How Can You Love God?

As most of you know, I typically don't use PowerPoint when I preach, but this morning we're going to be flying all over the Bible. And I want you to be able to jot, at least jot down the references that I'm giving you, alright? This is one of those, and frankly this summer is going to be kind of topical, because as we talk over some of these things, we're going to be spending over many parts of the Bible.

And then come fall, we'll be back into the books of 1 and 2 Thessalonians. So, consequently, the PowerPoint this morning. We want to talk about how you can love God. one of the things that used to frustrate me as a young christian was people would tell me things i would hear things but no one would tell me how to do it and so i want to encourage you today as we just kind of scratch the surface and maybe hopefully give you some ideas that are consistent with the bible as to how you can grow in your love for god and understand that as i'm preaching to you.

I'm preaching to me in this area. This is an area where I need to grow, just like all of us do. So before we look into the Word of God, let's ask God to bless this time together. Father, we're thankful again that you have brought us together, that we might hear together the Word of God, and that having heard, we might talk and encourage one another with the Word of God.

I would pray today Father that in your great mercy and your marvelous grace you would excite in our minds this idea of growing more in love with you and teaching us how to do it help us to get an understanding of this so that we may better learn to love you thank you that you have revealed yourself in your word that you have not left us in the dark but that you have clearly shown yourself in all your beauty and your splendor in this word. Help us to approach it today for what it is, the living word of God, speaking directly to us expressing the mind of our God Oh God help us to see it that way In Jesus name Amen Well, we've noted last week, God commands you to love Him with your whole being. In fact, Jesus, who is the final word from God, has told us this sums up everything that we need to understand about God.

That is that we need to love God. That all of Scripture hangs on two commandments. Loving God and loving your neighbor. And I think this is important for us to explore because we're all saying to ourselves, love God. I'm not even loving my wife or my husband the way I should. I'm not even loving my children the way I should.

Frankly, I'm not even loving my dog the way I ought to. And now you're saying, I ought to love God with all my heart, soul, and mind. Jesus, how do we do that? Well, let's talk about that today. Jesus makes it clear that this is the defining commandment for his people over all the ages, even under the old covenant, under the new covenant. This is the thing that remains the same, that we are required to love our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and we're required to love our neighbor as ourselves.

And so this week, we want to explore what it looks like to love God. and how we can grow in that love. What are some of the things that we can do? How do we see this? How can you do those things? And what I want to do is to give us a picture of where it comes from and how we ought to do that. Well, first of all, let's ask this question.

What does it mean to love God? Well, when we ask that question, we have to say, where does your love for God originate? Where does it start? That's a good place to start. And that's a good question because truth be known, you are incapable of loving God. And that's the first thing we need to understand.

We're incapable of loving God. No, God actually commands you to love Him, and frankly, it is not a burdensome command. So let's take our Bibles and let's go back to Deuteronomy 6. Deuteronomy 6. This is kind of a key text And remember now as you turning to Deuteronomy this is Moses last sermon to God people Deuteronomy chapter 6, and we'll begin in verse 4.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk with them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise.

You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. God actually commands you to love Him, but this should not be a burdensome command. This command comes after Moses has recalled the history of a merciful, loving, gracious God. He has talked to these people this whole history of God's grace to them.

Of God's mercy to them. He delivered them. He rehearses the fact that He delivered them from slavery and oppression. He defeated the Amorites for them. And unlike all the other nations, their God is near to them. And whenever they call on Him, He will be found.

He is merciful. and they will find Him whenever they seek Him. And all of it was to show them, as it says in chapter 4, the Lord is God in heaven, above and on earth, beneath there is no other. All of this leading up to this point. But the problem is, they will not love this God who has been merciful to them. They will not love Him. This covenant-keeping, steadfast, loving God.

Turn over to Deuteronomy chapter 10. By the way, when I say we're going to be running all over Scripture, I mean it. Alright? Deuteronomy chapter 10, verses 12 through 16. And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? But to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good.

Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth, with all that is in it Yet the Lord set His heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them you above all peoples as you are this day Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart and be no longer stubborn. Now love Him and fear Him. Instead of being stubborn, they have uncircumcised, stubborn hearts, He says to them.

You're stubborn. You've got to love God. Ezekiel later will tell them centuries later will say you're guilty of having hearts of stone unresponsive hearts that do not respond to God the Apostle Paul describes it in different terms in Ephesians chapter 2 when he writes this and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world following the prince of the power of the air the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

There it is. We do not love God. Why? Because like the Israelites of old, we have stubborn hearts. In fact, our hearts are dead. They're stone.

We cannot respond to God. We will not respond to God. We're captive to Satan. We're a slave to our desires. We follow the philosophy of the world. All of those things conspire so that we will not love God.

We're incapable of loving God. But the point is, God is not satisfied with that state of affairs. He doesn't like it to remain that way. And so He makes a promise, which we first find in Deuteronomy chapter 30. So turn there. Deuteronomy chapter 30.

Note these words. Now before, notice, he had said to them, you're stubborn, get rid of your stubborn hearts and love me. Now in chapter 30, here's what we read, beginning in verse 12. It is not in heaven that you should say who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it. Neither is it beyond the sea that you should say who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it.

But the word is very near. It is in your mouth and in your heart so you can do it. See, I've set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I commanded you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in His ways, and by keeping His commandments and His statutes and His rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.

You know what? I'm in the wrong spot. It didn't seem right. It did not seem right. And I'm thinking, this is not right, because it's in verse 1 I want you to be. Oh.

No excuses. I just blew it. 30. Verse 1. Verse 1. Here it is.

And when all these things come upon you. Now he's just got done. Saying here's the covenant. If you obey God, I'm going to bless you. If you disobey, I'm going to curse you. That was the covenant.

God said, I'm giving all these things to you. Just obey. Right? And now Moses says this to them, And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you, that's one of the curses. If you don't obey me, I'm going to drive you into exile.

And return to the Lord your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul. Then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes, have compassion on you, and he will gather you again, from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of the heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there he will take you.

And the Lord your God will bring you into the land that your fathers possess, that you may possess it. And he will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers. And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul that you may live.

You see, He says to them, I will circumcise your heart. First He commands them, you do it. And of course, they're not going to be able to do it. And He says, there's coming a day when I will remove those stubborn hearts. I will circumcise your heart. And after centuries of refusing to obey God, after centuries of being unfaithful to this covenant, God promises his work on their behalf you find that in Ezekiel chapter 11 where God says and I will give them one heart that is a single devoted heart and a new spirit I will put in them.

I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh that they may walk in My statutes and keep My rules and obey them and they shall be My people and I will be their God. God has to do some work for us to love Him. Once more, in Ephesians 2, the Apostle Paul tells us how God does that. But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

That is to say, God has to intervene if we're going to love Him. And that's what we need to first recognize. And so here's what we need to see. Your love for God always originates with God's prior work of grace in your heart. God must work if you're going to love Him. If you want to love God, it's not going to happen.

You're not even going to want to love God until God loves you. and God in grace intervenes and gives you life and takes away your heart of stone and gives you a heart that will respond to Him. God must work. You recall what God says in 1 John, right? 1 John 4, verse 10. In this is love. Not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as a propitiation for our sins.

Alright? If we're going to love God, God must love us. He must work. He takes the initiative. Well, you say, well, what is that love then? What is that responding love?

God loves us, so I respond and love Him. What is that like? Is it some kind of overpowering emotion that grips me so that I love Him all the time? I mean, we're talking about loving God after all. Certainly it must be this overpowering emotion Well the question I would have to that is what exactly must you feel in order for you to know the love of God How do you know that How do you know that you really loving God What are the marks of that?

Part of our problem is that we think solely in terms of what we might call human passion. Human passion. Human passions are in a sense involuntary and passive. Okay? That's how we think. When we think about that, it's feelings that are called forth from something outside of us and we can't help it.

For example, like grief and hurt. I remember the day I had preached for my dad because he was with my mom at the Mayo Clinic. I'll never forget this day. I'd preached for my dad. He asked me, hey, why don't you fill the pulpit? And so I preached in his church.

And then that Sunday afternoon, he called us. And here was the words he told us. Your mom has cancer. And right away, man, my heart just broke. Oh, it just, boom, it was like a ton fell on me because the first thing that went through my mind was she'll never see her grandchildren. And she didn't.

And I remember that day. Now, that's what human passion is like. Something happens, and suddenly we feel this, right? Your friends do or say something to you, and it hurts, right? It just, boom, it happens. And that's how we think of loving God too often.

And we think that way about love in general. Oh, I love this woman because whenever I'm around her, oh, I just feel this way. I can't help myself. Right? That's how we think of love. And the problem is the Bible doesn't give us any benchmarks for this feeling.

It doesn't say, when you reach this level, that's the love of God. Okay? It doesn't tell us that anywhere. And yet, not trying to prove a point too much, yet it does describe deep emotion. just have to read the Psalms. One of my favorites is Psalm 63. So let's turn there.

Psalm 63. If you want to see deep emotional love for God, it is at least described for us. I can understand that yes it does involve emotion Psalm 63 This is the Psalm of David This is when Absalom tried to take over the throne and drove him out into the wilderness You remember, if you remember the story, Absalom mounts this palace coup and he gets this army together and he literally drives David out.

David is out in the wilderness with the remnants of an army. And civil war is about ready to break out. And he has just left the palace in a hurry. He's hardly been able to get anything with him. He's had to get out of Jerusalem quick before the opposing army gets there and kills him. So he's out in the desert when he writes these words.

Oh God, you are my God. Earnestly I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My flesh faints for you. As in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.

Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you so I will bless you as long as I live in your name I will lift up my hands my soul be satisfied as with fat and rich food and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips when I remember you upon my bed and I meditate you on you in the watches of the night for you have been my help and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy my soul clings to you your right hand upholds me. There's deep emotion there, right? That is love of God.

That's love of God. It's that deep emotion that says, God, no matter how hard things are, I long for you. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I'm going to be thinking of you. God, only you can satisfy me. Sure, it involves our emotion. What about Psalm 27?

One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple. Is there emotion in our love for God? Certainly there is. We can see it described here. There is a sense in which my heart longs for God. And yet we have to say that true love goes beyond emotion.

It is more than emotion. If it's just emotion, it's not enough. It goes beyond emotion. Love for God is first and foremost loyalty. A single, mindful love. devotion to God. It's loyalty.

Okay? That command first came as God explained His covenant with His people. If we were to go back and take apart the whole book of Deuteronomy, it is a sermon. It's Moses summoning it all up and saying, okay, before you enter the Promised Land, I have one more thing to say. And that's the book of Deuteronomy. And in this book, he rehearses the covenant of God.

And it's formed like a covenant. Where in the covenants of those days, when a king would make a covenant with a vassal, he would say, here's all the things I've done for you. Right? Now I'm committing myself to you. And you're committing yourself to me. This is what I require.

And in that pivotal scene in Deuteronomy chapter 6, Moses explains what it means to be God's people in covenant with this God. God had wondrously delivered them. He rehearsed to them how God had graciously revealed Himself to them, how He had fought their battles for them. And now this gracious, merciful Lord and King enters into this covenant with them and pledges Himself to them.

What does He require of them? He requires a single-minded devotion. To Him. A loyalty that will renounce all other gods and will obey Him. You see? It's that devotion that says, God, because You're my covenant King, I will renounce all other gods.

Isn't that what He says all the way through the book of Deuteronomy? You're going to renounce all your other gods and you're going to obey My commands. That's the kind of love I want from you. It goes beyond mere affection, mere feelings. true love will always express itself in this kind of devotion it will always express itself it is a devotion that transcends feeling Beck and I had been married for three days we had already gotten to the house where we were going to live and she asked of me would you scrub out the shower And I said, okay.

You know, it was kind of orange. You know how that is So I in there It August And I scrubbing away And I working and I scrubbing And man I just pouring sweat And nothing is happening It's still orange. And I'm scrubbing. And I'm in there. And I'm doing this. And I'm pouring sweat.

And nothing is happening. And I'm starting to get three days now, three days into marriage, I'm thinking this. What have I gotten myself into? If I were living by myself, I couldn't care less if this thing was orange or not. It could be purple for all I care. I could still take a shower in it.

What am I? Oh, this is not what I signed up for. That's what I was thinking. And then she says to me, let's go for a walk. And I said, okay. So we're walking along, and I'm quiet, as I always am when I'm mad and grumpy.

And she looks over in the field and says, look at those butterflies over there. And I said, butterflies, they're nothing more than moths with a little bit of color. She looks at me and says, what's wrong with you? Oh, gee. Now what do I say? I wish I'd never got married.

So I lied. But that's beside the point. How does my wife know that I love her? You know why? Because I'm devoted to her when I have the warm fuzzies and when I don't have the warm fuzzies. I'm still devoted to her.

Alright? Do you know what true love is? It's when someone attractive comes by who's younger and funnier and cares for you. Right? And you run away. You know why?

Because you're devoted to your wife. And you turn and you run the other way as fast as you can. That's devotion. That is love. That is true love. Right?

And that's what God's talking about here. How do you know? We talked about this last week. How do you know that Jesus loved you? How do you know that Jesus loved his father? Because at the moment when he is agonizing before God, and he says, Lord, if there's any other way, take this cup away.

He asks that three times He in agony And then he says what Not my will but Yours be done At that moment His emotions were screaming at Him You don't want to do this! How do I know He loved His Father? Because He didn't go with His feelings. His devotion transcended His feelings of the moment. And He gave Himself in submission to His Father. That's how I know He loves Him.

You see? that's how we love God even when the warm fuzzies aren't there we're still devoted to him we're still devoted to him the question is is this love for God then devoid of emotion no, no it is not in fact without emotion it's not what it should be and I cry out to God often God I do not have affection for you like I ought to I want it but it does go beyond that it does include that but it's not just that it's both it's both how do I get that? I cannot help but think and know that the only way that you get that first of all and primarily is to look at the cross look at Philippians chapter 2 Philippians chapter 2 now this is not about love this particular passage is about have the mind of Christ in you to serve one another but when I see the description of the cross here it should do something to me to this old cold heart have this mind among yourselves verse 5 of chapter 2 which is yours in Christ Jesus who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but made himself nothing taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death even death on the cross he went from the highest to the lowest he gave up glory for shame I need to look there and look there often if I'm going to see the love of God it's not devoid of emotion but it is more than that I love my wife more deeply now than when I was young When I was young I thought those old men, how can they love a woman? I mean, you're old and decrepit, you know.

I love her more than I loved her when I was a young man. Why? I think because we lived in a covenant devotion to one another. When we didn't have the warm fuzzies, we still remain devoted and the feelings grew that's how it works with God right that's what love is it's this single minded devotion I am yours no matter what you have reached me I want to respond to you and I will be devoted to you and even on those days when I don't feel like it I'm still going to serve you even on those days when I'm not overwhelmed with this overpowering emotional uplift because of God I'm still I'm still going to fall on my knees and say God I want to serve you today help me help me to love you today in the way I act help me to love you by loving others well now how then can we grow in that kind of love well let's develop this.

I want to talk about some real practical things here to grow in your love for God. Consider the implications of Psalm 34.8. So I'm going to ask you to turn there. Psalm 34. All right. How then can I grow in my, let's put it this way, how can I grow in my devotion and my emotion?

How can I grow in my devotion and my emotion? Well, Psalm 34 is something that years ago the Lord used to kick me off and head me down a particular path. Psalm 34, verse 8. O taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. now this psalm exalts God because he has delivered David from danger he has proved to be a refuge and deliverer to David in answer to his prayer his prayer.

And here we find that God gives himself to you so that you can enjoy him. God does not only relate to us as a God who is holy, a God who is just, a God of anger, a God of mercy, and a God of grace. He reveals himself to us in more ways than just that. He relates to us as the God who gives Himself to us. Actually gives Himself to us so that we can discover that He is good.

To enjoy Him as we enjoy our dearest friend. To enjoy Him as we enjoy our spouse. Right? You enjoy your spouse. You spend time together. You love each other.

You have a good time. You enjoy one another. You enjoy your friends. God does the same thing. He gives Himself to us so that we can enjoy Him. And God is good.

Taste and see that the Lord is good. God is kind, not mean. He is generous, not stingy. And He gives us all good things. Listen, what I've just said, sometimes we've got to really think about God is generous, not stingy. How often do you think of God as stingy?

Huh? He's never stingy. He's always generous. He is kind. He is not mean. He's kind.

His goodness overflows with grand generosity in both spiritual and material things. Note this is a command. Taste. Go ahead. Do it. Taste and see that the Lord is good.

God commands you to taste His goodness. It's like a mother when she puts good food in front of her children. Sometimes she has to say, eat it! Right? Eat it! But they don't know what good food is.

Right? They've eaten too much. Too many donuts. And they've eaten too many candy bars. And had too much ice cream. And that seems better! and yet here is this wonderful meal with roast beef and gravy and mashed potatoes and green beans with bacon in them and all this good stuff And they don understand that And she says eat this It's good for you.

You know, we need that command to taste and see that the Lord is good because we are too easily satisfied with the junk food of our culture. We are too easily satisfied with the entertainment. Oh my, entertainment. We live in a culture that's just flooded with it, right? Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Redbox. And that's for those of us who don't have a television connection.

Right? All kinds of things. Ruin our appetite for the good things of God. Taste the goodness of God. We've got to do it. Here's a command.

Sit down to the feast. Well, how do you taste the goodness of God? How do you taste the goodness of God? Well, you taste it. He tastes the goodness of God in his revelation. Look at the goodness of God in his revelation of himself in nature.

Right? In nature. Some of us are more wired this way than others. My dear wife, we're going to Marion, and we're running along 95, right? And here's the railroad tracks on the right-hand side. You all know what I'm talking about, right?

We've been down that a thousand and one times. And she says, Look at that ditch. it's just bursting with color and texture. Look at those flowers. To me, you know, I'm looking at things, I just see green. But she sees the little purples and the blues and the yellows and the cattails and all the things that are there. She has more of an eye for this.

But I know Becca's told me one time, not one time, several times, how there was a time in her life where she was thinking, is there really a God? Right? I looked around. And there he was. Taste the goodness of God in the glory of the nature that's around you. Because he reveals himself to you there.

Don't feel guilty about that, by the way. Right? Just look around and see the beauty and the intricacy and all the things that make up this world. It's amazing when you see that. But taste the goodness of God in his revelation in the Scriptures. See the beauty of his perfections in the Scriptures.

See what he's like there. Read those stories in the Old Testament Read how he wiped out the Egyptian army because he loved his people and didn want them to be hurt Read about his glory at the temple where Solomon is and the glory is so great that they all have to hide their eyes. Right? All these things. In our Sunday school class, we've been reading Packer's book, Knowing God. and as he sums up what the scriptures the scripture reveals about God's attribute of love and his essence as spirit so he's saying here's God as love here's God as spirit how do they work together right and here's what he wrote so the love of the God who is spirit is no fitful fluctuating thing as human love is nor is it a mere impotent longing for things that may never be that's how we look love, right?

Oh, I love her, but she'll never see me. I'm a nobody in her eyes. Unrequited love, right? Requited whatever. And he says that's not God's love. He doesn't love for things that may never be.

Rather, it is rather a spontaneous determination of God's whole being in an attitude of benevolence and benefaction, an attitude freely chosen and firmly fixed. There are no inconstancies or vicissitudes in the love of the Almighty God who is Spirit. It's like, wow! That is amazing! That's the way the love of God is. And when I grasp the scriptural truth of God's love, it causes me to love Him more.

It incites my devotion and raises my emotion. As I see the beauty of his attributes in his revelation. Look at God's goodness to you. Taste the goodness of God in his providence in your life. Look over your life. Psalm 34 is David's reflection on the providence of God in protecting him.

Can you look back over the course of a lifetime and see the goodness of God? We don't do that enough. Look over your lifetime. Some of you don't have much to look at yet. Some of us have a whole bunch. And I can and look back over the course of my life, and I can see God working in marvelous ways.

I think about how I ended up here. Right? Crazy story Ended up here Instead of doing it I was headed in an entirely different direction I was going to go somewhere entirely not even church It was something else entirely God directed my steps here to a lifetime of service and heartache and joy And I can see God's working. I can see His working in my children's lives as they were in our household.

And I can see His working in your life. I can see over a whole lifetime all these things that God has done. If you want to taste and see that the Lord is good, look at your life. Some of you are new Christians. And you can say, wow, a year ago I was there. Now I'm here.

And I'm loving it. Right? Look over your life. You can see it in his salvation. Now where could we end? We can't end here.

Right? have you considered the goodness of God as you reflect on your daily sins and God's continued grace have you thought about that you know we talked about in Sunday school today even your life as a Christian deserves God's judgment because you're still not good enough but you know who's gracious to you God he's gracious to you because of Jesus because Jesus has paid for that he can look at you and love you and embrace you and do marvelous things for you why? Because he sent his son. And God can do it now without ever destroying his justice.

And love you, this imperfect sad sack. Right? Look at his salvation. See his goodness in his son. Without Jesus, there's no access to the feast, is there? I can't enjoy God without Jesus.

I'm his enemy. And he's mine. and so you come to Christ for mercy before you're allowed into that marvelous feast through him God's wrath is appeased and God welcomes you to the feast with open arms Jesus himself said this all that the Father gives me will come to me and whoever comes to me I will never cast out I go to Jesus he'll never throw me away he will never I was good to him. Jesus, you're what I want.

He says, you're mine. He will never cast any of you away. Lastly, let me just say this. Purposely delight in God. Purposely delight in God. Now let me tell you what I mean.

What I'm saying here is actually come to God and find delight in Him. How do you delight in your spouse or your girlfriend or your boyfriend? How do you delight in that person? Well, you spend time together. You see things in that person that delight you. And you revel in that.

You say, this is wonderful. I like that. You have a great sense of humor. Right? And you delight in that. Do that with God.

Purposely approach God with the determination to delight in Him. Now, let me share some things with you. This is what happened to me. And as I read my Bible, I want to keep a journal. I want to write things down. I want to write my prayers down.

I want to write down what I found. And several years ago, in fact, I can tell you, it was in 1998, I was going through a dry spell. I was actually saying I do not love God like I should I do not love him God help me and so here's what I did I said okay I'm going to read the book of Isaiah and I'm going to read three chapters a day and I will not let that text go until I find something there that I can delight in that's what I'm going to do now for one thing when you really want to find things to delight in God, sometimes the prophets are a little more difficult.

Because they tend to be a little bit gloomy and doomy Alright But that what I did I picked Isaiah And I said three chapters a day I will not leave this text alone until I can write in my journal something about the delight of God. So can I give you some examples that I wrote down? This is from back years ago, decades ago now. This is from Isaiah 2. Isaiah 2.

I'll give a summary. The second half of the chapter is a plea based on judgment. stop trusting in man who is but a breath in his nostrils of what account is he? That's kind of the theme of the last half of Isaiah 2. God will rise to shake the earth, a judgment so terrible and terrifying that men will hide in holes and rocks to escape his dreaded majesty.

That's what Isaiah 2 is about. What are you going to do with that? Taste and see that this is what I'm writing. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Here is my God in His righteousness. It is a righteousness that judges and humbles.

God's righteous character then ought to cause me to learn and walk in His way. And it also teaches me that He is the only safe repository for my faith. Why trust man when all his ingenuity, in which he takes pride, will only one day be crushed? God, because of His righteous character, is the only one to trust. That's what I wrote for that day. God, I can delight in you because man will fail, but you never will.

Here another one from Isaiah 14 Isaiah 14 is a taunt against the king of Babylon A taunt is a kind of a in sort of a thing that the Old Testament prophets do So here's what I wrote. This is a taunt against the king of Babylon. Here you see that no matter what your position of power might be, death is the great leveler. What a perspective. We look at the powerful in fear and envy.

But what is there to fear or envy? Ultimately, that power is lost at the grave. The taunt also reveals God in the wrath of his judgment. No oppressor ultimately escapes judgment. All are brought to the bar of God's justice. I can delight in my God because of the revelations of his character.

He does not overlook the oppression of his people. He hates pride and he will punish it. His sovereignty is also revealed. How delightful to know that his hand will never be arrested in accomplishing his purposes. this ought to help me with my fear if God chooses to use me to accomplish his purposes then I need not be afraid if the consequences are bad yet God still moves for my good, his glory and for whomever is involved so what I'm saying to you is take your Bible and say I'm going to delight in God and you don't move on until you find it until you can say, here it is.

Here's what I can delight in. Purposely do that. And watch what happens to your devotion and your emotion. Okay? Purposely delight in God So we have a command to obey It is to love the Lord our God with all that we are But the only way we can obey that command is by the grace of God in Jesus That's the only way. In Christ, God offers Himself to you as His gracious, loving, merciful Father.

He comes to you in Christ. That's the only way we can find delight in Him. and so as we come to this table today right here's one way here's one another way of how God causes us to love him and that is as we reflect on what he's done for us in Jesus this great and merciful God who sent Jesus so that we can enjoy him that we can delight in him that we can love him Father, thank you for your word today. Would you help us to taste and see that you're good?

Would you help us to delight in you? Oh God, increase our love for you. Help us to spend time with you. Help us to love you. God, give us that single-minded devotion that leaves everything else behind for your sake. For Father, as we come to this table, we know that you gave everything for our sake.

How can we not love you? Help us now, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.