Psa 119:162 I rejoice at your word like one who finds
great spoil.
Psa 119:163 I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your
law.
Psa 119:164 Seven times a day I praise you for your
righteous rules.
Psa 119:165 Great peace have those who love your law;
nothing can make them stumble.
Psa 119:166 I hope for your salvation, O LORD, and I do
your commandments.
Psa 119:167 My soul keeps your testimonies; I love them
exceedingly.
There is a principle that is found in every human being and
it doesn’t stop when someone is converted.
It is that we have a great interest in what we love. I guess that is a redundancy because to love
something is to have a keen interest in it.
It might be more to the point to say that when someone doesn’t have an
interest in something then that proves he doesn’t love the object.
The things we love, we love to read about and study and get
better acquainted with. If you tell me
you love flower gardening and I ask you to tell me about it and you say that
you don’t really know much about it or I ask you to show me your flower beds
and you say that you don’t have any, then I am going to conclude you don’t
really love gardening.
Now a Christian by definition loves his Savior. I won’t try to expand on that and I shouldn’t
have to. And to love Jesus necessitates
loving his Body and his Word. So it is
disheartening when someone who claims to be a saint seems to never spend time
with those three entities. What would we
say to a man who had a fiancée but always seemed to forget to spend time with
her and just didn’t seem all that interested in her?
When Jesus said that if we love him we will keep his
commandments I don’t think we necessarily need to read that as if he is
commanding us to keep his commandments; he is making a similar point. To love someone is to be consumed with him or
her to some extent and since Jesus is the most glorious person, we should be
most consumed with him. If we have a
keen interest in the Lord of glory who happens to also be our creator God then
keeping his commandments is just a natural thing to do. You enjoy pleasing the one that you love.
With all of our remaining sin, we clearly struggle
expressing our love for the Lord as he is due.
But a true saint struggles with this expression he doesn’t just ignore
Christ, nor his church, nor his Word.
Those three might be the trifecta of Christian pursuits. Now that is just a thought that came to me
and there might be some more to add to the list but they are right up there and
in a sense cannot be separated. You can’t
ignore any one or two of the three without doing harm to all. If fact I am rather sure I have never met anyone
who is unfaithful in one who isn’t also unfaithful in the other two.
Of course, the problem is that we constantly meet people who
claim to love Jesus but hate the hypocrites in the church or are too busy to
spend time under the preaching of God’s Word.
But it all goes back to the flower gardener. If we love Jesus we will find the time and
energy and money to pursue him as the great love of our life.
And along with this we can say that we have no problem
sacrificing for what we truly love. I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t spend time
and money on things they don’t need but that they love enough to spend hard
earned cash for or to give up time with other things they like so they can be
with what they love as much or more.
That is one reason why I have never had any problem having three
services a week; because I love the Lord, I love his Word and I love his
people; 2Sa 24:24 But the king said to Araunah, "No, but I
will buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD
my God that cost me nothing." So David bought the threshing floor and the
oxen for fifty shekels of silver. Jesus
is too wonderful to be casual with.
I am fully aware that my love for the Lord is weak compared
to so many Christians but it never occurs to me not to be at church when the
doors are opened. That is where Jesus speaks
and that is where those that love him are found. It reminds me of Peter’s wonderful words when
Jesus asked his disciples if they would abandon him as the crowds had just
done, Joh 6:68 Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom
shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.
I was already planning to teach one SS lesson this summer giving the amillenial interpretation of Revelation. So I just began listening to your Introduction to Revelation sermon. A minute and a half into it, and I'm already excited to purloin and use your analogy of movie genres! This is a great way to describe it! Thanks buddy.
ReplyDeleteMy first exposure to the amillenial interpretation of Revelation came from a SS lesson series last year by my greatest SS teacher-hero Mark Lanier in his biblical-literacy class at Champion Forest Baptist here in Houston. I've only visited once, but I've caught maybe 100 of his lessons on-line.
Kenny B
Listened already to both intro to Revelation lessons. The second one was immensely helpful in me reviewing and getting a better grip around the 7 parallel sections of Revelation.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure I will listen to it again in early summer as I do final prep on that one lesson on Revelation from your viewpoint.
Of course, I gotta do multiple lessons from the pre-millenial viewpoint first.
Thanks for making your sermons available.
Kenny B
Thanks Kenny, While some of my following messages might not be as compelling as the first two; those first two at least give structure to what follows so that we don't just interpret using our wild imaginations. They point us in the right direction anyway, at least as far as I see it.
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