A Sermon Delivered by Pastor Jim Scott Orrick

March 11, 2001

But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" Jesus said to him, "You shall love the LORD you God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."

All of God's commandments are good. They come from a good God. Sometimes you can pretty well guess what the content of a letter is going to be like by simply reading the return address and seeing who it is from. So it is with all the commandments of God. You can pretty well guess what they are going to be like if you know who sent it. God sent it, and God is a good God. So if any of God's expectations appear to be burdensome or appear to be grievous, it's because we've just not understood them properly. You can put your heart at ease if it's the commandment that has come from the true and the living God. It's a good commandment because He is a good God. And all of God's commandments are good.

You can't save yourself and get yourself to heaven by keeping God's commandments. It's already too late for that with you. It's already too late for that with me. We've already broken God's commandments. Even if today we decided and were able to live without breaking any of God's commandments for the rest of the time that we lived, we still would have to reckon with the debt that we have already built up at God's store. Suppose you're charging groceries at a store, and you reach the point where you say, "This grocery bill is going to eat me up. I'm going to have to stop using credit at the grocery store, and I'm going to start paying for everything with cash." So you go to the grocer, and you tell him, "I'm going to start paying for everything with cash from now on," and after a few months you get another bill from him. You go to the grocer and tell him, "But I told you I was going to be paying for everything with cash from now on, and that's what I've been doing." He says, "Yes, but what about the bill that you've already run up?" You can't get to heaven by keeping God's commandments. Even if it were possible for you to start right now and never break another commandment as long as you live, you still would have the past sins that something must be done with. But, if you had your choice of living among a group of people who had no regard for God's commandments whatsoever, or living in a community where people obeyed God's commandments and were at least trying to keep God's commandments, which would you rather live in? There's no contest, really.

For about seven years I pastored a small church in a small town in West Virginia. The town was about 1,000 in population. Do you know that there was not a policeman in the whole town? We never had a law office. Only occsionally would we even see a police car driving through from one of the other towns going someplace else. What do you suppose life was like in a community where there was no policeman? Well, the entire seven years that I lived there, I remember only two crimes being committed. One of the crimes was committed by someone from out of town. The other crime consisted of some boys putting sugar in the gas tank of a woman’s car. I think they paid for the woman's gas tank. It was a good place to live. There was sin of other kinds going around, but it was nice to live in a place where people obeyed at least the eighth commandment, thou shalt not steal. We never worried when we left home whether we remembered to lock the door because I never heard of a house being broken into. I liked living in a place like that. God's commandments are good. It's good for a society when the society has a regard for God's commandments, even if they're non-Christian people who yet have a respect for God's commandments. It's a good place to live because God's commandments are good.

Just like God's commandments are good for a society or for a community, they're also good for a family. They're good for individuals. Think for a moment, which family has the greater peace? Which family has the greater security and contentment? That family which regards the word of God and the commandments of God or that family that has no regard whatsoever for God or for God's commandments? Which family would you rather be in?

What kind of person would you rather be? A person who has a heart disposed to keep God's commandments, or a person who has no regard for God's commandments at all? All of God's commandments are good. I want to live in a place where people don't lie, where people don't steal, where people don't kill one another, where people respect the marriage relationship, where I don't have to worry about my wife being violated, or I don't have to worry about being purposely tempted by someone else. That's a good place to live. All of God's commandments are good, but Jesus says there is one that is the greatest. And that is that we should love the LORD our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength.

The question I want to answer today is: Why? Why is this commandment the greatest? To help you fit this sermon into the overall scheme of my intentions, allow me to say that I'm leading up to a series of sermons on The Attributes of God or The Characteristics of God. My purpose in preaching this series of sermons on the attributes of God is so that our hearts will be drawn out to love Him, because I'm convinced that the more we know about God, the more we will love Him, and the reason our love for Him is often so cold and so small is that our knowledge of God is so small. And so I hope in this sermon this morning to give all of you a hungering after a greater love for God, and then in the weeks that come, give you a reason for your love to grow –to supply you with fuel that will make your love burn hotter. For right now, I want you just to see the importance of love for God and to have a desire for love for God.

I especially have Christians in mind as I preach this, but let me say a word to you who know that you really don't love God. This is a very simple commandment, and it is a very reasonable commandment. Every good thing that you have ever received has come down from God. Isn't it reasonable that you should love God? But you know in your heart of hearts that you don't love God. You cannot honestly plead that you have kept this most important commandment. Imagine how lame your excuses will sound on the day of judgment. "Lord, I didn't believe in Jesus because I wanted to do other things. I knew that if I followed Jesus I couldn't pursue this pastime that I enjoyed so much, and I didn't want to be a hypocrite. And Lord, I didn't want to be with other hypocrites, and so I never did associate myself with church." After you've gone on excusing yourself for a minute, the Lord says, "I just have one question for you—did you ever or do you now love Me?" "Well, you know I had, uh…." And then you see that in the presence of Him, before whom all things are naked, there is no point in making some shallow excuse. You have never loved God, and you do not love Him at that moment. Without love for God, you can no wise be fit for heaven. Heaven is a world of love, and the chief business of heaven is loving God. Now does that sound attractive to you? To some of you it does. To those who already have the fires of love for God kindled in your heart and already know why love is the greatest commandment, that sounds attractive to you, but for some of you the idea of being consumed with nothing but God sounds repugnant, not attractive to you at all. May God the Holy Spirit then teach you and reveal to you the beauties of the Christ and the fitness of loving God and show you that you will never be happy—in time or in eternity—until you become a lover of God.

Why is love for God the greatest commandment? First of all, love for God is the blood that gives life to the body of service. Love for God is like the blood that gives life to a body. Without blood, the body is lifeless. Your life is in your blood. If all of your blood drains out, you have no life. And so it is with our service to God. If our body of service to God is not filled with and pulsating with the blood of love for God, then it's like a dead body. It does not take a dead body very long to become unattractive, and it doesn't take very much longer after that for it to become positively unpleasant. I was in a bookstore once and picked up a biography of Marilyn Monroe, and it had a photo section in the middle. I saw all these photographs of this very beautiful woman, and then I think the last photograph in the section was a photograph of her lying on a slab in the morgue. I was impressed by that picture. I was just a boy when I looked at that picture, but I was struck at how terribly ugly she was. So beautiful in the other pictures, but in this last picture, when her life was gone, she had become so terribly ugly. It doesn't take long for the flower to fade, does it? Isaiah says, the grass withers and the flower fades. Man is like grass. Man is like a flower of the field, and even the most beautiful flower does not remain beautiful once it has been cut down, once the life is gone. Marilyn Monroe was ugly when she was dead, and when your service to God is not enlivened with love for God, you're ugly to God.

Here you are at church. I’m glad you're here. I'm glad you're listening, but if your listening and if your coming is not motivated out of love for God, then this service of yours is not acceptable to God. Your coming to church doesn't gain you any merit in God's favor if you don't love God. Love for God is the greatest commandment because without it all of your service to God is in vain. So, love for God is the blood which gives life to the body of service.

Let me give you a second reason why love is the greatest commandment. I'm going to prepare you for this answer by asking you, What is the greatest enemy to a human being? What is your greatest enemy? It's not Satan. It's not somebody who lives down the street who has a dog that barks all night. It's sin. Sin is your greatest enemy. Sin de-humanizes you. Sometimes we excuse our sinful behavior by saying, "Well, I'm only human." But saying, "I'm only human," is not really an excuse for sin. Sin is un-human. Sin makes us unlike what we're supposed to be when we were created by God. So the greatest commandment is the greatest commandment for this second reason: because it drives sin out of our lives. Imagine a bucket that is filled with dirty, nasty water. It's filled all the way to the top, as full as it can go, with dirty, filthy water. Now you take a rock that is half as big as the bucket, and you place it in that bucket full of nasty water, and what happens? The water is displaced. It flows out of the bucket. It has been replaced with rock. And then if you could make the rock bigger and bigger, then what would happen to the water? It would go out. And so it is with love for God. Love for God is a great stone, a great bedrock in our lives that displaces sinful lusts, sinful habits, and sinful behaviors. I really believe that love for God is the key to sanctification. You cannot simply make up your mind that you are going to stop sinning. Oh, you can, you can make up your mind, but you won't be successful. Some of you have tried that before, and you know that the old sin comes back. What's the key to success? Replace love for sin with love for God.

When I was a boy, soda pop came in glass bottles. Sometimes after I had drunk all the pop, I would play with the bottle and would suck all the air out of the bottle. I couldn't get all of it out, but I would suck on the bottle so that a vacuum was created in the bottle, and it would suck my lip into the bottle or my tongue or the side of my face. There was a vacuum in the bottle. Vacuums want to be filled, so if I pulled my lip out of that vacuous bottle, then air would rush into the bottle. I never did this, but let's just suppose that I had the bottle stuck to my lip, and I plunge my head under water, and I pull the bottle off my lip. What is going to rush into the bottle? Water will rush into the bottle. A vacuum will be filled with whatever is around it. Human beings are like vacuums. You will be filled with something. You will too! It is the very nature of human beings that you want to be delighted with something, and you will seek that delight somewhere. If you are not delighted with God, then you will be delighted with sin. When you boil it down, there are only these two options: You can be satisfied with God and loving God, or you can be satisfied with sin and loving sin.

Jesus told a story about a man who had a demon in him. The demon was cast out. The man cleaned up his life, but he didn't fill his life up with something new, so the demon that had gone out of the man went through dry places looking for someplace to live. He couldn't find any place, and so he came back to the man; he found that the house was empty, that it was clean and swept. So this demon went and got seven of his buddy demons, and they came back, and then all eight of them lived in the man so that the final condition of the man was worse than the first. There may be other meanings to that parable, but one of the chief meanings, I believe, is this: you cannot be a holy person by simply getting rid of the bad; you've got to replace it with the good. And indeed, the very process of loving God will displace sin, just like the rock in the yucky bucket displaced the nasty water. When we love God, then, it is a sanctifying process. So it's the greatest commandment because it gives life to our service to God; it's the blood that gives life to the body of our service. And it is also the body that displaces sin in our lives.

A third reason why this commandment is the greatest commandment is because it is like a locomotive or a train engine that is pulling an entire train of graces. If you really love someone, then it's easy for you to believe what that person says. Believing what God says is faith. There are many victories in the Christian life that are gained by faith. If you have love for God, then faith will follow in the train behind this locomotive that is pulling faith. If you really love someone, then you believe their promises, and you're eager to receive those promises. If someone that you love says, "I'll be there at 7:00, " you eagerly look for 7:00 to come because you love that person. You're filled with hope, confident expectation that they will fulfill this desirable promise they have made. So if we love God, then we also will be filled with hope. The greatest graces of the Christian life are faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love. It pulls faith and hope in the train.

Also if you think of other graces of the Christian life, you will see that they are pulled along and encouraged by your love for God. Consider your devotional time. Do you begrudge spending time with someone that you really love? You look forward to it! You enjoy it, and so if your prayer life and your devotional live are sagging and not what they ought to be, you know that problem would be cured if your love for God was increased. If your loved one is far away, and you receive a letter from them on the same day you receive a number of bills, do you look at the bills first, or do you open that letter first and read that letter from the loved one? You're eager to see what the loved one has to say because you love them. And so it is when you love God: you're eager to see what He has to say to you. So studying His word is not a heavy burden. Your practice of spiritual discipline is pulled along by the locomotive of love.

Think about service to God. It, too, is connected to the train that is pulled by the locomotive of God's love. When you love someone, then you are eager to do what pleases him. You'll even attempt to think of ways that you can please this person you love. If you find out that planting flowers would please them, then you want to plant the flowers. Your service then, is motivated by love, and so it is with God. When you love God, your service to Him is pulled by that love and follows in the train.

Or think further. God wants us to be in fellowship with other people. When you really love someone, talking about that person comes easy to you. You want to talk about your loved one with other people who also admire your loved one. You don't want a rival in your love for this person, but you're eager to talk to other people who love your loved one, who admire your loved one. So it is when you love God; it's an easy thing for us to want to be in fellowship with other believers because they also love our loved one. So love is the greatest commandment because it's like a locomotive that pulls a train of all the other graces in the Christian life along behind it. It is really the key to success in everything in the Christian life.

Why is love the greatest commandment? Fourthly, love is the greatest commandment because love is the greatest treasure that we possess, and love is the greatest treasure that we receive. As I'll say later, loving God is always reciprocated; He always loves us back. But now let's think about our loving God. Human beings desire not only to be loved, but also to bestow our love on others. And in God we have the greatest opportunity to love the greatest being in all the universe. So do you really want to bestow your love on someone, someone who always loves you back and appreciates the love that you give? Then love God. For these four reasons that I have cited, love is the greatest commandment.

I have two more answers to that question, but I'm going to talk a little bit more about these two, and so I make a bit of a separation from them in my own mind from these first four answers. The first four answers were that: 1)Love is the blood that gives life to the body of service. 2)Love is the great sanctifier. It's the body that displaces sin in our lives. 3)Love is the locomotive that pulls the other graces of the Christian life in its train. 4)Love is the greatest treasure that we posses and that we receive.

Let me give you a fifth reason. As I said, I'm going to talk a little bit more about this one. Love is the most powerful catalyst for change. I first encountered the word catalyst while working at a church camp when I was a teenager. Some days we had to work in the craft room where campers would come and do various crafts. One summer we had a craft activity making paper weights, and we made them from some kind of polymer plastic. The children would gather a flower or an insect that they wanted to be in their paper weight. This paper weight would be about the size of half a baseball. They would put their flower in the bottom of the mold, round-side down, and then we would pour some kind of plastic in over their flower. This plastic had been in a bottle for months. It was liquid. It could be squeezed out. It was about the consistency of glue, and it would remain soft until you put a catalyst in, and the catalyst was a few drops of some other liquid that suddenly made this liquid plastic turn into solid plastic. It would happen in just a few minutes. We would put the catalyst into the liquid plastic. We would stir it around or mix it some way, pour it into the mold, and then in just a few seconds, it would turn into solid, almost as hard as glass. And that little liquid that brought about the change was a catalyst. It made the change happen. I'm saying that's what love for God is. It is a catalyst that makes change happen quickly in your life, and not just quickly but steadily throughout your life.

I'm going to give you a general principle and then apply this specifically to love for God. The general principle is this: You become like what you love. More obviously, you become like the persons that you love and admire. You see this in persons of all ages, but sometimes it's especially obvious in a young person who admires a particular rock star. Often they will try to adopt that star's attitudes toward life and sometimes even dress like that person dresses. This is a principle that we find in the Bible when the Lord talks about idolatry in the book of Psalms. He says, "They that worship these idols shall become like them.” That is, like the idol, those who worship it will become unable to see clearly and unable to think clearly. That's the way idols are, and the Lord says that those who worship them will become like them. This principle is found in other places in the Scripture. "Bad company corrupts good morals," Paul writes to the Corinthians. Bad company corrupts good morals. You become like the people that you're around. On the other hand, the book of Proverbs says, "He that walketh with the wise grows wise." This should lead us to make our friends carefully, because your friends will make you. You walk with wise friends and you'll grow wise. On the other hand, if you have good morals, but you're plunged into bad company, bad company corrupts good morals. A man can be known by the company that he keeps because the company will act as a catalyst in the man's life. Now how does this work with God?

Before I answer that question, let me ask you this: Do you have good friends who have a good influence on you? You may say, “I work in the midst of a pack of heathens. What am I to do?” Well, the Lord has provided a church to be a community to have an influence on you. That's one answer that I'll give you that's a very good answer. Along with that, not so good as a church, but very good nonetheless, are the biographies of godly Christian men and women. They can act as an influence upon you, and you can keep company with men like C. H. Spurgeon, John Calvin, Martin Luther, and George Whitefield. You can keep company with them by reading their biographies and reading their writings, and they too will have an influence, just like real flesh and blood friends will have on you.

Perhaps you say, "I don't enjoy reading." I'll tell you what you have, then, as a catalyst for change that is better than books, and that is better than any human being. You have God. You have access to God through the Holy Spirit. God is not some impersonal force in the universe. He is a real person that you can be around and who can talk to you through His word, and you can talk to Him through prayer, and His presence can transform you. When you love and admire Him, then this love and admiration for Him is a catalyst that brings about changes in you that are good changes. What sort of changes? Your mind will be changed and become like God's mind. Your affections will be changed and become like God's affections, and your will will be changed and become like God's will.

Your mind will be changed, and your understanding will be enlightened. What we don't understand about sin while we are engrossed in the darkness of sin is that it blinds us, and it clouds our understanding, and we are not able to see things clearly. Our thinking has been befuddled by sin so that in some ways, reality is turned upside-down in our minds. We want what is bad for us, and we don't want what is good for us. Is that clear thinking? No, that is darkness! And yet the Bible teaches that that's the way that we are. God is what's best for us, but God looks down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there are any that seek after God. How many are there? “None.” Let me check again. “Not one.” Not even one that seeks after God. What do they seek after? Their hearts are turned aside after wickedness as soon as they are born, speaking lies. They are constantly lusting after what is bad for them. In order for us to come to Jesus Christ, God the Holy Spirit must draw us. Part of that drawing, when He effectually calls us, is that He enlightens our minds in the knowledge of Christ.

What is effectual calling? In the words of the Baptist Catechism, “Effectual calling is the work of God's Spirit, whereby convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ and renewing our wills, he doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ freely offered to us in the gospel.” Right now let’s focus on process of the Holy Spirit's enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ. We don't understand before the Holy Spirit enlightens our minds in the knowledge of Christ. When we love God, our minds are enlightened more and more. When God first draws us to Himself, He has to enlighten our minds, but as He draws us closer and closer to Himself after we're saved, He continues to enlighten our minds, and to fill us up with the knowledge of Jesus Christ. So when we love God, it is a catalyst for change in our lives that makes our minds change, that we think like God about Jesus Christ.

We also begin to think like God about our sin, and that's what the catechism question means when it says "convincing us of our sin and misery." We have to be convinced of it. Before He convinces us of it, we love sin. We don't always feel ourselves to be miserable as a result of sin. We think the misery is because this scheme failed, or that thing didn't work out, or some other reason. But when the Holy Spirit does His work in us, then we come to see that this is all caused by sin, and we realize, “I am miserable because of sin.” So the Holy Spirit convinces us of our sin and misery. We realize this fact in the light of love for God. We come to understand that all of this other distraction is only sin and sure to cause us misery. So our minds become like God's mind. We see Jesus Christ like God sees Him. We see our sin like God does. We see ourselves like God sees. We see other people like God sees them. Sometimes we spend so much time being frustrated because of someone's sinful carriage toward us. Once our mind becomes like God's, we are enabled to feel sorry for them instead of being angry at them. We're able to think, “This person is acting like this because they're under the control of Satan like I once was. They've not yet been enlightened, as I have been enlightened. They're still enthralled by sin and don't know that they're miserable. They've not yet been convinced.” Now that will help you to behave in a Christian manner towards someone much more than getting mad at them will. How does it happen? It happens by loving God and by being around a person like God. Your mind is changed.

Not only is your mind changed, but your affections and will are also changed. What you love is changed, and this also is mentioned in the catechism response. Your will is changed so that not only do you know what is best, not only do you love what is best, but now you are enabled to choose what is best. Notice the catechism response again. The last sentence says "He doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the gospel." He persuades us. He enlightens our minds and shows Jesus to be beautiful. He quickens our affections after Jesus Christ. He persuades us, but the Spirit does not stop there. He also enables us. This is what Jesus was talking about when He says in John 6:44, "No man can come to Me unless the Father who has sent Me has enabled Him.” In other words, God has to make the sinner capable of coming. If you're feeling that you're away from God and do not love Him, and today you're wondering, what can I say to God when I come to Him? Why don't you go home and say, "Lord, I need to be effectually called. It's the work of Your Spirit, so send me your Holy Spirit. Lord, I know that my mind is diseased, and I don't have the proper attitude toward sin, and so please convince me of my sin and misery. I know that I don't fully understand the gospel in the way that I should, so please enlighten my mind in the knowledge of Christ. I know that if You leave me to myself, I will always choose sin, and so I pray that you will renew my will, and I pray that you, Lord, will persuade and enable me to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to me in the gospel. If you don't save me, Lord, I'll never be saved." And then you just keep praying that until God saves you. Pray, "Lord, I don't love you. I confess it. It's the greatest commandment, and so it's my greatest sin that I don't love You as I should. I pray that you will teach me to love You. And as I love You, and as I'm around You, then make that a catalyst for changing my mind and for changing my affection, for changing my will. Make me like You, Lord, make me like You." And so love for God is a great catalyst for change.

Finally, why is this commandment the greatest commandment? Because it is a fountain of inexhaustible joy, a fountain of incomparable joy. When we love God, then we love someone who is infinitely worthy of our love. Have you ever loved someone who brought disappointment to you, someone who just let you down? Of course you have. If you think about it, every human love carries with it some disappointment. It's inevitable. You should still love human beings. The second greatest commandment is that you love your neighbor as yourself, but you can only love your neighbor as yourself properly, when your love is first of all directed to and poured out on God. And here's the wonderful thing. This is why I say love for God is an inexhaustible fountain of joy: when you love God, you'll never be disappointed in God. He is infinitely worthy of your love. You, as a human being, were created to love God, and if you're trying to find all your satisfaction in merely human relationships, just loving human beings, you are bound to be disappointed often and deeply. You were made for more than that. It's unfair to expect your child to supply you the satisfaction that you can get only from loving God. It's unfair for you to have the unrealistic expectation of your husband or your wife that they can fill up the great, dry crevice that is in your life that can only be filled by God. You were made to love God.

What would you think if you came by my house one day, and you saw that I was sitting on a bulldozer in my front yard. I see you pull up, and I turn the bulldozer off, and you say, "What are you doing, Jim?" I say, "I'm fixing a flower bed here for Carol, so I rented this bulldozer for it." "Well now, Jim, that bulldozer was meant for something else. It can do the flower bed job okay, I suppose, if you're skilled enough, but that bulldozer was really meant for something a lot bigger than that." I think that's what the angels must say when they look down and they see human beings so caught up in loving TV, or loving the computer, or loving dogs and cats and beer and food and beds, and they say, "You were made for something so much bigger than that, so much better than that! It's no wonder that you're all psychos! It's no wonder that you're so messed up! You were meant for something more than that." Perhaps you have had the experience of driving an unfamiliar vehicle that has a standard transmission. Not all transmissions shift exactly the same, so perhaps you have had some difficulty getting the engine into the gear you want to drive in. The gears may make a grinding sound as you try to shift. But then it will slip into gear, and it will run right. When you begin to love God, your life slips into gear. Before that, it's no wonder if the gears are grinding and things are turning out wrong. When you begin to love God, that's what you were made to do, and the gears of life engage. So when we love God, it is a fountain of inexhaustible joy because God is an object that is infinitely worthy of our love.

And then another reason why love for God is a source for inexhaustible joy is that when you love God, you're loving someone who always loves you back. I suppose all of us have felt the pain of loving someone who didn't love us back or didn't' love us as much as we wanted to be loved back. You'll never experience that when you love God. God is love. God loved us while we were still His enemies. How much more then, now that we have been brought into His kingdom and that we have begun to love Him, how much more then, will He love us? And so God is a source of inexhaustible joy because when we love Him, we love someone who always loves us back, and more than we love Him.

The third reason why God is a source of inexhaustible joy for the Christian is because when you love God, you love someone who is always near. I love my parents, but I'm hundreds of miles away from them. There are times when I just wish that I could go home and enjoy those easy days when you don't feel the pressure of having to hurry up and visit because you've only got a few days there. And then there are some other people that I love whom I will never see again in life because they have died. But when you love God, your loved One is always near, and you'll never be separated from God by death. Indeed, when you die, then you'll only become closer to God than ever before. So, the third reason why love for God is a source of inexhaustible joy is because our loved One is always near when we love God.

And then a fourth reason—and with this I'm finished—a fourth reason why love for God is a source of inexhaustible joy is because when we love God, we participate in infinite happiness. Let me explain. When you really love someone, it makes you happy to see them happy. I take my dog on a walk with me in the morning, and I enjoy seeing that dog tear around through the woods, and run through every mud puddle and ditch that he can find with reckless abandon. It makes me smile. I'm happy that my dog is happy. And when I come home and my little children are smiling, and they come rushing to see me and jumping off the stairs into my arms, I'm happy because they're happy. And when my wife greets me smiling at the door with a big passionate smooch, I'm happy because she's happy. I'm happy when my parents are happy. I love it when my loved ones are happy. When you love God, you're loving the blessed God. You're loving a person who is infinitely happy, and it makes me happy to love someone who is happy.

When we love God, and we know that He loves us, then all the duties of religion are filled with sweetness. They're acts of love. They're displays of love from our Father and ways that we show our love back to Him. When we love God, then all of life is sweet. The good providences that we enjoy, we see as gifts handed down by a loving Father, and when we are dealt cross providences that do not make us happy, yet we are able with peaceful resignation to know that these cross providences have been sent down by the hand of a Father who loves us so much that He even gave His only begotten Son that we might have life. The entrance into this world of love is through Jesus Christ. You cannot really begin to love God until you have embraced His Son. I read a proverb this morning. C. H. Spurgeon has got a big collection of proverbs. The proverb was this: "Love me, love my dog." That means that if you love me, don't be criticizing my dog. Don't be criticizing my children and my family because we go together. Now how can you possibly love God and show your love to God, if you've not embraced His Son? You cannot begin to love God, you cannot begin to know God until you receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and as your Savior.

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Scripture from The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by
Thomas Nelson, Inc.