Resolved: To Pursue Life's Highest Priority! - Part 3

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Well, as we've begun this new year, as we've begun it, we have turned to Deuteronomy 6 to sort of settle our minds on what is really the chief priority of our lives and should be for the year that lies before us. I invite you to turn there with me one last time this morning even as we prepare our hearts for the Lord's Table – Deuteronomy 6 where we're talking really about our heart for God.

I was thinking this week about a problem that runs in my family. Heart murmurs basically run in my extended family. And about ten years ago, the doctors recognized some problem with my heart, decided that I needed to take a stress test to see exactly what issues that I might have. If you ever had a stress test, you know what it's like. They hook up various electrodes all over your chest and head, and then they put you on a treadmill. And every three or four minutes, they increase the speed of the treadmill and the incline of the treadmill essentially until you give out, as best I could tell, or something else happens. Fortunately, in my case, nothing else happened.

I took it as a bit of a competition. That's kind of my nature. My wife got onto me, but my first question was, "So what's the longest anyone's made it on the treadmill?" And they told me, and so I sort of set that as my personal goal. I didn't quite make it, but I got close, and I don't think that was the point of the test. But they discovered through the test a fairly common heart murmur type condition, that I have other siblings who have, and they gave me, apart from that, a clean bill of health.

That test was intended to determine the health of my physical heart. This morning, I want us to come to Deuteronomy 6 again because here after Moses tells us to love God, he gives us a kind of spiritual electrocardiogram, a sort of spiritual stress test to see the health of our love for God, a test intended to show the condition of our spiritual heart. Let me read it for you again. Deuteronomy 6:4,

"Hear, O Israel! [Yahweh] … is our God, [Yahweh] … is one! [And] You shall love [Yahweh] … your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. And you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on your doorposts of your house and on your gates."

In those verses, Moses tells us what it really means to love God. And specifically, as we've discovered together as we walk through this passage, really, he provides us with four key insights on loving God. So far, we've looked at the first three. Let me remind you of them.

The first was its preeminent claim. This command takes preeminence over all others. And we saw that both in the "hear, O Israel" with which it begins, that sort of solemn declaration, as well as the context in which this command was given.

Secondly, we saw its personal confession. If you're going to love God, you must confess the one true God, the God who has revealed Himself as the eternal "I am" and whom Jesus taught us to refer to as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It must be the God of the Bible, the God who has revealed Himself. You must confess Him and Him alone to be your God and acknowledge that He is uniquely in that position; there are no others. It's a personal confession.

Last week, we looked at love's precise character, its precise character. What is it? Well, verse 5 tells us, "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might." True love, we learned, has certain characteristics regardless of what the object of that love is. We discovered that a love for God is a decision that leads to exclusive allegiance to Him. We discovered that love for God is actions, actions of selfless service toward God. And we discovered that love is an emotion, an emotion of genuine affection for God because of who He is as well as what He has done.

And Moses said we're to demonstrate that kind of love with all our hearts and with all our souls; in other words, with our whole self – with our mind, our will, our emotions, our desires, our entire being. And Moses adds that we are to render that love to God with all our might. It's to be consistent, and it is to be maximum effort. I love the paraphrase that I brought to your attention last time from Christopher Wright, who paraphrased this verse as: "Love the Lord your God with total commitment with your total self to total excess." That's the command. That's the precise character of the command to love God.

Now today, I want us to look at the fourth and final insight that Moses gives us here about our love for God. The fourth insight is its practical consequences, love's practical consequences. We see this in verses 6 - 9. An all-encompassing love for God will find expression in a willing and joyful obedience to the commands of God, to the Word of God. That's the theme of verses 6 - 9. Notice he begins verse 6, "These words, which I am commanding you…." Specifically, he's referring to the commandment to love God as the summary of all the other commands. And notice that all the verbs that follow have to do with our response to the Word of God. If you look through verses 6 - 9, they're all about our response to God's Word, to His commandments. Moses is saying here that a love for God will demonstrate itself in a life immersed in the Word of God.

In fact, it's interesting. Only one man in all of the Old Testament is said to have responded to God with all his heart and soul and might. You know who that man is? His name is Josiah. He was a king of Judah. Listen to 2 Kings 23:25 – "Before [Josiah' … there was no king like him who turned to the LORD with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might (listen to this), according to all the law of Moses; nor did any like him arise after him." Did you see what distinguished his turning to God with all his heart and soul and might? It was in accordance with the Word of God.

That's what Moses is telling us here in these verses. If you want to measure your love for God, you want to measure how much do I love God, measure your love for, your passion for the Word of God. Now, Moses shows us this because he gives us four additional commands here in verses 6 - 9. And these commands identify four practical consequences of love for God. If you love God, you're going to respond in these ways. And all four of these practical consequences have to do with the Word of God. If you love God, these things will be true.

Number one: the first practical consequence is you will study and meditate on God's Word. You will study and meditate on God's Word. Look at verse 6, "These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart." Shall be on your heart - as if they were imprinted there. In fact, this same verb is used in chapter 11 and is translated "impress". Impress these words upon your heart. We could say engrave these words upon your heart.

And by the way, remember the Hebrew word for "heart" here is not like our English word talking about your emotions. Instead, it is the seat of your person. It is your intellect, your will, your mind, your intention. So, to be "on the heart" means God's words are to be in our constant, conscious mind, in our reflection. We are to think about God's Word. We are to meditate on God's Word. Moses' point is that the Word of God is to be at the center of our minds, controlling and directing our thoughts, governing our moral decisions day in and day out and determining our affections, what it is we love. It is to be front and center in our hearts. This is talking about taking God's Word seriously because to know them you have to study them; you have to think about them.

It reminds me of Joshua 1:8. You remember that passage where God tells Joshua, "'I don't want you to let the Law of God depart from your mouth." In other words, I want you to read it. In the ancient world, they read out loud. And so, when He says I don't want it to depart from your mouth, He's saying I want you to read it. I want you to read it again and again. And I want you to "meditate on it (why?) … so that you may be careful to do it."

Or think of Psalm 1 where the righteous man is described. How is a righteous man described? "His delight is in the law of the LORD, And in His law he meditates day and night." That's what Moses is saying. We have to have lives that are known by study and thoughtful meditation on the Word of God.

Let me ask you this morning. I want you to answer this question in your own heart and mind. Every person here, answer this question. Do you know how to study the Bible? Let's start there. Do you know how to study the Bible? I mean, really. Do you know how to study the Bible like we're studying it here on Sunday morning? If not, there are tools available to help you learn how to study the Bible. Go to our bookstore or go online and buy John Macarthur's book on How to Study the Bible or buy Gordon Fee's book How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth. But get some resource that will help you learn how to study God's Word. Go online and listen to the teaching seminar that I did here a number of years ago now - well actually, just a couple of years. And the first part of that really isn't about teaching; it's about learning how to study God's Word. But do something. Learn how to study God's Word. If you're going to love God, you got to take His book seriously.

Maybe you're here this morning, and you say, "Yeah, I know how to study God's Word." Well, let me ask you a question. Do you consistently set aside time almost every day to seriously study a passage from the Bible? If not, why not? You say, "Well, you know, life's busy." Listen. David was busy. He was a king. Our Lord was busy. He was here to bring the redemption of mankind. I think it's frankly the height of arrogance for us to say, "You know, He wasn't too busy to do those things, but I am." We make time for what's important to us. We all do. And if you love God, this will be important to you. Make a New Year's resolution to set aside time each day that you will put God's Word on your heart. Do you study it?

Let me ask you this. Do you meditate on what you study? There are Christians who give themselves to studying the Bible. They go to Bible studies, and they get up in the morning; and they have their time in the Word of God; and they read and they, and you should do that. But then they fold up their Bible; they put it in the drawer and close it; or they put it on the shelf and leave it; and they never think again about what they studied that morning until they pick it up the next day. Listen, the Bible's not a magic book. It's not going to transform you by osmosis. We need to meditate on it. Meditation is absolutely crucial. In both Joshua 1:8, in Psalm 1:2 and many other passages, meditation (Psalm 119), meditation is crucial to getting the Word of God in us.

What is meditation? Here's a very simple definition. It's not, it's not something esoteric and out there, mystical. Meditation is choosing to think deeply about God's Word in order to better understand it and to plan how to do it. That's it; choosing to think deeply about God's Word in order to better understand it and to plan how to do it in your life. That's meditation.

The first practical consequence of loving God is that you will have His Word on your heart. That means you'll study it; you'll know what it means; you'll be thinking about it; you'll carry it around with you in your heart throughout the day. That'll be a consequence of loving God. And frankly, if that isn't true, to whatever degree it's not true, you don't love God. That's what Moses is saying.

There's a second practical consequence of loving God and that is you will teach your family God's Word; you will teach your family God's Word. Look at verse 7, "You shall teach them diligently to your sons...." Once you understand the commandments yourself, you're then responsible for your family. And truly loving God assumes that you will long for others to know and love the God you know and love. And that starts with those that are closest and dearest to you, your own family. If you want to know if you love God, ask yourself this question. Do I attempt to teach my children God's Word?

By the way, the Hebrew word translated "teach" here is a very interesting word. It's the only time this Hebrew word is used in all the Old Testament. It literally means to repeat. You shall repeat them diligently to your sons. It refers to oral teaching that leaves an impression in the mind of our children by our constant repetition. The picture behind this word is that of an engraver who has a stone, a piece of granite before him which may in some cases compare to the minds of our children. And the responsibility is to engrave into that stone the truth. And with stroke after stroke after stroke, the engraver slowly etches the text into that solid piece of granite. The words aren't there on that stone after just a few strokes. He has to strike it again and again and again in order to create those valleys that ultimately form the words.

That's how it is with our instruction. That's what we must do with the minds of our children. We must teach them in the sense that we must repeat them again and again diligently. We, we see this in everyday matters, don't we? I mean, how many times have you said to your kids, "Don't lean back in the chair. Close the door when you go out. Make sure the refrigerator door is closed. Go take a bath and use soap." Well, I know I'm not the only one who's ever said these things to my kids when they were growing up. Maybe you've seen that Internet sensation of the words a mom says in a twenty-four-hour period set to the "1812 Overture" and then she just repeats them again the next day. I loved it when my kids saw that because they realized that we weren't the only parents who said those things. And we say them over and over and over again (why?) because repetition is the best aid to learning both with our children and with us.

And this is how we're to think about the task of teaching our children the Word of God. You can't tell your children something one time and they get it: "'Okay, sweetheart. Here it is. From now on, every time somebody does something nice to you, I want you to say thank you." Okay, whew. That lesson's done. We can move onto the next one. It doesn't work that way with the Word of God either. This is a heavy responsibility.

In Psalm 78, in fact the words of Psalm 78 are in our children's building down there reminding us that we have the responsibility to pass on to the generation now the words and works of the Lord so that a generation yet to be born might hear them and understand them. We're thinking multi-generational here in this approach. It's not just your kids, not just your grandkids.

And by the way, let me just say that Deuteronomy 6 has been abused by some in the Christian community. This text is not demanding a certain kind of formal education as opposed to other approaches. Instead, this is a demand that parents intentionally communicate God's Word to their children. Moses' point is that we are to use the influence God has given us to impart a love for and obedience to God's Word in the people over whom we have influence.

And guys, let me just talk to you for a moment. It is not the primary responsibility of our wives to see this happen. It is not the primary responsibility of this church to see this happen. It is not the primary responsibility of the children's workers to see this happen or of our youth pastor. They can all help, and they do, but when we stand before God, we give an account for our having done it. It is our job first and foremost. You say, "'You know, I hear you and when I hear that, I always feel guilty. I don't do what I should do on this front, but I don't know where to start." Listen. Start by doing something. You don't have to be John Macarthur. Just communicate the truth.

You know, my dad was not a teacher. He was a music director like Seth. I said in the first hour, "You know, that doesn't mean Seth can't teach." But my, my dad couldn't teach. He wasn't a teacher. But you know what? Every morning, he woke our family up (I'm not making this up) at 5:30 a.m., and we had breakfast together. 5:30 a.m. – why? Because we only had two bathrooms and a lot of kids. It takes a while to cycle through everybody before school and work and everything else. But every morning at 5:30, we got up, and we came to the table, and we all sat around this table for this wonderful breakfast my mom had prepared, but it sat there on the table until my dad opened his Bible, and he read a passage to us all. He read it with respect. He closed it. He prayed to God with respect. And that's all he did.

I'm not suggesting that's all you should do, but I'm saying start with something. And that pattern in my life impressed on me a respect for the Word of God and for God Himself. It's a good start. Or maybe buy Donald Whitney's book, his helpful little book called Family Worship. Do something. Right now, I'm leading my own family through the Fundamentals of the Faith, that, that curriculum on sort of the foundational truths of the Christian faith. But do something. If you love God, you will want your family to love God as well, and you will want them to know Him through His Word.

There's a third practical consequence of loving God. It's you will saturate your daily conversation with God's Word. You'll saturate your daily conversation. Look at verse 7, "you shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up." Now these words could be just a further explanation of teaching your children – teach your children like this. And in fact, they're used that way later in chapter 11:19: "You shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house … when you walk … down the road … when you lie down … when you rise up." They're used that way.

But here in Deuteronomy 6 I think it's best to take them as a separate command because of the grammatical construction of the Hebrew text. It seems to imply this is a separate command from teaching your children at this point. So, Moses' point in the second half of, of verse 7 is that the Law is to be a topic of ordinary conversation in everyday life – when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way. In other words, when you're at home, when you're away from home - what does that mean? Is there anywhere else? You're either home, or you're not at home. This is everywhere. Wherever you are is the point. When you lie down and when you rise up. – Is there any other time? You're either lying down, or you're, you're rising up. The point is all the time, wherever you are at all times.

Now this verse actually shaped the pattern and still does of Jewish daily worship because the rabbis taught that this verse required a morning and evening recitation - when you rise up and when you lie down. So, you should recite verses 4 - 9, they said, along with the other verses in the Shema morning and evening. And they still do that to this day. But that isn't Moses' point. He's not saying to recite those things twice a day. His point is if you love God, the Word of God will be a constant part of your daily conversation wherever you are, whatever you're doing throughout the day from morning till night. It will permeate your life and conversations.

He's saying if you love God, you're not going to put His Word in a box. You're not going to put God in this tidy little box that you keep in your personal devotion time, and then you box Him back up, and you put Him in the drawer because He doesn't really have anything to do with the rest of life. And I can go work and have entertainment and have friends and do whatever I want and that doesn't really matter. Listen. God will not be kept in a box and we're not to do that. He and His Word are to permeate our daily conversation wherever we are, whatever time of day it is. It's to be the outflow of our lives. We're to let the Word of God spill over into every part of life, intentionally making Him a regular part and His Word a regular part of our conversation.

And that's a measurement of our love for God. Ask yourself, do you find yourself thinking about God and His Word, talking about God and His Word throughout your day in various contexts? To whatever extent that's not true, it's an indication of an unhealthy love for God.

There's a fourth practical consequence of loving God. It's in verses 8 and 9. Let's call it, you will occupy yourself with applying God's Word. You will occupy yourself with applying God's Word. Notice the expressions in verse 8, "write them", "bind them as a sign" - "bind them as a sign" and then verse 9, "write them". This was originally understood to be a metaphor, just a word picture to communicate a truth. But later, the Jewish rabbis interpreted these words literally so that by the time of Christ, there was the practice of literally binding these passages on your body and on your door and on your gates. The ones on the body were called phylacteries. You can read about them in Matthew 23:5. Jesus castigates the Pharisees for them.

Phylacteries were simply small leather boxes. Picture a tiny, little leather box. And inside that leather box was a tiny scroll with four passages written on them, the Shema – Deuteronomy 6:4-9, Deuteronomy 11:13-21, Exodus 13:1-10 and Exodus 13:11-16 - those four passages written in tiny little print on this little scroll rolled up and stuck inside that little leather box. And then they would take straps, and they would tie that leather box around their forehead because it says between your eyes. And it says, notice, "on your hand". And so, they would also have a box on their, usually their left arm and the box would be located up near the heart. That was to indicate that they had a real love for God and His Word. These are called phylacteries. Then once they tied those boxes to their foreheads and their left arms near their heart, they would recite the Shema. Morning and evening, they would recite this passage along with the others.

Now obviously, it's impractical to wear those little boxes, you know, everywhere you go. And so, they isolated the wearing of them to the time when they were specifically reciting these passages morning and night which was frankly a tacit admission that they were word pictures after all and not intended to be taken literally because we're told to do this all the time.

This still happens by the way. When a group of us went over to Israel, I've been over there now several times, but back in 2008 when a group from our church went, we went to the Western Wall. There on the temple mount, there's only, the temple's not there; instead, just the large sort of open platform on which the temple stood. And the retaining wall of that platform that is original is still there. It's called the Western Wall, or the Wailing Wall, you may have heard it described. And Jews go there to pray.

And right by that Western Wall is a vendor. Picture, you know, one of those carts like in the mall. That's really what it's like. There's a cart sitting there, a little vendor cart. And he's there to rent phylacteries. And I have pictures that I took, others took on our trip. I've seen it each time I've been there. You rent your phylacteries, and someone will help you wrap that leather cord around your arm with a little box with the, the scrolls in it and then around your forehead here. And then you go to the Western Wall, you pay him money, you go to the Western Wall, you pray and then you come check back in your rented phylacteries. That's not what was meant here.

Eventually, rabbis took the same ultra-literal approach with the doorpost. You see the word "doorposts"? In Hebrew, the word "doorposts" is "mezuzah". It came to describe a small metal, usually metal cylinder containing again a piece of parchment inscribed with portions of the Shema. That "mezuzah" was then affixed to the right-hand doorpost. If you go in a Jewish home, or I had one on my home for a long time I got in Israel. It's just a little box containing a scroll with portions of the Scripture. And as they go by it, they touch it, or they kiss their hand. It's an indication of their love and respect.

But clearly, these expressions are not to be taken ultra-literally like that. They are metaphors. In fact, the same expressions are used of the Feast of Unleavened Bread in Exodus 13. You don't see anybody walking around with a piece of moldy bread on their forehead or on their forearm. They're metaphors. To bind and to write are used metaphorically for writing the Word of God on every area of my life. It's a beautiful picture of the application of truth to every part of life.

In fact, Moses mentions three aspects of life here in which we are to seek to apply the Word of God. Notice verse 8, "on your hand" and "on your forehead" – that's our personal life. Verse 9, "on your doorposts" – that has to do with our family life. And then "on your gates" – that has to do with our public life. Individual homes in the ancient world rarely had gates; instead, the city gate was crucial in a town. It was the place where there was the center of public activity. That's where court was held; and it's where there was a marketplace; and it's where there were businesses of various kinds. There were all kinds of transactions that occurred there.

So, Moses' point is that we are to be diligent to apply the Word of God and to pursue the love of God practically in every area of our lives. No part of life is to be excluded - our personal life, our family life and our public life. And ultimately, folks, this is the truest and greatest test of our love for God. Do you seek to apply the Word of God to your life? Or to put it differently, do you seek to live in obedience to the commands God has given us? That's the truest test of your love.

And by the way, throughout the Scripture, that's the test that's raised as the truest test. What did our Lord say in John 14:15? "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments." There it is. And by the way, our Lord did this perfectly. He lived a life of love shown in His obedience to the Father. I love what He says in John 14:31. Right after He said, "If you love Me, you'll keep My commandments", later in that same chapter He says this: "so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as He commanded Me." There's how you show your love.

Listen. People talk all the time about loving God. But I don't care how emotional you get. I don't care how many goose bumps you feel, how many layers of goose bumps you feel. I don't care what kind of visions you think you may have had and all of that means you love God. If you don't love God's Word and seek to live it out and apply it in your life, you don't love God. That's what Moses is saying.

The practical consequences of loving God all have to do with His Word. You will study and meditate on God's Word. You will teach your family God's Word. You will saturate your daily conversations with God's Word. You will occupy yourself with applying God's Word to every area of life. If you truly love God, you will love and obey His Word. Psalm 1:2 will describe you. Think about it. If you're going to describe a righteous man; if you were going to put a psalm at the opening gate to the psalter; and you were going to end that psalm, try to capture what it means to be a man who loves God, a righteous man, how would you describe him? What would you say? The psalmist was content to say this about him: "He delights in the law of God, and in His law he meditates day and night."

Now, as we conclude our study of Deuteronomy 6, I want you to consider very briefly two very practical questions for your own heart that flow out of our study, two very practical questions.

Question number one: how healthy is your spiritual heart? How healthy is your love for God? There are medical tests to determine how healthy our physical heart is. The Bible gives us tests that show the health of our love for God. Here in Deuteronomy 6, we've seen one of those tests. Do you love God's Word? Do you love His Word and seek to obey it? That's a test of whether or not you love God. There are other tests in other places in Scripture. I'm not going to take you there, but let me just give you a couple of others to consider, to add to this test to see how your love for God is.

A second one is if you love God, you will believe in Jesus and follow Him. If you love God, you're going to believe in Jesus. Jesus said that. Listen to what He said in John 5:42. He says to some of the Jews there: "I know you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves." Wow. This is Jesus talking. You don't love God. Why? He says "because I have come … and you do not receive Me." If you really loved God, Jesus said, you would receive Me because the Father sent Me. Do you receive and follow Jesus Christ?

There's a third test of love – not only love for His Word and obedience to it, faith in Christ; thirdly, love for other believers, love for other believers. First John 4:20 says, "If someone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen." There it is. Listen. You cannot love God without loving His Word, without loving His Son and without loving His children. It's impossible.

What about another test, a fourth test? Persevering in trial. How do you do when hard times come? Do you sort of throw up your hands and say, "I knew it? God isn't good, and this isn't worth it. This whole Christianity thing isn't paying off for me. This isn't what I bought into. I wanted an easy life. I didn't want a marriage like this. I didn't want this financial situation. I didn't want this health problem. I didn't want kids who turn out like this."

James 1 says, verse 12, "Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial; for he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him." Listen. That trial is a test of your love. Do you really love Christ more or do you love all the stuff He brings?

Do you find your joy and delight in God? I mean, really. Do you find delight in God? Listen to Psalm 5:11 – "… let all who take refuge in You be glad, Let them ever sing for joy; … may You shelter them, That those who love Your name may exult in You (may enjoy You, may find their pleasure in You)." If you love God, you can say with the psalmist, 'You are all I need. You are my portion forever. If I didn't get anything else, and I got You, that would be enough.' Is that how you think? Those are tests of your love for God. How'd you do? How's your spiritual heart?

There's a second question very briefly. What contributes to our growth in love for God? You say, "Okay, I do love God, but frankly I need to grow in that love." We all do. I do. You do. How? How do we promote the growth of the love of God?

Number one, what promotes and encourages greater love for God? Number one: the gift of God's grace in salvation. It starts there. You cannot love God in and of yourself. You can't sit here this morning and hear this message (if you're not already changed by God), you cannot sit here, hear this message and go out and love God – not going to happen. The standard's too high. It's impossible. It can't be done. In fact, right after Moses commands all of this, look over at Deuteronomy 30. Deuteronomy 30:6, "The LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and all your soul, so that you may live." God has to do this.

You cannot love God like this on your own. He has to change you. And by the way, read the first part of that chapter, chapter 30. It requires repentance – turning to God from your sin and, as we saw in the New Testament, putting your faith in Christ. And when that happens, He changes your heart. He circumcises your heart and enables you to love Him. It starts there. You can only love God when God changes your heart.

If you're here this morning and you're not in Christ, you don't have the capacity to love God. You will only love yourself or something else, but never the true God because you can't until He changes you, which puts you in the position of a beggar coming to God and crying out for His mercy and for His change.

There's a second way to promote the love of God, and this is for those who are in Christ: the work of the Spirit. It's the work of the Spirit. Galatians 5:22, the fruit the Spirit produces when He's present is (what?) love. The Spirit does this. Again, Christian, you don't have the capacity to crank this up on your own. This is something the Spirit has to do. So, where does that leave us? It leaves us praying. It leaves us praying that God would increase our love. You see that throughout the New Testament - praying that Your love may abound. Pray that God would increase your love for Him and for His Son and for His Word, that His Spirit would have that work in you.

There's one practical thing you can do beyond praying (which is also practical) and that is develop a deeper understanding of God's love for you in Christ. Develop a deeper understanding of God's love for you in Christ. That passage we read this morning, Luke 7, Jesus says, "The one who's been forgiven much (what?) loves much." It's not that the prostitute and the Pharisee, one needed to be forgiven a lot and the other needed to be forgiven a little. That isn't the point. They both needed to be forgiven a lot. The point is one understood what she had been forgiven and the other probably hadn't been forgiven at all, so he, he wasn't going to love.

It's only as we come to grips with the forgiveness and love we've been shown in Christ that our own love for Him responds. First John 4 says, "We love Him (what?) because He first loved us." We respond to His love. And as our understanding of God's love for us in Christ deepens, our love for Him grows. That's what he prays in Ephesians 3, you remember? "I want you to grow in your understanding of the love of Christ for you so that you will grow in your love and response." Think about Christ. Think about the cross. Think about what you've been forgiven. Meditate on those realities, and it will drive you to a deeper love for Him in response.

Our Father, we thank You for the blood of Christ. We thank You for the wonderful reality that we stand in Him complete, all our sins washed away.

Lord, we love the image that we would never have dared to use if You had not taught us – that we now appear to You, although our souls were deeply stained with sin, we appear as white snow. Lord, we love You, and we thank You for Your love toward us. Lord, may our reminding, reminder here and reminding ourselves of the love that You have shown us in Christ even through this wonderful ordinance, may it deepen our love for You as we contemplate Your amazing love.

We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.