guards were moving swiftly and not paying much attention, which might allow him to pass through undetected. But just as he was hoping this, Brother Andrew saw the guards stop the car at the front of the line. He watched, in anticipation, as the vehicle’s owners were forced to take out all of the car’s contents and spread them on the ground for inspection. Each car that followed received the same treatment, with the fourth car’s inspection lasting the longest. The guard took a full hour to sift through it, including removing hubcaps, taking the engine apart, and even removing the seats.
“Dear Lord,” Brother Andrew remembers praying, “What am I going to do?” As he prayed, a bold idea came to Brother Andrew. “I know that no amount of cleverness on my part can get me through this border search. Dare I ask for a miracle? Let me take some of the Bibles out and leave them in the open where they will be seen.” Putting the Bibles out in the open would truly be depending on God, rather than his own intelligence, he thought. So when the guards ushered Andrew forward, he did just this. “I handed him my papers and started to get out. But his knee was against the door, holding it closed.” And then, the almost unbelievable happened.
The guard looked at Brother Andrew’s passport and abruptly waved him on. “Surely thirty seconds had not passed,” he remembers. Brother Andrew started the engine and began pulling away, all the while wondering if he was supposed to pull over so the car could be taken apart and examined. “I coasted forward, my foot poised above the brake. Nothing happened. I looked out the rear mirror. The guard was waving the next car to a stop, indicating to the driver that he had to get out.” God had cleared the way for Brother Andrew to smuggle the Bible to Christians who had no access to God’s Word.
Love God and love the people of God
- Hebrews 6:10 For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister.
- A new commandment in John 13:34-35
- First of all the Lord Jesus Christ says this because he’s going away
- Second, he says this because it will be part of their testimony in the world.
- People who say they got saved but the crowd they ran with now had no idea that saved soul belonged to Jesus Christ. Why? They loved the world and forgot to love the brethren.
- Hebrews 10:23-25 Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;) 24 And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: 25 Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.
- 1 John 2:7-10 – God vs. the world. God’s people love the things God loves and love the people God loves. The world loves its own and the people of the world love the things of the world.
- 1 John 3:10-13
- 1 John 4:20-21 If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? 21 And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.
Love of God is shown by ministering to the saints
- Hebrews 6:10 For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister.
- Galatians 5:13 For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.
- If you can’t go, give to help out. If you can’t give to help out, pray for those who are doing the work and let them know you’re praying for them. That’s what Paul is doing.
- Yokefellows working together – Matthew 11:28-30, Philippians 4:2-3 I beseech Euodias, and beseech Syntyche, that they be of the same mind in the Lord. 3 And I intreat thee also, true yokefellow, help those women which laboured with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellowlabourers, whose names are in the book of life.
- Colossians 3:14 And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.
- Ephesians 4:16 From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.
