In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of obedience to the word of God, particularly in regards to possessions and giving. He mentions that many people today are resistant to this message due to the materialistic culture we live in. The preacher also discusses the concept of forsaking all and compares it to the teachings in the book "True Discipleship" and a verse from the Bible. He highlights the need for compassion as a driving force in our actions and mentions the importance of love and prayer in fulfilling the commandments of God.

Orientation session number five. The motive for our warfare, love. Without any doubt we can say that this is probably the most important message in the orientation series. For if we miss, if we miss the emphasis and the basic principle of this message, everything else will be as Corinthians said, sounding brass and clanging cymbals. God has told us in his word quite clearly that the first commandment is to love him with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. And this is what we want to consider in this orientation session. Without any doubt it's probably the most practical principle. For it's our love for one another that will determine our effectiveness on our teams as we go into Mexico, as we go into the Middle East or as we go into Europe. Now as we look through the New Testament, we see so many verses on the subject of love, we hardly know where to begin. We see so many revolutionary verses concerning love and how we're to love God and love one another that it would be impossible in this short orientation session even to begin to discuss a small part of them. One time for my own study, I went through the whole New Testament and underlined all the verses that mentioned love and then all the verses that had one of the synonyms of love such as patience, kindness, meekness, long-suffering and the other fruit of the Holy Spirit that comes in this great spectrum of love. Just as light can shine into a crystal and come out many different colors, so the love of God shed abroad in our heart comes out in the many different spectrums of love such as joy, peace, long-suffering, etc. And as I look through the New Testament on the subject of love, I found that next to the name of Jesus Christ, love was mentioned more than anything else. Without any doubt, love is the message of the New Testament and anyone who has not loved has not received the message of the New Testament. We can be orthodox, we can be fundamental, we can be evangelistic, we can be studious in the word of God, but if we have not loved, the Bible tells us very clearly we are nothing. And as we think in terms of this tremendous warfare that we have entered into, as we think in terms of moving into Mexico to evangelize, as we think in terms of moving into Europe to evangelize, we must think constantly in terms of love. The Bible says God is love and we cannot separate one from the other. You cannot have God without having love and you cannot have love without having God. John goes so far as to say that he who does not love is a murderer. How more blunt can you possibly get? How more specific could he possibly be than to call those who have not loved for the brethren murderers? Or that we might stop watering down the word of God. Or that we might stop rationalizing and theorizing and we might realize God meant what he said. When God said we were to love one another, he meant it. When God said we were to love our neighbor as ourselves, he meant it. When God said we were to lay down our lives as an offering of love, he meant it. So now let us look into the New Testament and let us change this subject of love, realizing that as we go into the warfare, this must be our motivation. This must be the compelling thing. This must be the constraining thing. This must be the thing that leads us out into the battle. As we look at the cults and as we look at communism and as we look at various groups and organizations in society, societies moving out actively, working, struggling, fighting, witnessing for their faith, we realize that in most cases they're working out of false motivation. There's so many things that can come in in the realm of false motivation. One of the greatest is seeking honor of men. Jesus in the book of John 5.44 said that the Pharisees and the scribes could not believe. He said to the specific how can you believe which receive honor one of another and seek not the honor that comes from God alone. God saw, Jesus saw that these men could not believe. They could not enter into this revolutionary life. They could not enter into this dynamic life because they sought the honor of men. And it's seeking the honor of men is our motivation in this evangelistic effort. If seeking the recognition of men, seeking the honor of men, seeking the back-pattings and the hand-shakings, seeking the well-dones of men is the thing that's going to motivate us, we're going to find only sadness and eventually catastrophe. Jesus said, I seek not the honor of men. And each one of us needs to come today as we think in terms of this tremendous warfare, as we think in terms of this tremendous crusade that lies ahead. We must come and ask God to purge our moods. We must ask God to take away all this spirit of adventure that we might not go to Mexico or to Europe or any other place motivated by anything else than the love of God. And we see this so clearly in the New Testament. Let us open now to the book of Matthew. First of all, let us look in Matthew the ninth chapter. I found that in every single book in the New Testament, minus none, love was either the major theme or one of the major themes in every book in the New Testament. That's why I want to go through the whole New Testament during this orientation session and take one major verse on love from each book in the New Testament. And then in your own study, you can read the other verses that are found in each one of the books of the New Testament. In Matthew, there are many verses, of course, of love. The whole Sermon on the Mount is basically a sermon on the subject of love. But I want us first of all in this study on motivation to look at the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ wasn't a sit-down pacifist. He wasn't one of these kinds of people who said, well, we better not do anything because we might end up striving. Jesus did things. Jesus was not a hearer of the word, but a doer. And we see Jesus Christ in the ninth chapter of Matthew doing something. Matthew 9 35. And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. Here we see Jesus Christ doing basically what God has put on our hearts to do as we follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. This past summer, God put it on our hearts to go into all the villages of Spain, Italy, Austria, Belgium, in France. And so we went, and God blessed. As over 250 tons of literature went out, as tens of thousands of people were dealt with personally, as close to a thousand street meetings were held, as people were presented the claims of Christ, we went because Jesus went before us. We love him because he first loved us. Yet Jesus wasn't just a pew sinner. Jesus didn't just go into the mountain and stay there all day in prayer. He believed in prayer, but he also believed that prayer motivated. He believed that prayer moved, and he believed that which his father had told him. And in the light of it, he went. He went into all, notice that word there in that verse, all the cities and villages, all that God might give us, that same desire, all that God might meet us in our wayness, in our sleepiness, in our lack of mobility, and say all the villages, all the cities, in all the world. This has always been the great commission. Jesus didn't 2,000 years ago tell us to go into all the world, and now 2,000 years later, because things were hard in the realm of political barriers, say, well now it's only half the world. The command is still all the world, just as Jesus went into all the towns and villages in the area where he lived, in the area where God had sent him. So we today can go into all the towns and villages in all the world. But here's the important thing found in the 36th verse. Why did he go? That's the key thing. Was he seeking a status? Was he seeking position? Was he seeking recognition? Was he going for the spirit of adventure? Was he going because he wanted to see what the villages were like? Was he going because some friends had asked him to go? Was he going because he was proving himself? Was he going to prove that he was Jesus? No. He went, as we see in the 36th verse, for a reason more important than all of these. He went for a reason beyond anything that the human mind had ever dreamed of or thought of. A reason that had begun with the Father and had been carried down to the earth through him. Here it is in the 36th verse. But when he saw the multitude, when he saw the people, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep, having no shepherds. There was the motivation of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was moved with compassion. Moved indeed he was, but not by false motivation, not by status seeking, not by a drive to beat somebody or to go somewhere. But he was moved with compassion. And I want to say with all sincerity and from the very depths of my heart, that unless we in this movement to reach the world for Christ are moved with that same compassion, everything we do will eventually be sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. Unless what you're doing there in your college campus, unless what you're doing there in your Bible school campus is being done because you're moved by compassion, eventually it will be sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. And that includes your Bible study, that includes the clubs you belong to, that includes the athletic events you take part in, that includes wherever you go, whatever you do, whatever you say. God says it needs to be moved by compassion. That compelling motive, that constrained motive, that dynamic impetus is compassion. The compassion that drove Jesus into the towns and villages is the same compassion that will drive you and I to the very uttermost parts of the earth. And yea, at the same time, the same compassion that will drive you and I to be kind and meek and loving and gentle and friendly to those who live around us. We see in the next verses, then said he unto his disciples, the harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few. Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into the harvest. We discussed that verse, I believe, in one of the previous tapes. But we see here again that divine combination of love and prayer, love and prayer. It tells us in the book of Galatians that faith, worketh by love, and faith and prayer and love are linked as close as the Trinity. Oh might we see this in our Christian living. Now let us turn to the book of Mark. Mark the 12th chapter and the 29th verse. Here we read, And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first commandment. And the second is like it, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is no other commandment greater than these. Now Jesus bluntly, clearly, specifically, emphatically tells us that there is none, there is not one commandment greater than these in all of heaven and in all of earth. The first commandment is to love the Lord our God. Oh young person, if we only see this, God is far more interested in our love for him than our service or our study or our activity. Oh might we beware of the barrenness of a busy life. It's easy to become busy for God, so busy for God that we miss God himself. God has not called us to be busy, he's called us to himself. God is not asking us to see how much we can do for him, God is asking us to see how much we can love him. And as you listen to this tape, no matter what you're doing for God this week, no matter where you're going for God this week, no matter what you're studying about God this week, still his first commandment is for you to love him. That's why the most important thing in your study life is your love to God, your personal devotion to God, your personal time of worship, your personal time of praise to him. So easy to be tricked by the noise of this world, so easy to be tricked by the babblings of men, so easy to be tricked into the busyness of Christian activity that ends in barrenness and noise and futility. Oh, might we come back to that place that Jesus came to, in which we realize that the most important thing we can do is love the Father. Might we seek those quiet times where we can be alone with him, to love him, to praise him, and to worship him. Might the great love book, the book of Psalms, become the very treasure chest of our library as we take it day after day to worship him and to praise him. I believe that it's a worshiping life, a loving life, a life linked with the love of God that's going to be and make the greatest impact on the world today for Jesus Christ. As we go into this warfare, indeed we have a weapon of prayer, indeed we have a weapon of the word of God, but without any doubt, even though it's also a motivation for using prayer and for praying and for using the word of God, love by far surpasses these two things when it comes to a weapon because it's as we love God and as we give ourselves utterly to him and as we love him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength that he pours out the power and the blessing upon us to carry out this tremendous offensive to reach lost men and women for Jesus Christ. Sometimes I speak on the subject of Luke 14.33, the subject of forsaking all, and a lot of people don't like it. We don't like to hear that message today in materialistic America and materialistic Britain. We don't like to hear it on what we're to do with our possessions and the verses that are throughout the word of God concerning possession and concerning giving and concerning forsaking all are verses that most people need to cut out of the Bible with their scissors, for we are living in obedience to them. The little book, True Discipleship, has brought criticism from all over the world practically as people have rebelled against this message, but they haven't rebelled against that message any more really than they rebelled against this message found in the 30th verse of the 12th chapter of Mark because this verse teaches us to forsake all far more than Luke 14.33. This verse makes even the book, True Discipleship, look lukewarm as far as its challenge to forsake all. Man in all his efforts will never get the words or the challenge or the dynamic that God's word has. God says here that we're to love him with all of our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our mind, with all of our strength. If on this table I have a glass of water and I take the glass and I pour the water out but I leave just a few drops in the bottom of the glass, can I say that all the water is out of the glass? Of course I can. If I take the glass again and pour all the water out except one little drop of water in the bottom of the glass, can I say that all of the water is out of the glass? Of course I can. If I have 10 apples and I put nine of them on one side of the table and one on the other, can I say that all the apples are on this side of the table? Of course I can. And even if I only leave a part of something or a part of the apple on one side of the table, I can't say if all of the apples are on this side of the table. So it is in our love for God. As long as there's one little bit of love for this world, as long as there's one little bit of love for anything in this world, as long as there's one little bit on this side of the fence, it can't all be on that side. And as long as there's one little bit of love anywhere for anything in this world, we are bringing the first commandment. You say well that's hard. You say that's difficult. Indeed that is as hard as Luke 14 33. You see we in the evangelical church, we in the fundamental church, for years have taken the Bible as sort of a fetish. We say no, I believe the Bible from cover to cover. I believe from Genesis to Revelation, it's all inspired. And it's inspired by God. I believe in verbal inspiration. And beloved I want you to know I do. I believe that the Bible is verbally inspired by God. That God breathed and this book was the result. But when we say this we need to tumble. When we say this our lives should shake. When we say this our very eyes and ears and mouth should begin to take on a new form. Our feet will begin to go in a new direction. Our hearts will begin to pound and beat in a different way. For we're coming in saying that we believe that God's first commandment is to love him with all of our heart, not half, not three-fourths, not 90 percent, but all. And this is the great message of the New Testament. This is the message of Jesus Christ. This is the message of this book from Genesis to Revelation. The message that God demands all of you. God wanted all of Abraham. God wanted all of Moses. God wanted all of Isaiah. And God wants all of you. He never asked for half. He never wanted half. He never asked for 90 percent. He never wanted it. He wants all of you, all of your love, all of your time, all of your talent, all of your energy, all of your money, everything you have. He wants it. That's why he said in Romans the 12th chapter, I beseech you brethren by the mercies of God that you present your body as a living sacrifice. You don't make a sacrifice with just half. All on the altar is the cry of God. A challenge indeed. A challenge that makes communism look lukewarm. A challenge that makes the cult look like they're walking backwards. A challenge that should thrill the heart of any young man or any young woman. A challenge that should cause us to renounce all the hidden things of darkness and cling to God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Might we no longer pray with the word of God. Might we no longer just count it as a theological explanation of nice and interesting facts. But might we realize it is the living word spoken by a living God for you and me in this generation. This is the message of this movement. This is the message of the New Testament. Love, and without love we are nothing. Without love we are noise. Without love we will never in all the world see the world evangelized. And the second commandment says the 31st verse is namely this. Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than thee. One young university fellow told me not too long ago he meditated on that verse and he was never the same again. I challenge you. I challenge your university students. I challenge your young intellectual. I challenge your bible school students to meditate on that verse. To let it penetrate into your inner most being. To let it penetrate into your subconscious mind. To let it penetrate into the very heart of your life. Think on it. Memorize it. Meditate it. Meditate on it. Consider what it means and you'll find that your life will never be the same again. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Love thy neighbor as thyself. What does it mean? What does it mean in this modern materialistic age? What does it mean in this modern age of mechanism at all nations? Love thy neighbor as thyself. First of all I think we need to consider how we love ourselves. It says love thy neighbor as thyself and to get an understanding of how we should love our neighbor we need to realize how we love ourselves. And in order to understand this it would be good to substitute the word care. Care for thy neighbor as thou dost care for thyself. You see you don't rise up in the morning and go over to your mirror and say well now George I really love you. You're the best dressed and you're the best looking and I love you. None of us are that stupid. But we get up in the morning and we take care of ourselves. We wash and we have a nice breakfast and we put on our clothes and we put on our shoes and if it's cold outside we get on our handy coats and constantly all day long automatically we take care of ourselves. And when we realize this that our love for ourselves mainly is expressed in acts of charity, in acts of love, in acts of kindness, in acts of self-preservation, we will realize that this is indeed a revolutionary teaching from the word of God. Care for your neighbor as you care for yourself. There's so many ways love for self is expressed. It's expressed in taking care of ourselves as I mentioned. It's expressed in exalting ourselves. It's expressed in defending ourselves. It's expressed in satisfying ourselves. It's expressed in helping ourselves. It's expressed in making ourselves comfortable. It's expressed in wanting our own way. It's expressed in impatience and irritability. It's expressed in not having self-control. It's expressed in harshness and a lack of gentleness. But when the revolution takes place, when this dynamic revolution takes place and the Holy Spirit begins to take control of our life, we're going to find no longer these words, but we're going to find that we take care of others, that we exalt others, that we defend others, that we satisfy others, that we help others, that we make others comfortable, that we want the other man's way, and that our lives will be tempered and controlled by patience, self-control, gentleness, and all the other fruit of the Holy Spirit. This is the greatest revolution that has ever taken place in the earth. This makes the revolution that Marx began look like a little game of checkers. Oh, let God and I grip up with the fact that Jesus Christ has brought the revolution in. We're in a new dynamic way of life in which everything we do is hinged around this great thing of loving him as of loving our neighbor, yes, even as ourselves. Oh, I challenge you to meditate on this. What would this mean in terms of world evangelization? What if we began to love the Chinese like we love ourselves? What if we began to love the Indian like we love ourselves? What if we began to love the Turk like we love ourselves? What would happen to our spending? What would happen to the way we spend our money if we began to care for the other man as we care for ourselves? Indeed, there would be a revolution in your college campus. Indeed, things would be different. No longer would it be every man out for his own self, but it would be as the Word of God says, each man seeking the other man's welfare. Oh, how little of this we see. I remember back at school making an intensive study of this on my campus. How little we see a practical, outworking, outreaching love, love that shines the other man's shoes, love that helps him when he's weak or sick, love that comes to his rescue at every moment. I remember how at school we used to have apples on Saturday and 10 of us would sit around the table and there'd be 10 apples put in the tray on the table and usually one of them was fairly rotten. It was worm-eaten and the apples would be passed around the table. When do you think the rotten apple was chosen? First? Of course not. Second? Certainly not. But around the table and went each man taking the apple and the rotten apple would always be the last or the second to the last. It might be a crude illustration, but I can give a dozen. I can give hundreds of other similar illustrations that are probably taking place in your and my life daily with others even realizing it because we've never allowed Jesus Christ to bring us into this revolution, to make this tremendous change in our life, to turn our lives upside down like Paul turned the world upside down. In which, in a similar instance, we would happily and automatically reach for the rotten apple, esteeming the others as better than ourselves, seeking their benefit, seeking their welfare, seeking their advancement. Every time we went to buy a new book to build our library bigger and bigger, we'd begin to think about that Indian pastor who still hasn't got his first Bible concordance. We'd begin to think about some of those Russian pastors who still haven't even got a complete Bible. And we automatically, in our living, begin to think of others, others, others. Instead of I, my, me, the three most famous words in our vocabulary, it would be others, others, others. Oh, that God might show up, that he's called us to fall into the ground concerning our own life, that we might bring forth fruit, that we might be a blessing to others. There isn't time to go on. I challenge you to meditate on that, the second commandment, realizing there's no greater commandment than these two. And that will bring about a revolution in Mexico. That will bring about a revolution in world evangelism. That will bring about the evangelization of the whole world. Oh, my God granted, the grace to see and the grace to obey. Turn now to Luke, the sixth chapter, Luke chapter six, starting at the twenty-seventh verse. Here are some more of the revolutionary teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ, mainly outward expressions of this commandment of loving our neighbor. Jesus said, Luke 6, 27. But I say unto you which hear, love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you. And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek, offer also the other. And him that taketh away thy cloak, forbid not to take thy cloak also. Give to every man that asketh of thee, and of him that taketh away thy goods, ask them not again. And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? For sinners also love those that love them. And if you do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? For sinners also do even the same. And if you lend to them of whom you ought to receive, what thank have ye? For sinners also lend to sinners to receive as much again. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again. And your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the highest. For he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful. Judge not, and ye shall not be judged. Condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned. Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven. Give, and it shall be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give unto your burden.