Authentic Love for God

Harris Creek Church, it's days like today. You're really glad, first of all, that your amazing worship leader lives next door to you. There he is. And secondly, you have an incredible tech team that can make things happen with iPhones and lights and all the things that God has provided. They're a grace to us from him so that this message can come to you. I pray that right now you're surrounded by loved ones and snuggled up cozy, maybe next to a fire in the comfort of your home. But I do not want you to miss this message as we continue our series for the love of God. I was so excited to preach this message to the church and I'm so grateful that the Lord would allow us to do that even on a day where we're iced in. And so we're gonna start just by centering our hearts in worship through song and I'm glad we can. Drew, thanks for being with us. Yeah, man, of course. I was reading this morning, Psalm 52, nine. It says, I will praise you forever for what you have done. In the presence of your faithful people, I will put my hope in your name for His good. So hopefully you're around some faithful people today as we sing some songs together, as we hear His word. Let's sing to the Lord now. ♪ Amen ♪ Come now, Father.

♪ Come now, Father, every blessing ♪ ♪ Turn my heart to you, send thy grace ♪ ♪ Streams of mercy never ceasing ♪ ♪ Call for songs of loudest praise ♪ ♪ And teach me some melodious sonnet ♪ ♪ And some by flaming tongues above ♪ ♪ Praise the mountain, praise the morning ♪ ♪ Mountain high, revealing love ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ And here I raise my heavenly exult ♪ ♪ Safely by thy help I come ♪ ♪ And I know my, my redemption ♪ ♪ Safely to thy right hand hold ♪ ♪ And Jesus saw me when a stranger ♪ ♪ Wandered from the land for the guide ♪ ♪ He to rescue me from danger ♪ ♪ To place a ghost in his precious body ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ I'm prone to grace, how great a debtor ♪ ♪ Daily I'm constrained to be ♪ ♪ I'm prone to grace, Lord, like a debtor ♪ ♪ I'm mired by hunger, he comes to me ♪ ♪ And prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it ♪ ♪ I'm prone to lose the God I love ♪ ♪ He's not the one, so you can't see it ♪ ♪ I'm prone to be poor, like a debtor ♪ Father, we just thank you for your church. Thank you for all the work you're doing in and through Harris Creek. I ask you to keep everyone safe today.

As Texans, we're just not used to the freezing temperatures and it kind of throws our rhythms out of whack. And I just pray that you would meet us in the middle of that, even as we open your word this morning. I thank you for your provision of gifted people and technology. I thank you for your provision of Drew leading us before the throne in worship through song. And just as we read these texts, Lord, I pray that you would teach our hearts how we can love you to do the greatest thing that you've asked us to do. In Jesus' name, amen. Wherever you're at, I would just encourage you to find one of these. I'm sure you have one in your home. This is my travel Bible, and I'm gonna be in 1 John 5. It says, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. And everyone who loves the father loves his child. as well. This is how we know that we love the children of God by loving God and carrying out his commands. In fact, this is love for God to keep his commands and his commands are not burdensome. For everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.

Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the son of God. The word of the Lord. I can remember when I thought I was in love, deeply in love with Monica. We went through the puppy love phase, the early stages of dating. She was graduating from Baylor and I was wrestling with what to get her as a graduation gift and she had taken a golf class so I got her a brand new set of women's golf clubs. But I also had recently become a Christian and she and I really took our faith serious and started pursuing Christ and we were about three months in on that and I thought, you know what? Dating as a Christian is really hard. We should get married. It was kind of like the posture of my heart was like, might as well get married. And so I thought, I need an engagement ring. And so I know you're wondering, did he go to Jared's? Did he go to Zales? Did he go to Ladani's? Where did he go? I went to eBay. And so I found an engagement ring on eBay and it was supposedly appraised for $23,000. It was from a jeweler in New York City and I thought, this is incredible.

The next thing you could bid, it was a no reserve auction. So I bid, it was $1,600. So that was about my life savings at the time. So I bid $1,600 and lo and behold, a few days later, it says you've won this auction and I go back and forth with the seller. He wasn't super excited about selling me the ring, but I said, hey, it's a no reserve auction. I won it. And so I'm getting ready to go to Monica's graduation. I'm packing up my things. I live in Dallas at the time. I'm gonna drive down here to Waco. And I hear something at the door on the sidewalk outside my very public apartment. And I go out there and sitting on the welcome mat where lots of people walk by every day is a box. And inside that box is the engagement ring. And so I'm thinking this thing's not real. So I load up in my truck and I head South with a brand new set of women's golf clubs and an engagement ring. And I'm not sure what I'm going to give her for graduation, which one, depending on how the evening goes, if she's gonna get a four iron or be a fiance. And I stopped by a jewelry store and I'm just like, hey, can you guys confirm this is real? Like, I'm not sure this is real. I just wanna make sure. I mean, they just left it outside my apartment.

Is it legit? Is it authentic? And the jeweler there says, well, you want to examine the four Cs. And you guys know the four Cs of a diamond, color, cut, clarity, and carat. He said, that's gonna tell you a lot about the diamond itself. The color, the cut, the clarity, and the carat. And as I thought about the four Cs and he examined it and confirmed, hey, it is real. I went down there to Waco or down here to Waco. Monica walks across the stage. And that evening I didn't propose. She ended up with a brand new set of women's golf clubs. Because while I had an authentic engagement ring in my pocket, I don't think that I was at the level of maturity to love her for the rest of my life, to make that commitment. My love for her was not authentic. And so we're in this series talking about for the love of God. Jesus says this is the greatest commandment. He sums up over 600 commands. He's asked which of these is the greatest. And he says, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. So this is the thing that we can't mess up. This is what we have to get right. We have to know how to love God.

And if I said, how do you love your kids? How do you love your spouse? How do you love your neighbor? You could probably answer those questions, but sometimes people get stumped when you say, how do you love God? And even this word love is confusing. Because I love coffee, and I love to travel, and I love chocolate, and I love my car, and I love my wife, and I love God. Now surely that same word for all of those things can't mean the same in the way that I use it. So what does it mean to love God? How do we know that our love for God is authentic? And that's what we're going to talk about from the scripture today in 1 John chapter. John, the apostle, wrote this letter to believers around Ephesus, in and around Ephesus, not to challenge atheism, but for them to confirm that their faith is real. Do they have a real faith? And so what I'm gonna give you today are four Cs to consider, four Cs. Just like you wanna know if a diamond is authentic, four Cs that will let you know if you have an authentic love for God. And so I'll just dive into this text and what it says. It says, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves his child as well.

This is how we know that we love the children of God. And so the whole text starts by emphasizing, hey, if you love God, then you're gonna love his children. What Jesus did in the great commandment, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. If I would have proposed to Monica on that day, I think the results would have been catastrophic because my love for her was not authentic, but not nearly as catastrophic if we go through life assuming that we have a real love for God only to find out that it was not real, that it was fake, that it was inauthentic. And so here we see that whoever loves God loves the children of God. And we get this because like if somebody comes up to me and they're like, oh, JP, man, I love you. I love your ministry. I bought all your books. I'm your biggest fan. Man, your kids are so annoying. Like I can't stand your kids. I'm gonna be like, oh man, you know, I'm kind of nodding my head as they're sharing and they get to that, I don't like your kids part. And I'm like, whoa, like you don't like my kids. Then you don't like me, right? I mean, that's a really significant part of me. And in fact, I can think like the only time as a believer

I've ever, you know, as I'm following Christ that I've ever been provoked toward violence or like thought about it is when somebody's hurt my kids. And if that's how I feel as an earthly father, imagine how our heavenly father feels when we have bitterness and hate in our heart towards someone who's pursuing him. When our agenda, when the things that we care about grow bigger than loving those of the faith. And I know that we're supposed to love those outside the faith, the Good Samaritan. I understand those stories, but it seems like the scripture prioritizes us loving those inside the church. That's a really big deal. It's a really big deal. And I would just say, likewise, if you wanna bless me, like if you do something kind for me, it's like, man, thank you, that was really kind, I'm grateful. But if you really wanna bless me, you bless my kids. Like I'm a loyalist, you know, it's like you bless my kids, like you're a blessing to my kids. I'm gonna get as creative as I can get to repay you, to thank you, to show you how thankful I am. I mean, you bless my kids, you bless me. And in fact, this past weekend, I did a wedding. Last Sunday, I did a wedding, that's why I was out. And it was a wedding of a Harris Creek small group leader.

And in fact, she happened to be my daughter's small group leader. And so when she asked me to officiate the wedding, which was, you know, near San Antonio, I thought what an honor, like what an incredible privilege it is to be able to play that role in her ceremony. And what was amazing is she actually invited her entire small group to be a part of the wedding. So Finley was in the wedding. And I was, you know, as Finley's walking down the aisle, as kind of a junior bridesmaid, then it was like, I was just moved to tears, thinking about how incredible it has been that Stevie's invested her life into her. And going through the years, just loving our daughter and caring for her. And I'm like, there's nothing that I wouldn't do to, you know, for Monica and I to love and to support this new bride, this ceremony. And again, like if that's how earthly fathers, the scripture says, Matthew 7, though you are wicked, if that's how you care for people, imagine how your heavenly father does. And so how are we called to treat his children? called to love his children. So that's my first point is, how do you treat his children? We have love for his children. And so as we go through these four C's,

the first one is children. And as we move back into the text, it says in verse two, this is how we know that we love the children of God, by loving God and carrying out his commands. In fact, this is love for God to keep his commands and his commands are not burdensome. It says, this is love for God. So in the series, love for God, we're asking, answering the question, how do we love God? The text says over and over, this is love for God to keep his commands. And so how do you handle his commands? If we have an authentic love, we obey his commands. We obey his commands. We do what he asks us to do. And his commands are not burdensome. And so some of you might think, well, yeah, I mean, they are burdensome. Like it's really difficult to not chase the vices of my heart, to not pursue the fleeting pleasures of the world that I want to. And I would just say, you know, as C.S. Lewis says, our desires are not too strong, but too weak, that we have to desire the greater good, the greater thing.

And so you might think like, well, I desire to gamble. And I would say, no, you desire, your deeper desire is to care well for your family, to have enough resources to be generous with. You might think, well, I desire to get drunk. And I would say, no, there's a deeper desire in you. There's a deeper desire in you to be purposeful with your life and to not waste it. You might think that, well, I desire to lust. And I would say, but there's a spirit-driven desire, a foundational desire to the regenerate believer with the new heart, to have a healthy marriage and to love God's people and to pursue a healthy marriage. You might still have a desire to seek revenge on somebody, but the greater desire, the God-given desire is to experience real, true, sustaining peace. And so while you may have a surface-level fleshly desire that wins in the moment, you have a greater desire. You have an overarching God-given, spirit-driven desire to do the things that God desires you to do that lead to life. That's why we can say they're not burdensome because all of God's desires lead to life. And they lead to the blessing that He has for us. It's like, who's gonna win?

The flesh or the spirit? And it's like, well, what are the thoughts that you feed as you're driving down the road? What are the things that you're thinking about? If I ask, the built-in illustration throughout this text is really like a father and his children. And so if I ask my kids to do something as their father, like I say, guys, Finley's in the kitchen. Let's just say, hey, Finley, will you do the dishes? There's dishes are piled up. We're doing things. You're in the kitchen. Will you do the dishes? And I leave for a bit. And I come back and the dishes are still piled up and she's still standing there. Like, I'm gonna be confused. Like, Finley, I thought you were gonna do the dishes. And if she's like, well, I took some time to read about doing the dishes. And in fact, I studied and I memorized the steps that it would take to do the dishes. And I gathered my small group, I called them up and we all circled up and we all prayed about doing the dishes. And we asked the Lord, you know, or do it. And it was weird, like as a result of that, I didn't really feel led to do the dishes. I didn't feel convicted to do the dishes, but dad, you'd be so proud of me.

Because what I did do is I learned how to say dishes in Koine Greek. I learned the Greek, I've studied it that much. I would be like, but wait. You didn't do the dishes. Like you didn't obey what your father asked you to do. And sometimes I think we're so focused on learning all of the commands of God and trying to understand what is the context and what's happening and what's the Greek word. And there can be power in understanding and growing through the disciplines. But ultimately what God wants from us is our obedience. That we would do what he's asked us to do. And this is not unique here to 1 John 5, John the apostle in his gospel, you know, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. John, who spent a lot of time with Jesus. In your Bible in John 14, the word, these words I'll read to you. They're read. These are the words of Jesus. This is where John learned it from. Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commands. That's John 14, verse 15. In verse 21, he says, whoever has my commands and keeps them, this is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my father, and I too will love them and show myself to them. In verse 23, it says, Jesus replied,

anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My father will love them, and we will come to him and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. Same author. This time, this is John writing down what he observed Jesus saying. To love me is to obey my commands. And so what does he want us to do with his commands? We obey his commands. Verse four, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. That's a confusing sentence. For everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world. Underline the word victory. Even our faith. And so I had to go on that, and I was just confused by that phrasing. The word even in the Greek is not there. And so that was that. This is one of those strange translator choices. It would be, it really says in the Greek, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. If you want to put a word there connecting it, like namely our faith. Or you could say,

for everyone born of God overcomes the world. Our faith is the victory that has overcome the world. And so how do we live in creation? The world, right? How do we live in creation? We're victorious over creation. Number three, we're victorious over creation. That's how we know we have an authentic love for God. Cosmos, it's that word we talked about in 1 John 2.15, do not love the world or the things of the world. And we said, but wait a minute, doesn't God love the world? John 3.16. And it's the same word cosmos. We're talking about the elemental spiritual forces of the world. The fallen nature of the world. The fact that Satan is here on earth trying to tempt people away. And Satan wants you to put you at the middle of everything. And so we're not gonna camp here for a long time because we spent an entire week on this and week two for the love of God. Go check that out. But I would liken it to like in creation, there's all kinds of temptation that want to lead you out of right relationship with God. It's like, if you've ever been

to the grocery store hungry. Shopping at the grocery store hungry is different than not being hungry. Like usually you go to the grocery store with a list, you get the things that are on your list, you check them off, you gotta throw in the cart, you put the cart on the belt, back in the cart, you're down the road. But you go to the grocery store hungry and all of a sudden you're buying new flavors of Pop-Tarts. You're buying pre-made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that you put in the toaster because you saw them on TikTok. You're buying things in the aisle. Like as you're checking out, there's something in the aisle, you're like, yeah, I wonder if that, I bet you that tastes good, let's try that. You're buying pizza rolls that you know that are not good for you, but you've got like a craving. Why? Because you're hungry. Because you're hungry. We don't wanna go through God's creation. We don't wanna walk around in this fallen world right now, looking to feed the cravings of our flesh. We wanna be full of faith in the Father. We wanna walk here resisting the pull because we're full of faith, because we're abiding in Him. Living by faith means that we can resist the desires of the flesh. So how do we live in creation?

The word there is victory. We're victorious over creation. We're victorious over creation. And verse five says, who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the son of God. So he kind of wraps all of this up, talking about Christ. And in the context, he's like, you have victory. In the context, he says, his commands are not burdensome. In the context, he's saying, you're the children of God. You have a good father. And so what do you do with Christ? We enjoy faith in Christ. If we have an authentic love for God, we enjoy faith in Christ. And that's Christ being the fourth. here and we enjoy faith in Christ. Victory, that word there, that's what we receive through the gospel. That Christ has overcome the world, that Christ has overcome death, so we don't walk around looking for something to feed our flesh. We understand that we have been created for another world, that we're not constantly, you know, listening to our own appetite. He says, Paul writes to the church in Philippi, you know, their God is their stomach, their destiny is destruction, their mind is set on earthly things. That's not you and me. We're not enemies of the cross of Christ. We have received grace through the cross of Christ. We have received a good inheritance through the cross of Christ. We have received victory through the cross of Christ, and so we're not just walking in a spiritual maturity of knowledge, but actually the enjoyment of God. Like one of the most encouraging things that my children say to me on occasion, and there's times they don't say it, but when they do, Dad, I'm so glad you're my dad. I'm so glad you're my dad. I'm so thankful that you're my dad. That's one of the greatest things they can say to me, and I mean, I treasure

those moments in my heart, and this is what God wants from us. Father in heaven, I'm so thankful that you're my father, that you're my God. I'm thankful for what you've done for me through Jesus Christ. He's a loving God, and then it says, you know, his commands are not burdensome, that everything that he asks of us is for our good, and you know, Nate said week one in this greatest command, you know, that it is, that what he's asking of us when he says to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, that it's for our good that God went first. That's what Nate said. He said he loved us first, and John elaborated as we were talking about what keeps us from loving God, that God went first, that we love because he first loved us. The day after I did that wedding, so the day after a wedding started, a marriage started, I had just seen one end, not through divorce, but through the death of our loved one, Pam here, and I watched Steve pursue his wife. I mean, they had what I had the privilege of saying the next day, right after that wedding, at Pam's celebration of life, you might call it a funeral, I got to share this one thing of just watching their marriage, and even in her last days, I saw Steve take great joy in pursuing his wife, and when chemotherapy had taken away all of her hair, he loved his wife. When she's in physical therapy, he's helping his wife. When a stroke had stolen her smile, I saw Steve love and pursue his wife, and it's one of the greatest examples of love I've ever seen on earth, and one of the most beautiful pictures of a Christ-centered marriage for me, and as she went home, and she's in the fullness of the presence of God, you know, with Jesus in his presence, I just saw a man so faithful in that loss, and it reminded me, one, the metaphor of marriage, how Christ loves us, how God pursues us through his Son, that we're waiting for his return, and I saw someone that understood the covenant that they made, that they loved even till the end, till the last day, saying, if anything but death separates me from you, and it was stirring for me. This is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith, and so what do we do with Christ? We trust in his death and resurrection for the forgiveness of our sins, knowing that we've been reconciled to God because of the work that he did

for us through his Son, Jesus Christ, and we enjoy faith in Christ. That's number four, we enjoy faith in Christ, and so how do you know, and I'll wrap up with this, how do you know that you have an authentic love for God? You love his children, you obey his commands, you have victory over creation. and you enjoy faith in Christ. And so that's not just four C's. If you look at that, those first kind of action words there at the beginning, love, obey, victory, and enjoy. It's the reminder that this is authentic love for God. When I went to Monaco on that day, I had an authentic cream, but I didn't have an authentic glove. And what happened between that day and the day that I actually got down on one knee is I grew in my knowledge and my understanding of what God did for me through his son, Jesus Christ. I got plugged into his church. I became a member. I surrounded myself with his people. I began to read this book for the first time in my life and really understand what it says and what it's calling me to as a potential husband. And so that when I went to her, when I went to Monica Rubin in 2004, and I said, will you marry me? Will you be my wife? I could do so knowing that my love for her was authentic. That, you know, I was saying no to every other temptation of this world.

I'm saying no to any and all other lovers. And Jesus is asking you today, are you ready to do that? Are you ready to say yes to him and no to all other lovers, all other elemental spiritual forces of this world, all other fleeting temptations? Listen, I couldn't make Monica marry me, right? She had a choice. I asked the question and she had a choice. I couldn't make her love me. And likewise, Jesus is asking you now, will you be his and only his? And he can't force you to. You now have a choice. Do I want to have an authentic love for God through his son and forsaking all others will keep you only and to myself beyond death, not just until death do us part, but beyond death that we would be with him forever and ever and ever. I'm gonna pray and then we're just gonna move back into a song before we close. Father, thank you that your word does not return void. Father, thank you for the ways that you love us through the cross. Thank you for the ways that you've been faithful through your son. I pray that you would help us to forsake all other fleeting temptations in this world, that you would fill our hearts with love for you,

that we would love your children, that we would obey your commands, that we would have victory over creation and that we would enjoy faith in Christ, that the four C's, how we treat your children, what we do with your commands, what we do in your creation, what we do with Christ, those four C's would mark our lives. We would have an authentic love for you. We worship you now in Jesus' name, amen. I'm gonna sing this. ♪ For creation suddenly articulate ♪ ♪ A thousand tongues lift one cry ♪ ♪ From north to south and east to west ♪ ♪ May Christ be magnified ♪ ♪ Amen, amen, amen ♪ Now hold it. ♪ When the earth echoed with the birds ♪ ♪ They came with birds from sea and sky ♪ ♪ From rivers to mountains and seas ♪ ♪ May Christ be magnified ♪ Oh, Christ. ♪ See me go, Christ be magnified ♪ ♪ Let His praise rise, Christ be magnified in me ♪ ♪ See me go, Christ be magnified ♪ ♪ The altar of my life, Christ be magnified in me ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ Would you? Preacher.

♪ When every creature fights against my will ♪ ♪ And every human heart is beaten, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ I'm coming back to Him He's coming back to me He's coming back to me He lifts me up He's sending me home Christ is my divine He's coming back to me Christ is my divine He's sending me home Christ be magnified The altar of my life Christ be magnified In me Oh be magnified I won't bow my eyes I won't worship you Christ be magnified He's lost His divinity I won't beg for my things I won't ask for what is true The cross brings transfiguration I won't be crucified with you I won't let the thirst of the Lord Take me as a wretched child I won't do anything wrong But I'll join you in the fight I won't do anything wrong But I'll be humble in the face

I won't look and see But I'll stand up and be in His face Oh Christ be magnified Let His praise arise Christ be magnified In me Oh Christ be magnified The altar of my life Christ be magnified In me To praise God from whom No one seems to know And praise Him all creatures In me know And praise Him above In me know And praise by His Son In all me know In me know Church, I so badly wish I could be with you today in person. But I'm grateful that you're safe and that you're able to see this. I'm thankful for technology. I keep thinking about Steve Wilson in the last day of Pan's Live. He would sing over her and had the privilege of getting to visit her there in that not normal bed, you know, that hospital bed in their bedroom.

He would pray over her every day and sing over her. And she's reunited. You know, I'm so envious of everything that Pan sees today. But the only reason those two could love each other in that way that is otherworldly is because they had an authentic love for God. Because their love for God, it's the real deal. And that's what I'm praying for our body today. That our love for God would be the real deal. So we'll gather together next week in our church building. But the church still gathers today, even though we are apart, we're still gathered today around His Word. I love you guys. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.