The Loving God

Knowing God — Steve Gregg

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The Loving God

Knowing GodSteve Gregg

Summary: Steve Gregg explores the concept of loving God and the dynamics of relationships with Him. He emphasizes that every person has the potential for a relationship with God, even those who initially approach Him with hostility or rebellion. Gregg highlights Jesus' manifestation of God's love and emphasizes that loving God requires surrendering oneself and prioritizing God's pleasure over our own. He discusses the dangers of idolatry and the importance of obedience as a demonstration of love for God. Gregg also reflects on the natural and covenantal aspects of jealousy in the context of God's relationship with His people.

Transcript

I'd like to talk today about the subject of loving God. When we talk about knowing God, it's clear that we're not talking about simply knowing information about God, but having a relationship with God. We know, because we're evangelicals and the language and the clichés are common among us, that Christianity is not a religion, it is a relationship.

This is a cliché that's been around a long time, and a good one. Clichés are often in existence and in circulation because they state something that's worth repeating, and eventually it gets repeated so much it becomes what we call a cliché. And it is true.

Salvation, Christianity, is not a religion, it is a relationship. But many people who would say this have not done as much as they could in exploring what kind of relationship Christianity is, because really a relationship is simply two parties standing in some relation to one another. A relationship can be positive or negative.

A relationship can be hierarchical or egalitarian. Relationships can have many dynamics, and it should not be thought that everyone who has a relationship of some kind with God is saved, because frankly everybody has some relationship with God. Everybody does.

God, for one thing, communicates with all people in some measure, through various means. All persons stand in relationship to God as creatures of a Creator. That is, there is the Creator-Creation, the Creator-Creature relationship that every living person has to God.

However, unfortunately for many, this is not a relationship that saves in itself. To be created by God is not to be saved necessarily. To even have heard from God, or having had thoughts of God, or even having talked to God, praying, these things are not necessarily the elements of a saving relationship either.

All of these things bespeak some relationship at some level. That is to say, God stands in relation to people, but of course we know that many people stand in a relationship of enmity against God. There are many people whose relationship with God is one of hostility and enmity or rebellion.

Therefore, we need to define, when we talk about knowing God and having a relationship with God, Jesus said, this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God. A saving knowledge and a saving relationship with God has certain features. Last time we talked about the fear of God.

All persons are created by God, and all persons must stand judgment ultimately from God. For that reason, all have occasion to fear God, but not all fear God. There are those of whom the scripture speaks that did not choose the fear of the Lord.

Now, the fear of the Lord is not all there is to a right relationship with God. Jesus did teach that we should fear God, but that certainly was not, I would say, an emphasis in his teaching. It is truly an emphasis in the Old Testament, and it is an emphasis that is reaffirmed in the New Testament often enough to know that it is still as important as it ever was.

But there is a new dimension of relationship with God that Jesus introduces. When I say he introduces it, I don't mean that it was absent before Jesus came. It was in the Old Testament also.

But while it was there, attention was not drawn to it to quite the same extent before Jesus came as after he came. Jesus came to, it would appear, demonstrate and emphasize and teach the element of love between God and his people to a degree that exceeds that in the Old Testament, it seems to me. Now, I say it seems to me because I'm speaking somewhat from cursory memory.

I have not gone through the Old Testament and named or found all the places where the Bible talks about God loving his people or his people loving him back. I am well aware, just at a cursory survey in my own mind, of quite a number of places in the Old Testament in which such a love relationship is spoken. Where God says in Jeremiah, I have loved thee with an everlasting love.

Or in Deuteronomy chapter 7, he says, the Lord did not choose you because you are the greatest of nations, for you are indeed the least. But I chose you because the Lord set his love on you because he loved you. He loved you because he loved you.

And we know of those many places in the Scriptures that exhort people to love God also. So the relationship of love toward God, reciprocating love, is found in the Old Testament. But it seems to me, not nearly so thickly in the material, is it emphasized as in the New.

The very appearance of Jesus to the earth is described in terms of God's love to us, for God so loved the world. And he gave his only begotten Son. The death of Jesus for us is explained in terms of God's love for us.

In this, the love of God was manifested. That Christ died for our sins while we were yet sinners, it says in Romans 5, I believe it's in verse 8. And so it says in 1 John, herein is love made manifest that God sent his Son to be a propitiation for our sins. So the very appearance of Jesus and career of Jesus was that of manifesting the love of God.

And also his teaching emphasized the need to love God back. That the relationship between God and man has this dimension and emphasis in the New Testament. It's drawn from the Old Testament.

Certainly Jesus' principal teachings on it were simply repetition of what the Old Testament said on the subject. But as with most of what Jesus taught, it's not so much original with him. Most of the teachings that Jesus gave are found in the Old Testament.

If you know where to look, the only thing is they were covered over by either emphasis on other aspects of the Old Testament in the mind of the Jew. Or else covered over by traditions that were contrary to what the scripture taught. So that Jesus had to come in and uncover them and reemphasize them.

Now certainly we are aware, any of us who have read the Bible or read the New Testament are aware that Jesus said that one commandment, or rather two, stand above all others. And actually include all others. And those are the love, what we call the love commandments.

If you'll turn to Deuteronomy chapter 6, you'll find what is no doubt a very familiar statement of scripture, but really quite remarkable. Almost so familiar that we might not realize how remarkable it is. When things become overly familiar, we cease to be in awe of them.

And I'm sure this scripture is made very familiar, not only by the fact that it is here in Deuteronomy chapter 6, but also that Jesus quoted it in at least three of the gospels. And that the apostle Paul quoted it. And it's alluded to in many other places in the New Testament.

You cannot read the New Testament without becoming aware, very much aware, of this scripture. It is in fact the scripture that Jesus answered with when they asked him, what is the great commandment of the law? Or what is the first commandment? Meaning first in priority. And in Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 4 and 5, Jesus quoted this, but of course Moses is the speaker.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord, that is Jehovah, our God, Jehovah is one. You shall love Jehovah, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. It has been pointed out by scholars that Jehovah is the only God known of the ancient religions who commanded that his followers love him.

The gods of the Greeks and the Romans, the gods of the Canaanites, the gods of Egypt, the gods of Babylon and Assyria, did not ever require that their subjects love them. They only required that they worship them, reverence them, fear them, but not love them. Now of course the reason for that is that false religions, in so far as they have any reality behind them at all, are demonic.

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10 and 20 that the sacrifices that the heathen offer, they offer to demons and not to God. There are demonic presences, there are demonic minds that have inspired most pagan religions, but to a certain extent I think we would have to say pagan religions have been developed, maybe even apart from any demonic influence, by priesthoods and ruling classes that have desired to dominate people and enforce their subjection by appeal to angry gods and so forth that must be placated. And even Christianity in some of its perverted forms has been subjected to this character.

False religion, generally speaking, calls for fear, fear and of course obedience out of fear, and loyalty and reverence and worship out of fear. The God of the Jews, however, was different. Though he was not different in terms of requiring fear, he did require and does require that his people fear him.

He also requires that they love him. Now this is a very difficult thing to require, that somebody love you. It's hard to give a command to love and expect someone to obey it.

You can force people to fear you, probably, if you are bigger than they are and have the power to hurt them very badly. You can possibly control them through fear, but it's very difficult to force people to love you if they are not so inclined. Even God himself cannot force people to love him, or else he would.

God desires that all of us love him. He commands that we love him, but it is clear that many do not love God. And because of that, it is clear that love is still left to us as a voluntary act of response to him.

Now God has done a great number of things to inspire our love. It says in 1 John 4, verse 19, we love him because he first loved us. And it is because of his prior love and his prior manifestation and expressions of love that we love him at all, that we are inclined in the least to love him.

But we have to admit that there are many who have received manifest expressions of love from God and generosity and grace from God, but who have not reciprocated in any way toward him. They certainly have not returned that love. So it is clear that even though God gives many incentives for us to love him by being kind and by being lovable, and being one to whom we would naturally be thankful and have an indebtedness to, yet not all people give back to God the love that he desires or that he really deserves.

And that is an area where Christians, of course, have an obligation as well as an opportunity to enter into a relationship with God that most people spurn and most people do not pay the price for. Love always costs something. You know, we talk about salvation being free.

It is a gift. Unfortunately, a great number of people who have heard that salvation is a free gift have concluded it must therefore be cheap. But salvation is not cheap.

It is a very expensive gift. It may be purchased, as it were, without cost. It may be obtained without cost in one sense, but only because a great price has been paid for it by another.

Of course, Jesus paid the price with his own blood for our salvation, and that is what has made it so accessible to us. But it is not really the case that salvation is free to us in all respects. No one has ever obtained it without surrendering to God.

It is unfortunate, really, that we use the term gift. I mean, that the Bible uses the term gift. It is not unfortunate in the sense that the Bible is ill-advised to use that term, but rather that we have taken it too far, the metaphor too far.

The Bible speaks of salvation as a gift in the sense that it is not something available for purchase. You cannot buy it if God were begrudging it and God were not eager and willing and desirous to give it to us. We would in no way be able to obligate him.

What we receive from him, we receive because he wishes to give it, but he wishes to give it on the condition of a relationship of a certain sort, and that relationship is a loving relationship and a trusting relationship. The basis of all relationships, as I have told you on other occasions, is trust. Love is not the basis of all relationships.

Trust is. But love is that which makes relationships enjoyable. And believe it or not, God can enjoy or not enjoy a relationship the same as you or I can enjoy or not enjoy a relationship.

The most enjoyable relationships are those where there is mutual exchange of committed love, covenantal love actually, and that is the kind of love that God has toward us and which we profess to have toward him when we enter into a covenant relationship, and that is costly. You do not love for free, or you may choose to love for free, but love will always end up costing a great deal or else it is hardly recognizable as love at all. And so I want to talk about the opportunity we have to have a relationship of love toward God.

God has loved the world. He even loves sinners. He even loves his enemies, although in another sense he hates his enemies.

The Bible is not self-contradictory in making both of those statements. In one sense, God loves all people because he desires all to be saved. He wishes the best for all.

He does not have any malice toward some group that he has just decided to be malicious toward. He has made the same provision for the salvation of all and desires that all men be saved, but on the other hand, God, like any other person, reacts with grief and anger when his love is spurned and when his children rebel against him and so forth. And the Bible indicates, and I believe, I do not have any trouble seeing these two things harmonized, some people do, that God can love people in the sense that he wishes they would repent, but hate them in the sense that everything they have chosen to be is offensive to him.

And even those who have decided not to rebel against God and to be lovers of God can learn to be perfect or more perfect in love. John says, perfect love casts out fear. He says, the person who fears has not yet been made perfect in love.

And so love is one of those things that is developed, perfected, matured, and to the degree that we love God the more, I won't say we're more saved from hell by having loved God more because it's not our love for God that saves us, it's his love for us that saves us. But our love for him saves us from ourselves, from selfishness. The more we surrender of our own selves, which is what love is and calls for, the more we focus on God and his pleasure and not our own, which is what love is, the desire to please another more than yourself, the more we become eminent in this love for God, the more free, the more delivered from our own self.

From our own carnal nature and from our own habits of sin and that bondage we experience. So there is a part of our salvation that is worked out with fear and trembling in the development of love for God. The more you love God, the less there is to fear him about, which means, of course, the more in harmony you are with him in general.

So this is a deliverance from sin. This is a deliverance from the power of sin in the life. In fact, although I have not come to my conclusions about this from reading any of the literature from this quarter, it is interesting that those of the holiness camps, the Wesleyan writers and so forth, they have sometimes equated entire sanctification and the eradication of the sin nature and so forth as they speak of it.

They have equated that with the implanting of perfect love in the heart. And that is, of course, although I disagree somewhat with the Wesleyan model of obtaining of sanctification, but I think it is quite correct to believe that perfect love is perfect sanctification. Holiness is God likeness and God is love.

So the more we love, the more we are perfect and the more we are sanctified. And sanctification is a part of our salvation, too. It is the part that we are working out.

And so we need to know whether we love God. We need to know how to love God. And those are the things I'd like to talk about a relationship of loving God.

We saw in Deuteronomy chapter six and verse five that God commands us to love him with all our heart, soul and all of our might. Now, the reason for this is that if we don't love him with all of our heart, that means we love something else with part of that heart. It means there are rivals.

And while it may be that if you get married, you will not mind if your husband or wife loves his job or loves his car or loves his dog. In addition to loving you, it will not bother you because you do not unless his love for them exceeds his love for you. You will not you will not care too much about that.

If your husband or your wife loves you more than anything else, but also loves some other things, too, then that will not be too threatening. But if your husband loves you supremely, but also loves some other women a little bit of the time, or your wife loves you mostly and loves some other men some of the time, that will not be tolerable. And the reason that God desires all of our love of all our heart, soul, mind, strength is because whatever we love additional to him is not just another thing, but is another God or at least potentially so.

You know, my wife loves her father very much. I wouldn't be surprised if she loved him more than she loves me. And I think she has probably good reason to.

But I'm not I'm not jealous about that. I'm not jealous about that. I don't consider him to be a potential rival.

I don't consider I mean, there's just no possibility of that. Likewise, you know, her love for our children is very strong. But I'm likewise not not jealous about that.

I don't consider them to be rivals of the kind of relationship that I and she have and desire to have. Her love for those things which cannot be rivals of mine are not a problem. But you see, love for anything of the world is potentially a rival to God, because everything in the world can become another God.

And therefore, he desires that we love him with all of our heart, all our soul and all our mind. You might say, well, are we not allowed to love our children and our husbands or wives and stuff like that in measure? Yes, but not I mean, but only because we love him. Really, if the consolation of our love for a relation or for a thing is something that we can fall back on in the absence of a good relationship with God.

By the way, many Christians, because of deficiency in their relationship with God, it seems to me, have other idols for their comfort, have other things that they can fall back on. If they're not getting along well with God, at least they can find consolation in X. To me, that's almost like if my wife, at times when she was not getting along well with me, had another guy that she could at least find some consolation with. That would not make me comfortable at all.

Nor would it make her comfortable if the situation is reversed. Even if it were the case that I'm the one she always came home to, or I'm the one, you know, she's the one I always come home to, it would not be satisfying to know that at times when we're not doing well, I've got an ace in the hole. There's this other relationship.

That would just not be acceptable. Likewise with God, if there are other things that we find comfort in which, in any sense, fill a place in our heart that would give us comfort or a substitute comfort, where our comfort ought to be in God alone, this is like a rival in the marriage. And God doesn't want any part of our heart given in this way to them.

People have often asked why it is that God is opposed to getting drunk or using consciousness-altering drugs or whatever. Well, it's only one of many things that God objects to for probably, there's probably one reason that underlies his objection to many, many things. And that is that these are forms of comfort that are not necessary when one's relationship with God is as it should be and which people resort to instead of going to God for the same things.

When people are depressed, when people are fearful, when people are just hungering for some pleasure, God desires to be the source of all those things to us. And he wants us to seek those things in him and have all of our eggs, as it were, in one basket. Our love for God should be so abandoned to him that the loss of a relationship with him would practically drive us crazy.

I didn't intend to bring this up, but what I just said reminded me of a conversation I had with a fellow who called me the other day, a Christian fellow, definitely a Christian leader in another town. And we were just talking about various things, and he said something about, and I don't remember how this came up. Oh, yeah, we were talking about the Y2K thing and how a lot of people are optimistic about it just because they have no other option.

There's nothing else they can do. They can either be optimistic or they can go crazy. I mean, the possibility is that everything will fall out from under them, their whole life, everything that is their God, everything that is their hope, everything that is their security.

If it's possible that it may all just disappear overnight in an instant, and I'm not saying that it's necessarily going to happen, but that is what some people predict, then the thought is just too horrendous. They would go crazy if that happened, or even if they thought that it was going to happen. Some people have strong instincts just to pretend like everything's going to be okay and like an ostrich stick their head in the sand because the alternative is just too unthinkable.

It would drive a person to distraction and insanity. Well, we were talking about that, and this friend of mine was saying, you know, he said it's true, he says, but he says, when I became a Christian, I found comfort and answers to questions, deep questions that I never would allow myself to even think about before I was a Christian. I just didn't have, I couldn't, I couldn't allow myself to think about certain things because I had no answers and they would just drive me crazy.

And he said that now that I'm a Christian, I not only welcome those questions but have found answers to them. But he said, I know that if I ever would lose my faith, I would also lose my sanity because I've opened certain doors. My faith has opened ideas and awareness of issues to me that I would never have allowed myself to even contemplate if I didn't have God there as the answer to these things.

And he says, if somehow my faith in God disappears, I'm already in that room, I've already examined these issues, and if God ceases to be the answer to them, there's just no answer there. All my eggs are in one basket. I've forsaken all others and cleave only unto him, as people vow to do when they get married.

And you know a woman who has several suitors, maybe several of them appealing, yet she may choose that one which appeals to her most. And if she marries him, she is giving up all the others. She is putting behind her even the option, the alternative, the possibility of ever having a relationship with any of the others.

If it turns out she's made a bad choice, she'll have reason to regret it because she'll perhaps think of all the other men who would possibly have been a happier match for her. And yet by choosing the one, she has forsaken all others. And the same thing with the man.

When he chooses a woman to marry, he has forsaken all others. There's no guarantees that he'll be happier with that one than he could possibly be with any other. But he's made his choice and he's got all his eggs in one basket, as it were.

And so God wants our love to be abandoned to him. So much so that if we find no comfort in him, there's none other. If we find no answers in him, there's none other.

That without him, there'd be nothing else to fall back on. That we've given our whole heart to him. We haven't kept certain reserves back and said, well, if this falls through, or if I get bored with this relationship with God, I've got this other thing I can always go back to.

That's not the kind of love that is wholehearted. It's got to be total abandonment to him. And by the way, like a husband might be expected to be, God is jealous over our love.

Because the Bible certainly compares the relationship we have to God to that of a married couple. God being in the role of the husband and we in the role of the bride or the wife. And when God first entered into that kind of relationship with the nation of Israel after the Exodus and brought them to Mount Sinai, and actually instigated a covenant like marriage with them, he gave them the Ten Commandments, which I don't know if all of you can quote them, but I hope you can.

They should be very familiar. But the second commandment that he gave them was this one in Exodus 20, verse 3, he said, You shall have no other gods before me. Now, the word before, some people may think that that means above me.

You shall have no more gods above me. As if it was alright to have several gods as long as God was the one on the top. As long as God was the one who received the most loyalty and the most attention, other gods might be tolerable as well.

You shall have no other gods before me. But before me means in my presence. He's not saying you may have other gods so long as you don't put them before me.

He's saying, in my presence where you live, you shall have no other gods. Before my face, I am watching. I do not permit rivals in my presence.

And he goes on to explain, in verses, actually that was the first commandment. The second is like it. He says, You shall not make for yourself any carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.

You shall not bow down to them nor serve them. Now here, For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. God is a jealous God, a jealous husband.

Jealousy, generally speaking, is listed along with sins. In catalogs of sins, envy and jealousy and wrath and malice and hostility and things are all kind of listed together. They're considered to be bad traits.

However, there apparently is one circumstance in which jealousy is appropriate. And that is in a covenantal love relationship. A man has legitimate reason to be jealous over the faithful affection of his wife.

And a woman who's married has legitimate reason to be jealous over the affections of her husband. I remember one marriage of a minister and his wife that I knew years ago, where the man did not understand this. And his wife was very jealous and she had reason to be because he was very warm and affectionate and so forth to other women.

He was a hugging kind of a guy and liked to hug the women a lot. And eventually he had some affairs, unfortunately. But before he did, or at least before any were known, his mother, I mean his wife, she was a mother of his children, his wife, had expressed her jealousy to him.

And he just rebuked her and said, you know, jealousy is a sin, etc., etc. And she asked me, you know, is jealousy a sin? How do you, what are we supposed to do about jealousy? And it was a hard thing. I was only in my early 20s at the time and I hadn't really thought it through.

And I thought, well, gosh, I don't know. Jealousy is listed as a sin in many cases, and yet God is jealous. So there must be some cases with jealousy, as with anger, and with some other things, where sometimes it's a sin, and in maybe some other circumstances of another sort, it is appropriate.

Since that time, I have come to the conclusion that jealousy is not only appropriate, but it's inevitable between persons who've made covenantal relations between themselves. It is stated as a fact of life, unavoidable, that husbands will be jealous about their wives, and wives, probably, we could say, about their husbands. In Proverbs chapter 6, in the context of warning his son against committing adultery, Solomon said this, Proverbs 6, verses 32 through 35, he said, Whoever commits adultery with a woman lacks understanding.

He who does so destroys his own soul. Wounds and dishonor will he get, and his reproach will not be wiped away, for jealousy is a husband's fury. Therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance.

He will accept no recompense, nor will he be appeased, though you give many gifts. Now what he's saying is, if you, son, have an affair with another man's wife, and he learns of it, you can expect him to be jealous and furious, and you can expect few wounds, maybe even mortal wounds in some cases of histories, to be informative about this. And he says, don't think you can buy him off, don't say you can give him a fancy Christmas gift, and he'll say, oh, all is well, you slept with my wife, but you did give me this nice stereo unit for Christmas, you know.

Now he won't accept any recompense, nor will he be appeased, though you give him many gifts. Jealousy is natural. It is natural not only in the sense of fallen nature, it is apparently natural in the sense of God's nature.

God is jealous over his wife. He indicated, too, that if Israel made him jealous, he knew how to make them jealous as well. In Deuteronomy chapter 32, again following the metaphor of a marriage relationship between God and Israel, Deuteronomy 32 verse 21, God says, they have provoked me to jealousy by what is not God.

That is, by worshipping other things that are not really gods at all, but they're still rivals to him. They have provoked me to jealousy by what is not God. They have moved me to anger by their foolish idols, but I will provoke them to jealousy by those that are not a nation, and I will move them to anger by a foolish nation.

In other words, they went after false gods, I'll go after some other people who has never had a status before as my people. He means the Gentiles. He means that because Israel has joined herself to idols, he will divorce her and take another and make them jealous.

He not only states that he is made jealous in a situation like that, but he feels like once he takes another woman, his ex-wife, his unfaithful wife, will even be made jealous. Jealousy is not appropriate if you are jealous that somebody got a raise and a promotion that you did not get, or you are jealous that they have a happier circumstance in life than you have. Jealousy of that sort is sin.

But to be jealous over the unique and exclusive affections of the one to whom you are married is natural. It's God-like. God himself is that way, and he is the model for Christians in marriage.

The Bible says so. Men are to model themselves after this kind of divine marriage relationship, and women are to do the same. Now, Christians are not always as faithful in giving all of their love and affection to God as one would think they would.

I mean, God is certainly the most admirable and lovable and virtuous being to whom we can express or give affection, but that is not always what happens. In 1 John 2, verse 15, John says, Do not love the world or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

If you love the world, you don't love God. Now, that might seem like an extreme statement. Can't I love God somewhat and love some of the things in the world too? Yes, but not in any sense that matters.

If your wife has affairs with several men, but she still sleeps with you too, it's not really the kind of relationship that you're looking for. In fact, you'd probably prefer to have no relationship at all than to have one where your wife's affection is shared with other men. And likewise, although a person might have some measure of affection for God, some degree of attraction to God for some reason or another, even gratitude toward God, yet if a person loves the world, it's as if they don't love God at all.

The love of the Father that he's seeking isn't there. He just assumed not to have the relationship, as have that kind of relationship. He's not receiving love in that situation where you love the world.

There's a rivalry there. If you'll look at what Jesus himself said on the subject in Matthew 10, we'll see that love of the world is not restricted merely to loving evil things. We might think of a person who loves the world as a person who's committed to or attracted to and seeking after fast women and fast cars and fast money and fast snowboards or whatever.

You know, fast speed, you know, fast is the key. The world is fast, right? And those who are... Why is everyone looking around here? I don't understand. Worldliness isn't measured just in those kinds of attractions.

Those may well be some examples of worldliness, but notice Jesus gives even a much more surprising, although not surprising just because the verse is familiar, example of loving the world too much. And that is in Matthew 10, 37, he who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. He who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

To love your children, to love your parents can be to love the world. Because why? Because although they are Christians, or I mean sometimes they're not even, but although they are, you know, godly or spiritual, they yet represent something to which your loyalty can be drawn away from your loyalty to God. There have been many people who have known the will of God for their lives, but simply have not been able to allow themselves to do it because it would displease their parents or because it would displease their children or it would displease their wives.

And Jesus indicates that that too renders someone unworthy of his, of him, of a relationship with him. That is loving the world. Even loving good things in the world can be, make God jealous and render you unworthy of a relationship with him.

Well, why wouldn't anyone love God? One of the obstacles to loving God is that we can't see him. It is said of us, of Christians who, or at least who do love God, it says of us in 1 Peter 1.8, Whom having not seen, ye love. Having not seen him, we love him.

But that's a remarkable observation because it's harder to love someone who is not seen than someone who is seen. Did you know that? John indicates that in 1 John 4.20 and 21. He says, He that saith he loves God and does not love his brother is a liar.

For he that loves not his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? The impression of that argument is that it's of course easier to love someone you've seen than to love someone you have not seen. And yet the model of the Christian is one who has not seen him, yet we have loved him. It is hard for people to love somebody that they don't see, unless they are born again of course, because God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in the spirit.

It's a spiritual thing. And people who are not born of the spirit, and even many who are, but who have not really cultivated the spirit, they're not accustomed to living with an awareness of that reality of the spiritual realm. We are from birth acquainted with the tangible realities around us, with the things our senses bring us information about, things we see and hear and smell and taste and all that and feel.

And the material world is very real to us from childhood, but invisible realities are not very real to us from childhood. And this is a learned orientation. When we are born of God, we must come to a place where we are as aware of God, who is not seen, as not.

And you can't love God just by an act of psychological choice. You have to have reasons. Your heart has to be convinced, has to be won over.

And you can be won over if you contemplate God, though he is unseen, you can keep him in your mind. If you reflect on his many mercies and his benefits, David said, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits. Psalm 103, verse 2. And it is possible to forget his benefits because they come readily and we never see him, we never see his hand bringing them.

We just see them. We see the things themselves. We see the gifts and everybody has heard the lament of the traveling father, who goes away from his family from time to time, but always brings gifts home to his children.

Eventually he notices that when he comes home from his trips, the children are always looking for the gifts. And they are no longer so eager to see him as they are to see what he is bringing. And God experiences the same frustration, I am sure, because he gives us gifts.

And the gifts themselves cause great rejoicing to us, but because he is unseen, his hand delivering them is unseen, it is not natural for people to recognize them as gifts from God. It is something that has to be done by a discipline of the mind, focusing on the spiritual things. We have to remember, okay, this thing in my life is God's gift.

This is God's hand. Every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from above and is given by the Father of Lights. And to recognize God behind all things is something that not all are capable of doing, or at least not all are willing to do or bother to do.

And I think this is one thing that inhibits people's love for God. If people knew all the things God did for them behind the scenes, there would be much more incentive, much more prayer of the heart to love him. But we don't see him.

But the Christian who has chosen to live in love for God, in love with God, contemplates God, thinks about God, looks for God everywhere, and acknowledges God and gives God the credit for things that are pleasant. And this encourages love for God. And though we do not see him, yet we love him, it says in 1 Peter 1.8. But many people, because they don't see God, don't love him.

I think there's another very sad reason why some people don't love God, and that's because they love religion instead. They don't know that they don't love God because religion resembles God in their thinking so much. To them, the rituals of religion, the sacrifices made for religion, even the suffering endured out of loyalty to religion, all is translated in their mind as love for God.

But it needs to be understood that one can be very religious and faithful in their religion, even in Christian religion and Christian ritual, without loving God. There's a good chance that those who fit this description once loved God and probably entered into diligence in religious things because of their love for God, but eventually the religion being much more visible, presenting itself to our senses much more, the activities of religion, those things become more real to us than God. And eventually they are done for the mere pleasure or fellowship or acceptance or feeling of good conscience or whatever that comes from the very performance of them, and God is no longer dominant in our thinking.

And therefore, our relationship with religion or our love for religion becomes a substitute for love for God. Now, this we see in Luke chapter 11, for example, in the words of Jesus to the Pharisees. In Luke 11, 42, Jesus said, But woe to you, Pharisees, for you tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass by justice and the love of God.

These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone. Now, you pay your tithes. Why in the world would you do that? Tithing is giving to the temple.

Tithing is giving to the support of the ministry. It is a religious obligation of the Jew, and it is, at least it was, it is a religious ritual and practice. They were very careful about these things.

They loved it. But they were lacking in something more important, the love of God. Jesus said to the Pharisees, or the same class as the Pharisees, this may have been the Pharisees or other Jews of their same type.

I think it is in the fifth chapter of John, if I recall. Yes, John 5, 42. Jesus is speaking to some of the most religious people in his society, and he says, But I know you that you do not have the love of God in you.

John 5, 42. You do not have the love of God in you. Now, some commentators have pointed out that this could be translated, you do not have any love for God in you.

He is not saying that you are not exhibiting the love of God toward others, but he is saying that you don't have any love toward God. What a shock that would be for them to hear that. They certainly thought of themselves as great lovers of God, since they were great lovers of religion, and guardians of its sanctity, and preservers of its observance, and so forth.

But Jesus said, No, you don't have any love for God in you. What a thing that is to hear. And it is a rude awakening for many people who are religious, and active in their religion, and in good deeds too, to find out that they really don't have any love for God at all, or at least not like they used to.

Remember what Jesus said in Revelation 2 to the church of Ephesus. He said in Revelation 2, I know your works, your labor, your patience, that means endurance, that you cannot bear those who are evil, very zealous for righteousness, and you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars, and you have persevered, and have patience, and have labored for my name's sake, and you have not become weary, nevertheless I have this against you that you have left your first love. Well, their activities have not diminished.

They are active. They are zealous. They are intolerant of evil.

They labor. But something has changed. The motivation that led them at one time to do all of these good things, which was love for God, has dissipated, and they haven't noticed its absence because the activity has remained as feverish as ever before.

The activity of religion itself can take the place of love for God. And the scariest thing about that is that it does so without being obvious. You see, if you love God, but then your love grows cold for God, and you leave the church, and you start going to drinking parties and drugs and immorality and chasing bucks and stuff like that, at least you'll know you don't love God anymore.

I mean, you'll know that you've backslidden. But if your backslidden heart has left you faithful to religion, you may not ever know that you've backslidden. That was the case with the Ephesian church.

They were faithful in religious practice and good deeds, but they had backslidden in their hearts, and the love of God was no longer driving them as before. Now, that should tell us that we need to check it out once in a while and see whether we have the love of God in us, because we are all persons of a, you could say, a religious sort, depending on how you use the word religion. I don't know that anyone in this room is ritualistic in a high degree.

None of us go to liturgical type churches or interpret religion in those terms, but we all have our own religious things. We pray, we read the Bible, we fellowship with Christians, we abstain from certain things because it's not right for Christians to do them. We have our religion, and there's nothing wrong with the religion.

The problem is it becomes a smokescreen for backsliddenness of heart at times because we can keep doing all of those things, and yet our hearts grow cold toward God, and we leave our first love, though we don't leave off our religiosity. And that is, I think, one of the reasons that there is too little love for God is because other things, either worldly or religious, compete with God, and perhaps the scariest of it is when the religious things do because they are not so easily observed. The diminishing love for God is not as easily observed when religion is the idol as when worldly things and sinful things are the idol.

I'm not saying either of them are any good, but I'm saying that one is perhaps the more stealthy than the other, and therefore perhaps the more dangerous. Well, let me give you from Scripture what I consider to be five tests that you can apply to yourself to know whether you love God. These are basically evidences of love for God, and you can see whether they exist, and you can make your own conclusions from evidence.

There are perhaps more than five. I have found five, and there are some sub-points under each one. Let's turn to John 14 for the first of these.

John 14, 21, Jesus said, He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. That sounds like a good deal.

I don't know of anything I'd like more than for Jesus to manifest himself to me. Actually, I would gladly give up all other things for a vivid manifestation of Jesus. And that manifestation belongs to those who love him, he said.

And he makes it very clear who those people are. Those who have, he who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me. There is a test.

Am I one who loves him? Well, there's at least one way of finding out, at least one test. Do I have his commandments? I do. I've read them.

I know what they are. Do I keep them? In other words, do I obey? A few verses earlier, he said in verse 15, If you love me, keep my commandments. Obedience to Jesus is a mark of love for him.

Now, but that's not all there is. It's not as if that one statement does not need to be qualified, because there are definitely people who, like the Church of Ephesus, kept the commandments, but they had grown cold in their love. We do not wish to say that obeying Jesus is the sole evidence that someone loves him, because there are other tests that have to be applied.

All the tests must be applied. But we will say this, if a person does not obey Jesus, if a person has not made the commandments of Jesus his rule for life and his obsession almost, then we can at least say that person doesn't love God, that person doesn't love Jesus, who has not made it his chief business to be obedient. Now, a person may be obedient and not love God too, but at the very least we can say that a person who does not choose to be obedient is not a lover of God.

That is very clearly stated. Furthermore, there is a qualifier that is very helpful. This is in 1 John 5, verse 3. 1 John 5, verse 3, on this same point, but adding a little dimension to it.

John said, For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. Okay, that sounds like what Jesus said. If you love me, you keep my commandments.

He that has my commandments, he keeps them. He loves me. This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.

But notice this, and his commandments are not burdensome. There are people who keep to the moral standards that Jesus taught to a large degree, and are committed to doing so, but they find it very burdensome. It really goes against their nature.

And you can see that they are not happy in the Lord. They may be terrified to break the commands of God because they fear him, but do they love him? Obedience can be done out of fear alone, or out of love. I don't say love alone, because if we love him, we still need to have the fear of God in us.

But it transforms our whole experience of obedience. If you fear somebody, and therefore you do what they say, and that is the only reason you do it, because you fear them, you fear what consequences may come from disobedience, you will obey. But the dynamics of obedience in that case are so different than if you obey somebody because you love them.

Because love, by definition, is a desire to please. A desire to make another person happy. And if you know that such a person as you love would be happy for you to do a certain thing, and unhappy for you to do another thing, then you will, by an inward desire to please, you will do happily, and without feeling it burdensome, you will do what they want, because you love them.

Now, there are people who keep Christ's commandments, but who do not love him. And so we need what John tells us here, in addition to what Jesus said, John kind of amplifies, this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. Now certainly some have found them burdensome, but not those who love him.

A woman who works for a man as a maid in his home may do so only because she needs the money. She is a single woman, has no one to support her, she has to work, she fears the consequences of losing her job, because then she would perhaps go hungry, wouldn't be able to pay her bills, so she may be grudget, she comes to work, she has to get up in the morning, has to go out and serve this person, has to do his dirty laundry, and clean his dirty dishes, and clean his dirty bathrooms, and so forth, and it may be that she does so out of fear of the consequences of being unemployed. But suppose after a while she falls in love with the man, and he in love with her, and a relationship develops, and he proposes marriage to her, and she is totally in love with him, and marries him, and she does all those same things, but it's a very different situation now.

She does so to please the one she loves, and it's not burdensome any longer, it's very different. And so obedience without grief, obedience without it being a burden, is one of the tests that we love God. If you obey Him, if you don't obey Him, it's a good evidence that you don't love Him.

If you do obey Him, it may be that you love Him, and it may be that you don't, but if you do obey Him gladly, and without grief, this is proof of love. It says in Psalm 100, verse 2, Psalm 100, verse 2, it says, Serve the Lord, what? With gladness. Now people might serve the Lord without gladness, they might serve the Lord because they fear the judgment.

But we are told to serve the Lord with gladness. Well, when you make yourself a servant of another, and you're glad about it, it is an evidence that you love such a one as that. Keith Green, in one of his songs, the first line of it is, If you love the Lord, you will love His will for you.

This is, to my mind, quite evident. But not all Christians seem to be aware of it, because you meet Christians who at least profess that they're Christians, and therefore, of course, are professing to love the Lord. And yet they do nothing but grumble and murmur about God's providential dealings in their lives.

Not all is with them as they wish it was in their circumstances. And God has not called them to such a comfortable or such a noticeable or such a profitable role in life as someone else has been called to. And there's envy and there's jealousy and there's murmuring and there's, you know, it's just whatever God has called them to do, they're not happy about it.

Well, if they're not, then they don't love God. It's obvious. If you love somebody, you love to please them.

And if you know that you are in the will of God and you love Him, then you'll love being in His will. That may be in a prison cell, a dungeon. The Apostle Paul rejoiced in his chains, knowing that he was the prisoner of the Lord.

He wasn't the prisoner of Rome, he was the prisoner of the Lord. It was the Lord who had him in prison. It was God's will for him, and in that he rejoiced.

A person who loves God, loves God's will, loves to obey, does not find it a burden, wants to serve and serves with gladness. The Lord. This is one test of the love of God.

If it is absent, then the love of God is apparently absent as well. Another test of the love of God. If you would look at Psalm 97 and verse 10.

You who love the Lord hate evil. You who love the Lord hate evil. It actually says in Proverbs 8, 13 that the fear of the Lord is to hate evil.

But you hate evil out of the fear of the Lord for a different reason than hating evil out of the love of the Lord. If you fear the Lord, what you fear is judgment. Therefore you hate evil because of what evil has the potential to do to you.

To bring you under God's judgment, the very thing you fear. You hate it because when you find it in you, it terrifies you. It makes you less secure about your own well-being and your own standing with God.

You avoid evil out of fear of succumbing to evil and thereby bringing disaster upon yourself. That's what the fear of God does. It's wise.

It's the beginning of wisdom. But there are steps beyond in a relationship with God. There are steps beyond obedience out of mere fear and hating evil out of mere fear.

But there's the other aspect. Hating evil because it hurts someone else, not you. It hurts God.

If you fear the Lord, you'll hate evil because it could hurt you. If you love the Lord, you'll hate evil because it hurts Him. If you love somebody, you are protective of their feelings.

If you know that a comment or an act will hurt someone's feelings and you love that person, you will avoid doing it. That's what that whole teaching of Paul is about, not stumbling a brother. You know, if your brother stumbles that you eat meat, well, you know, he doesn't really have any right to forbid you to eat meat.

Paul says there's nothing wrong with eating meat. They said, if meat causes my brother to sin, if it grieves the conscience of my brother, I won't eat meat as long as the earth stands, Paul says. Why? Because of obligation? Because of fear of God? No, out of love.

In this case, love for the brother. If you love somebody, you don't want to hurt them. You are aware of what kinds of things will hurt them and you avoid those things.

Paul is astonished that the first Corinthians, in first Corinthians 10, that the Corinthians do not do not understand this. He points out that many of the Corinthians are going into the idols' temples, not to worship idols, but just to participate in the feasts that are thrown in honor of the idols. They are aware that the idols are nothing at all and that the food sacrificed to idols is not somehow made magically contaminated by having been offered to idols.

They are enlightened believers, but what he points out is that this is like, you are going to the house of the idols and sitting at the table of the idols. Do you not realize that idols are like rivals to God? If you are going for enjoyment, if you are going to evangelize, that's another story, but that wasn't the case. They weren't going there to evangelize.

They were going there to feast and enjoy themselves. Why not? We've got liberty in Christ. If alcohol had been a god to you before you were a Christian and you still enjoy going out and hanging out with those who drink and maybe having a little bit of a drink, but not too much in excess, maybe you are not sinning.

Maybe there is no great sin, maybe there is a Christian of liberty, but why? Is there still some attraction here? Why would you want to go there? Is there still some affection for this former lover? God is jealous over such, and here is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10.22. He says, verse 10.21 and 22, you cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the Lord's table and the table of demons, or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? Now he appeals a little bit to the fear of God here. Are you stronger than him that you can endure? You can survive a little bit of God's jealousy? Can you stand up to him? Now of course he has to do that because they don't love God enough to be motivated that way, so he has to appeal to the fear of God.

But he says, listen, to him, he is aghast at the thought. Going to an idol's temple? Sure. I mean, maybe we have liberty, maybe there is nothing in the law of Moses that says you can't walk into such a place and eat such food.

And if you are not worshipping, then I suppose you are not breaking any explicit command. But these are the idols you used to worship. It's like if a woman gets married and she still visits regularly her ex-boyfriend that she used to be shacked up with.

But never does anything with him. She just likes to visit him. She just likes his house.

She likes the inside of his bedroom. It's kind of nicely decorated. She likes the music there.

There's memories there. I mean, how is a husband supposed to feel about that? Well, how is God supposed to feel about it? And Paul is, you know, concerned, sensitive to what God is thinking about this. Maybe you are not breaking an explicit command, but do you think this makes God happy? Are you trying to make God jealous? Hating evil is a mark of loving God because evil hurts God.

He has emotions too. He has feelings. He is grieved.

He is angry. He is suffering. He is jealous.

And if you love somebody, you do not seek to torture them. You don't seek to do those things that will hurt them. And so you will hate evil.

There will also be a sense, and this is part of the same thing of hating evil, there will be a sense of jealousy for God's honor. As God is jealous over our love, we are jealous over His honor. To hear somebody blaspheme God should make you fume.

Some Christians I know love the Lord so much that if they hear someone blaspheme God in a public place, they'll walk over and confront them about it. I don't generally do that myself, although sometimes I feel like I should. Maybe I just lack the courage.

I don't know. Or maybe I just think that it won't be fruitful. But whatever.

Maybe I make excuses. But I do know people who, if someone takes the name of the Lord in vain, they'll just get up and walk across the room and confront them about it. Say, you know, you've just violated command of God and you've just insulted God.

And, you know, I personally find that insulting. Like I say, not all Christians react exactly the same way outwardly to these affronts, but all Christians who love the Lord should certainly inwardly cringe and grieve when they see God's honor and God's name demeaned and treated as a vulgar thing. There is a jealousy over the honor of the person that you love.

If somebody starts putting down somebody that you love, whoever it may be, you're going to rise naturally to the fence. There'll be a defense. There'll be an indignation there.

There'll be a defensiveness there. You'll hate any insult to the beloved. It's just natural.

That's what love is. That's how love reacts. In Psalm 139, David says some words that a lot of people find difficult, but I don't find them difficult at all.

I think I understand his sentiments completely. He says in Psalm 139, beginning of verse 20, or I guess 19, Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God, depart from me, therefore, you bloodthirsty men, for they speak against you wickedly. Your enemies take your name in vain.

Do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate you? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with perfect hatred. I count them my enemies. Now, a lot of people think, David's kind of getting out of hand here.

He's just not really, I guess he just doesn't have the love of Christ in him, because he hates these people. Jesus said you need to love your enemies. Well, David did love his enemies.

His enemies included people like Saul, Absalom, people who tried to kill him for no cause. He had given them no cause, but they hated him without a cause, and they sought to take his life. Who could be an enemy more than they? And yet, did David hate Saul or Absalom? Doesn't sound like it to me.

He wept when they died. He spared their lives when he could. And, you know, David was a man who did love his enemies.

What he couldn't stand was God's enemies. Notice he says, I hate those who hate you. He didn't say, I hate those who hate me.

I hate those who hate you. And he says in verse 22, I count them my enemies. Notice, they are not attacking David directly.

They are not making themselves David's enemies. They are blaspheming God. They are dishonoring God.

They are rising up against God. And that being so, David says, any enemy of yours, God, is an enemy of mine. I count them to be my enemies.

They may not have taken any direct swipes at me, but taking swipes at my God has consigned them to the role of being my enemies as far as I'm concerned. Now, is this a wrong attitude? I don't see any reason that it should be regarded so. Look at his very next words in verse 23.

Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxieties. See if there's any wicked way in me.

Well, if his hatred for these wicked men was a wicked way, he wouldn't need God to search him and find out if there's anything wrong in there. I mean, it's spilling out of his mouth. It's spilling out of his pen.

I hate these people with perfect hatred. But David has a clear conscience about it. He says, God, you know, search me.

I don't believe there's any wicked way in me. You tell me if there is. I'm not aware of it.

David did not feel any conviction about this as if this attitude was something he was ashamed of, but he just couldn't overcome. He believed it was part of loyalty and love for God, that those who hate God, well, what can he do but hate them? Love of God is hatred of evil. Now again, you hate them in the sense that God hates them.

You love them in the sense that God loves them. God wants them to repent. God wants them not to perish, but to be saved, and so do you.

But in terms of your actual gut-wrench reaction toward them, your feelings toward them are much more like animosity, because they have set themselves against the one that you love. If somebody takes, swipes it, you know, there's the old, almost cliché, you know, of the way you insult someone, say your mother wears army boots or something like that. You know, I mean, I don't really know how that would be a serious affront, but that's a classic, you know, affront.

I could tolerate everything until you insulted my mother, you know. Now that's going too far. You know, those fighting words, you know, well, that kind of reaction toward someone whose honor, out of your love for them, to preserve their honor is natural.

Natural and right. And I'm not saying you should take up your fists and go beat up somebody who's blaspheming God, but there should be a reaction of disgust and anger, and perhaps something should be done or said in cases like that. A person who loves God hates evil.

Look what David said in Psalm 101. Psalm 101, beginning of verse 2, I will behave wisely in a perfect way. Oh, when will you come to me? I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.

I will set nothing wicked before my eyes. I hate the work of those who fall away. It shall not cling to me.

A perverse heart shall depart from me. I will not know wickedness. And he says, whoever secretly slanders his neighbor, him will I destroy.

David was a king, he could do that. The one who has a haughty look and a proud heart, him will I not endure. My eyes shall be on the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with me.

He who walks in a perfect way, he shall serve me. He's making a vow as a king, as a ruler, to keep a clean administration, basically. I'm not going to have servants who are dishonest.

I'm not going to have servants who blaspheme. I'm going to only have godly people in my presence. I will not, like some men, allow those men into positions of privilege who pay me the highest bid for the job.

I'm going to choose men on the basis of their spiritual characteristics because I can't stand anyone else but godly people. Now, I mean, he says, I can't endure people like that. It doesn't mean that he just completely went to pieces whenever he was in the presence of sinners.

There were sinners all around him like there are around us and we have to be able to endure it. We have to be able to be gracious and composed and we have to be able to extend a winsome appeal to such people toward God. But in our heart, it must make a person fume and boil to hear Jesus Christ blasphemed, unless our love for him is not what it once was.

If we've left our first love, we get used to that. It doesn't bother us all that much. Of course, there's a third test that probably many of you would anticipate of the love of God in addition to these.

A third test of the love of God is that you love Christians. You not only hate evil, but you love the godly. You're a lover of good men, a lover of godly people, a lover of God's children, really.

And this is not so much because, I mean, it is partly because they are good and you love what is good. But there's another aspect to this, another dimension to loving God's children. I don't know if you remember, that is that you love them because he loves them.

Which means that even if they are not perfect, even if there are annoying imperfections, irritations and so forth in them, yet you love them because they are loved by God. It says in 1 John chapter 4, the last two verses and the first verse of chapter 1, 5, excuse me, the first verse of chapter 5. So, three verses in a row. 1 John 4, 20 and 21 and then chapter 5, verse 1. There's no obvious reason for making a chapter division here.

If someone says, I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God must love his brother also. Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.

And everyone who loves him who begot, also loves him who is begotten of him. Now what does that verse say? Same thing as the previous. If you love God, you love his kids.

Love me, love my dog. You know, I mean, maybe an ugly dog, but I love my dog. I hope you do too, if you love me.

My kids may not be all, you know, that whatever you like about me, you may not find in my kids, but you find in my kids somebody that I love and who, if you love me, you love them too. It says, whoever believes in Jesus Christ, that he's the Christ, is born of God. That means they're one of God's kids.

And it's inevitable. It's just a given. If you love the one who begot, that is God, if you love him, then you love the one that is begotten of him, that is his kids.

If you love the father, you'll love his children. Why? Because he loves them. Again, it's partially out of sensitivity to his feelings.

You know, if he loves his children, it would grieve him that you don't love who he loves. Doesn't it grieve you when you really want to be friends and close to someone, you're hoping there's going to be something important in the relationship, and you play your favorite music from your favorite band for them, and they think it's horrible, and they can't stand it, and you say, man, how are we going to have a relationship? I've got to listen to these guys every day. I get my fix of this kind of music every day.

I can't be happy without it, and this person can't stand it. You know, it's kind of discouraging. If you just love a certain person's preaching, and the person you love hates that kind of preaching.

I love Tozer. If my wife didn't love Tozer, it would be very difficult. Fortunately for me, my wife loves Tozer, my kids love Tozer, and it works out real well.

But imagine if I was married to someone, and they just couldn't stand Tozer. Every time I was reading Tozer, oh, you've got to hear this. Oh, this is fantastic.

Let me read this to you. And I said, oh, that guy, that guy gets on my nerves. I don't like that.

I mean, if you love somebody, you want everyone that you love to love that someone. And God loves His children, and He wants us to love His children too. If not because of their own innate goodness and lovable-ness, at least because it bothers Him when we don't love those that He loves.

And our love for other Christians is to be motivated by our love for Him. Actually, you cannot love Him without loving His children, it says. If a person says he loves God but hates his brother, he's a liar.

It's not true. Remember the story of the sheep and the goats, where Jesus said, Inasmuch as you did it to the least of these my brethren, you've done it to me. You insult the Christian, you insult God.

You ignore the needs of a Christian, and you've ignored God. And therefore, love for the brethren, love for Christians, is a proof of love for God. Remember that last recorded interview between Jesus and Peter found at the end of the Gospel of John.

Peter and six other of the apostles were fishing. Jesus appeared at the lakeside. They came to shore and had breakfast with Him, and there was a discussion.

Actually, there was a conversation, apparently fairly private, between Jesus and Peter. And in verse 15, this is John 21, 15 through 17, When they had eaten breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon son of Jonah, do you love me more than these? And he said to him, Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. Jesus said to him, Feed my lambs.

He said to him again a second time, Simon son of Jonah, do you love me? And he said to him, Yes, Lord, you know I love you. He said to him, Ten my sheep. He said to him a third time, Simon son of Jonah, do you love me? Peter was grieved because he said to him a third time, Do you love me? And he said to him, Lord, you know all things.

You know that I love you. Jesus said to him, Feed my sheep. Now, without getting into discussion of the different Greek words for love that appear in this passage, sometimes phileo and sometimes agape, that's a different discussion.

The point I'd like to make essentially is that Jesus said, Do you love me? Prove it by taking care of my people, my sheep. Feed my sheep. Feed my lambs.

Tend my sheep. These people are like sheep without a shepherd. They have a need and I want you to serve them.

By the way, don't think that he was saying, Do you love me? Then take authority. Do you love me? Then accept this position of high rank. He's saying, Do you love me? Then serve my people.

Feed my lambs. And that is apparently what Jesus regarded to be a proof of Peter's love, as if he would do that if he would serve not Jesus so much directly as serving Jesus' people. Of course, you do serve Jesus when you serve his people.

Well, there's another test, by the way, of love for God, and that is alluded to perhaps when we read in Matthew 6.21, Jesus talked about in the earlier verses, not laying up treasure on earth, but laying up treasure in heaven. But he says in 6.21, For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. I would sometimes, for clarity's sake, like to turn that around and say the reverse is true also.

Where your heart is, there your treasure will be also. If you have your treasure somewhere, then your heart's going to be naturally drawn there. But it's also true that if your heart is somewhere, your treasure will tend to flow that direction.

Your money, what you spend your money on, will show what you really love. Now, if you love somebody, you lavish gifts upon them, and you don't consider it expensive. Everyone here has been in love before, I'm sure.

If not, then you will, and you'll know I'm telling the truth when you are. But you want to give everything to that person. Not, I mean, depending on lowness or highness of motivations, but not so much to manipulate them, not even necessarily to win them, although if you haven't yet won them, you may wish to win them by this means, but even after they're won, even after you know that you have their heart, you want to always lavish on them things that are costly to you.

And where your heart is, your treasure will go there. Jesus actually was saying the reverse. Where your treasure is, your heart will go there.

I'm not denying that in the least. I think both are true. I think your treasure and your heart dwell together.

And if your heart is with the Lord, if you love the Lord, then your treasures will be gladly surrendered to Him. Remember the woman who came and broke a box of spikenard over his head in the 26th chapter of Matthew, and she was criticized for this because there were about a year's wages worth of oil in there, and Judas and others said this could have been sold and given to the poor. Why was it wasted like this? Jesus said, leave her alone.

She's done this as an act of reverence to me. She's done this to anoint me for my burial. Her love was expensive.

She gladly gave what was probably the most valuable thing she had. Others saw it as just a waste because they didn't understand. This is an act of love.

Love knows no expense. And that's why it is not a hard saying of Jesus, as sometimes called, when He says, you cannot be my disciple unless you forsake all that you have. Oh, those are the hard sayings of Jesus.

Really? Hard for those who don't love Him, I guess. Easy for those who do. It's a mark of love, an evidence of love, that you gladly part with your treasures.

And for us, that would not only be a matter of financial treasure, but there's other things we treasure, like our precious time. How much time do we give to God, and how much to entertainment, conversation, whatever, other things. You can see where your heart is by where your treasure is going.

Your precious time is certainly as valuable as your money. Sometimes more valuable than money, because some people have more money than they have time. And that too is a treasure.

Or your good name, that's a treasure. More to be desired than riches is a good name. And yet some people will not forfeit their reputation to take a stand for Jesus because of the poor light it will put them in in the eyes of others.

There's too much at stake here. Too much popularity to lose. This is a treasure too.

Where your treasures go will demonstrate where your heart is. If you love the Lord, you will not mind the forfeiting of popularity and reputation. You won't mind.

In fact, you will be eager to give your time and your resources to God. And there's another thing I'd like to draw your attention to. And this is the fifth and last that we have any time for.

I'm not even sure we have time for it. But that is in 2 Timothy, chapter 4. 2 Timothy, chapter 4, verse 8. Paul says, Finally there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day, and not to me only, but also to all who have loved his appearing. If you love the Lord, you will love his appearing.

Just as a woman engaged to be married to a man who goes off to war and he's taken from her presence for a year or two. And they write letters, but they don't see each other. They don't hear from each other anywhere near enough.

But she just longs for the day when he will be back with her again. She loves the prospect, the hope of seeing him again. And Christians who love the Lord, of course, love his appearing.

Now I say this as something that should be obvious, but I've met only too many people who have said, Well, you know, I hope the Lord doesn't come back too soon. Because I'm just getting started in this business. And I've just got so many prospects ahead.

And I'm enjoying myself now. And I really do want the Lord to come back, but I hope he doesn't come back too soon. I've heard once, I remember a minister's wife told me that.

A minister and a wife who I respected as spiritual people. And I was aghast, really. I remember a friend of mine said he was a surfer and he loved to go where the surf was up.

He goes to Hawaii from time to time. He said, When I go to Hawaii, man, it's just like Paris. I just say, Lord, don't come too soon.

Don't come too soon. Because there's no sea in the new earth. And he didn't want to be away from his surfing too soon.

He was willing to give it up instead of go to hell. There's no sea and there's no surfing in hell either. But if he had to eventually go somewhere where there's no surfing, he'd rather go to heaven.

But he doesn't want to go there too soon. Because he'd have to give up his idol. And this is a mark of loving God that we're eager for him to come.

There's nothing we're into right now that we wouldn't gladly drop and run off to, to be with him. These tests show whether we love God or not. And if we are deficient in any of these tests, they simply point to those areas where we need to cultivate and refine our own love for him and eliminate idolatry from our own lives.

Well, we're out of time. So we will close with a...