The Greatest Command

Okay, so this one we're looking at Deuteronomy six, four and five.

This section of text is a foundational principle to God's people.

It really establishes the foundation of our relationship with God.

And this was treasured by the Israelite people, the Jewish people.

It still is treasured today.

They actually call this section of Scripture the Shema.

So S-H-E-M-A, the Shema.

Now, what this is, this is fundamentally a declaration about who God is and a call following it into covenantal love in response to it.

So Shema, the Hebrew word there, it actually is the first word of this sentence.

And that's where they get the calling of this section of scripture from.

Shema means hear, O Israel.

Hear, O Israel.

That's how we translate that.

Hear, O Israel.

This is God calling for the attention of his people as he reveals himself to them and instructs them on how to respond to who he is.

This is the foundational reality for Israel and for us as God's chosen people today, because this is what it does.

It establishes two primary realities in understanding our relationship with God as his people.

These two primary realities are first and foremost one, that God reveals himself to his people.

That's a critical thing in Christian theology.

And we've talked about this several times before, but we have to realize we serve a God who reveals himself, not a God who conceals himself.

See, every other God who conceals himself, they actually leave their people up to speculation.

Well, what are they like?

What are they about?

Who are they?

What do they value?

What do they not value?

Who are these people?

They leave their people, their worshipers, in speculation.

But our God doesn't do that.

Our God reveals himself to his people.

Therefore, we know who he is and who we are to worship.

We're not left in speculation or some sort of spiritual wondering of who God is, or worse yet, should be according to our own opinions.

God's revealing himself now demands a response from those whom he revealed himself to.

So he says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.

This is God revealing himself of who he is to Israel.

But then immediately following that revelation, he gives them instruction on how they are to respond to that truth.

You see, we work in sacred mission in this rhythm of revelation and response.

Our whole liturgy is built around this.

We hear the revelation of God's word when we preach.

That's why a lot of our songs, if you go to some other churches, they may have all the songs on the front end, right?

And we kind of think of that as like they don't know what they're worshiping.

No, I'm joking.

That's not actually.

But we have this reality of response.

We try to do most of our songs on the back end because we believe that throughout the scriptures, what we see as a rhythm for God's people is he reveals something about himself, and then there's a demand or an obligation for his people to respond to what they have been revealed.

And so we preach first, that's the revelation, and then we respond second.

That's how we are called to response.

And the revelation should inform the way that we actually respond to God.

You see, God dictates the proper response to him in the way that he's revealed himself to be.

In the same exact authority that he revealed himself, he also establishes the guidelines and parameters for how we will respond to him.

We don't have the freedom or right to try and dictate how we will be in relationship with God.

We have zero ability to do that.

He sets the standards and in his revelation reveals how we're to be in relationship with him.

And so what the Shema communicates to us in this initial engagement is that we have no intrinsic ability to say who God is or how we are to be in relationship with him.

God alone dictates such things.

So he says, Hero Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.

That's a revelation of who he is.

Then he follows it with this command: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength.

He's dictating both who he is and how we as his people respond to him in light of that.

So this first part, Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

What we see this in summary is that the Father calls for his children to know him.

The father calls for his children to know him.

The opening call to God's people is to come and listen.

This would be actually the way that we would see a father instruct his children to come intimately near as he instructs them in the words of life.

We see the same exact call made by Solomon to his son as he begins instructing him in all of wisdom.

We see it in Proverbs 1.8.

He says, Hear, my son, your father's instruction, and forsake not your mother's teaching.

What we need to see here is a loving father desiring to bring his children intimately near to instruct them with the words of life.

This is the call of a father who longs so much for his children to know him that he gathers them into himself to reveal to them who he is.

And who does God reveal himself to be?

He reveals himself as the only one.

The only one.

Now, what we have to understand is a little bit of historical context when we start to approach this, because we could look at this simply as just a monotheistic reality, right?

God is one, there's only one God.

And there definitely plays some part into that for sure.

But if we look at historical context of where this is coming from, Israel had just been in slavery for 400 years to the Egyptians.

And if you know anything about the Egyptians, they are polytheistic.

They have multiple gods that all are vying for their affection.

They all have their list of demands of how you will be servants to these gods so that you could provoke or persuade or manipulate some type of blessing or good favor out of them.

You see, this was a people who served and worshiped many gods.

But God Yahweh was revealing himself as the only true God.

He's consecrating himself from the multitude of other gods that had fought for the affections of his people, declaring once and for all that Yahweh alone was their God.

This wasn't simply a declaration establishing some sort of dominance over lesser gods, but it was a statement that his eternal covenantal love would be on his people alone.

So to understand this revelation of who God is better, we might do well to read this introductory of the Shema like this Israel, my beloved children, I alone am God who will never stop loving you.

When God chooses to sovereignly reveal himself to his people, this is what he shows them: a loving God who alone would never stop loving them.

So as we hear, here, O Israel, this father calling his children in to gently instruct them on who he is, he says, Look, you've looked for other gods to provide love and joy and peace.

They were lesser gods who could never satisfy.

They were vying for your affections, they were demanding your sacrifices, but I alone am God, and I alone will never stop loving you.

Though Israel come from a multitude of gods who are all demanding for their affections, all of those lesser gods would come up infinitely short to ever love them in return.

It is God, Yahweh, alone who is their true God and true lover of their soul.

Now, this opening phrase of the Shema is the same thing God speaks to his children today.

You see, when we're called out of darkness and into light, when we experience the saving grace of Jesus, aren't we just really being told, not just, but aren't we simplistically, but yet very complex, being told everything you ever chased in your life, those lesser gods that you thought were going to satisfy, that you thought were gonna fulfill you, that you thought were gonna give you everything you ever wanted, but you had to realize something.

They were never able to produce the empty promises they made to you.

But listen to me, I alone am your God, and I will never stop loving you.

And you know how I show it most greatly?

And that I gave my only son to purchase you.

Isn't that what God speaks to us even still today?

These words of the Shema, He gathers us in as His children through adoption, through the blood of Christ into His family.

He brings us intimately near and gathers us as his own children, and he gently proclaims to us, child, I'll never stop loving you.

As we look at verse 5, we see that our response to knowing God is to love him with our entire being.

Our response to knowing God is to love him with our entire being.

Now that God has called his children near to instruct them on who he is, he instructs them on their only befitting response.

His love for them is to be met by their love for him.

A love that is produced from their entire being.

This call to love is known and understood in the form of a command.

You shall.

This is an expected response.

And we talked about this, we hinted on this last week a little bit, but it seems really odd to us, or maybe foreign to us, that we would hear the context of loving someone in the form of a command.

You shall love the Lord your God.

This is the only expected response, this is the only befitting response to who God is.

Obedience to God is to fully love Him as He has revealed Himself to be.

Now, our love for Him should not nor does not dictate our obedience.

Our obedience should drive a deeper love for Him.

You see, we tend to get this flipped.

We often don't see this to be the way that love should work.

We think that the more we actually love someone, the more faithful that we will be to them.

If you think about this with your spouse, right?

This is probably one of the most easiest ways that we could understand this.

The more that I love them and my affections are for them, then the more faithful that I'll actually be to them.

But we see this as our own understanding of what love is rather than what the Bible presents as what love should be.

Love flows from obedience.

Obedience does not flow from love.

You see, God sees it differently.

Love is predicated on faithfulness.

Let's look at Ephesians 5.25 as another example of this.

Ephesians 5.25 says, Husbands, love your wives.

This is in the context of a command.

This is an expectation set forth by God for husbands.

Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Here we see the command to love a wife.

The faithfulness of the husband is not fulfilled in his love for her, but it's in the reality that he is in covenant with her, and that this is the only proper response.

If you are in covenant relationship with your wife, the only proper response then is to love her.

This is the command that's given.

It's not whether you feel like it or you don't feel like it, it's whether your affections and emotions stir you to love them in such a way.

It is in the fundamental reality, the transcendent truth, that you are in covenant relationship with this person, and therefore the only proper response to that covenant relationship is to love them.

And that's how we see this with God.

But we flip the norms.

We flip it in the way that we understand love.

You see, the faithfulness of the husband is not fulfilled in his love for her, but in the reality that he's in covenant with her.

What if acts of obedience, faithfulness, are actually what produce love in our hearts?

Rather than working to have love produce faithfulness, I think we'd have more active pursuit of the ones we set out to love and have a more fruitful affection for them in the end.

You see, a lot of us we don't obey God or we don't pursue God or we don't pursue our spouses because most days we just don't feel like it.

Right?

Anybody track with me on that one?

Like you wake up and you're like, I really just don't want to love my life, my wife today.

Nobody ever feels that way.

Well, you can come pray for me in the lobby after.

I can guarantee my wife wakes up that day, like, he's a hard dude to love.

I'm not really feeling it today.

But see, our emotions, our feeling a love for an individual, should never dictate our faithfulness and obedience to them.

Our faithful and obedience should produce radical love for the person we're setting it upon.

Here in the second part of the Shema, we're not simply commanded to love God, but to love with our entire being.

And he says, our heart, our soul, and our strength.

So let's kind of dissect these three things.

First off, our heart.

Our heart is the center of our lives.

That's what he's talking about there.

It's the center of our life.

Not just simply speaking to the center of our emotions and feelings, right?

Get Valentine's Day out of your head.

God isn't telling us to send him cards on February 14th.

What he's saying is you're to love us, love him with the center of your very life.

The heart reflects the center of our intellect, our will, and our intentions.

You see, it's the heart that informs and produces our emotions and feelings.

But it produces those things after it's already been set in its intentions.

We try again to put the cart before the horse, or we try to understand the worldview of our lives through what we feel.

We don't realize that what we feel was produced by something before it, the intentions of our heart.

We have to be intent to love God.

We often focus on the emotions we have rather than working deeper to understand why we're having them in the first place.

To love God with our heart is not to feel like loving him, but to shape the intentions of the heart to be set on loving him.

You see, we do this through working to know him for how he has revealed himself to be.

We do this through prayer, worship, and fellowship with the household of God.

Our hearts need so persuaded of who God is that their only ability is to flood us with the emotions of love.

You see, we're not just going to love God and then we're going to be set toward obedience.

This is what I'm trying to get into our understanding.

We have to first set our hearts' intentions on obedience toward Him, and love will flow from it.

Then He says, our soul.

Well, this is what makes us who we are.

It's our life, the defining of our personality and uniqueness.

We are to love God with every aspect of what makes us us.

You see, we're to echo the words of the psalmist David in Psalm 103.1.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.

When David's saying that is, bless the Lord, O my soul, everything that makes me me, blessed him.

Everything that constitutes me as a unique person, formed and shaped, created in the image of God, blessed him.

All that is me, uniquely me, will bless and love you.

No one can take your place in loving God.

No one.

Now, this isn't to create some type of hyper-uniqueness perspective where you alone have this special relationship with God.

That's not what I'm trying to say.

God's not calling, though, we have to understand, a generic group to love him generically.

God is not calling a generic group to love him generically, but he is calling collected, unique individuals to love him uniquely.

We all are called to respond to God in the same way in our love, but it is only us who can express it in the uniqueness of what makes us us.

And we're called collectively as the church to worship him in that uniqueness.

We even see this in Revelation.

If you think God's a God of homogeny, you need to read the Bible a whole lot more.

Because he says that in heaven we will actually see every tribe, nation, and tongue worship the Lamb who was slain.

That's uniqueness.

Heaven doesn't create homogeny, heaven celebrates the uniqueness of diversity.

It's only that tongue that can worship God in that way.

It's only that culture that can worship God in that way.

It's only the uniqueness of what makes us us can lavish blessing and praise upon his glorious name.

And then our strength.

This is our excess.

Not just to love God with our heart and soul, but with and in our excess.

This is a total commitment to loving God with our bodies, our possessions, our entirety.

The oneness that God reveals of Himself is to be met by the wholeness of our love for Him.

Now, some of us can think of this word as an adjective.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength.

Like it's the might of these two previous things of which we're supposed to.

You're supposed to love him with a strong heart and a strong soul.

No, it's not an adjective of the first two, it's a noun that stands on its own.

Your strength is the entirety of your excess that you are to love God with.

There's not one place, one part of your existence that isn't called upon to love God.

Not your money, not your house, not your children, not your spouse, not your work, not your hobbies, not anything about you is left to your own joy and fulfillment.

But all of it is called to love God with.

So though the Shema commands a love from us, what I love is that it's preceded by an infinitely greater love promised to us.

You see, God's not requiring from us what he's unable to fulfill toward us.

He's not requiring from us what he's unable to fulfill toward us, unwilling to give to us, unlike the lesser false gods of our former lives.

In fact, it's only God's steadfast love that always holds up its end of the deal.

Right?

You see, we tried to worship false gods, whether it would be uh uh popularity, success in occupation, uh politics, uh finances, money, whatever we tried to put our hope in, that with if we just got this right, then everything would be good, everything would be fine, everything would be safe, and all that we've ever discovered is in the pursuit of those false gods, those lesser gods, idols that are in our hearts, that they never delivered.

Their promises were always empty.

They always left us unsatisfied and longing for more.

It is God alone who says that even when you can't love me the way I've called you to love me, I will love you with a never-ending, never failing love.

So, what's our main idea this morning?

To know God and love him in response is our highest calling.

So we should lead our families to do the same.

To know God and love him in response is our highest calling.

So we should lead our families to do the same.

You see, this is the great command, the Shema.

The great command to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

Since this is True.

To do so and fulfill it is our highest calling.

There's no greater ambition for God's people.

None.

I love the way that the Westminster Shorter Catechism sums up this great command, and it's catechism itself.

So we we're learning like catechism is this question and answers of discipleship, helping us to understand theology and doctrine of God.

And so, question one, right out the gate, this they set it as the highest calling of the Christian.

It says this what is the chief end of man?

Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.

You see, this is how they summarize this great command.

This is how they summarize this pursuit of us toward a loving God.

So if this is true for us, that to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, mind is added in the New Testament, I slipped there, right?

But if to love God with our entire being is the greatest calling that we could have as Christians, if this is true for us, then to fulfill the second greatest commandment, to love our neighbor as yourself, is known and realized in leading others to do the same.

If to love God with all of our heart, soul, and strength is our greatest calling and greatest command, then I would argue that the fulfillment of loving our neighbor as ourself is to lead them to do the exact same thing.

And let me put this to you there is no closer neighbor than your spouse.

And second are your children.

To lead our families in knowing and loving God is tangible.

Joy-filled obedience to these commands.

How negligent to the striving of obedience would we be if we passed over our closest neighbors to disciple others farther away?

If we looked at our own spouse and children and said, Look, sorry, but I've got to go over here to lead them in loving God with all of their heart and soul and strength.

We cannot look at these commands and then turn our heads to the very left of us and right of us and walk away as if they don't count or matter.

Men, we cannot say we love God and then turn around and not labor to disciple our families to do the same.

To act this way really only demonstrates ways in which we do not love God, or even worse yet, hate our neighbor.

That's the end of that.

When we take it to its fullest possible conclusion, if we say we love God and we don't lead our closest, most intimate neighbors, our wife and our children, to do the same, are we not just in the end saying we hate our neighbor?

Are we truly able to fulfill the second greatest commandment of what Christ has called us to?

And aren't we just showing glimpses into our hearts where we truly don't love God?

Do you love your wife?

This isn't rhetorical.

Do you love your children?

Then show it supremely in leading them to know and love God.

All other efforts in loving our families should work to support this supreme one.

Our jobs should work to support that.

The way that we have dinner and eat in our homes should work to support that.

The way that we have fun together should work to support that.

The hobbies that we get into should work to support that.

I'm saying absolutely there should be a parade of other people lined up behind your spouse and your children who you are leading to know and love God.

But if your spouse and children are at the back of that line, brothers, we're neglecting what God has called us to.

And here's some issues that we have with us, right?

Some of us, we pursue loving God on our own, never bringing our family with us.

We pursue loving God on our own, never bringing our family with us.

We talked about this last week.

We separate our faith and life very naively, not realizing how interlocked they both are.

We pursue knowing God through reading the Word, being in Bible studies, small groups, through prayer, other spiritual disciplines, but we rarely, if ever, bring our families into that very faith in pursuit of Him.

I know many in this room, and I'm not saying that I'm not calling anyone out by any means, but you know, you're in mission group, you're in DNA, you're in some other Bible studies somewhere else.

Some of you might be in Bible studies at other churches, or you're you've got this reading plan, or you're doing this men's video thing, or you're going to holy smokes and enjoying some great cigars and Tony Evans talks, right?

This is things that you're doing, but you haven't talked to your own children and spouse about the glories of God and who he is and how our hearts should love him in weeks.

Of course, we take them to church, we drop them off at youth group, we drag them along to mission group, but do we call them like our Father does to us?

Hear, O little children, hear, O wife.

Come and be instructed in who He is and how we ought to love Him.

This takes intimately bringing them along with us as we teach and demonstrate how to know and love God.

We often expect others to fill the roles God has uniquely put us in.

And we talked about this outsourcing our responsibilities to other people.

That's just what we're used to.

We outsource everything, right?

You don't have to be uh uh the man of your home and know how to fix stuff anymore because you just outsource that, right?

I've got enough money.

I'll just fix something.

Somebody else will come and fix this for me.

I don't need to do that.

No, most of us don't even know how to work on cars anymore, right?

Because we just outsource that, or YouTube teaches us, or somehow we outsource our children's education to other people's, or the responsibilities that we put on ourselves, right?

We can even outsource our cooking.

You don't want to cook?

Don't worry.

We can have it delivered to your door in under 15 minutes.

Just pay the driver, right?

Or they'll just ship you meals.

You don't have to think about it.

We outsource our responsibilities.

This is a culture that we're creating within us.

But this is like this.

It's like dropping our child off at the mechanic shop rather than bringing them under the hood with us as we try to fix the problems.

You see, faith and life are not separate, they are interlocked and fully dependent on one another.

We have no real faith if it's not known and seen in our life, in the life we live with others.

Likewise, we have no real life if it is absent from faith.

Faith was designed to be lived out and handed down in community.

And there's no closer community than the four walls of your own home.

But others of us, we we lead our families in obedience, never cultivating a true love for God.

We lead our families in obedience, never cultivating a true love for God.

We create a law home that's often absent of genuine love for God.

You see, if we're honest, we portray God as a tyrant, one who not only demands obedience, but will not be pleased with us if we fail to provide it.

We lord not Jesus, but the law, or worse yet, our own selfish wills over the people we love.

We create homes where we're afraid of God and run from Him in our failures.

You see, failure to obey, that'll happen.

It's called sin.

And each of us still wrestles with sin in our life, no matter how long we've been saved, no matter where we're at on our sanctification process, we still are gonna wrestle with sin in our life.

So the question isn't what happened, the question isn't will we fail to obey?

The question is, what kind of God are we teaching our children and wife when they do?

Is it one whom we fear and run from when we sin?

Or is it one that we trust and run toward when we sin?

You see, creating a law-focused home, one only primarily concerned about obedience, creates homes absent of the gospel and absent of any true ability to love God.

You see, it's only through the gospel that we can actually love Him.

So the gospel must be front and center in our homes, in our victories and in our failures.

But many Christian homes build a house of law.

They build a house of law and then they wonder why their children grew up and left the faith.

And this is something I've been wrestling with for years.

As me and my wife come from different church backgrounds, and some of us come up from different youth group cultures and so forth.

A lot of us look back and we're trying to understand why all of our friends leave the faith?

Why have so many of our friends abandoned the gospel?

They grew up in the church, they went to youth group with us, they were there four days a week with their families.

What happened?

I would submit in part, is because we never gave them the gospel.

The only true anchor of our souls.

You see, the law alone is incapable to tether us to Jesus.

It is the power and might of the gospel that holds us.

We have to fight to not create homes where our families function in a posture that if I do what is right, you will love me and be happy with me.

And if I do what is wrong, you'll be angry and relationally distant from me.

What kind of God are we demonstrating to our children and to our wives when we act this way?

What kind of message are we communicating about his love for us?

We need to be ruthlessly and tirelessly committed to living out fully the gospel in our homes.

This means not punishing others when they fail, but using opportunities to show grace, not dismissing the offense, but confronting it with the grace of the gospel of Jesus.

Because Jesus bore the punishment in himself for our failures.

You see, this is the reality of the gospel.

He doesn't take our sin and sweep it under the rug.

It's not that he doesn't just he just looks over or glances beyond and acts like, hey, it's okay, everything's fine, we're just gonna act like that didn't happen.

The gospel is extremely cosmically confrontational to our sin.

He doesn't sweep it under the rug, he deals with it, but he doesn't deal with it in punishing us for what we deserve.

He doesn't bring the sword and bow to destroy his enemies, he brings the cross and nails, and he redeems and purchases them for himself, bearing our punishment on the cross, so that we might understand his grace and steadfast love for us.

So, what does this mean, men?

It means taking opportunities to show that grace to your children.

I'll give you an example of this, and I don't do this perfectly.

I love law and order, right?

I love that.

I don't even know who that was supposed to be an impression of, honestly.

I think it was like an SVU episode or something like that.

But um I I love order in the home.

I I love it, and I can get obedience from my children really quick.

Because I'm louder than they are and bigger, and uh most of them are girls, right?

So uh so that becomes easy for me.

But here was here was an example, and I just I just submit this to you as one striving to do this in his own home.

Uh, and hopefully this encourages you.

But Addie, uh, my daughter Addison, she's 12 in the seventh grade, and she came upstairs after she had already been put to bed.

She came upstairs crying, holding um her school iPad.

And I said, Honey, what's wrong?

And she's she got a C on her quiz, and she was devastated.

And she she thought we would be disappointed and angry.

And I looked at her and I said, Honey, I'm proud of you.

Did you try your hardest?

I did.

I said, I know you studied, I know you worked, I'm proud of you.

Sometimes that's gonna happen.

Sometimes we're gonna mess up.

I saw her smile and take this breath of relief, and uh, and I sent her back downstairs, and she had a test that coming week on what the quiz was over.

And I know she studied hard, and she came up to me after school and she said, Dad, dad, guess what?

I got an A on my test.

I said, You know what?

I'm not more proud of you.

I'm still just as proud of you as I was when you got a C on your test.

And my love for you hasn't changed because you got an A and yeah, I got a C a couple days ago.

Nothing you can do will ever stop the way that I love you and how proud I am of you as my daughter.

That was an opportunity for me to show the gospel, for me to show grace, for me to hopefully point her to what God is actually like rather than what this person who fails and fumbles and sins and would rather have obedience and control and power and authority looks like.

You see, men, what this is gonna take for us is this means that we're gonna have to lead in confession and repentance in our homes.

Ask your children to forgive you when you sin.

Ask your wife to forgive you when you're sinned.

Be honest when you've sinned and fallen short and you've hurt people.

You've hurt their trust.

You've hurt their confidence.

This means also celebrating victories and bearing one another's sorrows.

Being involved in the intimate details of one another's life.

Don't allow your children when you ask them, how was school today?

It was good.

Don't know.

Uh-uh.

Sit down.

What was good?

Was it?

How good was it?

What made that good?

Why did you think that was good and this wasn't good?

Right?

Ask intimate questions.

Don't just settle for these little responses.

Dive deep into the depths of who they are as people, image bearers of God, so that you can celebrate their victories and you can bear their sorrows.

For us, why we look to Jesus is our only hope is that Jesus makes a way for us to know God and love him in response.

Jesus alone makes a way for us to know God and love him in response.

Jesus has made a way for us to know and love God in two ways.

Number one, he has shown us fully who God is.

If we want to know what God is like, we look to Jesus.

Everything about him has shown us who God is like.

Because he was the exact, we'll see this here in just a second, but he was the exact imprint of his glory.

Jesus said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father.

If you know me, you know the Father.

If you love me, you love the Father.

These two things were inseparable, are inseparable from one another.

Jesus allows us fully to know God because He fully expressed who God is.

So he has shown us fully who God is, and number two, he has reconciled us to God through his blood.

Only in that way can we love God.

Sorry, Hebrews 1.3 says this.

And he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.

We can only know and love God in response through Jesus.

You see the Shema.

It'd be a crushing weight.

It'd be a devastation to our souls without Jesus.

It'd be a heavy burden, a yoke that we could not bear in our own strength.

The Shema would be impossible for us to ever be obedient or fulfill without Jesus.

Because dead in our sin, we could not and even would not desire to fulfill the command to love God in ourselves.

But because Christ purchased us, because Christ made purification for sins by his death, burial, and resurrection, now we not only can love God, we desire to love God because of what Jesus has done in us.

So how should we live then in light of this?

Number one, know God and love him in response.

Know God and love him in response.

Who has God revealed himself to be?

This is the fundamental question we have to answer.

We have an obligation to pursue, to know him through the revelation of his word.

We have to seek the scriptures to know him, how he's revealed himself to be.

We have to study what Jesus was like so that we can see the image of God expressed in this earth.

To know him is going to foundationally come through knowing him through his word.

And we have to be in active relationship with him.

Allowing our pursuit of him and our obedience to foster deep affection for him.

When we become men of prayer and worship, when we participate in active relationship with him, this will cause a deep intimacy with the Lord.

And I think a lot of us still wrestle with knowing God, right?

We still wrestle with God as something we study, something we observe, something that we try to understand instead of a person of who we have deep, intimate relationship with.

I don't know about you, but sometimes it seems like me and God aren't even in relationship with them.

It's just this distant being who I try to wrap my mind around in comprehension.

Rather than having intimate relationship with him, rather than waking up and praying to him and seeking him, rather than worshiping him throughout the day, rather than giving thanks for the blessings that he's given me in my life constantly throughout the day, whether it be singing his praises throughout my day.

It just seems like he's this distant being that we've observed.

I don't want that.

I want God to be so intimately near to me in this deep, affectionate relationship.

And I see this in other men that I respect deeply.

The late J.I.

Packer, if anything bad happened in 2020, it was that J.I.

Packer died.

Ravi did too.

And um, but J.I.

Packer wrote one of the most influential Christian books that you could read.

If you're gonna read a Christian book, Knowing God is in the top five list of Christian books you should read.

And J.I.

Packer was the author of that.

And in this, he describes this intimacy that he has with God.

And I want to pull this quote from Knowing God by J.I.

Packer.

It says, trying to describe what I do in prayer will be like telling the world how I make love to my wife.

Trying to describe what I do in prayer will be like telling the world how I make love to my wife.

Think about the intimacy that J.I.

Packer has with God.

That the relationship with He has, that he even seems it so intimate that parts of it he has to keep secret.

Not in some weird way, not in some uh sensual, uh erotic way, but in a way that he consecrated that relationship to maintain its privacy of just something so intimately connected between him and his father.

That's how I want to know God.

You see, as we work to know God honestly, my prayer is that we'll grow in love and affection for him.

Number two, we'll lead our families to do the same.

We'll lead our families to do the same.

I see this as twofold.

Number one, our children and wife need to see us pursuing God.

Our children and our wife need to see us pursuing God.

This means they need to see us reading our Bible.

It means they need to see us praying and crying out to God.

It means they need to see us in extravagant worship, expressive worship of who He is.

Men, we got to be men who raise our hands, who dance before the Lord, who express outwardly.

And I don't care about your personality type, I don't care how uncomfortable you make it, you won't see anywhere in the scripture where the command to worship God is untethered or unchained from some physical expression of who he is.

Whether it's dance, sing, laughter, crying, rejoicing, clapping, raising hands, whatever it might be, shaking a tambourine for the Lord's sake.

Do it.

Don't know.

Don't do it here.

Do that at home in your own prayer closet.

You can tambourine the mess out of your prayer closet.

Don't be bringing that stuff in here.

But the Lord needs to, I mean, our families need to see us pursuing God.

Imagine, some of you probably grew up in homes where you never saw your dad pursue your mom.

Think about what that did to you in understanding relationship.

Think about when you saw that they never went out on date night, that dad never held her hand, that he never pursued in loving her and winning over her affections.

Imagine how that created your understanding of love and relationship and marriage in your own mind.

You think you're not doing that with you and God?

I try my best.

When I come home, the first person I kiss is my wife because I want my kids to understand this is my wife, and I love her more than I love you little you know what's.

I love her.

I want them to see me holding her hand.

I want them to see us going out on date nights.

I want them to see us pursuing and loving one another.

Because I want their understanding of marriage and relationship to be healthy when they grow up.

Our children and wife need to see us pursue God.

But number two, we need to intentionally bring them into that pursuit.

We need to intentionally bring them into that pursuit.

This talks, this is where we get into.

And the next two weeks are much more practical.

Family worship, devotions, teaching your family to pray and to worship, teaching them to treasure God's word.

I love prayer time at our home.

When we do our family worship, we go around the circle, and each person has to pray for the person on their left.

So the person will say what they need prayer for for that week, and the person next to them on their left will pray for them.

And let me tell you, when you have like four-year-olds, you're like, they don't, they pray, they are horrible, they're horrible at praying.

Just wretched.

So you have to coach them, like, hey, say this, right?

Because Liam will just go, Jesus, thank you.

Amen.

That's all, and and you could have poor Addy or like one of us just could have poured our hearts out of like all this trouble and sorrow we're going through and like relational tensions we have with friends, and I you just don't feel like you're good enough sometimes.

And Liam, will you will you pray for that?

Jesus, thank you.

Amen.

That's all you get.

But you know what?

Addy was the same way.

And now that Addy's 12, she has longer prayers that's more intentional about the things that we're sharing from our heart.

And it's it's great to see her praying to God and desiring to pray to God.

It's great to see her on the front row, raising her hands and worship to songs.

I mean, nothing warms my heart more, but it was laborious training and teaching and intentionally bringing them into that pursuit, teaching them to treasure God's word.

We have to be intentional about this.

We can't just model it.

Model it is a very fundamental aspect of it, but we also have to bring them into that pursuit with us.

And lastly, we would call others to begin knowing Him.

To call others to begin knowing Him.

To love our neighbor as ourselves should be most truly known in leading them to know and love God.

To love our neighbors as ourselves should be most truly known in leading them to know and love God.

This is the greatest thing that we can give to any of our neighbors, anyone who does not know God, to give them the gospel, to show them who God is, and to lead them in loving Him, I would submit is the most primary way we fulfill that command to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Because ask yourself, where would you be without loving God?

Where would you be without relationship with Him?

Where would you be without the saving grace of Jesus in your life?

You'd be hopeless, you'd be more of a wreck than you all already are, you'd have nothing to stand upon.

But when Jesus broke in and he revealed himself to you, and he caused your heart to love him and come alive, man, to give that, to pursue giving that to your neighbor, that's the greatest thing we could do.

So men, let us first set our eyes on this command.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.

If we're not there, we're not gonna lead our families to do it either.

If we're not first and foremost here pursuing this, we have no hope of truly leading our families to do the same.

And we're gonna see that in next week.

Let us be men who fix our gaze on loving God with our entire being.

Let's pray.