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Sunday 09/01/24
Title: Love & Respect for God
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Love & Respect for God
I hope that following last week’s message, you followed through and spent time wrestling with the fact, that the command to love the Lord our God with all that we are is greater than our ability. The command of loving the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might, with all your strength, with everything that you really are including your impulses and all your passions and intentions… everything – at all times 24/7 is bigger than we can deliver on.
If you spend time with that and you’re being honest with yourself, this command will seem daunting and overwhelming because there is no way for a human being to be able to do that.
Just the regular demands of life require too much of your attention, situations in life arise, not to mention desires for other things all conspire together to draw your attention away from God. When that happens, even for a moment, it winds up supplanting God as an idol.
Something becomes more important than He!
You might say, I am overthinking the command or taking it too literally. No, any other understanding of the command fails to truly understand the words God spoke to Moses.
One litmus test we can use, is if it sounds like more than Jesus did, then it is probably incorrect, but if it is consistent with His life, His Own personal statements then – you’re pretty close to the truth.
God does not water down the command and He does not grade on a curve.
Nothing less than 100% perfection is the standard. We are being groomed to assume the nature, likeness and full approved character of Jesus Christ and you cannot get that by aiming south of the command.
So I think that the clear, obvious answer is you can’t do this, which is supposed to evoke in us the result that the law was designed to have.
The law was given to us to be a tutor that would bring us to the person of Christ.
The end game of the law, in fact the end game of all scripture is to show that the standard of God’s character so, SO far outstrips our character and our potential by ourselves, that it creates a sense of helplessness.
It’s supposed to have that effect so as to cause us to realize, “you know what, I can’t do this”! And to realize it with such a finality that it closes the door to any consideration of that delusion forever.
It is in that state of total brokenness that the Spirit leads us to Christ.
The heart that remains open, not protecting itself, excusing itself or watering down the command to make it seem more in keeping with our abilities is wooed by the Spirit and tutored to a place of surrender to Christ. Or for those who were under the Old Covenant to a place of faith-filled expectation in the arrival and deliverance of the Messiah when He came.
It is there that we embrace a strength that can be found only in Him that will far outstrip what we can do on our own.
The truth is, if we took a sober approach to all of the law… really all of scripture, even the New Testament, it would all have that effect on the child of God and on everybody.
In fact, it is probably because it DOES have that effect on the world that they recoil from it and call it judgmental and unreasonable, outmoded and out dated.
They cannot stand the piercing brightness of the command. It cuts into their darkness like a blinding laser demanding a response and usually the response it draws out of the world is one of denial and self-protection.
As God’s children however, we should possess eyes and understanding, in our reading of the scriptures to see what they really say, and this is the real underlying problem that leads to man-made rules and religion.
I think we’ve demonstrated that enough over the years here in the teaching at the church that it’s not a hard thing to illustrate before you.
There’s what the Bible actually says, and then there’s what we see when we’re reading it. And sadly they’re not always the same thing. In fact, I would submit that unless we’re careful, they are rarely the same thing.
We read over, we read past, and we read into. But read? Well that’s something we don’t do that much… not unless we’re very, very deliberate in what we’re doing.
We have a filter. The Bible calls that veil that blocks our understanding, the flesh. And by the flesh, it literally means two things.
- It means your physical body.
- It means the impact that having a physical body in this world, apart from direct connection and submission to your Creator has on you.
It has a blinding effect.
There’s Who Jesus really is. And then there’s Who Jesus is as I perceive Him.
The Bible says that the reason why, on the day that He shows up to pick us up, we will be transformed into His likeness in an instant is because we’ll finally see Him AS HE REALLY IS.
If that means anything, it at least means that if we were to finally see Him as He really is right now, we’d be instantly transformed.
Why can’t I do that? I have the flesh that still contains sin and death and so it serves as a veil causing me to only see Him in part.
It’s not because God’s unwilling to reveal Himself. It’s that really in all honesty, I’m unwilling to see Him.
God tells us that He will hold no good thing from those that love Him.
I don’t think there are many Christians who would fail to agree that to know Jesus in perfection would be a good thing!
So if I really, honestly, completely loved Him, as the command requires, He would not hold back perfect knowledge of Himself! Yet here I am – here you are – with imperfect knowledge as if we were looking through translucent glass.
We have to learn to be vulnerably honest before God and with ourselves and really own the fact that in truth, we love Him with limits.
I love him up to a point. And usually the point is a point of comfort or convenience. I know all too well that as Christians we don’t like to say that.
This is one of the reasons why I truly love Peter. Even after he had been forgiven denying Jesus in His apparent moment of greatest need – when asked by the risen Jesus, “Peter do you love Me?” Peter’s response was, “Well Lord, you know I have great affection for you as a friend.”
Hey – at least he was honest! In fact, it is perhaps due to that honest appraisal of his own limitations regarding loving God, that Peter eventually loved Him enough to live and die for both the person of Jesus his lord, and His Kingdom!
What usually eclipses our view of Him is our affections and connections with this temporal world and life which brings us back to Paul and his thorn in the flesh.
Last week I had suggested to you that an example of how to deal with this issue is Paul’s Thorn in the Flesh. That embracing our weakness rather than running away from it was the first step in the right direction.
Paul’s thorn in the flesh was a particularly good example – assuming I am right of course in my belief that Paul’s thorn in the flesh a messanger from satan to exploit his weakness of wanting to go to the Jews when God had specifically called him and sent him to the Gentiles.
Regardless of his directive from God, everywhere Paul went, he first went to the Jews out of his passion for them. You even hear it in his letters. Paul said, “I do all the things that I do. If by any means I might save one of my own countrymen.” – Romans 9:3 (not a quote)
I submit to you that this was a weakness and a potential crippling one to his ministry at that!
What should have been coming out of Paul’s mouth is I do everything I do so I can win Gentiles, because that’s where God sent me. But Paul was a human being. I said Paul was a human being.
You may be thinking, well, I just don’t see how that could be bad. How could it be bad to have a passion for the Jews – especially if you ARE Jewish?
Well, in and of itself such a passion is not bad… it is good. However, even what is good CAN be corrupted into something very bad indeed if it supplants something else God called you to have a passion for!
God called Paul to have a passion for the Gentiles. What Paul should have said is that I do all things so that I might save the Gentiles.
If you follow Paul’s ministry, I submit to you that his passion, if it was not completely replaced by the Gentiles, it was largely replaced by the Gentiles because he was a man that did truly love God.
He could not have continued to pursue God and been unfaithful to what God called him to do for an extended period of time.
Are you seeing what I’m saying?
I think Paul struggled against a resistance and even perhaps a type of undercurrent of resentment of not being sent to the Jews – at least at the beginning of his ministry, just like anybody else would.
If what you wanted to do with your life is different than what God called you to do with your life, you might have a little bit of a resent factor going on behind the scenes that even you might not be fully aware of that God just has to weed out over time because we’re human. You know we’re messy. Relationship with us is messy! It’s never straightforward but God is patient and kind and full of faithful love for His Own.
So when God told Paul, “My grace is enough for you” I think that what was being communicated to Paul was, “If you would just do what I influenced you to do in the first place, this problem would take care of itself. But you’re doing something I never called you to and are therefore in some measure creating your own problem by opening the door to the enemy’s attack through less than complete obedience.”
That’s most often the case with us. However, even if we were perfect human beings, we’d still have problems because the enemy would target us just like he did Jesus. The point however is that usually we don’t offer the enemy a large number of problems. We often give the enemy a free ticket with us because he doesn’t have to do much. We create most of our own problems. We really do!
He might give us a nudge here and there and influence us a little bit, but it doesn’t usually take much. Just suggest something bad and we’ll usually follow it like a lemming off a cliff.
When Paul allowed that passion for his own countrymen to be submitted to Christ, then he went entirely to the Gentiles. At least twice he said to the Jews, we’re turning to the Gentiles.
One was the famous statement, were he said, “because you Jews judge yourself unworthy of eternal life, we turn now to the Gentiles.” [See Acts 13:46]
It wasn’t too long after that that we began to see Paul largely just going back to the Gentile churches he had founded. He really didn’t spend a lot of time dealing with the Jews from that time forward. But at the beginning he went to Jews first.
Again, the reason why his going to the Jews FIRST was sin was because it’s not where God called Paul. And so his passions had to be surrendered to Christ.
Just like you and I, Paul had to learn how to love the Lord as his God with all of his heart and that included his passions, pursuits, and desires.
Now when God said, “My grace is sufficient for you” how did that fix or tweak this avarice passion in Paul’s heart? Or applied to our lives, how does just knowing we’ve given grace change passions that are out of priority?
Well, it doesn’t directly.
What it requires at that point is an embracing and a surrendering.
Paul had to embrace his weakness and surrender it to Christ, which is one of the things he talked about in 2 Corinthians, in that same discussion about the thorn and the flesh.
He said, “God’s strength is made perfect in weakness. Therefore much gladly therefore I will embrace my weaknesses because it’s right in the middle of my weakness that the strength of Christ is made perfect in me!”
So he began to learn to embrace that and run towards that.
After introducing this fact we turned 1 John. We saw there that our ability to love God comes from God.
We love him because what? He first loved us! (1Jn. 4:19)
Ours is an echoed response back to him.
It does not originate with us!
We also discovered one other thing.
John said, “We have known and had believed the love that God has for us.”
The word ‘known‘ here indicates an exchange.
- I saw it, and I didn’t ignore it.
- I saw it, and I entered into a relationship of coming to know the love that had been spent on me.
This is nearly identical to the process seen in Jesus’ parable of the heart soils in Mark 4.
The good heart is the one who saw it.
The other hearts saw it, but they really didn’t see it. They saw what they wanted to see. They heard what they wanted to hear.
The second heart, (the Stony Heart) heard the word of God, immediately received it with gladness and joy. But then when opposition came against him because of that word, he let go of it.
He said, “Wait a minute – I didn’t know it involved that! I didn’t know that in order to accept this word from Jesus, I’d have to also accept persecution. No, I’m sorry. I misunderstood! I just wanted the perk without the price. So have a nice day, Jesus.”
The next heart (the Thorny Heart) is the heart that saw some value in Christ. Their response was more like, “I want to hold on to Jesus, but, you know, I can’t give myself entirely to what God’s asked me to do because I’ve got work and I’ve got this and that demand on my time, I’ve got family obligations and I’ve got this and that and the other thing.”
They only give so much to God with part of their heart and with the other parts belong to the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, the desires for other things. All of these other things enter the heart and they do what? They choke out the word!
Now that would be bad in and of itself, but in Jesus’ parable these other devotions choke out the Word to the point where these people bear ZERO FRUIT! Now we’ve got a real problem!
Jesus said, any branch that IN ME that bears no fruit, I will lob it off and it will be thrown to the fire.
So these cares of this world, deceitfulness of riches, desires for other things which divide our passions are not just harmless distractions that limit our effectiveness, they can keep us from bearing fruit unto His likeness entirely!
When I allow the monstrous substitution of the temporal for the eternal, it has a systemic effect on my life that causes death throughout. Jesus wasn’t minsing with words. He was being very honest!
The only heart that made it and produced fruit responded to God and His words in a different way than all the rest. The good heart received God’s word, valued it, protected it against all opponents to its pre-eminence in the heart and bore fruit as a result.
However, even these didn’t necessarily have a bumper crop.
Jesus said, some of these people only produced 30-fold, some 60, some all the way up to 100-fold.
So even in the heart of those people who received it, valued it and kept watch over it there is variation in how much fruit they produce. But at least they produced something which evidenced that they are truly His!
The other three heart categories do not belong to Him because they bore no fruit.
We protect things that we see value in because there’s something that is a threat which “could” spirit it away.
So when I guard and protect the word of God in my heart, it’s because I see that I have an enemy, something out there that can draw my attention and my affections away from what really matters.
THAT is how all of this reconnects to our parent topic of loving the Lord our God with all we are!
John, in 1 John was saying to the group he was writing to that…
“We are having a relational experience with this love God has given to us and we’ve placed our relational trust in this love. We’ve entered into it!”
When we do this, we begin to allow the love of God to express itself through us because we learn over a period of time that we can’t do this on our own.
For the command to be lived out, it is going to have to be the love of God’s in me, flowing through me back to Him.
Essentially God is going to have to love Himself through me. That’s all there is to it!
You might think, well, that just really doesn’t seem like much of a prize. Well It is to Him or He wouldn’t have made it this way.
Now, if you do some type of a study, which I did, you’re going to find that there’s a direct connection between the love of God and the fear of God.
The promises for both are almost identical as you’re reading through the scriptures.
So let’s look at some passages that deal with the fear of the Lord because as I already suggested to you – fearing the Lord and loving the Lord are really just different sides of the exact same coin.
So let’s turn to Psalm 34:11-22,
“(11) Come children! Listen to me! I will teach you what it means to fear the LORD.
(12) Do you want to really live? Would you love to live a long, happy life?
(13) Then make sure you don’t speak evil words or use deceptive speech!
(14) Turn away from evil and do what is right! Strive for peace and promote it!
(15) The LORD pays attention to the godly and hears their cry for help. (16) But the LORD opposes evildoers and wipes out all memory of them from the earth.
(17) The godly cry out and the LORD hears; He saves them from all their troubles. (18) The LORD is near the brokenhearted; He delivers those who are discouraged. (19) The godly face many dangers, but the LORD saves them from each one of them.
(20) He protects all his bones; not one of them is broken.
(21) Evil people self-destruct; those who hate the godly are punished. (22) The LORD rescues His servants; all who take shelter in Him escape punishment.”
Proverbs 2:1-15,
“(1) My child, if you receive my words, and store up my commands inside yourself, (2) by making your ear attentive to wisdom, and by turning your heart to understanding, (3) indeed, if you call out for discernment – shout loudly for understanding – (4) if you seek it LIKE silver, and search for it like hidden treasure, (5) THEN YOU WILL UNDERSTAND HOW TO FEAR THE LORD, and you will discover knowledge about God.
(6) For the LORD gives wisdom, and from His mouth comes knowledge and understanding.
(7) He stores up effective counsel for the upright, and is like a shield for those who live with integrity, (8) to guard the paths of the righteous and to protect the way of His pious ones.
(9) Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity – every good way.
(10) For wisdom will enter your heart, and moral knowledge will be attractive to you. (11) Discretion will protect you, understanding will guard you, (12) to deliver you from the way of the wicked, from those speaking perversity, (13) who leave the upright paths to walk on the dark ways, (14) who delight in doing evil, they rejoice in perverse evil; (15) whose paths are morally crooked, and who are devious in their ways;”
Proverbs 8:13,
“The fear of the LORD is to hate evil; Pride and arrogance and the evil way And the perverse mouth I hate.”
Proverbs 9:10,
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”
Proverbs 14:26, 27,
“(26) In the fear of the LORD there is strong confidence, And His children will have a place of refuge. (27) The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, To turn one away from the snares of death.”
Proverbs 15:33,
“The fear of the LORD is the instruction of wisdom, And before honor is humility.”
Proverbs 16:6,
“In mercy and truth Atonement is provided for iniquity; And by the fear of the LORD one departs from evil.”
Proverbs 19:23,
“The fear of the LORD leads to life, And he who has it will abide in satisfaction; He will not be visited with evil.”
One of the major causes of sin is a lack of satisfaction with what we have. This is addressed in Hebrews in the context of fidelity in marriage.
Heb. 13,
“44 Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge.
45 Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, “I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU NOR FORSAKE YOU.”
46 So we may boldly say: “THE LORD IS MY HELPER; I WILL NOT FEAR. WHAT CAN MAN DO TO ME?”
He said, be content with what you have because I told you I won’t leave you.
So what is he saying that you have? Me. Jesus said, right? Be content with Jesus! So we may boldly say the Lord is my Helper, I will not fear. What could man possibly do to me?
You know, Augustine in the famous confession said,
“You have made us for Yourselve, oh Lord, and our hearts are restless until we find our rest in You.”
And that’s what sin comes from. Sin comes from a restlessness in us.
Looking for a satisfaction that’s always elusive because the only way your heart is ever going to settle down and find true contentment is in Him.
That’s where all sins spawn from, is a lack of seeing God as our only true contentment.
It is the truth. I mean, there’s all kinds of ways to dance around it and repackage it, but in the end analysis, that’s all sin is. It’s not being satisfied with God.
Proverbs 22:4,
“By humility and the fear of the LORD Are riches and honor and life.”
Proverbs 23:17,
“Do not let your heart envy sinners, But be zealous for the fear of the LORD all the day;”
How this is lived out as love and relationship rather than JUST a command and obligation is the same as in other natural relationships.
By being mindful of Him and acknowledging Him.
Meditating on the words of God out of awe, respect and love for Him – which love originates from Him.
The Old Covenant placed the burden upon us. The command tells us to meditate, but even David and his son Solomon under the Old Covenant used another word and that is “treasure”.
I mean, we all immediately see that, don’t we?
Psalm 119:151-176,
“(151) You are near, LORD, and all Your commands are true.
(152) Long ago I learned from Your decrees that You have established them forever.
(153) Consider my affliction and rescue me, for I have not forgotten Your instruction. (154) Defend my cause, and redeem me; give me life, as You promised.
(155) Salvation is far from the wicked because they do not seek Your statutes.
(156) Your compassions are many, LORD; give me life, according to Your judgments.
(157) My persecutors and foes are many. I have not turned from Your decrees. (158) I have seen the disloyal and feel disgust because they do not keep Your word.
(159) Consider how I love Your precepts; LORD, give me life, according to Your faithful love.
(160) The entirety of Your word is truth, and all Your righteous judgments endure forever.
(161) Princes have persecuted me without cause, but my heart fears only Your word.
(162) I rejoice over Your promise like one who finds vast treasure.
(163) I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love Your instruction. (164) I praise You seven times a day for Your righteous judgments.
(165) Abundant peace belongs to those who love Your instruction; nothing makes them stumble.
(166) LORD, I hope for Your salvation and carry out Your commands. (167) I obey Your decrees and love them greatly.
(168) I obey Your precepts and decrees, for all my ways are before You. (169) Let my cry reach You, LORD; give me understanding according to Your word. (170) Let my plea reach You; rescue me according to Your promise. (171) My lips pour out praise, for You teach me Your statutes. (172) My tongue sings about Your promise, for all Your commandments are righteous.
(173) May Your hand be ready to help me, for I have chosen Your precepts.
(174) I long for Your salvation, LORD, and Your instruction is my delight. (175) Let me live, and I will praise You; may Your judgments help me. (176) I wander like a lost sheep; seek Your servant, for I do not forget Your commands.
Notice he didn’t say I go to a book and learn about them, he said YOU teach it to me.
My tongue sings about your promise for all your commandments are righteous.
So you can readily see both sides of the coin.
We know to love the Lord our God with all of our heart and the only way to do that is for us to embrace our weakness and our tendency to not love him and allow his love to be perfected through us.
Just as Paul had to do that with his ministry and his personal desires and passions that were apart from what God called him to right?
We also do the same thing with the fear of the Lord.
He said you know you’re going to develop a taste for this but doesn’t start with that. Eventually these things are going to become attractive to you but they don’t start there – it starts with obedience!
God said do this! So I make the decision I’m going to do this and I’m going to do it with all of my heart that I have available to me to give right?
Eventually your heart will completely comply. You were made for Him after all.
It’s not like God’s not trying to squeeze a square into a round hole. You were created to fit this!
It’s only through delusion that we think we fit something else or that something else fits you better or more comfortably. The problem is that we’ve learned to find satisfaction in other things!
Now in closing, how is this all connected with our lessons over the past few months? We have been learning about being called and empowered as living testimonies. That is what the Spirit of God UPON US is for. He empowers us to be a living testimony and the way that we become a living testimony is by living by the Spirit Who INDWELLS US right?
“If by the Spirit I will put to death the deeds of the body I will live”. That’s what Romans tells us!
If by the Holy Spirit within us we will put to death the deeds of the body we will live.
Well didn’t we see the word love and the word fear the Lord directly associated with leading to life today?
We now know clearly the mechanism by which we live out the love of God and live out the fear of the Lord and that is by the Holy Spirit.
If by the Spirit I will. Amen?
Now the flesh wrestles against the Spirit. The Spirit against the flesh and these two are contrary to one another which is why you don’t always do the things you wishes. BUT if we will be led by the Spirit we will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh!
So this is a relationship of knowing and trusting that leads us into the fear of the Lord and the love of God.
The Bible tells us in Romans 5:5 that when we got born again the Spirit of God came within us and it says we were flooded with the love of God.
The Wuest translation has it this way,
“And this hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts and still floods them through the agency of the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”
Actually the wording is different again Wuest comes to our rescue and says that in fact someone turned to Romans 5 I think it’s verse 5 I could be wrong and read it from your translation then I’ll tell you what Wuest says about it. And hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who’s been given to us. Okay so the hope that we have of Christ being formed in us doesn’t disappoint because of love. I do have the ability to love God because it’s been shed abroad in my heart by the Holy Spirit.
This is true even though right now you may not feel a stitch of that love – He says it is flooding it!
In other words it’s not like you are a container and when you went through the assembly line God dumped the love in you when you are born again and that’s all you get. No, no, NO! The picture painted with these Greek words is one where when you got born again God turned the pitcher of His love upside down over the container of your heart and He’s never turned the picture back up again. It’s still flooding it. Overflowing it!
And it’s God’s love that is the source which is why our hope doesn’t disappoint.
I’m just the cup that’s being overflowed into. I’m not the source but I have the source and He has come to dwell inside of me.
What did Jesus say to that precious Samaritan woman at the well? “This will be in you a well springing up into everlasting life. Whoever drinks the water I’m talking about,” Jesus said, “will never ever thirst again”!
You’ll never be dissatisfied again because you’ll have the source of all satisfaction springing up in your heart 24 hours a day seven days a week. You will live in perfect contentment!
Blessings!
