Loving God; Serving God

Introduction

We have no religious holidays, but we’re still beholden to our calendar, aren’t we? And so we have civil and secular holidays sometimes thrust upon us. And we accept those holidays maybe begrudgingly, accepting them only because they mean an extra day off of work. But there’s some secular holidays that we welcomely embrace.

Sometimes they perfectly coincide. First the scriptures that say, honor your father and your mother. Men, if you’re just finding out that today is Father’s Day, you’ve got some work to do. Today’s Mother’s Day. A day in which we pause to honor not just the ones who gave us life, but in most of our cases, those who gave us sacrificial love. We honor our mothers today, both living and past. You may not have known your mother. Or you may have known your mother, and she was not the type of mother that she ought to have been.

But we take solace in the promise that Jesus gave us that in him and in this body we can have a hundred loving, supportive mothers. I was one of the fortunate. I had the best mother of all. She raised three very different boys, but all equally troublesome and rambunctious. I was the baby, and I was her favorite. No matter what my other brothers might say.

Simply entitled, Rock Me to Sleep. Backward, turn backward, O time in your flight. Make me a child again for just tonight. Mother, come back from the echo shore, take me again to your heart as of yore. Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care. Smooth the silver threads out of my hair. Over my slumbers, your loving watch keep. Rock me to sleep, mother. Rock me to sleep. Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years. I’m so weary of toil and of tears. Toil without recompense, tears all in vain. Take them and give me my childhood again. I’ve grown weary of dust and decay, weary of flinging my soul wealth away, weary of sowing for others to reap. Rock me to sleep, mother. Rock me to sleep.

Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue, mother, O mother, my heart calls for you. Many a summer the grass has grown green, blossomed and faded our faces between. Yet with strong yearning and passionate pain long I tonight for your presence again. Come from the silence so long and so deep. Rock me to sleep, mother. Rock me to sleep. Over my heart in the days that are flown, no love like mother love has ever shown. No other love abides and endures, faithful, unselfish, and patient like yours. None like a mother can charm away pain from the sick soul and the world weary brain. Slumbers soft, calm or my heavy lids creep. Rock me to sleep, mother. Rock me to sleep. Come let your brown hair just lighted with gold fall on your shoulders again as of old.

Let it drop over my forehead tonight, shading my faint eyes away from the light. For with its sunny edge, shadows once more happily will throng the sweet visions of shore. Lovingly, softening it bright billow sweep. Rock me to sleep, mother. Rock me to sleep. Mother, dear mother, the years have been long since I last listened to your lullaby song. Since then and unto my soul it shall seem man’s years have been only a dream. Clasped to your heart in a loving embrace, with your light lashes just sweeping my face. Never hereafter to wake or asleep. Rock me to sleep, mother. Rock me to sleep.

Our dearest and loving Father in heaven. We’re so thankful, Father, for our mothers, for the good that they do, the tireless love and sacrifice that they have made for us all. We honor them this day, Father, as you’ve commanded us to honor our father and our mothers. We thank them for their love. And we thank you for giving us them. We’re thankful for your parental love for us and the example that you have given how that we as fathers and mothers ought to love our children. And we pray that that love may continue. And we’re thankful for our dear sisters in Christ, who have been sisters and mothers to us as well, and for the encouragement and the love that they afford. We honor them all.

And we thank you for them. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen. One of the grand qualities of a mother is love. Jesus was asked by one of the lawyers, one of the Pharisees, testing him, saying, What is the great commandment in the law? I’m not sure what he thought Jesus would answer when said, What is the great commandment in the law? Maybe he thought Jesus would give one of the commandments that they could set against one of the others that they thought was greater. But as he had done with the Sadducees, he silenced the Pharisees when he answered the question.

On this day that we honor our mothers and the love they gave us, I want to talk about love. Not our love for our mothers and not even our mothers’ love for us, but the foundational love that Jesus would argue was the foundational commandment because he argued that this was the greatest of all commandments that we love God. It was the greatest of all commandments because it was the basis of everything else we do and are as his children. He said, Upon this commandment, love your Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Upon this commandment, depend all of the law and the prophets. What does it mean to love God? What does it mean to love God with that all-encompassing love? And how does that love show itself?

1. Love Produces Faithfulness

This morning I’d like for us to talk about our love for God. Not so much what it is, because to borrow the lines of a song, it’s in every dictionary and nowhere to find. But I want to talk about how we love. What that love for God, if we love him with all our soul, all our heart and all our mind, what that love will look like and what it will do. Love God and serve Him. One characteristic of love that we see certainly in our relationship with God, or at least we ought to, is that love produces faithfulness. Love by its very nature will be a faithful love. Look with me in 1 John chapter 2. John spoke of the dilemma that faces a child of God who is to love God with all of his being, a child of God who lives in a godless world.

The choice, the dilemma that is placed before us. In 1 John 2, verse 15, you’ll remember this text, he says, do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. In one of the quintessential, easier said than done statements, he simply says that love is a choice and it’s an exclusive choice. You will either love God or you will love the world. Love produces a faithfulness and allegiance to him alone. God said, You cannot serve two masters several years ago. I sat at my desk in my office, and across from me sat a brother who had just admitted to serial unfaithfulness to his wife. And he not only had said that he had been unfaithful to his marriage vows, but that he was actually going to leave his wife and be with this other woman.

As the shock of that set in.

He says, now I want you to know I still love my wife. To which I blurted out, no, you don’t. If we have any concept of what the word love really means, you cannot just simply say, I love somebody, and yet I’m going to treat you this way. That’s not what love is. You love the world or you love God. In fact, James would use that same blunt language. Look over in the book of James, chapter 4. James could have said, You’re not doing what you ought to be doing as a Christian. James could say, you’re falling down on your responsibility. James could have even said, you’re not being a faithful Christian. But the Holy Spirit gave different words to James when he said in James 4, verse 4, adulterers and adulteresses.

Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever, therefore, wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. It becomes quickly clear that James was not using the word in its most literal sense of adulterers. He wasn’t accusing them of being unfaithful to their spouses. He was accusing them of being spiritually unfaithful to God. And so he uses this descriptive horrendous word that you are an adulterer. You are not being faithful to your God. No one with any bit of honesty in them. In the audience that James addresses here could say, but I still love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, and mind. James said, No, you don’t.

And so what is James’ advice to those who had been unfaithful and therefore exhibited their lack of love for God. Do you not think, he says in verse 5, do you not think that the scripture says in vain, the Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously? In other words, God demands, God is a jealous God, and he demands our allegiance and our fidelity. But he gives more grace, verse 6. Therefore he says, God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Therefore, here’s the remedy. Therefore, submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. You be faithful to him, and he’ll be faithful to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, you adulterers and adulteresses.

2. Love Will Bring Us Back

Purify your hearts, you double minded. Now look at verse 9. Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Lament, mourn, and produces faithfulness. But when we are not, love does this. Love will bring us back. And so James is saying, you are not loving the Lord your God. You are guilty of spiritual unfaithfulness. In fact, you are an adulterer. And so what does he say? He says, What every adulterer should be told to do, you lament and mourn and weep for your sins. You come back. Because that’s what love does. Love brings us back when we’re unfaithful. Love brings us back when we fail to love. There are numerous examples of that in the scriptures, are they not?

Maybe our favorite would be the prodigal son. What caused the prodigal son to come back? Well, you could say, well, it was the blessings of home. Well, but would it also be true that it was love that brought him back? His love for his father that caused him to understand that there may be the chance that my father will take me back, even if just in the role of a servant, I can go back to my father. Love causes us to be faithful. But when we stray, love will bring us back. Another example, turn with me to John chapter 21.

Another example would be Peter. Remember Brash, bold Peter, the one with the foot-shaped mouth that would often speak before he thought. When Jesus said, All of you will be offended by me this night, the night of his betrayal and crucifixion. Peter so boldly declared, not me, maybe they will, but not me, I will never leave you. And Jesus said, Peter, before mourning, you’ll deny me three times. And Peter did just that, didn’t he?

Peter strayed. Peter did not love him with all his heart, soul, and mind. He said to that servant girl, I don’t know him. To those others around the fire, he would say, I don’t know what you’re talking about. And then finally, the text says, he began to curse and to swear, saying, I don’t know him. And as those very words were coming out of his mouth, the gospel writers tell us he turned and saw his Savior looking at him. And his heart broke. And he went out. And he wept bitterly. What did James say? You adulterers and adulteresses, lament and mourn and weep.

But Peter came back. The text tells us that when they had heard that the tomb was empty, that it was John and Peter, who didn’t just make their way to the tomb. It says they ran. I have a couple things in common with Peter. Sometimes I think, I speak before thinking. And I’m not the fastest runner. John outrun Peter. But John got there and was stooping down, looking into the tomb, and Peter finally came in huffing and a puffing and ran right by John and went into the tomb.

He came back. And then in John chapter 21, Jesus has this conversation with Peter. John 21, verse 15, so 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. And Jesus said, feed my sheep. At a later time we’ll unravel all of this conversation. But suffice it to say that Jesus, three times, the same number of times that he denied knowing the Christ, three times Jesus asked the question, Peter, do you love me? Jesus knew that it was going to be love that would bring Peter back, that it was love that brought Peter back. I pray that every soul that has strayed from God, who has loved the world more than they have loved God, have somewhere within them the love of God that will cause them to come back.

3. Love Seeks the Best of Its Object

Because that’s what love does. In that grand chapter of love, 1 Corinthians chapter 13, the Holy Spirit, through Paul speaks of the characteristics of love. We don’t have the time to unfold all of them. But one thing it says about love is that love will see the best and seek the best of its object. Look in 1 Corinthians 13, beginning in verse 5. Of love, it says it does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. He says, last of all, that it believes and hopes all things. I think that what is what that is saying is that hope sees the best, or excuse me, love sees the best in its object.

But we started out by saying in verse 5 that love does not seek its own. What is the implication? The implication is that love in not seeking its own seeks the best in its object. And so if I love God, not in word, but as the scriptures would say in deed, then I will seek the best for God. What does that mean? How will that look? Now I can easily wrap my mind around. I may fail in it miserably, but I can easily wrap my mind around the concept of love doing that for a fellow human being. How will I put you first, which love demands of me? I can list off hundreds of ways. Again, sadly, I can list off 99 ways that I fail.

But I understand the concept easily. When it talks about love of a fellow human being, how I can seek the best for you. But have I really given thought to if I love God with all my heart, soul, and mind, how will I seek his best? And not my own? We have a few glimpses. We have the story of Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, who took that costly bottle of ointment and broke it and anointed Jesus, she gave the best. We have the example of the Apostle Paul when he is making his way back to Jerusalem on that third missionary journey, and everywhere he goes on the last legs of that journey, he is warned of the impending danger in Jerusalem. And they literally beg him and are crying out, Paul, don’t go.

And he says, I’m ready not only to be bound, but also to die. Paul loved God. And he did not seek his own. What does God ask of me? Does he ask me to be bound and to be put to death for him? Has he asked me to buy an expensive bottle of perfume and break it open? How does God want me to show my love for him? How can I today seek his best?

John’s epistles, 1st, 2nd, and 3 John are often called the epistles of love because he speaks of love. God’s love for us and our love for God so often. In that second epistle, 2 John and the sixth verse. John helps us to figure out how we seek the best of God when he says, This is love, that we walk according to his commandments. This is the commandment that we have heard from the beginning that you should walk in it. Echoing the words of Jesus that said, if you love me, you’ll keep my commandments. How do I seek the best of God? I do what he says. And true love, truly loving God and serving God, tells me that love must be the motivation for everything that I do.

4. Love Is the Motivation

We won’t turn back there, but in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, that chapter of love, he introduces that concept by saying that no matter what grand works that we might do, if they are devoid of love, they are empty symbols. God first wants our heart. That the most grandest of accomplishments, speaking in the tongues of angels, moving mountains, giving our bodies to be burned, are absolutely meaningless if they are not motivated by love. Love is the motivation. And so the challenge today is how can I love God with all my heart, soul, and mind.

Now I need to add this disclaimer. I am not saying that the Bible is not law. It is.

Conclusion

Love God. And so I want to encourage you to read your Bibles not just to find out that thou shalt and that thou shalt not. Oh, they’re in there. But to open up the Word of God to find in it your motivation to love Him with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. And I think you’ll find two things. Number one is it will change the way you read the Bible. If you read it with love as your object. And the second thing, almost miraculously will happen that you’ll find yourself doing what he has asked you to do. And refraining from what he has commanded you not to do. Because produces faithfulness. And love will bring you back. And love will be the motivation as you seek the best of God.

Jesus, what’s the greatest commandment in the law? What a shame to think that I may be failing in the greatest commandment of all. God give me a heart of love. Open your word to me that I might know more about you and that I might love you more. Do you love God? Not a phrase, not a bumper sticker, not something that you just say because you feel like you’re supposed to say it. But do you love Him with all your heart, soul, and mind? Why not become a child of God this morning? Rendering obedience to His gospel. Why? Because you love Him. And because you want to seek His best, not your own. And you’ll actually find out that the wonderful thing of the love that God has for us is that seeking His best actually is seeking our own best.

We just didn’t know it. Why not come to Him? Have you become a Christian in the past, but you’ve strayed and been unfaithful to Him? Then today, lament and mourn and weep and let love bring you back. Your Father’s loving arms are waiting. Can we help you this morning as you render obedience to the gospel? Or can we help you in any spiritual way as together we stand and as we sing?