Do You Really Love The Lord?

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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June 23, 2019

00:03: I want to invite you to take out your Bibles, turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 16.
00:17: We're going to read verses 14 to 24 with special emphasis on verse 22, which will be where we spend most of our time today.
00:32: Beginning at verse 14, I rejoice at the coming of Stephanas, and Fortunatus, and Achaicus, because they have made up for your absence, for they refreshed my spirit as well as yours.
01:17: Give recognition to such men.
01:21: The churches of Asia send you greetings, Achilla and Priscilla together with the churches in their house send you hearty greetings in the Lord.
01:33: All the brothers send you greetings, greet one another with a holy kiss.
01:40: I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand.
01:45: If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed.
01:54: O Lord, come.
01:57: The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you.
02:00: My love be with you all in Christ Jesus, amen.
02:06: Father in heaven, as I seek to give an understanding of this passage, I pray, Lord, that you would fill me with your Holy Spirit.
02:20: I pray that you would keep me from error as I am capable of preaching error and do not want to for the sake of your people and the sake of your great name and for the sake of my own conscience.
02:34: Father, I pray that you would, by your mercy, open the eyes of the blind this morning, open the ears of the deaf, not physically, Lord, but those who are blind to the truth of their own spiritual condition, those who are deaf to hear the word of God.
02:51: May they see it, may they hear it, and may this day be to them a day of reckoning.
03:00: Father, for those who know Christ, may today also be today a day of challenge, to ask the simple question, do we really love the Lord? And I pray all this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and for his sake, amen.
03:20: You may be seated.
03:32: This week's text is one that has struck me in my soul.
03:40: It has been on my mind all week, and while that is always the case, because I'm always preparing for the week to preach, this one has been even more so like a weight sitting on my chest.
04:02: I realize we read a lot of text this morning.
04:06: This is the conclusion to the study that we've been doing for the past 18 months.
04:11: We have looked at every verse of 1 Corinthians.
04:14: We've gone verse by verse through it.
04:17: And next week, I do plan to go through verses 14 to 24 all the way and make comments and give application of all of that.
04:26: But today, one verse has stopped me in my tracks, and I was literally up until 1230 this morning, adding thoughts and rewriting notes and praying and considering what I wanted to say about verse 22.
04:49: Verse 22 is really the sermon today.
04:52: We'll go back later for the rest.
04:55: And the thing about verse 22 is this.
04:57: It's nothing particularly difficult.
05:04: It's not really a heavy theological passage, but it is a text which spoke so clearly to my soul's needs and I believe will speak to the needs of the soul of our church.
05:18: And I hope will speak to your individual souls as well.
05:24: This passage is what we call a warning passage.
05:30: A warning passage is one that is intended to remind us of the dangers that lie ahead for those who would either reject or abandon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ.
05:49: And I believe the warning it provides goes tremendously overlooked in the evangelical church today.
06:01: The Bible is filled with warning passages.
06:05: And some people have such a low view of Scripture that they do not take the warning seriously.
06:13: They have it in their minds that God is somehow so loving and so forgiving that He would never act as judge of the universe.
06:24: They read of His judgments and they consider that to be something for someone else or something for another time or somehow irrelevant to their current situation.
06:37: They imagine somehow that God in the last 2,000 years has softened His blow and it will never reach them.
06:52: If we ever get to the point where we believe God will not judge sin, we are no longer believing in the God of the Bible.
07:07: God is the King of the universe.
07:10: Therefore, that which is opposed to Him is cosmic treason.
07:19: That is what makes sin so vile.
07:24: And it's also why these warning passages exist.
07:29: They remind us of the severity of the penalty of sin.
07:37: So today we're going to examine this passage and my genuine prayer is that you will not ignore this warning.
07:46: Whether you are 12, 13, 14 years old or you're 85 years old, which I know that only applies to a couple of you, but some of you are close, I want you to hear this.
08:00: Whether you're a man, woman, whether you've been in this church for 50 years or whether you've been in this church for less than a month or maybe today is your first day, I want you to hear this warning because it may just be pointed directly at you.
08:22: Now, this passage is short.
08:23: It is only a few words, verse 22, but I have broken it into three parts because I think it's necessary to see it in its parts so that we understand the whole.
08:34: We're going to look first at the identity of the warned.
08:37: We're going to look second at the destiny of the warned, and we're going to finalize by looking at the imminency of the warning.
08:46: So let us look first at the identity of the warned.
08:51: It says in verse 22, in the first part of that verse, in the ESV, which is what I'm teaching from, may read a little differently in your Bible if you have another, but it's all essentially the same.
09:02: It says, if anyone has no love for the Lord.
09:07: That's the section that grabbed me, by the way.
09:09: That was the section that when I read it, it so sunk into my heart and I was stunned.
09:15: I couldn't go any further.
09:18: And I just laid everything down and I prayed because this is a tremendously powerful statement because note what it does not say.
09:29: For just a moment, I want you to consider what it doesn't say.
09:32: It does not say, if anyone does not believe in the Lord.
09:40: We spend all our time trying to get people to believe in Jesus, right? We go out and evangelize.
09:44: I want you to believe in Jesus.
09:46: But notice it doesn't say, if anyone believe not in Jesus.
09:51: That's not what it says.
09:54: Notice also it doesn't say, if anyone does not accept the Lord.
09:58: You know, a lot of churches go out, we got to get you to accept Jesus, got to get you to accept Jesus, accept Jesus.
10:02: That's the name of the game.
10:08: Notice it doesn't say, if anyone does not submit to the Lord.
10:13: All of these are true, but you can believe in the Lord and not love Him.
10:20: You can accept the Lord and not love Him.
10:23: You can even submit to the Lord and not love Him because the demons do all those things.
10:32: The Bible says, you believe that God is one, you do well.
10:35: Even demons believe and shudder.
10:39: That's James chapter 2, verse 19.
10:42: Demons believe, demons accept, demons submit.
10:49: But demons do not love the Lord.
10:56: I want you to note something else it does not say.
11:00: It does not say, if anyone does not love the Bible.
11:05: It doesn't say, if anyone does not love doctrine.
11:09: It does not say, if anyone does not love the church.
11:12: Because again, all those things are good, but beloved you could love the Bible and not love Jesus.
11:20: Secular scholars do, they devote their whole life to the study of the scripture and they don't love Jesus.
11:29: You could love doctrine and not love Jesus.
11:31: I know a lot of theologians who are lost.
11:35: They love not the Lord Jesus Christ, but boy they can argue you up and down their theological position.
11:46: You could love the church and not love Jesus.
11:48: Many social butterflies do.
11:52: They love the relationships they have, they love the people they get to know, they love the social gatherings they get to enjoy, they love the meals they get to eat and the games they get to play, but they do not love Jesus.
12:09: Consider the Pharisees.
12:11: They loved to teach from the Torah.
12:14: They loved to argue doctrine and they loved the gathering of God's people because that's where they had the most important position.
12:25: But they hated Christ.
12:29: Jesus said this to them in John 5, you search the scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.
12:40: They loved the Bible, but they hated Jesus because they didn't understand the Bible.
12:50: The identity of Paul's individual that he's dealing with in verse 22 is somebody who doesn't love Jesus, but get this, they are in the church.
13:03: Paul is not writing this letter to the city of Corinth.
13:06: He's writing this letter to the church at Corinth and he says if anyone of you does not love Jesus, he's talking to us.
13:24: What is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus was asked that question.
13:30: Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the law? Matthew 22, verse 36 and verse 37.
13:38: And he said, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.
13:47: That every man is commanded not just to believe, but to love his God.
14:01: It is our duty.
14:03: It was what we were created to do.
14:06: What's the first catechism question in the Westminster Confession? The first catechism question is what is the chief end of man, meaning what is his chief goal or what is his chief purpose? What is the chief end of man that he glorify God and enjoy him forever? How do we glorify God? First by loving him.
14:28: In fact, that's the greatest way we glorify God.
14:30: Everyone will glorify God in some way.
14:32: Even the damned will glorify God in their being damned because they will glorify his justice.
14:38: That's why we can say it's the chief end of all men will ultimately glorify God, whether it be in his grace or in his justice.
14:43: But what is the best and most appropriate way to glorify God in loving him? And immediately somebody may ask, and it would be not an inappropriate question to ask, what does it mean to love the Lord? Honestly, that's where I sat back in my chair and I've rolled this around and I've thought about it.
15:08: This is actually what kept me up late last night.
15:09: I was writing this section because I kept going back to it and I got to thinking because the Bible gives us a couple of ways that we can sort of test ourselves.
15:22: Do we love the Lord? And I'm going to look at those in a minute, but for a second, if I could just give you a practical thought, not that the Bible is impractical, mind you, but I'm just saying there's something that is sort of a practical, just here's a question.
15:35: How do you know you love your spouse? Because when you ask me, how do I know I love the Lord? How do you know you love your spouse? You value that person above all others.
15:51: You place their opinion above your own.
15:53: You put their desires above yours.
15:55: You place being with them above being with anyone else.
15:58: You work toward building the relationship and you seek to please that person above all else.
16:03: That's how you know you love them.
16:05: In fact, if you don't do those things with your spouse, there's probably a problem in your marriage.
16:14: But can you say those same things of your relationship with Christ? Do you value him above others? Do you place his opinion, his commands above your own? Do you put his desires above your own? Do you place being with him above being with anyone else? But I want to give you two things from Scripture as well to add to that little just practical thought I had.
16:52: I want to give you two, two things to if you're writing, how do you know you love the Lord? He tells us and it isn't like we have to guess or have to somehow create in our mind.
17:03: He tells us very clearly.
17:05: And if you want to if you want to go look at this, I invite you turn with me to John 14, John chapter 14.
17:13: This is Jesus speaking and he's talking about what it means to love him.
17:20: And it's in verse 15, John 14 and verse 15 says simply this.
17:32: If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
17:38: So love for Christ begins with obedience to Christ.
17:44: Now, jump down to verse 21, because this is where he really gets into it.
17:49: Verse 21, he says, whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.
17:56: And he who loves me will be loved by my father and I will love him and manifest myself to him.
18:01: Judas, not Iscariot, said to him, Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus answered him.
18:08: If anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my father will love him and he will come to him and make our home with him.
18:16: Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.
18:19: And the word that you hear is not mine, but the father's who sent me.
18:23: What did Jesus say over and over in that passage? If you love me, you're going to do what I say.
18:28: Why? Why is that the test for love? Because if you love Jesus, it means first and foremost, you know who he is.
18:37: Who is Christ? He is your creator.
18:42: He is the God-man.
18:43: All things were made through him and for him in heaven and on the earth.
18:51: You were made for him.
18:54: You were created to glorify him.
18:59: I will say this very simply, if you have no desire for obedience to the Lord, you have no love for the Lord.
19:08: It's just that simple.
19:17: There's a lady on television this past week, one of these shows where they they get all these men together to date one woman and then she's got to pick at the end which one she's going to date.
19:34: I didn't watch the show.
19:35: So it was it just made the rounds because of what she said.
19:40: The man was giving her a hard time about her having illicit relationships with all the different men on the show.
19:48: And he said, I'm a Christian and and the marriage bed is sacred.
19:53: And she said, well, I'm a Christian and I can do what I want because Jesus forgives me for anything.
19:58: It doesn't matter what I do.
20:02: That's modern evangelical nonsense that Jesus doesn't care what I do.
20:13: Shall we continue in sin so that grace can abound? May it never be.
20:22: So again, if we say we love the Lord and do not care what he says to us, we don't really love him.
20:30: That's that's one.
20:32: But there's also another one.
20:33: And I do want you to see this one because this is smack in the face.
20:35: This one here, this one here gets every time I read it.
20:39: It's it's it's hard.
20:40: Go to first John.
20:41: So not John, the gospel, but the first epistle of John.
20:46: And look at chapter four.
20:54: First John four and verse 20.
21:07: He says this, if anyone says, I love God, stop right there.
21:12: What's a person claiming? I love the Lord.
21:14: I mean, you know, you could whether you say God or the Lord, it's this person is making a claim to fidelity.
21:21: I love God.
21:23: OK, if anyone says I love God and hates his brother.
21:29: He is a liar for he who does not love his brother, whom he cannot see.
21:39: Oh, rather, I'm sorry, whom he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.
21:50: I tell you what, that should that should be convicting upon all of us.
21:56: That should make our stomach.
21:59: Go into a knot, it did me.
22:03: And maybe maybe you're maybe I don't know, maybe you don't feel it the way I do.
22:07: Maybe maybe you're more sanctified and praise God if you are.
22:15: But sometimes we leave this place.
22:19: Upset with people, angry with people.
22:23: Talking about people, our kids hear us talking about people.
22:28: People were supposed to love.
22:29: People were supposed to cherish.
22:31: People were supposed to pray for.
22:33: People were supposed to call our brothers and sisters.
22:38: Do we really love each other? I've learned that it's nearly impossible to hate someone for whom you are praying.
22:53: So let me give you this piece of small advice from your pastor.
22:57: If you are having trouble loving someone, start to sincerely pray for them and see what the Lord does with your heart.
23:10: So there are the two.
23:11: I mean, there are others in scripture for sure, but there are the two ways that we are given very clear command.
23:17: What does it mean to love the Lord first to keep his commandments and then to love our brothers and sisters in Christ? If we do not either of those, we can say for certainty we do not love the Lord.
23:27: Now, I want to add to this.
23:28: None of us does this perfectly.
23:30: You do not love the Lord perfectly.
23:33: I do not love the Lord perfectly.
23:36: But I'm asking you today, do you love the Lord at all? Because I fear some of you don't.
23:45: Again, I think you might love the Bible.
23:46: I think you might love the church.
23:47: I think you might love doctrine, things you might love.
23:55: But do you love Jesus? That's the question today.
23:59: I wrote my son a letter this week.
24:01: As you all know, he left for the Air Force.
24:03: I've mentioned it four billion times.
24:05: Everybody knows.
24:07: But I want to tell you something I wrote in the letter.
24:11: See, he thought by leaving, he'd no longer be part of my illustrations.
24:14: But nope, he didn't.
24:20: But I wrote this in his letter and I thought I would share it with you.
24:27: Son, I know for years I have encouraged you to believe in Jesus Christ, but I don't know if I ever properly stressed how important it is for you to love him.
25:01: And I don't know that I've done that for you either.
25:07: I've called you to faith and I've called you to faithfulness every week for 14 years.
25:15: But I don't know that I have stressed to you how much you need to love the Lord.
25:22: It is not enough to believe the devil's belief.
25:29: Do you love the Lord? Because if you don't, this warning is for you.
25:40: So now I want to look at what the warning is.
25:41: We've seen the identity of the warned.
25:44: I want to look at the destiny of the warned because he said, if anyone loved not the Lord, let him be accursed.
25:55: And that word accursed is a strong word, probably more so than any of us really realize, because we often think of cursing as the opposite of blessing.
26:10: We like blessing.
26:11: We don't like cursing.
26:12: You know, one's good, one's bad.
26:14: But that's really not the idea here.
26:16: It's not just the juxtaposition of blessing.
26:20: But this is the warning of a consequence that none of us can really understand, because this is the consequence of separation from God in hell.
26:33: The word here in Greek is anathema.
26:41: And I did a lot of study on this word, and I wish I could take all the time to break it apart.
26:45: But let me just give you the quick understanding of what this word really means.
26:52: In the New Testament, it's almost always translated in the ESV as a curse.
26:57: We see some in First Corinthians 12, it says no one should say Jesus is accursed.
27:02: In the book of Galatians, it says if anyone preaches another gospel, let him be accursed.
27:09: And in Romans chapter nine, Paul says, I wish I could be accursed if it meant the salvation of my brethren according to the flesh, the Jews.
27:18: So it's always a negative.
27:21: But this word actually comes over to us from the Old Testament.
27:28: This word actually finds its root in the Old Covenant scriptures.
27:33: But you remember, the Old Covenant wasn't written in Hebrew.
27:37: The Old Covenant was written in Greek.
27:39: It was written in Hebrew.
27:40: And so the word anathema is not there.
27:42: But we have something called the Septuagint.
27:44: It's a Greek translation of the Old Testament.
27:47: And in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, we have this word anathema come up.
27:51: And so we can trace that word back to the Hebrew word that was used.
27:57: And the Hebrew word that was used as haram and haram means to be devoted to destruction.
28:08: It was what was given as a command when the people of God were to go into the cities and destroy everything.
28:17: Every man, woman, child, animal, everything, you go in and you devote it to destruction.
28:26: That is what anathema is.
28:33: I want to read from the Bible.
28:35: This is a this is a New English translation commentary.
28:38: It says this.
28:39: The anathema of First Corinthians 1622 denotes that they who love not the Lord are rightly objects of loathing and execration to all holy beings.
28:50: They are guilty of a crime that merits the severest condemnation.
28:54: They are exposed to the just sentence of everlasting destruction from the presence of God.
29:03: A more direct way of saying it, if he does not love the Lord, let him be damned.
29:17: Here is a necessary inference from this text.
29:23: If a man has no love for Christ, he is not born again because the Bible says there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
29:37: If you do not love Christ, the condemnation of anathema sits upon your head.
29:45: You cannot be in Christ and be anathema.
29:53: What an awful destiny.
29:54: This summer, I'm going to preach.
29:56: I'm finishing First Corinthians, hopefully in the next few weeks.
29:59: I'm going to preach a few weeks on heaven and hell.
30:07: Bear in mind, hell is where a person is headed who is under the anathema of God.
30:14: Hell is real.
30:17: It is not a myth concocted by Dante.
30:23: It is not something that was thought up by the Roman Catholic Church to bring people into subjection, into submission during the Middle Ages.
30:30: It is something that was preached in Scripture 2,000 years ago by the one who knows all things, Jesus Christ, who preached on hell more than he preached on heaven.
30:46: Now, I want to move to the third, because this is the part that a lot of people would really overlook.
30:53: He says, if any man love not the Lord, let him be anathema or let him be accursed.
31:01: And then in the ESV, it says, our Lord come.
31:05: Seems like it's not even connected.
31:08: Seems like it's not even really a part of what he just said.
31:12: But I want to ask you a question.
31:14: Have you ever heard the word Maranatha? There's churches, Maranatha Baptist Church, Maranatha Church.
31:22: There's the Maranatha singers.
31:25: The word Maranatha is fairly common in the evangelical dialect.
31:30: This is the only place in the Bible where it is.
31:34: This is the word Maranatha in the underlying language.
31:39: I know it doesn't say that in the in the ESV.
31:42: If you have a King James, it does say it.
31:45: It says, let him be anathema, Maranatha.
31:48: In fact, I believe both of that's Greek and Aramaic, by the way, Maranatha is not even Greek.
31:53: It's an Aramaic word.
31:55: And I believe and again, this is something as I was studying this week and I just kept coming to me, kept coming to me.
31:59: I believe this is a play on words.
32:04: So what do you mean, Pastor? Sometimes in the Bible, there are unique literary devices that are intended to bring about memory, like in the Old Testament, you go to the Psalm 119 and it's given in alphabetical order from the Hebrew alphabet so that you can memorize the whole psalm.
32:23: Paul says this, let him be anathema, Maranatha.
32:29: Now, I know they don't rhyme perfectly, but I do think that there is a sense in which there is a rhythmic quality to those words following one after the other.
32:46: It's almost as if we see Paul making two statements that are meant to fit together.
32:52: Anathema, Maranatha.
32:53: In fact, I believe Maranatha is actually more more probably the way it should be pronounced.
32:58: So it'd be anathema, Maranatha.
33:04: Therefore, if Paul is using the first word anathema to mean curse, he's using the second word for the coming of Christ.
33:16: And by putting them together, he's saying, beloved, time is running out.
33:25: If you do not love the Lord, you're under the curse of God and time is short.
33:32: He is coming.
33:33: That's what Maranatha means.
33:34: It means he is coming.
33:35: The Lord comes.
33:40: Therefore, a simple paraphrase of this passage could be this.
33:43: Those who do not love Jesus will be damned when he returns.
33:48: Those who do not love Jesus will be damned when he returns.
33:59: Lots of folks get fascinated with the return of Christ, but for those who do not love Christ, you shouldn't be fascinated.
34:12: You should be frightened.
34:17: You shouldn't be excited.
34:21: You should be scared to death.
34:31: Anathema, Maranatha, our Lord comes.
34:39: Do you love Christ? Do you really love him? Some of you don't know him.
34:59: You can't love who you don't know.
35:07: To love him, you have to believe in him.
35:09: That's obvious.
35:10: To love him, you have to receive him as Lord.
35:12: That's stated without really saying.
35:15: And to love him, you have to understand what he's done for you.
35:24: So I plead with you today.
35:27: If you don't love the Lord first, believe in him.
35:36: Realize what he has done for you.
35:40: Turn from your sins and realize that he is worthy of your love.
35:51: No one has ever come close to showing you the amount of love that Jesus Christ showed on the cross.
36:01: No love need to be compared to the love of the Lord Jesus Christ that he gave for us.
36:13: And if you don't love him, it is not because there's something wrong with him.
36:20: There is something wrong with you.
36:28: There's an old hymn.
36:32: Some of you younger folks may not know it.
36:39: There is a name I love to hear.
36:42: I love to sing its worth.
36:45: It sounds like music in my ear.
36:48: The sweetest name on earth.
36:53: It tells me of a savior's love who died and set me free.
36:58: It tells me of his precious blood, the sinner's perfect plea.
37:04: It tells of one whose loving heart can feel my deepest woe, who in each sorrow bears a part that none can bear below.
37:16: Oh, how I love Jesus.
37:19: Oh, how I love Jesus.
37:23: Oh, how I love Jesus, because he first loved me.
37:31: Can you sing that with sincerity? Do you love Jesus today? Let us pray.
37:44: Father of mercies.
37:47: We long to love you.
37:50: And I long to see your people love you.
37:54: Not just believe, not just trust, not just submit, but to love you.
38:01: I want to see my children love you.
38:04: I want to see the children in this room love you.
38:09: Father, you so deserve our love.
38:11: Christ, you deserve our love.
38:13: Spirit, you deserve our love.
38:15: Let it be that we love you.
38:17: The triune God of the universe draws close to you.
38:28: In your love this morning, in Jesus name we pray, Amen.