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- D.L. Moody - Christian Love
"Christian Love" by D.L. Moody
 IT
speaks in Galatians about love, the fruit of the Spirit being love,
joy, peace, gentleness, long suffering, meekness and temperance. The
way this writer has put it -- and I think it is very beautiful -- is
that joy is love exultant, peace is love in repose, and long
suffering is love enduring. It is all love, you see, a gentleness is
love in society, and goodness is love in action, and faith is love
on the battle-field, and meekness is love at school, and temperance
is love in training.
Now there are a great many that have got love and they hold the
truth. I should have said they have got truth, but they don't hold
it in love, and they are very unsuccessful in working for God. They
are very harsh, and God cannot use them. Now let us hold the truth,
but let us hold it in love. People will stand almost any kind of
plain talk if you only do it in love. If you do it in harshness it
bounds back and they won't receive it. So what we want is to have
the truth and at the same time hold it in love.
Then there is another class of people in the world that have got the
truth, but they love so much that they give up the truth because
they are afraid it will hurt some one's feelings. That is wrong. We
want the whole truth anyway. We don't want to give it up, but hold
it in love, and I believe one reason why people think God don't love
them is because they have not this love. I met a lady in the
inquiry-room today, and I could not convince her that God loved her,
for she said that if He did love her He would not treat her as He
had. And I believe people are all measuring God with their own rule,
as I said the other day, and we are not sincere in our love, and we
very often profess something we really don't possess. Very often we
profess to have love for a person when we do not, and we think God
is like us.
Now God is just what He says He is, and He wants His children to be
sincere in love; not to love just merely in word and in tongue, but
to love in earnest. -That is what God does. You ask me why God
loves. You might as well ask me why the sun shines. It can't help
shining, and neither can He help loving, because He is love Himself;
and any one that says He is not love does not know anything about
love. If we have got the true love of God shed abroad in our hearts
we will show it in our lives. We will not have to go up and down the
earth proclaiming it. We will show it in everything we say or do.
VERY NICE TO THEIR FACES
There is a good deal of what you might call sham love. People
profess to love you very much, when you find it is all on the
surface. It is not heart love. Very often you are in a person's
house, and the servant comes in and says such a person is in the
front room, and she says: "Oh, dear, I am so sorry he has come, I
can't bear the sight of him ;" and she'll get right up and go into
the other room and say, "Why, how do you do? I am very glad to see
you! " [Laughter.] There is a good deal of that sort of thing in the
world.
I remember, too, I was talking with a man one day and an
acquaintance of his came in, and he jumped up at once and shook him
by the hand-why I thought he was going to shake his hand out of
joint, he shook so hard-and he seemed to be so glad to see him and
wanted him to stay, but the man was in a great hurry and could not
stay, and he coaxed him and urged him to stay, but the man said no,
he would come another time; and after that man went out my companion
turned to me and said, "Well, he is an awful bore, and I am glad
he's gone." Well, I began to feel that I was a bore, too, and I got
out as quickly as I could. [Laughter.] That is not real love. That
is love with the tongue while the heart is not true. Now, let us not
love in word and in tongue, but in deed and in truth. That is the
kind of love God gives us, and He wants the same in return.
Now, there is another side to this truth. A man was talking to me
out here the other day that he didn't believe there was any love at
all; that Christians professed to have love, but he didn't believe
men could have two coats, and I think he reflected on me, because I
had on my overcoat at the time and he hadn't got any. I looked at
him and said: "Suppose I should give you one of my coats, you would
drink it up before sundown. I love you too much to give you my coat
and have you drink it up."
A good many people are complaining now that Christians don't have
the love they ought to have, but I tell you it is no sign of want of
love that we don't love the lazy man. I have no sympathy with those
men that are just begging twelve months of the year. It would be a
good thing, I believe, to have them die off. They are of no good. I
admit there are some that are not real, and sincere, and true, but
there are many that would give the last penny they had to help a man
who really needed help. But there are a good many sham cases-men
that won't work, and the moment they get a penny they spend it for
drink. To such men it is no charity to give. A man that won't work
should be made to work. I believe there is a great deal more hope of
a drunkard or a murderer or a gambler than there is of a lazy man.
TOO LAZY TO STAY CONVERTED
I never heard of a lazy man being converted yet, though I remember
talking once with a minister in the backwoods of Iowa about lazy
men. He was all discouraged in his efforts' to convert lazy men, and
I said to him, "Did you ever know a lazy man to be converted?"
"Yes," said he; "I knew of one, but he was so lazy that he didn't
stay converted but about six weeks." And that is as near as I ever
heard of a lazy man being converted, and if there are any here today
saying they don't love us because we don't give them any money, I
say we love them too well. We don't give to them because it is ruin.
Some years ago I picked up several children in Chicago and thought I
would clothe them and feed them, and I took special interest in
those boys to see what I could make of them. I don't think it was
thirty days before the clothes had all gone to whisky and the
fathers had drank it all up. One day I met one of the little boys
for whom I bought a pair of boots only the day before. There was a
snow-storm coining up and he was barefooted. "Mike," says I, "how's
this? Where are your boots ?" "Father and mother took them away,"
said he. There is a good deal that we think is charity that is
really doing a great deal of mischief; and the people must not think
because we don't give them money to aid them in their poverty that
we don't love them, for the money would go into their pockets to get
whiskey with.
POVERTY SOMETIMES A BLESSING
It is no sign that we are all hypocrites and insincere in our love
that we don't give money. I believe if the prodigal son could have
got all the money he wanted in that foreign country he would never
have come home, and it was a good thing for him that he did get hard
up and to live on the husks that the swine ate. And it is a good
think that people should suffer. If they get a good living without
work, they will never work. We can never make anything of them. God
has decreed that man shall earn his bread by the sweat of his brow,
and not live on other people.
But I am getting away from the subject. I only wanted to touch upon
this subject because a good many are complaining that Christian
people don't help them. I have sometimes fifteen or twenty letters a
day, coming from Kansas, and Europe even, asking us to take up a
collection. They say: "Here is a poor woman. Just get the people to
give a penny apiece." Suppose we began doing that sort of thing. We
should have to have somebody to look up this man or this woman and
find if they are worthy. If we took up one collection, we would have
to take up five hundred. I never found a person true to Christ but
what the Lord would take care of them. I think it is a good thing
for people to suffer a little until they come back to God. They will
find that God will take care of them that love Him. A great many
say, "Oh, I love God." It is easy enough, to say this, but if you do
love God He knows about it, be assured. He knows how much you love
Him. You may deceive your neighbors, and think you love God, and
assume a good deal of love, when there is really no love in your
heart.
Now it says in Corinthians 8: "But if any man love God, the same is
known of him." God is looking from heaven down into this world just
to find that one man. God knows where he lives, the number of his
house, and the name of the street he lives in. In fact, He has the
very hairs of your head numbered, and He will take good care of you.
He will not let any of His own children come to want, He will not
let any of those that come to want suffer, He will provide for their
wants if they are only sincere, but He don't want any sham work,
When the Lord was here He was all the time stripping those Pharisees
of their miserable selfrighteousness. They professed great love for
Him while their hearts were far from God. Let us not profess to love
God with our tongue and lips, while our lives are far from it.
DON'T KNOW THEIR OWN MINDS
Another class say, "I don't know whether I love God or not. I am
really anxious to know whether or not I love God." Now, if you are
really anxious it won't take you long to find out. You cannot love
God and the world at the same time, because they abhor each other.
They are at enmity, always have been and always will be. It is the
world that crucified God's Son; it was the world that put God's Son
to death. Therefore, if we love the world it is a pretty good
evidence that the love of the Father is not in us. We may say our
prayers and go through some religious performances, but our hearts
are not right with God because we cannot love God and the world at
the same time. We have got to get the world under our feet and the
love of God must be first in our hearts or else we have not got the
love of God.
The command we have is that he who loveth God loveth his brother
also. Now, if we have got our heart full of enmity and jealousy and
malice toward any of God's children it is a sure sign that the love
of God is not in our hearts. To love a man that loves me that don't
require any goodness; the greatest infidel can do that; but to love
a man that reviles me and lies about me and slanders me-that takes
the grace of God. I may not associate with him, but I may love him.
I may hate the sin, but love the sinner, And that is one of the
tests by which to find out whether you have love in your heart. The
first impulse of the young convert is to love every one, and to do
all the good he can, and that is the sign that a man has been born
from above, born of God, and that he has got real love in his heart;
and these tests God gives us that we may know.
CHRISTIAN LOVE OPPOSED TO WORLDLINESS
The question is, do you love the world? Had you rather go to a
theatre than to prayer-meeting? Had you rather go to a dance than to
commune with the godly? If so it is, then it is a good sign that you
have not been converted and not born of God. That is a test. People
want to know whether they love God or not; let them turn to that
test and they will find out If your heart is set on the world and
you had rather not be with God's people, it is a sure sign that you
have not been born of God.
Well, there is another class of people who say, "I don't see if God
really loves me and I love Him, why I am called upon t have so many
afflictions and troubles." Just turn a moment to the 8th chapter of
Romans, the 28th verse: "And we know that all things work together
for good to them that love God, to them that are called according to
His purpose." It is not a few things; not a part of them, but all
work together for good. Give a man constant prosperity and how
quickly he turns away from God, and so it is a little trouble here,
and a little reverse here, and some prosperity there, and taken all
together it is the very thing we need.
If you just take your Bibles you will find that God loves you. There
is no one in this wide world, sinner, that loves you as God loves
you. You may think your father loves you, or your mother loves you,
or a brother or a sister, but let me tell you you can multiply it by
ten thousand times ten thousand before it can equal" God's love.
"While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Can you have
greater proof of God's love and Christ's love? "Greater love hath no
man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Christ
laid down his life for his enemies. Ah, my friends, it will take all
eternity for us to find out the height and breadth and length and
depth of God's love.
PROTECTED BY THE FLAG
How men with an open Bible can say that God don't love them is more
than I can understand. But the devil is deceitful and puts that into
their heads. Let me beg you, beg you, go to Calvary and there you
may just for a moment catch a glimpse of God's love. There was a man
came from Europe to this country a year or two ago, and he became
dissatisfied and went to Cuba in 1867 when they had a great civil
war there. Finally he was arrested for a spy, court-martialed, and
condemned to be shot. He sent for the American Consul and the
English Consul, and went on to prove to them that he was no spy.
These two men were thoroughly convinced that the man was no spy, and
they went to one of the Spanish officers and said, This man you have
condemned to be shot is an innocent man." "Well," the Spanish
officer says, "the man has been legally tried by our laws and
condemned, and the law must take its course and the man must die."
And the next morning the man was led out; the grave was already dug
for him, and the black cap was put on him, and the soldiers were
there ready to receive the order, "Fire," and in a few moments the
man would be shot and be put in that grave and covered up, when who
should rise up but the American Consul, who took the American flag
and wrapped it around him, and the English Consul took the English
flag and wrapped it around him, and they said to those soldiers,
"Fire on those flags if you dare!" Not a man dared; there were two
great governments behind those flags. And so God says, "Come under
my banner, come under, the banner of love, come under the banner of
heaven." God will take good care of all that come under His banner.
Oh, my friends, come under the banner of heaven today. This banner
is a banner of love. May it float over every soul here, is the
prayer of my heart. God don't will the death of any who will come
under His banner of love. It is pure love, and sinner, may the love
of God bring you into the fold is the prayer of my heart. I read
once of a young man who left his father, and at last that father
died and the boy came to the funeral, and there was not a tear that
flowed over his cheeks during all the funeral. He saw that father
laid down into the grave, and he did not shed a tear. When they came
to break the will, and the boy heard that the father had dealt
kindly with him and had given him some property, he began to shed
tears. When that boy heard his father's will read, his heart was
broken, and he came to his father's God.
0 sinner, if you want to find out God's love, take this last will
and testament of Jesus Christ. He showed his love by going to
Calvary; He showed his love by His death agony there. He loves you
with an. everlasting love; He don't want you to perish. O, may you
love Him in return.
Dwight L. Moody
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