All Things For Good: Chap. 6 Pt. 4

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February 10, 2022

The Puritan Thomas Watson's book, All Things For Good, walks through Romans 8:28 showing us how all of God's attributes work for our good. This does not mean that difficulties, trials, and affliction will be avoided, but however will work for our benefit. Join us as we go through the sixth chapter on reasons to love God.

Hermeneutics: Matthew Chap 24 Pt. 5

00:12: We're still in chapter 6, tonight where it will be part 4 as we make our way through.
00:19: The title of the chapter is An Exhortation to Love God, and as he's encouraging us to become lovers of God, to love the
00:28: Lord, he gives us 20 motivations to do so. So far we've covered 9, so today we'll begin with number 10, and we will read it and discuss.
00:37: So, number 10. So, how does this motivate us to love
01:17: God? As we think about that little paragraph, by our love to God, we can conclude
01:25: God's love to us. And keep in mind, all 20 of these are motivations to love
01:31: God. So how does this cause us to be motivated to love God? Any ideas?
01:39: The doctrines of grace are very humbling, the fact that he chose us from the beginning, you know, it's very humbling.
01:50: Yeah. He loved us. Amen. Yeah. Knowing how miserable we'd be. Right. Nothing in us worthy of love, we were sinful, we had taken his image and shattered it, corrupted it, and yet he loves us.
02:06: And so, when we love God, it's actually a manifestation that he has already loved us.
02:15: As we read through his word and sees, we're only reflecting back, we love him because he first loved us.
02:21: You've probably heard of, you know, a vicious cycle, you know, things constantly going around and around.
02:28: Here is a glorious cycle, right? We love God and then realize our love is only possible because he first loved us.
02:35: And that's where theology matters. And these are, you know, the doctrines of grace.
02:41: This is not us choosing God, as is sometimes presupposed, just on our own.
02:47: Like, we just decided to love God. No, he has loved us first and made it possible for us to love him.
02:54: And that should cause us to even love him more. And it just goes around and around. So, indeed, a simple but motivating factor.
03:04: Because he's loved us, it makes us want to love him more. Number 11.
03:09: Oh, sorry. There we go. If you do not love God, you will love something else, either the world or sin.
03:20: And are those worthy of your love? Is it not better to love God than these, the world or sin?
03:27: It is better to love God than the world, as appears in the following particulars. If you set your love on worldly things, they will not satisfy.
03:36: You may as well satisfy your body with air as your soul with earth. In the fullness of his efficiency, he shall be in straits.
03:45: Plenty has its poverty. If the globe of the world were yours, it would not fill your soul.
03:53: Will you set your love on that which will never give you contentment? Is it not better to love
03:58: God? He will give you that which will satisfy your soul to all eternity. When I awake,
04:04: I shall be satisfied with your likeness. When I awake out of the sleep of death and shall have some of the rays and beams of God's glory put upon me,
04:12: I shall then be satisfied with his likeness. Number 11 here is actually long.
04:20: So we're going to take it a paragraph at a time. There's a number of slides that are generated out of that thought.
04:27: If we don't love God, we'll love something else. And he's predominantly talking about the world, and then at the end he'll reference sin.
04:35: And so the question is, are these worthy of your love? Is it not better to love God than these?
04:42: So as we try to think about this, this is a motivation to love God, he's talking about what are the alternatives?
04:49: You can love the world, you can love sin, and many people choose to do so.
04:55: There's many Christians trying to hold on to both, and we find ourselves miserable when we do that.
05:02: So it's something that we need to be conscientious of. But let me ask you, when he says plenty has its poverty, what does that mean?
05:14: Does that make sense to you? That can't be right. Jason, and then Erica? You're thinking you're getting something that's pleasurable, and yet it's a subtraction.
05:33: Zach? More money, more problems, yes. In the modern vernacular, yes indeed.
05:46: Because that God can change. You can lose your money, you can gain more money, that becomes the overriding desire of your heart, where your heart is there, your treasure will be also.
05:55: So, you know, it's a bad God. It overpromises and underdelivers.
06:04: Talking about riches sprouting wings like eagles flying away. Erica, did you still have something?
06:11: Nope, I'm good. She goes, I was going in a totally different direction. John? Many of you know my uncle, who
06:20: I'm going to reference. When you have as much as he has, he doesn't see any need.
06:28: So when it comes to God, he's in poverty. It's just terrible. And it's his possessions that have given him comfort and security in his mind.
06:39: Yeah, Proverbs has a lot to say about that. You know, thinking that a rich man, his riches are his strong castle, so he thinks.
06:49: Did I see a hand? Just thinking like when you have plenty, there's a lot that can take up your focus and attention.
06:55: But when you don't, you can only focus on one thing. Yeah. Did I see another hand?
07:02: Pastor? I love the way he starts off. You know, saying that if you don't love God, you'll love something else.
07:08: That's a universal axiom. Even in the physical realm, we talk about the nature of the vacuum.
07:17: Right. If you have a vacuum, you try to create a vacuum. Break that seal just a little bit, and something is going to rush in.
07:25: Same thing is true with the spiritual sense. We are spiritual beings, whether people want to admit it or not.
07:31: And those who don't admit it are really being very foolish. So if you look at it, your spirit is going to be filled with something.
07:40: What is it? It's either going to be God, or it's going to be something that's false.
07:47: Yeah. And so many, because we're in rebellion against God from the start, we're almost always looking to put something else there.
07:58: And even when you say, well, there's people who cling to other religions, but it's a religious system of their own making, or if they have them created in their own mind, it's something that appeals to them because it appeals to their flesh.
08:13: Like, well, this I can earn my salvation. So they're always worshiping something, loving something.
08:21: And so, yeah. And then, yeah, all good answers. Excellent. We'll go to the next paragraph here, under number 11.
08:30: If you love worldly things, they cannot remove trouble of mind.
08:36: If there is a thorn in the conscience, all the world cannot pluck it out. King Saul, being perplexed in mind, all his crown jewels could not comfort him.
08:45: But if you love God, He can give you peace when nothing else can. He can turn the shadow of death into the morning.
08:53: He can apply Christ's blood to refresh your soul. He can whisper His love by the Spirit. And with one smile, scatter all your fears and disquiets.
09:03: I tell you, how beautiful is that? Thoughts on that.
09:10: How often do we see that to be the case? Normally, a lot of people are aspiring to have the wealth of the world and to have all those different things, and yet they're rarely satisfied.
09:24: We see, you know, the page six of the news, the scandals of all the celebrities who have everything we could think we would want.
09:32: We could think we would want, right? They have the money, they have the vacations, they have everything you could possibly think of, and yet scandal after scandal, heartache, heartbreak, suicide, everything.
09:45: All these things loving the world, and they're fully imbibed, and they have everything the world seems to offer, and yet trouble of mind abides.
09:54: You don't see many of these people who are uber -wealthy or have all the goals that you think that they would want to have achieved, achieved, and you don't see them content.
10:07: They seem very, very unhappy. But for us, maybe on that lower level of the economic status, do we find that, though?
10:16: Do we pursue these things? Do we find ourselves loving worldly things, and yet do they remove that trouble out of our mind?
10:25: Do we find this to be true? Thinking of King Saul, can we think of others who are pretty much all our celebrities, all our leaders, and no one seems to be happy, right?
10:40: And how do we compare this and contrast it to the love of God? I love the way he put that. He can whisper his love by the
10:46: Spirit, one smile, scatter all your fears and disquiets. Has that been our experience?
10:55: You guys are very quiet on this one. It's pretty straightforward. We'll continue.
11:04: If you love the world, you love that which may keep you out of heaven. Worldly contentments may be compared to the wagons in an army.
11:13: While the soldiers have been entertaining themselves at the wagons, they have lost the battle. How hard is it for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God?
11:22: Prosperity to many is like a large sail to a small boat, which quickly overturns it.
11:28: So that by loving the world, you love that which will endanger you. But if you love God, there is no fear of losing heaven.
11:35: He will be a rock to hide you, but not to hurt you. By loving him, we come to enjoy him forever.
11:45: Thoughts on that? There are some older analogies there. Think about the soldiers in the wagons.
11:51: It's like, okay. Thoughts or comments on that?
12:00: All right. Coffee is in the back. All right. Thinking of this along with that first paragraph, thinking about, you know, can you love
12:12: God and man? I found it interesting when he talked about prosperity being like a large sail to a small boat.
12:19: That sail is there to harness the wind and to give you the power to go where you need to go.
12:26: And so in a sense of temporal things, we do have needs, right?
12:32: We do need money and resources to live life here. But if you're trying to get as much as you possibly can, how is that for your life?
12:42: And the boat that's your life, you can find that it's too much and it knocks you off course. You know, sail should be proportionate to the boat's size.
12:51: So if you've ever seen a sailboat, if you could ever imagine too large a sail catching too much wind, catching too much of this world, that's not necessarily a good thing for you.
13:01: You know, we have, you know, that sense of, you know, having balance, you know, having our daily bread for our needs.
13:10: You know, we have that prayer that, don't give me too much that I might forget you and think
13:16: I have everything I need. Don't give me too little that I would be tempted to steal and, you know, dishonor your name.
13:23: But most people don't tend to think about that. They just, they go forward right into looking for that prosperity and loving the things of the world.
13:32: But you can't, you can't maintain a love for the world and a love for God. Zach? Yeah, so what's your outlook on the world?
13:43: What's my outlook on the world in terms of what? Just on the world, just on like the tangible.
13:51: Like what's your outlook? Oh. Like we can't love this world and love God. Right. So I'm just curious, like what's your...
13:57: Well, it's one of those things where, depending on how you define the world, you know, you have the world system, you have the worldly goods.
14:06: We should have a love for God. We're told to seek first God, you know,
14:12: His kingdom, His righteousness, and everything else will be given to us, right? And so, you know, we've had heroes of the
14:19: Bible who were wealthy, and it's not sinful to be wealthy. It's not sinful. These things can be gift if they're used properly.
14:30: Think of like a man like Job where when he's defending himself as far as, you know, does he deserve this plight, humanly speaking, he goes, you know,
14:39: I've cared for the fatherless. I've cared for the widow. No one's ever come to me and went away hungry. You know, we can be a conduit of grace with the resources that God gives us.
14:48: So it's not wrong to enjoy if God has blessed us with wealth.
14:53: It's not a sin to enjoy that. But we also want to make sure that we're keeping everything in a balanced perspective.
15:02: You know, if we see a need, are we greedy? Are we holding on to it? Are we looking to our resources as our salvation?
15:11: Are we looking to it as I need this in life? And they're not trusting God to meet their needs.
15:18: They think I have to hold on to it. Proverbs talks about the wealthy man who closes his fist and then he never has enough.
15:26: And then the one who's constantly giving who always has plenty, you know. So my outlook on the world would be to keep everything in balance, you know, to recognize that the gifts that we have, the resources that we have, whether we have a lot or a little, what
15:41: I try to remember myself and encourage others to remember, particularly as those who belong to Christ, everything we have we're stewards of, you know.
15:51: Nothing actually belongs to us in one sense. You know, that's not to say, you know, communal living and everything, people can just come to my house and take stuff.
16:01: No, we have property rights. You can't have the commandment, thou shalt not steal, if you don't have property, right?
16:09: But to be a steward and to recognize God has given me this, and if he's impressing upon my heart to help a brother or sister in need,
16:18: I should always be ready. I should have everything with open hands, you know. For those, you know, most of you here are aware of our situation with Bella.
16:30: You know, and we love her, you know, but she's not ours, you know. So we're there to be stewarding the resources we have, our time, our love, everything to help her and to help her mom and to make sure things go back together properly.
16:45: But even in encouraging the girls to face that reality that we might have to one day say goodbye, I said, I have to look at all you and do the same.
16:53: As much as I love my children, they're not mine. They belong to the
16:59: Lord. So I have the privilege of parenting them and raising them, and I'll always have that relationship with them.
17:05: But I can't say, you can't go here, you can't do that. You know, if God is calling them to marriage, to the mission field,
17:11: I can't stand in the way of that thinking they belong to me and I make all the decisions. They ultimately belong to the
17:19: Lord. So does that? Yeah. He goes, that's way more than I was asking for. I was just going to catch it, you know, just in different terms saying basically the same thing.
17:32: A Christian worldview is one in which Jesus has purchased the whole world. It belongs to him, every bit of it.
17:38: Us as Christians, people who are born of God's spirit, our job is now to be ministers of reconciliation and bring everything under the lordship of Christ, including our own finances.
17:49: So like Pastor Chris said, that whatever God gives me, I recognize that it's a gift from him, and I just have to be a good steward over those things.
17:56: Whether it be a little or a lot, it doesn't matter. I just have to be a good steward over the assets that God has placed in my hand, such that everything
18:07: I do with my finances, with my relationships, is for the glory of God. Because he's the king.
18:13: He owns it. So when I give to someone else, it's for the glory of God.
18:20: What do I have that I did not receive? And if I did receive it, why do I boast as though I did not?
18:27: We hold our assets with an open hand. We don't clench them and say, oh, this is mine.
18:33: Because then it becomes greed. Then it becomes idolatry. We're holding on so tightly to something.
18:38: We should be holding on so tightly to Christ, not those other things. Joe, and then
18:45: Pastor? Pastor, I think this makes me think of the so -called prosperity gospel.
18:52: And all the guys on TV and radio and whatever that are always touting material wealth.
19:00: And what is it that they do in their minds? What are they doing to justify that?
19:09: It just doesn't figure. There's one Christian rapper who says if you come to God for money, he's not your
19:17: God. Money is. He's just a means to the end. It sheds a lot of light on it.
19:24: It's Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 6. He ends his discussion about seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.
19:35: And all these things shall be added to you. For the context, you've got to go back to what we've been talking about.
19:41: Why are you worried about what you're going to wear? What you're going to eat? And you can add a whole bunch of things to that.
19:48: Where are you going to work? What are you going to do? All of these things. He says, why are you worried about that?
19:54: And then he says something very interesting. He says, all these things the Gentiles eagerly seek.
20:02: He says, but you seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And these things will be added to you.
20:08: So it's a matter of a priority. If you're going to seek those things, they do become your
20:16: God. That's where your love is. But on the other hand, if you're seeking him first, he's going to provide everything that you need.
20:24: And so it's a question of respect. Yeah. Hopefully that helps you.
20:30: A couple different angles to look at it from. But that's a good question. Our next paragraph here.
20:38: You may love worldly things, but they cannot love you in return. You may love gold and silver, but your gold cannot love you in return.
20:47: You love a picture, but the picture cannot love you in return. You give away your love to the creature and receive no love back.
20:54: But if you love God, he will love you in return. If any man loves me, my father will love him, and he will come unto him and make our abode with him.
21:05: God will not be behind hand in love to us, for our drop we shall receive an ocean.
21:12: I'm talking about perspective. When you think about that, think about the things we pour out our love on and how many of those things can love us in return.
21:33: I'm thinking of an old musical or something. I'm talking about the cash register or something. There's no warmth there, but the bell rings or something.
21:44: Thank you for both of you who saw that. It's an old, what's her face,
21:50: Barbra Streisand. I want their mouth out. I forget what the name of it was. Hello, Dolly.
21:56: Yeah. So, sorry. That wasn't in the notes.
22:01: I just popped up. It's a freebie. Yeah, the things we pour out our love on and to, but can they love us back?
22:12: We might love our car, our houses, and then they break down. They never seem to return that love that we put on them.
22:19: Or people. You love the creature, and you receive no love back.
22:28: We'll talk a little bit more about that as far as not only getting no love back at times, but getting hatred back in return for your love.
22:36: But we'll discuss that in a minute. But how often do we consider that, too? When we give our love, are we getting it returned?
22:52: Or are we getting it in the same measure? How many, if you've ever had a crush or something on someone, you know, this works for both sexes, and there's only two, right?
23:06: If you've ever had a crush on someone that was not returned, and just, oh, you know, these are the living as fallen creatures and living in a world where that's just the way it goes sometimes.
23:18: It's not always, your love's not always requited. But here, God will always love you far more than you love
23:27: Him. We're being called to love the Lord because we don't love
23:34: Him as we ought to. We need to be reminded to love God and encouraged to love God.
23:39: And yet, He loves us perfectly, as we've discussed before. His love is never failing.
23:45: It's never lacking. And we give Him a drop of our love, and He gives us an ocean in return.
23:53: Thoughts or questions on that? Any comments on some of this?
24:00: No? Okay. Oh, sorry.
24:09: We'll continue on. When you love the world, you love that which is worse than yourselves.
24:19: I'll put that for a second. The soul, as Damison says, is a sparkle of celestial brightness.
24:28: It carries in it an idea and resemblance of God. While you love the world, you love that which is infinitely below the worth of your souls.
24:37: Will anyone lay out cost upon sackcloth? When you lay out your love upon the world, you hang a pearl upon a swine.
24:46: You love that which is inferior to yourself. As Christ speaks in another sense of the fowls of the air, are you not much better than they?
24:57: So I say of worldly things, are you not much better than they? You love a fair house or a beautiful garment.
25:03: Are you not much better than they? But if you love God, you place your love on the most noble and sublime object.
25:10: You love that which is better than yourselves. God is better than the soul, better than angels, better than heaven.
25:21: How often do you think about that? The things that you set your love upon are worse than yourself. Some of you are going, but you don't know me.
25:29: It's probably not worse. Yes?
25:34: No? What reminds me of Hebrews, obviously the better covenant, better Jesus is better.
25:41: That's the whole thing. Better than everything that, you know, anything that we can lay our eyes on or our affections on.
25:47: Once we find our love and affection upon him, like Augustine says,
25:53: I won't find rest until my soul rests in Christ. It's an angel. It just changes everything.
26:04: When we're talking about the world, how would you define worldly things, right?
26:11: It could be the world. You know, he mentioned Christ talking about the birds of the air, you know, and that goes along with that Sermon on the
26:20: Mount, right? The birds of the air, the lilies of the field, and that's probably not the example he's using, but it might help serve some of our extreme environmentalists who think, you know, we're the intruders.
26:33: You know, that's the worldview some of us have. Some people have is that humans are the plague.
26:38: Well, in some respects, they are. We brought the sin. We brought the devastation upon the world. But as far as the purpose of man, man is called, you know, he was put here to have dominion over all things.
26:54: But all these things, whether it be in the creation itself, whether it be all the things that we create, all the things that we value, gold, silver, clothes, homes, cars, anything that we can think, anything,
27:10: I think this is a better way to put it. If you were younger, and all you were at some point, some of you still are, have you ever had a possession that a sibling wanted, wanted to play with, or they had, and you would fight over this possession, right?
27:27: And you would actually show that you had more love for some stupid toy that could be broken in a moment.
27:35: And you would put your love for that possession over your sibling, your brother, your sister.
27:43: I'm speaking as one who had brothers and a sister. Still do. We don't fight as much, especially over things like that.
27:50: But how quickly can we put our possessions, things of this world, things that are here today and gone tomorrow, they have no eternal value whatsoever, but we'll put them above people, right?
28:06: Does that make sense? Am I the only one who's ever done that, ever in my life?
28:14: Many, many years ago, right? We love things that are worth less than ourselves, that are worse than ourselves, and worse than other people.
28:25: I mean, we're called to love God, and we're called to love our neighbor, and yet more people nowadays seem to love things more than people, and yet the value of the soul is much more important than anything else that's created.
28:44: And then how much more so God who has created us. There is nothing, no flaws in God, nothing to say, well,
28:52: I can see you're not loving that part of God. He is, as Thomas Watson says here, the most noble and sublime object.
29:01: So to love anything else in the world is to love something worse when we have the very best thing that we could love before us.
29:10: Questions or comments about that? Any thoughts? What does sublime mean?
29:17: Sublime. What's the best way? Oh, I don't have Maria here. I need my
29:22: English major. It's just an adjective talking about just something that's wonderful.
29:31: Someone look it up and get back to Zach. I'm gonna move on. Just edit that part out. What's that? No one want to give me?
29:38: Not the band either. That's why I asked. That's right. Right.
29:44: Okay. Next. You may love the world and receive hatred for your love.
29:50: Because you are not of the world, therefore the world hates you. Would it not vex one to lay out money upon a piece of ground which instead of bringing forth grain or fruit should yield nothing but nettles?
30:01: Thus it is with all earthly things. We love them and they prove nettles to sting us. We meet with nothing but disappointment.
30:09: Let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon. While we love the creature, fire comes out of this bramble to devour us.
30:19: But if we love God, he will not return hatred for love. I love those who love me.
30:25: God may chastise his children, but he cannot hate them. Every believer is part of Christ and God can as well hate
30:32: Christ as hate a believer. How's that for some encouragement for us? So you have that contrast.
30:40: You can love the world and be hated in return. But if you love God, you will never experience hatred from him.
30:49: You'll only receive love. And as we already mentioned, he's going to love you far more than we love him.
30:59: Questions on that, thoughts on that, about love return. How often do we see us trying to love the world and what's our payback for that?
31:12: You know, I see we see a lot of compromise in the church today, right?
31:18: You know, how we define love. We're trying to love people. We're trying to meet them where they're at.
31:26: And to a degree, we should. But when we start redefining what love is, what you often see is that the church will compromise.
31:36: Believers will compromise trying to be more appealing to the world, appealing to the unbeliever.
31:45: And it's always, of course, the believer who's making the compromise. You don't see the unbeliever saying, oh, let me make a compromise so I can be more, you know, more appealing to the church.
31:55: I can meet them halfway. No, all you get is more hatred. You know, all this talk today about being woke and cancel culture and the cancel culture mob and there's no forgiveness there.
32:10: You know, if you have done wrong and you're trying to meet them on their grounds, most of the time, though, you're going by their definition of what love is, of what righteousness is.
32:20: And if you've fallen short, there is no forgiveness. There is no good news. There's no gospel with the cancel culture.
32:27: There's simply more hatred, you know. You give a little bit and they want more.
32:35: And so, this is just, seems like a modern example of trying to love the world and getting hatred in return.
32:44: When we love the world, we shouldn't be doing it to get anything in return. Second of all, when they hate us, we always fall back and say, but God loves me.
32:56: I'm not seeking their love. Their love doesn't make me who I am. God's love is what makes me who
33:03: I am. And then, to go one step further, we recall the times in our lives when we did not love
33:10: God, when we hated God, and he loved us despite that, and he calls us to love your enemies as yourself.
33:17: So, we're fueled by God's love even in the face of hatred because we have God's love.
33:23: We don't need all their love. When we have that, we have all the love we need. Amen. And we need to be encouraged.
33:31: I'm pretty sure each and every one of us who are here who have...
33:36: We belong to Christ. We have people that we love, family members, friends who don't love
33:44: Christ. And it causes friction. And you love them because you should love them.
33:51: They are your friends. They are your family. Even if they are your enemies, we're called to love each one.
33:57: And yet, that can be difficult. It can be difficult to stand for truth. It can be difficult to keep trying to pursue
34:04: God where we feel like the more I draw closer to God, the more I am opposed by those who
34:10: I care about, who I'm surrounded by in this place.
34:16: And yet, as Pastor Anthony has pointed out, we have God to fuel us.
34:22: We recognize that before we hated God and so we can understand their perspective because they are without God.
34:29: And so, it's natural for them to hate God. And yet, God's love has shone on us and so we love
34:37: Him as we ought to and are growing in love with that. And we can love our friends, our family rightly, but without compromise.
34:46: That we might continue to be the witness to them that we need to be. And we can be encouraged that God will never turn on us.
34:54: He'll never leave us. He'll never forsake us. And so we always have that comfort there. Any other thoughts on that before we go to the next one?
35:03: Oh, Pastor Jensen. And God can as well.
35:15: That's comforting just to see it that way. But if you take it one step further and when
35:22: I first started this, I was in disbelief and I had to be convinced that what the scripture teaches, what it is, that is that when
35:30: Christ looks at you He loves you with the same love that He loves Christ. He doesn't love Christ any more than He loves you.
35:37: Just think about that. I mean, that's amazing. I mean, you would have to think, well,
35:44: He's got to love His own begotten Son even more than us. But no, because we are part of Christ.
35:49: We are one with Him. He loves us with that same exact love. It can never dissipate and can never be any better because it's already perfect.
36:01: To me, that just blew me away. Especially when I do something wrong.
36:07: Yeah, that's it. You take it in that next step. But even if, even when, it's more when than if, isn't it?
36:15: When we fail, when we mess up, He still loves me as much as He loves
36:20: Christ. That should be a huge encouragement to us, knowing that we sin all the time.
36:27: We're constantly falling short. We should be growing in our sanctification, yes, but to know that God loves us perfectly, that should motivate us to love
36:35: God and to be encouraged. That's it. That's a huge source of encouragement. It says, you may over love the creature.
36:45: You may love wine too much. Now you're meddling. And silver too much.
36:53: That's a joke. Never mind. But you cannot love God too much if it were possible to exceed.
37:01: Excess here were a virtue. But it is our sin that we cannot love God enough.
37:07: How weak is your heart? So it may be said, how weak is our love to God? It is like water of the last drawing from the still, which has less spirit in it.
37:18: If we can love God far more than we do, yet it can never be proportionate to His worth, so that there is no danger of excess in our love to God.
37:28: Now there's something. How often do we think about that? That was a joke. Just take that part out.
37:38: What here after God, apart from God, what can be overloved?
37:49: Is there anything that can't be overloved? Maybe that's a better way to put it.
37:56: That would be a long list if we start thinking about what things we can overlove. Yes, you can love wine too much.
38:03: Alcohol. We're Reformed. We know that alcohol is a gift from God. But in moderation, you can love it too much.
38:11: Gold, silver, material wealth. We can love too much. We can put all these things above.
38:18: We can make an idol out of pretty much anything, right? That's what John Calvin said. Our hearts are idol -making factories.
38:26: We can turn anything. We can just put it in there, and we can form it into an idol. Is there anything that it wouldn't be sinful for us to overlove?
38:40: God. God, yeah. Aside from God, because that's hopefully the obvious answer.
38:48: We can never love God enough. There is no excess in that, but is there anything that we can love too much?
38:55: Yes, no? Wine. Is there a standard? Wine. Is there anything that wouldn't be sinful to overlove?
39:03: That's what I'm trying to get. This wasn't meant to be a trick question, actually.
39:20: Can you love them to the point where they're an idol? Yeah.
39:31: Yeah. What about the Bible? Can you overlove the
39:38: Bible? Good question. I think if it's true love, it can't be overloved.
39:46: Because you're not crossing boundaries. So I can't overlove my wife. I can't overlove my kids.
39:52: If I overlove them, then it's not love. Love says, what can I do for you?
39:58: Love says, what can you do for me? Right? So, if I'm continually loving on them, or whatever it is, and it's true love,
40:08: I'm not crossing boundaries. Right. And so, whether it be the Bible, loved ones, this is kind of what
40:16: I was trying to get at. I wanted to see if we'd get there. How you define love sometimes as far as what is true love?
40:25: What is God's standard of love? You know, when Jesus talks about if you love anything more than me, you know, so and yet Jesus commands us that all of the
40:38: Law and the Prophets are love God and love neighbor, right? And so, we're supposed to love people.
40:46: And we're supposed to love truth, beauty, and goodness. We're supposed to love the Word of God. All these things have their place.
40:55: Do we ever fixate on any of them to the detriment of loving
41:00: God? Where our so -called love for them displaces God.
41:05: That's, you know, it's a matter of what is true love? What is love according to God's standard?
41:11: So, if we're holding to His standard, we will love things properly and in balance because we should love our family, our friends, we should love the
41:20: Bible. but there seems, you can have people who put their family above God because they love them, but it becomes an idol if they're displacing
41:32: God. You can have people who claim to love the Bible and, you know, they know the
41:37: Bible in and out and yet they don't love the God of the Bible. But some people like having the academic knowledge.
41:45: Some people like to have these different things. We have to love things properly in their proper categories.
41:52: Anything else before we move on? That's why it's important. Define your terms.
41:58: Yes. Indeed. Okay. You may love worldly things and they die and leave you.
42:08: Riches take wings. Relations drop away. There is nothing here abiding.
42:14: The creature has a little honey in its mouth but it has wings. It will soon fly away.
42:20: But if you love God, he is a portion forever. As he is called the sun for comfort, so a rock for eternity, he abides forever.
42:29: Thus we see it is better to love God than the world. And so, again, the contrast.
42:36: You know, you can't over love God but if you don't love properly, you can over love the creature.
42:43: But the creature does not abide. You know, our worldly wealth can be gone in a moment.
42:50: The stock market could crash. Thieves can break in and steal. Moth and rust destroy.
42:57: The people we love the most we can lose. Nothing remains except for the
43:02: Lord. And so we have this contrast that the Lord abides. He is the perfect object for love.
43:12: Questions or comments on that? No? Okay. We have one more slide and then we'll finish off number 11 so we can start with number 12.
43:24: It is better to love God than the world. Surely also it is better to love God than sin.
43:29: They are haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They are forever inventing new ways of sinning.
43:36: What is there in sin that any should love it? Sin is a debt. Forgive us our debts.
43:42: It is a debt which binds over to the wrath of God. Why should we love sin? Does any man love to be in debt?
43:50: Sin is a disease. The whole head is sick. And will you love sin? Will any man hug a disease?
43:56: Will he love his plague sores? Sin is a pollution. The apostle calls it filthiness.
44:02: It is compared to leprosy and to poison of asses. God's heart rises against sinners.
44:08: My soul loathes them. Sin is a hideous monster. Lust makes a man brutish.
44:14: Malice makes him devilish. What is in sin to be loved? Shall we love deformity?
44:19: Sin is an enemy. It is compared to a serpent. Sin has five sharp stings. Shame, guilt, horror, death, damnation.
44:28: Will a man love that which seeks his death? Surely then it is better to love God than sin.
44:35: God will save you. Sin will damn you. Is he not a fool who loves damnation?
44:40: Many love sin more than God. Think about that list.
44:46: Go through that and then say, but many still choose sin over God. Thoughts on that?
44:57: So he's talked about the world and all the things in the world. We see that as man is tempted to love things, to love people, to put almost anything in the place of God.
45:09: And yet here he says clearly God is worthy of our love and the world is not.
45:15: And it should be obvious, we only have this one large paragraph here about how sin, but people love sin, right?
45:24: We read Romans 1 verse 30, Hebrews 11 24 talks about the fleeting pleasure of sin, right?
45:34: But how many choose sin over God? Now this is obvious for unbelievers, right?
45:40: They reject God. What does this word tell us? They suppress the truth and unrighteousness.
45:47: They try to pretend there is no God so that their sin is of no consequence. If there is no God there's no standard.
45:54: And if there's no standard then what is sin? Sin is if someone does something wrong to me that I don't like.
45:59: That's sin for them. But we're believers so as we conclude this portion and we think about loving
46:09: God more than loving sin, that seems like an obvious choice. Of course we should love
46:15: God over our sin. But how many professing believers cheat on God?
46:23: For a moment to enjoy themselves, knowing the Lord will take them back. We're not talking about that knee -jerk reaction something happens and you just react and you haven't had any time to think about it.
46:34: But you actually think, you know what I really want to do? I really want to do this. And you allow even if it's not taking an action perhaps you're just allowing sinful thoughts to dwell in your mind.
46:46: Meditating on it. Knowing it's wrong and letting it just sit and settle in our minds for a bit.
46:59: How often do we choose our sin over God? A moment here, a moment there. And yet if we were thinking about these verses it might benefit us to memorize some of these if we haven't and then meditate on them.
47:15: When we're in the middle of spiritual warfare at all times. It's the world, the flesh, and the devil.
47:22: Sometimes it's the flesh and we're doing spiritual battle within. The spirit and the flesh are at odds with one another.
47:29: But are we fighting it? Are we using the weapons that the Lord has given us? His word.
47:36: Memorizing it and then bringing it to mind to defeat those thoughts. To defeat that plan to sin like no,
47:42: I'm going to choose righteousness instead. And remember what God says about sin. That which seems so not a big deal, yet each and every sin is a sin that Christ died for, right?
47:55: And so while we want to love God because it's better to love God than sin, it's good to be mindful of exactly what sin is.
48:06: Even what we would deem little sin. So hopefully we can benefit from memorizing and meditating on these to call to mind when we are tempted to willfully sin.
48:19: Any questions or comments? I don't have the questions slide. I didn't realize
48:24: I moved this fast. We've been going slowly through the slides. We made some good time tonight. But we still only did 10 and 11.
48:33: 11 was a big one. So next week we will have our business meeting.
48:39: The week after we'll start off with 12. Any final questions or thoughts before we close?
48:47: Let's pray. Amen.