All Things Together For Good: Chap. 6 Pt. 2

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All Things For Good: Chap. 6 Pt. 3

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Okay, so good evening. Last week we started chapter six, and chapter six is titled

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An Exhortation to Love God, and so he was seeking to earnestly persuade believers or remind believers to, in fact, love

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God, to be lovers of God, and he talked about the fact that there's a lot of hypocrisy out there, a lot of people profess love, but very few do love, and so he wanted to give those who were believers 20 motivations to love

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God, and last week we started that chapter and we got to the first motivation, and we had a lot of good conversations, so I'm hoping that we continue to have a good conversation, but we're going to start off with the second one, number two.

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So this was the first one about how all religion is in vain if we don't have love for God.

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Now number two, love to God is the most noble and excellent grace.

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It is a pure flame kindled from heaven. By it we resemble God, who is love.

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Believing and obeying do not make us like God, but by love we grow like him.

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Love is a grace which most delights in God and is most delightful to him. That disciple who is most full of love lay in Christ's bosom.

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Love puts a verdure and luster upon all the graces. The graces seem to be eclipsed unless love shines and sparkles in them.

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Faith is not true unless it works by love. The waters of repentance are not pure unless they flow from the spring of love.

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Love is the incense which makes all of our services fragrant and acceptable to God.

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What do you think? Believing and obeying do not make us like God.

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How about that? Do you agree with that? It was a purity and a little off. What do you think?

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Well, does God really believe in us? Does he like, you know, oh I really believe in him.

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He's like, no. Krista.

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We obey because we love. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Right. It's not, we don't just obey just to obey.

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It wouldn't be, it's not easy. But we do it because we love God. And the more we love him, the more obedient we are.

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And the more obedient we are, the more holy we are. Isn't that great? It's a really long process.

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It is a process. Jerry. Along that same line, my question would be to us is, with regard to believing, is it believing intellectually or believing experientially?

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You know, and that plays into where, you know, the aspect of where's your heart? Is it loving

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God and obeying out of, or is it obeying out of just plain fear?

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Right. Yeah. And as far as what makes us like God, the demons believe, right?

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The demons believe in shudder. So they believe, but they don't obey. But what our, and Krista brought up, you know, if you love me, you will obey my commandments.

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It doesn't really go the other way. And as we spoke about last time, with the first motivation, all religion is in vain if it's without love.

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And so when he's speaking to the people of Israel, how they continue to bring sacrifices, right?

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I mean, they had knowledge of God even during the Exodus, but did they love him?

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You know, they saw what he did and yet they did not often obey.

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Even the generations that were bringing sacrifices were not obeying him.

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They did not love him the way they ought to. And we consider what the greatest commandments are, love for God, love for neighbor, all of those things.

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Go ahead. I'm going to go out on a limb here. What's that? I'm going to go out on a little limb here and say that it doesn't seem like Thomas Watson is a

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Christian heathens. No, he doesn't seem. It doesn't seem that way at all, does it?

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Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, I quote

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Christian philosophy anyway, but here what Watson is saying is, you know, love for yourself has got to take a second seat to love for God which is what

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Christian heathenism promotes. Right. And, you know, not that we can ever in this life do anything purely from one's selfish motive of love for God.

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That's what I was striving for. And the sanctification process is actually growing where we were able to love

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God more and more and which is, and I love the way he puts it, it's the most noble and excellent of all praises.

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Excellent. What else do we expect from Pastor Jensen? Right. You know,

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I put down here, you know, we Calvinists are always quick to remind people that the Lord does things for his own glory, right?

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So why does God do anything? It's for his glory. And this is true, but we do have to remember that the

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Lord says over and over again about the love that he has for his people. You know, he tells them that in Deuteronomy 7 about why he chose them and it's not because they were vast in number or mightier than the other people, but, you know, he said because he had chosen them, because he was honoring their forefathers, but that he set his love upon them.

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You know, in John 3, 16, for God so loved the world. 1 John 4, as was referenced here about God's love.

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Along those lines, I mean, let's face it. God gives us every opportunity.

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He shows us in his word what he requires. He changes our hearts.

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He gives us the ability to love. He gives us the ability to obey.

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How is that not loving his people, right? He tells them what he requires.

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He makes it possible. And what hope we have to look forward to because of that, and what we gain from that, not from anything we did, could do, would do, is far above anything we can imagine.

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So, our second motivation for loving God is, it is the most noble and excellent grace.

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It is what actually makes us become like him because God is love. Good. Any questions or comments before we move on from that?

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That's pretty good, pretty thorough. Number three. Is that unreasonable, which

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God requires? It is but our love. If he should ask our estate or the fruit of our bodies, could we deny him?

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But he asks only our love. He would only pick this flower. Is this a hard request?

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Was there ever any debt so easily paid as this? We do not at all impoverish ourselves by paying it.

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Love is no burden. Is it any labor for the bride to love her husband? That's funny, buddy.

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I was thinking of it the other way around. It's no burden at all. Love is delightful.

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She's like, I should have stayed home. I didn't think about it until just now.

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So, how about that? Is this unreasonable, which God requires?

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It's just our love. How easy is that? And it's funny, living in the world that we live in, and having heard people, both unbelievers and some even professing believers, they would be ripping into Thomas Watson right about now, disagreeing with him strongly about these points.

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So, thoughts on that? Does he ask us only our love?

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Is it true that we don't impoverish ourselves in giving love to God? How would you answer that if this was the objection brought to you by an unbeliever?

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I mean, it's a sacrifice. There is a sacrifice, in a few sense.

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Everybody wants to follow Him, but He must deny Himself. But it's not a sacrifice in and of itself.

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We gain much more than we lose when we gain Christ. His love allows us to love

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Him and others. So, it's really a good trade.

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It's a good trade. I think the question becomes, what is impoverished in this sense?

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Because even here on earth, we're given so much that may not spell out in a nice car or a beautiful home or property.

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It could be, but then our riches aren't necessarily here either.

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Our riches are what we are hoping for. And then the other riches is the riches in the sense of the renewed heart.

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And all that comes along with that. The peace of mind, the peace of heart, the peace with God.

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To me, and I think this is spelled out in scripture as well, to me, that's more valuable than silver and gold, right?

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Silver and gold have I not, but such as I have, give I thee. So, I think the impoverished aspect perhaps we need to define.

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Erica? Well, I was thinking about the first question. Is that unreasonable, which

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God requires? And I know it continues on throughout our love.

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But when you think about it, if He requires everything or anything,

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He's given us everything. So, who are we to withhold it from Him? How is that ever unreasonable?

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You guys are all pretty much hitting on exactly the right way to respond to that.

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Is it unreasonable? I mean, He gives us the ability to love. Look what He's done to save us, to draw

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Him to ourselves. I said that wrong. Look what He has done to draw us to Himself, right?

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And talking about the sacrifice, talking about impoverishing, talking about all that. Can we outgive

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God? I mean, because how many people have given up their estates, their freedom, their life, their family?

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I mean, what do the disciples say? See, we have left everything for you.

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Thriving businesses and all that. Leaving behind business, leaving behind family.

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But what does Jesus say? Any who lose father, mother, brother, they'll receive a hundred times, a thousand times in the kingdom.

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Now, when we come to Christ, there's times where sometimes we are rejected by our family.

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But we have a family already there for us. Saved into a body and we're not by ourselves.

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I thought it was interesting what Pastor Jensen had said one time. Talking about someone getting saved, that they're never saved alone.

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There's always a church, right? Do you remember that? Do you remember saying that? I wish

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I remember the context of it. But we are already into a body.

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And plus, all the riches besides. We talk about going through first Peter and we have this inheritance that's imperishable, undefiled, unfading.

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What do we have that compares? We can't outgive God. But as far as the love, like he says, is it any labor for the bride to love her husband?

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When you think of newlyweds who are just so in love for each other, what wouldn't they do for their spouse?

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It's no burden at all. It's what you want to do. Because again, it's motivated by love.

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So, is that unreasonable? Of course not. Go ahead. Well, I was thinking about that last question about is it any labor for the bride to love her husband?

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I was thinking about the promise on Monday night.

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And Pastor Anthony, I've heard him say it more than just Monday night. When we define love, love is a choice to, well,

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I mean, not in the case of God. God gives us love. The covenantal marital love of God is a choice on His part to bestow it on whom

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He will. On His part, yes. But I was thinking about also how you were mentioning how we are not like God just by living in obedience to Him.

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How it's by love that we become more like Him. And how, just like it says, is it any labor for the bride to love her husband?

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Love leads you to do different actions for that other person.

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But there is that willingness. And so it's different than just doing something because you have to.

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Or just doing it for the other person, but begrudgingly. It just didn't make so much sense that love is delightful.

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Because the delight is in the fact that you have a willingness to do it because of, I don't know, what a driving force of love.

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I mean, it sounds circular, but... Yes? Pastor Jensen and then...

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I think you have to put this question even in the context of the whole book. Not only does

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He bring the good things into our life, but He promises that even the bad things will turn out for our good.

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It's a question of love. How can you not love somebody who makes the promise that you know what, even if something bad happens, that's going to be to your benefit.

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So there is no downside. There is, yeah, absolutely. That's an excellent point.

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Is it unreasonable? I would say, is it unreasonable or is it beneficial?

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Because God is telling us to love Him and we trade the finite, our estate, our bodies, the things in this world, for the infinite.

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Something that's going to last forever. So it's not unreasonable in any sense.

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It's not even close. It's so beneficial for us to love

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Him because God is the greatest being. So if we love something more than God, we're loving less than the best.

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That's actually going to come up. That's one of his motivations later that we'll be touching on.

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Loving something that's actually worse than yourself, interestingly enough. Right, it's funny because, again, you might have heard this argument about loving

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God, giving glory to God, worshipping God. Who does God think He is? That's someone who's got blinders on and hard hearts to realize their eyes are on exactly what he said, the finite, the temporal things.

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Things that, you know, you give up everything. People give up their family to chase after material goods and it's here today and gone tomorrow.

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You can lose it in a moment. And yet, everything that God gives us is beyond all we can ask or think.

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So, no, it's the furthest thing from it, being unreasonable. It truly is for our best and benefit.

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And it should be no burden. That's what love is. It's unreasonable not to love. It's unreasonable not to love

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Him, indeed. All right, we're good. Number four.

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God is the most adequate and complete object of our love. I'll get to that in a second.

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I think sometimes with the words that they use. Like, that was the word I put in the Hallmark card to my wife. Like, you are the most adequate.

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It means better than that. We've just kind of downplayed the thing.

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You are my muse tonight. All the excellencies which lie scattered in the creatures are united in Him.

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He is wisdom, beauty, love. Yes, the very essence of goodness. There is nothing in God which can cause a loathing.

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The creature sooner surfeits than satisfies. But there are fresh beauties continually sparkling forth in God.

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The more we love Him, the more we enjoy Him and are ravished with delight. There is nothing in God to deaden our affections or quench our love.

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There is neither infirmity nor deformity, such as usually weakened and cool love. There is that excellence in God which may not only invite, but command our love.

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If there were more angels in heaven than there are, and all those glorious seraphim had an immense flame of love burning in their breasts to eternity, yet could they not love

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God equivalently to that infinite perfection and transcendence of goodness which is in Him? Surely then, here is enough to induce us to love

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God. We cannot spend our love upon a better object. Okay.

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I was looking at it like, tell me there's a better way of saying that word. So, adequate talks about, like I was saying, it doesn't seem like a great description, but it is one of the meanings that is sufficient, most sufficient.

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It's complete. And if you're curious about the word surfeit,

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I looked that one up too. It causes us to want no more after having an excess. The creation can be had in excess and not satisfy, not so with the

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Lord. But beyond just talking about some of the vocabulary there, as you read this along with me, what does it mean?

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Like, how would you explain this in your own words? Rather than something that would appear in a...

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Do you understand what he's saying? Sufficient?

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Well, I mean, just the whole motivation itself, what he's talking about, the most adequate and complete object of our love.

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I was just thinking about how to, as fireplace, to love what is good, right, and beautiful.

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And so, I think about how God is, you know, how it says, God is the very essence of goodness.

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It's like, how can you lose something that's good? You know, it's just, there's nothing, no dirt you can dig up on God.

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You know, God is the standard for what is good and he just is purely good.

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Yeah. I mean, I guess a question for us is, how often do we consider the truth of this, right?

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And how often do we meditate on the greatness of God? You know, talking about this, all the excellencies which lie scattered in the creatures.

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You know, we are drawn to, you know, truth, beauty, and goodness, right? And you said that in about the same words.

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That's what we should be attracted to. And here is God who is all of that. The very essence of that.

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Using that word, for instance, 2 Corinthians 12, 9, my grace is sufficient.

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It's not just like, eh, it's actually, you know. Right. Well, one of the things early on in my

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Christian walk that really bothered me was the fact that no matter how much

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I studied, there was always something else that I didn't know. You know, I'm like the person, the guy who wants to know.

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And it really bothered me. Like, I don't know this, I don't know this, I don't know this.

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And then the very thing that bothered me turned into the thing that fuels me on because I'm never going to know all there is to know about God because he's infinite.

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And the joy of learning and getting that nugget that you learn about God, my goodness, I never saw this, that's going to happen forever.

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So the very thing that really ticked me off is the very thing that turned into the greatest gift I could have had.

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It's never going to end. So that constant desire to search out and learn more about God is going to happen forever.

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And it never disappoints. Right, exactly. Unlike the creatures, you know, unlike us, things of the world that can disappoint us.

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Oh, you know, how many people, they want to meet a celebrity or something and they're just like, oh, that's my hero.

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And they meet him and they're a total jerk. Like, oh, what a letdown, right?

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And we never have that with the Lord. He is, he is the perfect, the very essence of goodness.

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He does not disappoint. And the more you learn, it just increases your love.

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Just thinking about this and just considering having these moments like David in the field, writing psalms, as he's just meditating on the

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Lord, he's writing songs and poems and the psalms that we have today. Do we have those moments?

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Do we just bask in it at times and think of just how worthy God is of our love?

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Even if we don't have his songwriting ability, do we think of these things and give him glory?

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You know, one of the things I was thinking about is as we've been, you know, we've been coming to say, you know, during the worship service, that, you know, as we come in prayer, as we, the prayer of invocation, the pastoral prayer, like we're coming into the heavenly realm, right?

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This is how Paul describes it. And Lawrence was actually very helpful in describing worship early on in a

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Sunday school and Pastor Anthony, during the worship service, talking about what the worship service is early on.

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And so when we have these moments when we're actually coming into God's presence corporately, as a body, and thinking about approaching his throne,

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I think about stuff like this. And when we come to worship, we come to prayer, we're in the heavenly realms, it's weird.

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But for me, like I don't even want to go to the bathroom or anything. Like, listen, we're human beings.

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He knows our frame. We're but dust, you know? But like, I don't want to miss a moment.

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So I'm trying to just make sure that when I'm here, whether it be Sunday school or, you know, the worship service,

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I just want to be here and just getting all of it and just appreciating it.

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And that's not to speak against anyone like, I had to go to the bathroom, I couldn't help it. I wasn't trying to leave.

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I'm just telling you how my mind thinks at times. That's just, take that for what, for what it's worth.

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And so again, we say, you know, adequate, sufficient, complete. These are not, these are not negative words in the slightest.

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It's just, they're just very, they're just very on point. He is, he is sufficient. He is adequate.

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He is complete. He gives us everything. There's nothing in God to deaden our affections or quench our love.

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As we continue to search him out, we just find more things to love, more things to be impressed with, more reasons to be encouraged and to glory in him.

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Truly, we can't spend our love upon a better object. Any questions or comments before we move on to number five?

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You got it? Okay. Love to God facilitates religion. It oils the wheels of the affections and makes them more lively and cheerful in God's service.

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Love takes off the tediousness of duty. Jacob thought seven years but little for the love that he bore to Rachel.

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Love makes duty a pleasure. Why are the angels so swift and winged in God's service?

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It's because they love him. Love is never weary. He who loves God is never weary of telling it.

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He who loves God is never weary of serving him. Love facilitates religion.

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Questions or thoughts on that, I should say. We had a contrast earlier, you know, that the first, the first motivation was that religion is in vain if it doesn't have love for God.

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And what's the contrast here? How do we...

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It's giving two different motivations, kind of like two sides of the same coin, all right? Yes?

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No? Did I lose you guys with Trump? I'm sorry. Jason looks like he wants to answer.

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No? He's like, I had an itch. He goes, I'll take the next one, whatever it is. I'm actually, this one,

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I guess the best way to say it is that this one's marinating a little more than some of the previous ones. I don't really have necessarily, you know, an immediate reaction.

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Hey, I know you're thinking about it. I know everyone's thinking about it. That's good. I'll take it. Yeah, but I mean, if you're talking about religion and you're doing things out of duty, okay, it's going to be labor.

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It's going to be laborious. It's not going to be seven years is too little. It's going to be like seven minutes is too long.

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But when you love the God behind the things that you're doing and you recognize that he's done that to you, for you, and we get to reflect him to the people around us, well, then it becomes a delight.

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It becomes easy. It's the oil, right? That makes it easy to do this.

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Right? I mean... Sorry, we're vlogging part of it.

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I'm sorry. I just wanted to be over here in the first place. It's okay.

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I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be a distraction. No, no, that's all right. No, I thought someone still wanted to say something.

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Yeah, we have that contrast. I was thinking about how often we hear, and I've mentioned even during this study, the contrast of, oh,

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I don't have religion, I have a relationship, which is you have both. But it becomes,

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I think because you have so much of the imbalance where this demonstrates the contrast over false religions.

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The false religions, people are doing things out of a sense of duty, out of a sense of fear, like I have to do this to earn my keep, to earn my salvation, to be pleasing to Allah or whoever.

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And so it really is a duty -bound thing. Not so much love, but I must, we have no other choice.

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False gods are served out of fear or they're served out of an expectation, not out of love, but like, well, if I do this,

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I'll get that. And so it's sort of a quid pro quo. But why do we serve

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God? Because He has loved us first. He's provided for us first. We're the children of the

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Father, the bride of the Son, the King. So there's this tremendous love. Go ahead.

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So I was wondering, you know how it says that loving God facilitates children so it makes them more lively and cheerful in God's service.

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So you brought up earlier about how when there's newlyweds, they'll basically do anything for each other and it's not even a burden.

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They're just so willing because of how much they care about that person. Now, I'm kind of making that the equivalent of affections.

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You know how they say love is not a feeling and we were talking about how it's a choice. And feelings aren't always there.

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Emotions are not always there. Do they come and go with love in general?

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Like love to God? I still feel so much emotion towards God and I love for Him. Yeah, I think we say that and we're trying to correct an imbalance again and sometimes you can go off to the other ditch on the other side.

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Jesus talks about love is manifested in our actions.

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So, love the Lord your God, love your neighbor, all the law and the prophets hang on these two.

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So, love is not just warm, fuzzy feelings but you can have feelings of love.

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I mean, we are emotional beings and so yes, we do love and it's one of those things where we're told to love we're commanded to love and it's hard to just well, it's hard for me to have warm fuzzy feelings but if you obey if you're doing the things you're told to first of all, there's already a love there to do that, right?

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Why do we obey God? Because we love Him. So, we might struggle with those emotions and they might come and go but hopefully it's something where we're growing in that where we have a more consistent affection.

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We talk about God and there's this controversy about the impassibility of God. He's without parts or passions.

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He doesn't have emotions. Emotions go up and down. I like you today, tomorrow, not so much.

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God, He has perfections. His love is perfect. It doesn't waver one way or the other.

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So, I'm going to let some people talk. We'll come back. Jason, then

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Ashley, and then Alex. I think there was something in the language of this passage that I was struggling with before and there's almost an insinuation in the language that I think

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I might be perceiving but I could be incorrect about it. When he states that love to God facilitates religion, it almost insinuates that there could be a true religion or faith in God without love, meaning that it facilitates religion.

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It's not the origin or basis of true faith. When it says it boils the wheels of the affections and makes them more lively and cheerful in God's service, it seems to insinuate that there could be a service to God without love and that love merely just makes it more lively and cheerful.

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So, I think I'm struggling with that. So, facilitate, it makes it easier.

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I mean, there are people talking about religion. When we think of religion, we think of religious duties.

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James says, what's pure and undefiled religion, right? But to visit the orphan and the widow in their distress.

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These are things that God commanded them to do to care for the fatherless and the widow, to keep themselves from evil.

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So, doing certain things or not doing certain things is part of the religious service and you could do those things.

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We have lots of pretenders, right? People who are making an outward show and it gives them a good reputation wherever they might go.

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But if they don't have love for God, it's all worthless. It's all in vain. You know,

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Jesus himself says, men are going to come to me on that day and say, Lord, Lord, didn't we do this and do that in your name?

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He'll say, depart from me, I never knew you. So, you could do religion, right?

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And have no love for God. It serves you nothing because you're not helping him.

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We talked about it last time. Does God need our service? No, he doesn't. So, to be false gets you nowhere.

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You can't say, but I did those things you told me to do. It's the love that comes from that. So, those things are still obligatory.

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We're all called to religiously serve God. But it's those who have true hearts that he's going to honor it.

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I mean, we're just talking about Cain and Abel the other day. What was the heart attitude towards them, towards God in giving their sacrifice?

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Cain's heart wasn't there and Abel's was. So, when we have love for God, it makes religious service all that much easier.

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It's just like what we talked about before. It's not a burden. It makes those affections lively.

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Because we're fleshly, we do sometimes struggle. We've talked about struggling with Bible reading.

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We've talked about struggling with prayer, getting up and getting ourselves to Sunday school or worship service. We love

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God, but we feel the weight of our flesh saying, but do we want to?

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And the more we love God, the easier those things become. And so, the commandment is to love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Do we do that? Does any of us do that perfectly?

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I'd venture to say no. Right? But we should be growing in that. And so, we have love, but that love needs to grow.

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You know, we're not like God with perfect love. Pastor? Let's put it back in. There are some things that you might ask me to do, and I say, okay, but blindly.

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Now, is this me or is this Ginger? No, if my wife asks me to do it, I say, yes, dear. But not, you know,

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I'm being a little flippant, but I will do things for my wife that I won't do for anybody else.

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Why? Because I love her. And it makes it easy, so even, I mean, there are some things, certain jobs that I just hate to do, but yet she asks me to do them, and I do them because I love her and it makes doing those jobs easier because I know that she's going to be pleased on the other side of it.

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So I had a thing, so if I had to do, you know, number five and number four together, you can get a little bit of an idea of what it means to facilitate religion.

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It makes it much easier to be religious and do it in the right way because we love

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God. If you don't, if you don't truly have a love for God, well, we see that you mentioned before, we have people who make false prophecies and everything is fine as long as everything is going good.

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Then when they get their work done, what happens? They fall away. Right. I'm not doing this because their heart really doesn't work out.

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Alex. Kind of going along with what Professor Johnson said and also kind of circling in what

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Erica said before, you know, with the marriage example again, you know, obviously you were talking earlier about the newlyweds, the passion and everything and the contrast with a couple that's been together for 20, 30 years or whatever, maybe when you've been together with somebody longer, maybe there's not as many of the big passionate, like, expression, vast big expressions but it's the daily routine of, you know, the honey do list that that's the way

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I'm showing love and it's not as grand and sometimes the grander things are maybe easier to do because there's exciting and there's a big show while the mundane things that you have to do can wear on you and kind of get tiresome after time but continuing to,

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I continue to do things because I do love my wife and I want to show my love for her just like with God not everything is going to be the mountaintop experience sometimes it's just the daily day reading, praying that we can get caught up in yeah and that's the thing too where, you know, sometimes we make these grand gestures you know, for a spouse and because we know we're going to get you know, grand appreciation back like, oh, they'll be telling their friends like, oh, look what he did for me you know, but the mundane details of life that it's not going to make the news right?

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it's not hitting social media and in our service to God you know, if we can do something and everyone's going to know about it like, oh, wow, you did great then if we do other things where maybe no one knows about it but the

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Lord does, you know, it's, love makes it easier to just do those things and just be content in the doing of it kind of a sidetrack but it's something you do for a long time and you're doing these things and sometimes you do them out of rope and you, then you also tend to take for granted things that say your wife might do she comes home she makes your favorite meal or something and oh, this was good you know and or, you know, she's taking care of things that, you know, she's always taking care of but she's doing it, you know, out of love for the family and husband it reminded me of when we were doing the study in Joel where the drunkards where they talked about that they they loved their wine they loved the gift from God what

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God had provided for them but they had become who gave it to them you know so I think that kind of backwardly plays into this as well you know you can fall into that trap and, you know, forget you love what the gifts are but forget the love you give her

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I think I can kind of like show it or bring some light to the context of work we we tend to do what we enjoy and what we're gifted in um and I think um if you do truly enjoy your work or are gifted in it um you'll be able to bear the day -to -day tasks if they're mundane or if they're great um it's it's with the mindset of whether it's helping somebody else or or you know doing something for somebody else usually my work is people -related so um somebody on the other end is is getting the benefits of your labor um

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I think that that helps me at least personally knowing that you know I'm honoring

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God with my work and blessing somebody else that's that's something

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I think factors into you know allowing love to facilitate our religion um you know just knowing that there's going to be um something accomplished that honors

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God and loves others that should be a Christian's motivation and what's that saying?

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you know find something you love you'll never work a day in your life I mean that's what it's saying he loves

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God as never weary of serving him it's it's a pleasure Ashley okay

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I'm actually glad that you skipped me and like uh did all that because mine does not shine to what you guys are talking about she goes you guys are way off it does but like yeah um you had mentioned that God doesn't have emotions and I want to say that I disagree with that I believe he does have emotions you know like we're made in God's image and we are emotional creatures

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I think that our emotions are flawed and his emotions are perfect like he he's perfect in his emotions but ours is really flawed you know he can use our personality for good and our emotions for good but I don't think emotions are that you know no emotions are not

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I don't think it's the same as passion I don't think it's the same well I might let

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Pastor Jensen but I'll give a try to explain it with the little time we have you know when we think of emotions we we're emotional and there's and we are made in God's image

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God has given us emotions and so sometimes our emotions can be flawed you know we can be angry without cause we can be happy at the wrong things those sort of things because we're flawed our responses to things can be flawed but notice

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I said our responses right our emotions are responses to things if God is not responding in terms of like he didn't know he's surprised he he has declared the end from the beginning so he knows all things and his emotions if you want to use that word are you said perfect right he has perfections and so they don't go back and forth you know he speaks to us at times with what they call anthropopathisms right you know he says he regrets you know he says

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I regret making Saul king and then Samuel goes God is not a man that he would have regrets but that's what

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God said but Samuel understood what how God was relaying this information to us but he wants us to understand

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God is not like us we're made in his image but he's he's perfect and he is infinite and he he knows all things we are finite and so we respond differently to that anyone else want to yeah let me this way is there ever a time that God loves you less no it's a perfection you you know

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I I said it before you know like uh I can say to my wife I love you more that's that's great my wife would love to hear that but if God's saying that that's very bad for us he says in you know

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I the Lord your God do not change lest you be consumed if God would allow his anger to go unchecked he could just consume all of us at a moment like that but his passions don't change that doesn't mean that he doesn't have love but his love is perfect and and it's it's a very important the moment that God sets his love upon you it never changes no matter what you do so you can you can create you can do uh commit a grievous sin

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God doesn't love you any less he may discipline you but even that is out of love and that love is perfect it will always be the perfect discipline so you you said it yourself and I think it's just the

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I think it's just the uh the context because you said it yourself God has perfections his passions what we would consider to be passions are perfections and they do not change

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God hates sin but he always hates sin and he always hates it with a perfect a perfect hatred alright whereas as individuals

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I hate sin sometimes I love it you know what

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I mean but God has a perfect hatred towards sin it never changes just like he has a perfect love for us and also you can translate that one more let me just take one more step do you think that God loves you less than he loves

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Jesus Christ you see the importance of this when he sets his love upon you when he looks at you he's looking at you with the same love that he looks at Jesus Christ because you have been bought by him so that's why we say that he is without passions it's not

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I love you more today than I will ever have in the so you're right in one respect it's love in every way in any respect what helped me understand this is that God is not moved by me there's nothing

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I do that moves God God I'm not going to sin tomorrow

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I don't know what sin it's going to be I don't know when it's going to happen but I'm going to sin and I may kick somebody off when

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I sin God's not surprised because he knows what's going to happen tomorrow already so he's not going to go how could you do that I know you did but I say to you

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I love you and I still love you but now I'm going to do something so that you don't do that again so God's never surprised at anything because he knows it from the beginning just real quick going off of Anthony's constancy

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I always try to remember God is not reactive to anything because he knows everything and something that I struggle with and I have to write it on the five boards that I have is do not be overcome with your emotions don't react to things to be more like Christ which is a bigger struggle for women than it is men because we are very emotional and yeah we over react to everything well

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I do speaking on behalf of all women everywhere I'm not going to let the men get away with that because men can over react as well you know the stereotypes are you know women are more emotional and there's some truth to that but they're also they're wired more for nurturing and loving and you know they're the ones who compliment men and say you know

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I feel like we're more reactive with men than they are women it's one of those things

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I'm going to wrap this up because we're out of time it's a good conversation it's an important conversation and it's hard for us to wrap our minds around because we see things from our perspective and we're still learning about God we're still trying to understand

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God how do you understand someone who's infinite someone who knows all things I mean just edit that part out it's easy to understand women just do what they want when they want actually what

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I should say is do what they need when they need it needs and wants are two different things I'm just going to not make eye contact with anyone so this is a good conversation to continue and really seeking to understand the depths of who

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God is and in what ways he's like us and what ways he's not like us you know when we go through systematic theology that was one of the first things we started doing with the mentoring group talking about those communicable attributes things that we do share in common with God because we are in his image and then those in communicable attributes things that we can't be like God in certain ways so it's a good discussion and we can talk about it more after as we consider here we're going to leave off with number five for when we love