How Shall We Measure Love For God? Matthew 22:34-40
We are in Matthew chapter 22, looking at verses 34 to 40, and in this
section what I have done two weeks ago is to look at the breakdown of the basic
the basic exegetical components of the Scripture.
When we study how to read the Bible or how to study the Bible there are
three components to Bible study methods. One is observation, the second is
interpretation, the third is application. Observation is basically learning
what the text says. That is a lot of what goes on in a Bible class in our
study. In our study of the Word, first of all we have to understand what the
text says, because sometimes it's not is not readily apparent or a lot of the
nuances of the text are not that clear.
As Howard Hendricks pointed out when I had him as a professor many years
ago in Dallas seminary, the problem with most people as they jump to application.
They spent about 2 per cent of their time on observation about 1 per cent of
their time on interpretation, and then they jump into application. And if we
spend the right amount of time in observation, which is roughly 80 per cent,
then the interpretation becomes pretty obvious. But if we don't do our work in
observation, when it comes to a Bible study, when it comes to a sermon, and we
don't spend enough time really analyzing what the text says, then were often
going to misinterpret it, and then we were really out of bounds when it comes
application.
That's one reason I spend as much time as I do going through the
backgrounds of the text. But we have to look at application and sometimes are
passages that are just pregnant with significance. This is one of those, and so
I'm slowing down a little bit because I want to unpack some of the significance
of these passages in light of the exegesis that we have done.
What I want to do is take a little more time to think this through and
maybe set up a framework, a structure for application as we think about this.
As we know from looking at this passage last couple weeks, Jesus was
asked by an expert in the law describe a member of the Pharisaical party what
the greatest of the Commandments are. Jesus responds with the first
commandment: it is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind
and strength. The second is like the first, and since the first is about love,
the second is about love. That's how they connect and what will see is that
these are two interdependent commands as Jesus sets them off. You can't do the
second if you don't understand the first. The first is the foundation for the
second and those who are attempting to do the second without the first
adjustment to create a massive problem; and that is where our world is today.
I went down some things just a sort of summarizes thoughts and by way of
introduction. First of all, love is essential biblically to any human
relationship whether it is a relationship to God or a relationship with other
human beings. Love is foundation because God created us in his image and in his
likeness, and since God is love and we are created in his image and likeness,
then we are to reflect that love. But we have to understand what love is, and
if there's one concept that is grossly misunderstood by fallen human beings it
is the concept of love.
So love is essential to any human relation first relationship with God
and the relationship with others. Second, we have to understand that love is not
autonomous or independent; it is not just some abstract concept. As Scripture
teaches, love begins with God and we, as image bearers have to reflect that. So
if you want to be a better lover you have to be a better theologian. If you
have to want to be a better lover you have to understand what the word of God
teaches about love.
You can go to Webster's dictionary and look at the word love in a
Webster's dictionary to find out what it means, and they are way off base. They
start off: Love is an emotion. That is not what the Scripture teaches, so at
the very get-go we see this contrast between what the Bible teaches of what man
thinks. That is at the root of numerous problems.
Third point is that God's love is not something that occurs in a vacuum.
This is problem we often see, especially with liberal humanistic theology, that
which can't came out of the perversion known as 19th century Protestant
liberalism. It is an emphasis on the love of God without reference to any of
his other attributes.
We break out ten attributes when we study the essence of God, and what
we see there are these different attributes of God that we study independently,
but in the person of God there all interdependent and interconnected. You can't
separate the love out as if it at acts independently.
One of the implications we need to think through on that is that as we
hear in our society we hear a lot of buzzwords on many different things. A
couple of buzzwords we are hearing a lot over the last few years are terms like
social justice, or its opposite, social injustice, social inequality. People,
politicians, athletes, movements and organizations are using these words a lot.
If you're reading the papers, if you're paying attention to the controversy
surrounding athletes about whether they'll stand up or not stand up for the
national anthem, what they are doing is protesting social inequality.
Now whenever you see the word social, you'd better start thinking
biblically, and start thinking with the concept of love because that's going to
be inherent to properly analyze anything related to society. We have to start
at a biblical basis and not on a human viewpoint basis.
Terms like this often sounded good to the uneducated masses, but the
problem is there loaded with worldview presuppositions that are contrary to the
word of God. They have a populist appeal, especially to minorities or those
that view themselves as socially oppressed or economically disadvantaged, and
in some cases they may have a case or they may not have a case, but at the core
of these times we have to understand and think through these concepts very
carefully.
What does it mean to have love for other human beings? That is essential
in this command and that's what we see in the second command that Jesus
emphasizes coming out of Leviticus 19: we are to love our neighbor as
ourselves. But see, in 19th century liberal thought that was divorced from the
first command and so everything becomes oriented towards some sort of social
justice and social reparative therapy, if you look at it from a psychological
point of view, the things of that nature. And its divorced from what it cannot
be divorced from if it's going to be effective, and that his love for God,
because the two are connected. Love for God comes first and love for love for
one another comes second, but it can be divorced from righteousness and
justice.
So when we use terms or you hear people, politicians especially, talk
about terms like social justice and we have to hold to righteousness, righteousness
and justice all relate to the standard. What is the standard? Where are we
going to get this standard? When we talk about "that's not just and that's
not fair", what is the standard that we are appealing to when we get that
standard? If we are not going to the word of God and the character of God to
determine that standard then we are just offloading in space, just chasing our
own tail.
So we have to understand what righteousness and justice mean and we have
to understand how God's love relates to his justice and his righteousness,
because they are equally part of God's eternal character. What happened coming
out of 19th century religious liberalism, which was heavily influenced by the
late 19th century, early 20th century, with views of the kingdom of God: that
man could somehow bring about the kingdom of God. That was known as
post-millennialism and it also borrowed heavily from Marxism, which is a
Christian heresy.
A lot of people ask: How is Marxism a Christian heresy? Marxism is
Christian heresy because Marxism is built on a philosophy of history and it
borrowed and stole the idea of linear history from Christianity. So it's a
perversion of Christianity, and a lot of things flow out of that.
So as we look at those first three points I just summarized by way of
introduction, we have to really think through this, and the starting point for
all of us, for Christians, has to be God; it has to be the Word of God. That's
why I said if you want to be a better lover, you have to be a better
theologian. I mean that you need to understand God because that's the starting
point. The love of God has to be understood as it is demonstrated at the cross.
The fourth thing I want to bring out in this introduction is that we
need to understand we need to think in terms of solving some very core social
problems in our culture. These are going to go away, they get worse and worse
every year. But in order to do that, we have to understand some basics about
solving problems and basic solutions.
Part of what I'm covering is a focus on something that the Bible
emphasizes again and again. It is that we can measure how we love God, and
being able to measure how you love God is can impact how you love others, but
you have to we have to focus on love for God first. That is what we are looking
at now in terms of what is the biblical metric for loving God because that is
going to impact our biblical metric for loving one another.
We have to recognize that the Bible presents these two opposing ways of evaluating everything. There's man's way, which I often describe as the human viewpoint solution. By human viewpoint I don't mean man's finite way of looking at things, I mean a way that is opposed to the way God looks of things. It is a summary of human attempts to solve man's basic problems without reference to God or His reverent revelation. The Bible calls it the world's way. The world is the Greek word is KOSMOS. It is an orderly system, but it's not just one. It's made up of a lot of, in many cases, mutually contradictory approaches, whether they are religious, whether they are philosophical, whether it's Eastern religion, whether it works-oriented Western religion, whether it's some sort of idealistic philosophy, such as Platonism or Cartesianism, or whether it is some sort of empirically based philosophy such as Aristotelianism, or the empiricism of Berkeley and Locke and Hume. They all have a creation base starting point of finite reference point, not God. And this is always opposed Scripture to God's way.
That is what the proverb says, that there's a way that seems right to
man but the end thereof is death. When were operating on human viewpoint, it
feels good; it seems to be the right solution. We can't understand why it doesn't
work. But the endgame is destruction, and we always have to understand that the
wrong solution, no matter how good it makes us feel, no matter how right it
appears, it always ends in self-destruction and cultural destruction. We can
avoid that.
God's way is the divine viewpoint solution and it's the biblical way.
The two ultimate characteristics of the world's way is arrogance. Starting with
arrogance man elevates himself to be the ultimate reference point, and man
thinks that he can come up with a solution on the basis of his intellect alone,
and his ability to interpret the details of life. We see this in politicians
and people and editorialists all the time, and they ignore the divine solution.
And we see this coming from any number of pastors who haven't done their
homework and thinking about what these ultimate solutions have to be.
The second characteristic human viewpoint is that it always leads to an
antagonism toward God. Because man is suppressing the truth in unrighteousness
it leads to hostility towards God, and man in his fallen state or when he is
walking according to the sin nature is always hostile to God.
And so when Christians come along and offer a Bible-based solution, what
is the reaction going to be in a pagan culture? It is going to be anger or
resentment, hostility. Somehow we've got to stuff the Christians, along with
their God, back into a hole somewhere and cover it up, and put everything we
can on top of it so they can get out and make any more noise.
The biblical way is always going to be grounded on humility, and
humility is going to be manifested in love. So these are the polar opposites.
It is one way or the other way in Scripture. And when you are thinking through
a lot of things—and we have not so good choices this your politically in a lot
of ways—we have to think in terms of what the Scripture teaches about what
ultimate real solutions are as we are confronted day in day out with stories in
the news and people were upset, it just gets worse and worse. Our whole culture
is fragmenting and falling apart and has been for 20 years. It just got to the
point now where on almost nobody can deny it unless they're just living in a
bubble somewhere. This gives us a bit of a framework for understanding what is
going what is going on here.
Scripture does give us a metric that metric is going to be found in
Galatians chapter five. So this is the fifth point Galatians. In Galatians,
Paul gives us an insight into measuring or evaluating or identifying the source
of various solutions.
It's interesting that this section begins with Paul quoting in Galatians
5:14. Leviticus 19:18, the very verse Jesus quotes it has in Matthew chapter
22, and that is to love your neighbor as yourself. That's a starting point.
There is a section break in Galatians, a section from Galatians 5:14 on
is going to help us understand as believers how we can actually fulfill this
command, how we can implement this in our lives. So the command is given, there
Galatians 5:14. In Galatians 5:16 Paul begins with command to walk by the
Spirit. This is, "Walk by the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lust of
the flesh". So he is juxtaposing walking by God the Holy Spirit on the one
hand, or you are fulfilling the lust of the flesh on the other. These are the
only two options.
So once again, the Bible presents this black and white opposition. You
are either one or the other. You're either divine viewpoint or you're human
viewpoint; you're either a walking by the Spirit or walking by the flesh; you
are either operating consistently with Satan's worldview or you are operating
on a biblical worldview. There are no other options; it is one of the other.
So how do you know? If you look at the next verses in verses 17 and 18 rather
in Galatians 5 Paul goes on to say that there is a war that goes on, that the a
flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. There is this
conflict that always goes on; it is one of the other.
Then he gives us a metric. I want to skip to the positive metric first.
In Galatians 5:22 and 23 he says, when you are walking by the Spirit, the
Spirits is going to produce character qualities. These character qualities
reflect the character of Christ. "The fruit of the Spirit is love".
How did we start this section? We started with Galatians 5:14 saying that you
love your neighbor as yourself. So that is his focus point.
The focal point in Galatians 5 is how to develop love, and it doesn't
come by just saying I'm going love people, and generating it up, reaching deep
inside you, and say I'm just going to be different than a lot of people and get
all emotional and sentimental about everybody. It's the product of God the Holy
Spirit. And notice what this fruit looks like. It's not fruits, not looking at
these in terms of separate individual components, but as intersecting
components that make up the fruit of the product of the characters manifest in
the believer. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
Against such there is no law".
The point to look at here is, when looking at solutions that are being
proposed, if it's a divine viewpoint solution based on Scripture—which is what
we as Christians are to be focusing on—the end game is not going to be
divisiveness, it's going to produce harmony.
Now when we look at these different worldview attempts are proposed by politicians, many of which have been, more in the forefront over the last 30 years, primarily through progressivism, which is just another term for Marxism, it has led to more division. We have seen this country fragment more and more of over the last 30 years and it's not going to improve. That is because were not applying anything close to a biblical solution. A biblical solution doesn't manifest in that way. In fact what we see when, as individuals or culture operating on sin nature control we have the following results: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, which is the use of drugs (it was originally the use of hallucinogens and in occultism), which is why it is translated so sorcery. The Greek word there is PHARMAKEIA. And then notice in verse 20 it says, "hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions."
If you just watch the news, this characterizes our culture; were in
total meltdown. That's because were operating on human viewpoint solutions that
will never ever work because no matter how moral they may be, no matter how good
they may feel, no matter how well you can argue for them, the end result is
that it fragments the culture and leads to all kinds of divisions and hostility
and anger and resentment. Read social media sometime. Is that manifesting the
fruit of the spirit, or does that manifest the works of the flesh?
This is our metric right here. This is how we evaluate where things go
and whether there based on a divine viewpoint solution are human viewpoint
solution. That is a framework that I want us to think through as we talk about
what Jesus is saying in Matthew 22 in relation to these two great commandments.
Matthew 22, just to remind you of the historical setting: the last week
before Jesus goes to the cross. This is probably two days before He has the
last supper with His disciples, He is confronted with the Pharisees, as he has
been, and they asked three questions, setup, questions, and their attempt to
trick Him into somehow criminalizing Himself in the eyes of either the that the
Jewish religious leaders are in the eyes of the Roman authorities.
The first question had to do with whether it was lawful to pay taxes to
Caesar; in the second they set up a bogus hypothetical from the Pharisees who
didn't even believe in resurrection dealing with the death of the several
husbands of a woman who marries it in terms of a levirate marriage.
Then we come to the third question in verse 34 but when the Pharisees
heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together in one of
them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him. That's the key work all
through this. That's what they're doing the testing. They are trying to trap
Him.
In terms of summary, the setting is described in verse 35 and when one
of them a lawyer asked a question, testing Him and says, and then here's the
trap, "Teacher, which is the great commandment of the law?"
He is asking which is the great commandment in the law and it is an
interesting Greek phrase because the way he uses the word great is an idiomatic
use that is used as a superlative—what is greater than all of all of the
others? And so Jesus gives a two-part answer. Part one is you shall love the
Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind. We have a fuller answer in
the Mark parallels we've seen. But this isn't the kind of passage we can break
down and say this is the heart, this is the soul, this is the mind; that would
miss the point. The point is, every aspect of your created being that is in the
image and likeness of God is to be fully and totally engaged with loving God
all the time.
This the first part. The second part is like it in that it also focuses
on love, but it shows its dependent on it, and that is your love your neighbor
as yourself, which is a quote from the second part of Leviticus 19:18b. But
it's important to look at the first half that says you shall not take
vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people. The Bible
always teaches in terms of opposites, it juxtaposes truth with error and it
helps you understand white by comparing it to that which is off-white so you
can see the clarity of what the Scripture says. So loving your neighbor as
yourself completely eschews any form of vengeance or any kind of anger or
resentment or bearing a grudge towards anyone else.
When we get involved in some of the intense political discourse we are
seeing today, that's really difficult to do. That's why it's a work of the
Spirit. You and I just can't generate it from our own being.
Jesus draws a conclusion. He says on these two commandments hang all the
law and the prophets. What He means by that is that everything in the Scripture
is built on these two presuppositions. Everything in the Scripture, all
application, is built on these two foundations. In Matthew 7, which also is a
passage we will look at in reference to the second commandment, He talks about
also talks about loving one another, He concludes that section:
"Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them for this
is the law and the prophets". Notice it's the same summary, and by the law
and prophets is referring to two divisions of the Old Testament. The first five
books of the Old Testament that we call the Pentateuch, which is referred
technically as the Torah—although that Torah is used of all the Old Testament.
It simply means instruction, although it has a more technical meeting of law,
and then the prophets, those who wrote the former prophets, the latter
prophets. We refer to those as the historical books and in the major prophets
but it's is a summary term for the Scripture as they had it in terms of what we
call that the Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures.
Mark records the response—this isn't in Matthew—and the responses is
that describe who is trying to entrap him is convinced by what He says, and
says, "Well said Teacher, you have spoken the truth that there is one God,
and there's no other …"
Now when Jesus saw that he, that is, the scribe, this lawyer, answered
wisely, He said: "You are not far from the kingdom of God." That is,
you're getting close to understanding the truth. But then it says after that,
"No one dared to question Him anymore".
This emphasizes the starting point for personal love for anyone. If were
going to love other people it has to start with understanding this that is in
both Old Testament and New Testament.
The last time I started looking at how we learn to love God and pointing
out that in the essence of God part of his essential attribute is that He is
love. We also have passages in Scripture that talked about the fact that God is
righteous in God is just, but we have a number of passages, such as in first
John chapter 4, that talk about God is love.
Our conclusion from that that we need to be reminded of before we build
on it is that therefore we must understand divine love if were going to
understand love in any sense whatsoever. If you're married and you tell your
spouse you love them, is that a love that is predicated on an understanding of
God's love, or is that just a love that is predicated on the world and how the
world looks at things. That's a very important question to ask that something
that you parents and grandparents need to be teaching your little grandchildren
because is more you frontload their thinking with biblical concepts when there 3,
4 and5, the better it's going to protect them when their 15, 16 and 17. You
wait till they are 15, 16 and 17 and it's too late. They've already sucked up
the world's thinking on what love is.
So that led to the next point. What is divine love? We have to
understand this, that the pattern, the paradigm, the picture for divine love in
Scripture is the cross. The more I teach, the more I go to the Scripture, the
more I understand how important it is that we need to think about cross. We
need to think about the all the dimensions of soteriology because this helps us
to understand the love of God and how His love is manifest to us.
We looked at these passages last time. John 3:16, "For God loved the world", literally in this way. It's the Greek word HOUTOS, which doesn't mean love it so much, it means God love the world in this way. And then he tells us how God loved us. He sent his only begotten son. He "gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life". This is echoed by Paul in Romans 5:8, "God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us".
It's a love that is not focused on who we are what we done. When we say,
I love you, so often overlooked saying is when looking at a person and were
saying. There's something about you that makes me feel better. Often I joke
that if I were accurate in my wedding ceremonies I would have the bride and
groom looked at one another and say you make me feel so wonderful and so happy
that I'm in a give you the opportunity to make me feel like that for the rest
of my life. And we all understand how selfish that is and how self-centered
that is. That's just the opposite of love but that is so often what
characterizes relationships today.
What we see in the Scripture is God's love, the pattern for what our
love should be, is a dependent or conditioned on the character the qualities
the behavior the actions of the person that is loved. It is based on God's
character, not our character, and that means that we have to understand more
about God's character. And that's where His righteousness and his justice come
to play because his righteousness and justice gives us that understanding that
this love is a love that is predicated on character. It is predicated on
integrity, not on the ephemeral and mutating attributes of the object of love.
That leads to the second point. God's love for us is not based on our
actions, our character, our successes or failures, our morality or lack of
morality, or any other human factor. It is without conditions on our part.
That's what real love is. So if we're going to love God it comes as a response.
Scripture says we love him because He first loved us. He initiates, we respond.
But as we respond to His love it is because we understand His love and the
integrity of His love, and only that gives us the real ability to love one
another. That's not just in the relationships that we have as in romantic
relationships of the man and woman, or in family relations of parents to
children and children to parents, but also relationships outside the home,
relationships to those who are classified in Scripture as our neighbor. As
Jesus says it involves one another, and in those passages it is primarily
focusing on others in the body of Christ, but the constant repetition in the
Scripture of Leviticus 19:18 also emphasizes the love is to those who are not
believers, those who aren't in the family of God.
So to begin with we have to understand that our love reflects God's
love, and God's love is based exclusively on His character and has nothing to
do with our character. Ultimately if you want to be a better lover, when you
say to your spouse or to your children or your friends that you love them, that
consciously in our minds has to be predicated on, "I love them not because
of who they are; I love them because of who God is". And my love for other
people has to be built on my understanding of the integrity of God.
Third point. God's love for us was such that He devised a solution for
our greatest problem. Our greatest problem is your bank account, our greatest
problem is that the Democratic Party of the Republican Party; our greatest
problem is sin. Everything else flows from what happened when Adam disobeyed God
in the garden and plunged the entire human race into corruption and rebellion
against God. But God has the only solution to that, and the consequence is that
if God saw the greatest problem will ever face then God can solve all these
other problems. But the only way we can solve all those other problems is if we
start with the divine solution and not the human solution, because the human
solution is a result of the work of the flesh, and the work of the flesh leads
to hatred and anger and resentment and divisions and fragmentation, along with
numerous other things. We have to really understand that the starting point has
to be a biblical solution.
As I have observed different people with talking about all kinds of
different things that have been going on in our culture—and you hear a number
of theologians you hear a number of pastors come out with their solutions—you
can break them all down. There's one group of pastors who understand the divine
solution of grace and a Bible-based solution, and there are a lot of others who
are just looking for any sort of other solution.
We live in a real world we live in a world that is dominated by a lot of
unbelievers, and sometimes in political solutions you have to reach pragmatic
solutions. There are certain solutions that we that we have to deal with on a
practical level, but we as Christians understand that's not the ultimate
solution, and that that solution only will work if it is somehow part of an
ultimate framework that focuses on the divine solution. That is not always easy
to discern, but that's what we have to learn to think through.
The fourth point is that God's love for us involves his whole essence.
It is perfectly compatible with all the other attributes, specifically with his
righteousness. If we're going to ever talk about social justice and social
righteousness—and I despise those terms because they come with a lot of
baggage, and the baggage that they are caring is Marxism and Leninism and
progressivism, and these are all antithetical to anything that is taught in the
word of God.
But the Bible does talk about justice, and righteousness. Righteousness
is His standard, the standard that God has, and it's based upon His character,
not some external abstract characteristic of righteousness that God subscribes
to and we should also. It is His character, so we have to really know God and
really study his works in history to understand what righteousness actually is.
The solution has to be consistent with His righteousness and justice as well.
Justice is the application of His righteousness. Righteousness is His standard,
justice relates to the application of that standard.
In both Hebrew and Greek the words that are translated righteousness and
justice are the same words, because the two sides of the same coin. One side is
the standard of God's character; the other side is the application of that
standard to his creatures. Righteousness and justice go together and neither of
them is juxtaposed to His love but both function with another characteristic,
His omniscience. He has a solution that is based on his complete and thorough
knowledge of every dimension of every problem.
God understands all the social problems, whether the social problems of
the Egyptians in the ancient world, or the Romans in the ancient world, or
whether to social problems of Russia, the social problems in Islam, the social
problems in America, God knows that it's the same solution for every one of
them. In His omnipotence, He was able to solve all of the problems. There is no
sin that is too great for the love the grace and the power of God.
One of the problems you have in eastern orthodox Christianity is that
they have failed to understand eternal security, and if there is no eternal
security you don't have a God who can truly solve your problems. And that gets
into a really deep, profound conversation, but it always works itself out in
practical realities. This is why you've never had anything approaching the
stability of the West in Eastern Christianity. It is because they have a false
view of God and His power and His ability to solve problems. It is better in
the West, and then its highest form in the 19th century under English
language-based theology you had the greatest, sort of high watermark, of
Christian influence in history and culture. That doesn't mean they were
perfect. We are never going to have perfection in this world. That's the lie
that's offered by Marxism and progressivism. It is a utopianism that is
completely contrary to the word of God, so you are never going to get there.
In fact, if that was understood by our founding fathers. Our founding
fathers did not set forth in the Constitution that they were going to form a
perfect union. It's a work in progress. They said they were going to form a
more perfect union; more is a relative term. It is a work in progress but it's
a work in progress and must be predicated on divine viewpoint and their
thinking was for the most part.
So God's love is compatible with these other aspects of his character
and they all work together, and they all intersect together.
The fifth point is that God's love is also described in terms of
faithfulness and loyalty. The Hebrew word is the word chesed. You may have heard the word hasid or Hasidic Jews, or Hasidim.
It is the same word. The original Hasidic Jews (not related to the ones we know
of today) were a sect that probably gave birth to the Pharisees after the
return from Babylon. They wanted to go back to being faithful and loyal to God
so they took this word that is primarily used in the Old Testament as a
characteristic of God and his faithful loyalty to his people based on based on
his covenant.
So when God says to Israel, I love you is that of romantic love? Is that
an emotional love? No, is it a contractual love. Doesn't that sound romantic?
But that's what it is; it is a contractual love. That is the same thing that
you did with your wife when you stood up in front of a pastor or a member of
the legal profession or judge or someone. You swore on a contractual basis that
you were going to love your spouse, whether things are good or bad, whether you
are healthy or sick, whether you are in prosperity or adversity; whatever the
conditions you were in. Then you signed a legal document. You made a contract,
a covenant. This is what love is. It is based on loyalty to a covenant. This is
what chesed is. It is translated that
way in passages such as Deuteronomy 7:9, "Therefore know that the Lord
your God, he is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy." There
is the word. Not keeps covenant, but mercy. That is often translated mercy or
lovingkindness, "and mercy for a thousand generations of those who love
him and keep his commandments". Notice the connection: love is measured by
keeping his commandments.
Sixth point. God's love is sufficient to solve the greatest problem we
will ever face, and therefore it solves whatever sin problems we face. We all
live in this Devils world, which means it's a corrupt unjust place. Every one
of us faces injustices; every one of us faces inequities; every one of us faces
hostility from other people, for whatever reason. But it is God's solution that
enables us to surmount whatever those individual problems may be and being able
to respond in biblical love to those who are in opposition. And when were
operating on a human viewpoint solution it is not biblical love and will always
manifest as some kind of divisiveness and hostility.
The seventh point takes us back to understanding our response to God. We
love him because He first loved us (1 John 4). Personal love for God is our
response to God's initiating love.
Point number eight. Love for God therefore is based on knowledge and
knowledge of God. We learn to love God by learning who He is and what is done
for us. It doesn't happen overnight. As children—think about your relationship
with your parents—you had child's love for your parents. But as you came to
know your parents and you lived with them and you grew up through childhood to
adolescence that love matured. But it was based on knowledge until you became
an adult. The same thing is true in the spiritual life. The love that we have
when were brand-new Christians is different from the love that we have when we
are mature believers. Because we grow in the knowledge of who God is and what
He has done for us. 1 John 4:8 says, "He who does not love does not know
God, for God is love". If you are operating on the sin nature then the Holy
Spirit is not going be producing love in your life. And so if you don't love,
then the opposite is you don't know God, there is no spiritual growth.
Not knowing God doesn't mean you are not saved. In John's language not
knowing God means your ignorant about who God is. You've never grown; you've
never learned the word; you've never come to understand who God is. Love for
God is based on knowledge; we have to know the Word of God. That's our
priority. We have to read it
For the last year we have had a lot of people reading through the Bible,
and that's great. Now some people are starting a second time and now probe a
little more deeply. Think about questions like, what is this? What am I coming
to learn about God and how God relates to His creatures, and what God provides
for those who are obedient to Him and those are disobedient to him? What are we
learning about God that is going to develop our love for Him?
The ninth point is that love for God is first of all, based on
knowledge, not emotion. It is not to be confused with sentiment or even
gratitude.
I have seen this happen sometimes with couples. For whatever reason the
initial attraction is that one has provided something for the other one and the
response is gratitude. And they confuse that with love, get married and then
they have problems. Love is not gratitude. Gratitude may be a component of
love, but don't confuse the two. And love isn't a sentiment; it's not how you
feel. It may produce some sentiment, but don't confuse the two, they are
different. Love is not romantic. It may involve that, don't confuse the two.
So how do we know if we are loving God? First John 5:2 says, "By
this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep his
commandments."
Well, I'm going to love other people. Well wait a minute. Not if you are
not loving God and his commandments. The Bible doesn't allow us to separate
love for others from love for God. That is part of the metric. It is: How do we
love God? We see it and how we love others. Deuteronomy 5:10 says, "God
shows mercy to thousand, to those who love me and keep my commandments".
There is always is connection in Scripture: that loving God is measured by
obedience to God. It is not measured by how you feel; it's not measured by how
you sway when using Christian choruses; it is measured by your knowledge of
Scripture and your application Scripture.
Jesus says this in John 14 several times. In John 14:15 He says, If you
love me, keep my commandments". That's the metric." That implies we
have to know His commandments. We have to know the Word; we have to have the
Word embedded in our soul before we can understand how to obey him, and obeying
him is how we reflect that love that we have for Him. John 14:21, Jesus said,
"He who has my commands and keeps them, it is he who loves me". The
implication is, if you're not keeping them, if you have just abstract knowledge
and there's no and application in your life, then there's no real love for God;
it is just talk; it is just emotion.
John 14:21 NASB "He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.” This is an increase in fellowship, the deepening and strengthening of fellowship there.
John 14:23 NASB "Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him." That's fellowship again. That deepening relationship is related to loving God, keeping his Word.
And then the negative is expressed in verse 24 NASB "He who does not love Me does not keep My words …" So the one who doesn't love God doesn't keep His words, doesn't know His words, doesn't care about His words.
In 1 John 4:20, after reflecting on this for probably 40 or 50 years,
John wrote: "If someone says I love God, and hates his brother, they I
love God [that's the greatest commandment. And the second is like it to love
your brother], he is a liar [he does not love his brother] for he who does not
love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not
seen."
You can't disconnect those two commands. And this is what is happened in
the social solutions that are predicated in this country that grow out of all
of the human viewpoint worldviews, whether it is progressivism, Marxism,
socialism, whatever it is, liberal Protestant Christianity. They have separated
and made the priority out of loving one another without grounding it in the
ultimate solution, which is loving God first. And when you do that it's no
longer a work of the Spirit, it is a work of the flesh; and the end result is
the destruction of the individual and his spiritual life, or the destruction of
the family, or the destruction of a company, or the destruction of the nation.
Any society fragments when the foundation is on human viewpoint.
First John 5:2 NASB "By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments."
Closing prayer:
Father, thank you for this opportunity to study these things and to
think about some fairly profound ways in which what Jesus is said impacts the
culture around us, the circumstances we find ourselves in in this nation, and
maybe even in our own personal life and in our own families. The divine
solution always has to start with you, and the solution has to start with the
cross, but it doesn't end there. We have to grow, we have to know, we have to
grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, we have to obey the
Scriptures. And only as we walked by the Spirit, and the Spirit produces this
character transformation in us can we see the end result that we really wish.
But if we try to do it on our own divorced from your grace and who you are then
the consequences just what we see around us; it is self-destructive. And
Father, we have to be reminded again and again that the only solution is your
solution. The only solution is the grace solution and the divine solution.
Father we pray that there is anyone listening today that that has never
trusted in Jesus Christ as Savior that they would recognize that that's the
starting point of the solution.
Jesus died on the cross for our sins. He paid the penalty for sin, so
that by trusting in him and him alone we can have eternal life. It's simple;
it's based upon Jesus doing everything and we do nothing. But it secures
eternity, transforms us from something spiritually dead and spiritually alive,
and we are justified and redeemed with the salvation that can never be lost.
Father we pray that you would help us to implement what we have learned today,
that we would think about it that we would reflect upon what your word says,
and that it would have a transformative effect to the ministry of God the Holy
Spirit in our lives. And we pray this in Christ name, Amen