What Does it Mean to Love God? | Clip from Salvation in Full Color: Love to God

The sermon we're looking at today is a sermon entitled love to God and we want to point out that this is about Three -fourths the way through the book.

So it is not talking about God's love for the sinner that was earlier on and that's foundational we would say but it's discussing the

Impact of God's love toward the sinner and that is the sinners love to God.

So we've had repentance and faith Adoption conversion and now the great reality in the

Christian that we love God Chuck tell us about the preacher for this sermon Joseph Sewell was born in Boston in 1688 his father for a time was the chief justice of the

Superior Court of Massachusetts he became Spiritually minded at a very early age and was converted determined into the ministry and Was invited to share the ministry at Old South Church with Ebenezer Pemberton Pemberton and increase

Mather participated in his ordination service And so he did that for some years In 1724, he was invited to be the president of Harvard But the church would not release him.

And so he declined that He lived into I think until he was 80 and was of good health until suddenly he preached his last sermon and took ill and after several months of illness passed away in 1769 according to Sprague Sprague was a historian, right?

Yeah. Yeah according to Sprague he was distinguished above almost any other man of his time for devotional fervor and simple and earnest engagedness in his work

So He writes this sermon love to God you want to review the sermon for us

Yeah, so he has just a couple of major points It's not as complex as some of the other sermons that we've looked at and I think

Chuck you and I both felt that it was a particularly encouraging sermon and I think part of the encouragement is

The truths are laid before us in a way that you know That are simple enough for us to kind of grab hold of and run with and live on so the first major point is the doctrinal statement and that is

He deals with the question of what is this? Love to God from Matthew chapter 22 verse 37 and 38 where we read

Jesus said unto him Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind

This is the first and great commandment So the first major point is what is this love to God and he gives a definition there?

What is this love to God and let me read you the definition because what he does in the definition basically is he gives you?

All the sub points that he's going to just deal with under the first point So here it is love to God is a grace of the

Spirit whereby we esteem and desire God above all and cleave to him as to our chief good with holy delight from a spiritual sight of his most amiable perfections as Manifested in his word and works and in the perfection of our

Lord Jesus Christ So that's a that's a pretty detailed definition of loving

God. It is helpful because Loving God is a it's kind of a theme that we hear so often in religion

It is easy to assume that we know what it means It is easy to assume that the kind of the cultural definition or kind of a vague idea

I mean, you know if you if you ask someone Some theological questions.

Can you explain regeneration or can you explain, you know, the difference between Justification and sanctification and you know, they may say well

I I think I know but I'm not sure how to say it if you were to ask them If you were to say to them,

I have a theological question for you. Can you just can you define love to God? They would think well, that's an easy one

But his very detailed definition is helpful because it keeps it from being kind of a vague sentiment

We'll return to that first point in a minute because we really want to kind of stay there today Secondly he says

We may further explain the command by showing what is intended by loving

God With all the heart with all the soul and with all the mind

That too has a lot there that really is helpful His third major point is he wants to show why this is the first and the great commandment and then finally he concludes with a number of uses or Applications now before we jump into this.

I want to say that being an 18th century preacher Sewell does represent kind of a philosophical emphasis of his day and what

I mean is this Earlier generations and later generations might have talked about God's greatness and His goodness in sense of in the sense of like maybe purity like so God's goodness is his moral perfection his rightness

In the 18th century because because of some philosophical trends of the day and you can really see this in Jonathan Edwards And this is neither good nor bad

But I do think it helps Edwards and those men tended to describe the goodness of God and and Moral goodness not merely as something that is right, but it's something that was beautiful So there is something lovely about righteousness.

There is something Attractive about a being who has no moral contamination

So again, you know with John Piper's Re -emphasis of John Jonathan Edwards emphasis that God is desirable a desiring

God It's not just that he is the most worthy of beings He's also the most desirable and Edwards and those men in the 18th century connected that to moral perfection moral goodness was also moral beauty