I'll remind you that we're in 1 Peter 2, verses one through three, talking about desiring the sincere milk of the word that we may grow thereby. But for our scripture text today, I'd like you to turn to Philippians 1. We've gotten to Philippians 1 by way of 1 Peter 2, as we talk about an increase in love today. We'll begin our reading in verse three, Philippians chapter one and verse three. Hear now the inerrant, infallible, and inspired word of God. Paul and Timotheus, oops, verse three, excuse me. I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all, making requests with joy. For your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Even as it is meet for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as both in my bonds and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are partakers of my grace. For God is my record. How greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ. And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment, that ye may approve the things that are excellent, that ye may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God. May God add his blessing to the reading and hearing of his most holy word. For those of you that have access to the sermons, the series of the morning exercises at Cripplegate, it's sometimes known as the Puritan sermons series, in volume Volume 1, there is a sermon by Samuel Annesley, Reverend Samuel Annesley, that I would recommend to you, if you have time to look it up and read it. This is a quotation from that sermon. God is pleased in a wonderful and unexpressible manner to draw up the heart in love to him. God makes use of exhortations and counsels and reproofs But though he works by them and with them, he works above them and beyond them. The Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart and the heart of thy seed. To love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live. And again, I call heaven and earth to record against, or this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing, therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live, that thou mayest love the Lord thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him, for he is thy life and the length of thy days. He is thy life, that is, effectively, and that by love saith Aquinas. Well, so we have a review of what we just read in Deuteronomy chapter 30 in our quotation today. The Reverend Anisley speaks about the love of God in that sermon very often. It's a sermon titled something about loving God or how to love God or something like that. And I think you'll find it helpful. I certainly have. We've been discussing Christian growth. in our morning series. Thus far we have seen growing generally as that great gift from the Lord. And I can't emphasize this enough, beloved. Let me one more time here make a sentence or two of exhortation. What a great mercy of God that it is that he has designed for us to grow in the Christian faith. What a great mercy. And be thankful to your Father and look for that growth. Secondly, we talked about growth in grace, or graces, not sowing to the flesh, but to the spirit. We talked about growing in knowledge, learning to meditate on scripture as we read, and we took an example from John chapter four and the condescension of Christ. We looked at growth in faith, and we learned that little faith is better than no faith, and yet mustard seed faith is the kind that advances the kingdom of God. It is a growing faith. And then we looked at growing in obedience and holiness last week, and we learned to study to know our duty, the increase of knowledge in uprightness, and learning also how to know him who is from the beginning. That is, the greater our union with the triune God by faith, the more we will put away sin and grow in obedience. So this week, growth in love. I found this a very encouraging and yet also convicting topic. As I have studied to prepare, I have several things that I'd like to speak with you about on this. So first, notice that it is a very biblical kind of love that the apostle mentions in our reading. This, I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge, judgment, approval of the things that are excellent, sincere, without offense, in the day of Christ, filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, under the glory and praise of God. May I say, as I have told you often before, that We don't know what love is in our society. We use that word all the time. We've recently had a couple of sermons where we talked about the way we use the word love. We said, I love this and I love that. You'll remember that from a few weeks back. We remember that love is sacrificial and it is redemptive. That love, when it's rightly employed, is always toward God. and that everything else that we have flows out of that love that we have for God. And we'll see that in a few moments. But notice what he does here, what Paul does is he gives us an idea of love that is certainly all about that redemptive side that we were talking about earlier when we said that love is sacrificial and redemptive. Here, this love, first of all, he prays that it will abound yet more and more. So he's certainly talking about growth in love, isn't he? Beloved, it is possible that we can grow in love. Paul is praying for that for the Philippians. If Paul is the kind of man that I think he is, I don't think this is an untoward thing for me to say, that he's also praying that his own love would grow toward God. that he recognizes that our love at best can be spoken of as imperfect in this life. Always room for growth in our love toward God. The second thing that I want to make sure that we get here is that a love for God is something that we do not have naturally, beloved. When we talk about increase in love for God, we are assuming something, aren't we? We're assuming that we're speaking of people that have the love of God in the first place, but the only way we have that is by the gracious regeneration of the spirit. You'll not hear Pastor Todd tell you today that if you'll just do this and you'll just do that, and if you'll just whip yourself up in this way and that way, that you can have more love to God. However, I am gonna talk to you about means of increasing your love to God. But we remember from 1 John chapter four, verse 19, that we love God because he first loved us. Or from Romans chapter 5 and verse 5 where it says that the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. And so we have to pause for a moment when we talk about the increase of our love toward God. We have to ask ourselves the question, we have to examine our own hearts whether we be in the faith, whether we have that love of God that is that gift from God himself. Whether we have That at some time in our lives, to the best of our ability and with all of the sincerity that the Lord gives, turned ourselves to him and called upon the name of the Lord. And passed from not only death unto life, not only from darkness unto light, but from hatred of God to the love of God. Because beloved, we must confess, we must admit, that every son of Adam comes into this world as a hater of God. Romans chapter 1 tells us that the natural man does not like to retain God in his knowledge. That's not what you do with someone you love. Someone you love, you love to retain them in your knowledge. You want to think on them all the time. The natural man, what does he do? He does not like to retain God in his knowledge and so he turns away from that God. He builds up his own God. He worships and serves the creature rather than the Creator. We must confess then in that we have any kind of love for God at all, that this is a gift from God. This is that first in the list of what is called the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5.22. The fruit of the Spirit is love. And this is not love generally. Oh, I know that guy, he's a very loving guy. That's not what we're talking about. We are talking about love toward God. And may I say that love toward God is such an alien and radical concept that sometimes it is misidentified. Proverbs 8, 34. Personified wisdom will say, all that hate me love death. So, beloved, our first salvo when we talk about an increase of the love of God is to remember that this love comes from God. It is something that we apply unto Him for. Paul's gonna give us several characteristics of this love, and this is good. This is a way that we can examine our own love, right? How is it that you love God? What kind of love do we have toward God? We say that we love God, but can we examine ourselves as to what that love looks like? Can we be objective? And of course, that's my job to help me and you to be more objective from a competent look at the scriptures to show forth what that love of God is, what it looks like, what its characteristics are. As I said to you earlier, Normally we don't think of love as something we grow in. Normally we think of love as something that's sort of binary and involuntary. We're told in this world that you can't help who you love. You know what the theological response to that is, right? Balloon juice. Of course you can. We are commanded by the God that made us to make use of particular means, circumstances, ways, things he's put into our hands, that we should grow in love, that we can help what we love and we can learn to hate what we ought to hate and love what we ought to love. Love is not an involuntary thing. Love is steeped with our own wills, that is, wills that are made new. Oh, I just didn't wanna love God, but I couldn't help it. Who says that? No one says that. The Lord will speak to us about that kind of love and that kind of working upon our hearts in Ezekiel 36, 25 through 27, right? What does he say? That he's gonna put a new heart in us. He's gonna write his law upon our hearts. He's gonna take away that heart of stone out of our hearts and put a heart of flesh into our flesh instead. That we might love the Lord our God, that we might keep his commandments and so on. Well, there are several passages of scripture with those brief introductory comments that I want to talk with you about. The first is Mark chapter 12. Excuse me. Mark chapter 12 We'll begin our reading in verse 28. And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, which is the first commandment of all? And Jesus answered him, the first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first commandment, and the second is like it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. And the scribe said unto him, well master thou has said the truth for there is one God and there is none other but he and to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding with all the soul and with all the strength is more than all whole bird offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, thou art not far from the kingdom of God and after I'm sorry, and no man after that durst ask him any question. The first thing that I want you to note, beloved, is that the love of God, when it is rightly considered, is an eclipsing love. It is a consuming love. The commandment is to love the Lord our God with all that we have, all our heart, soul, mind, strength. This might mean not just inner man stuff, but outer man stuff as well. Can you think of that? When it says to love the Lord with all of our quote, strength, that doesn't mean the strength of our sincerity. I think that it translates out into with all that we do. With all of our ability. So with all of our heart, that is our affections. With all of our mind, that is with all of our thoughts. With all of our soul, that is with the entire life and with all of our strength, that is with everything that we do. These things are to be covered, steeped, informed by the love that we have for God. That's the first and great commandment. And beloved, once we begin to think that way, isn't it patently obvious how much we need a savior? Who loves God like that? We are divided. This is one of the reasons that we talk about God being holy and us not. One of the things that inform that, when God loves, How does God love? God loves because He is what? He is simple. He is one. There is no ambivalence or ambiguity in that love. There is no yes and no in it. When God loves, it is full. What I've told you about How do we understand how God reveals to us things successively? He reveals things successively to us, but God himself is everything all the time. When God says that he loves his people, he loves them with all, because there is no division within the being of God. He loves with all. This is why That commandment must be that same kind of thing for us. And this is why we need a Savior. Yes, there is a relative all, but there is an absolute all that our Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled, and we never will. Until glory, when we will be fully and forever freed from all sin and misery. And we will love God with all. So the duty then doesn't change. It is a consuming love. It is an eclipsing love. It is a love that takes all of us up into it. The second thing I'd like you to see about this is in Luke chapter 14. Verse 25. And there went great multitudes with him, and he turned and said unto them, if any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you intending to build a tower sitteth not down first and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it, lest happily after he hath laid the foundation and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build and was not able to finish, What king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first and consulteth whether he be able with 10,000 to meet him that cometh against him with 20,000? Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage and desireth conditions of peace. So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath cannot be my disciple. How does this work with the love of God? The love of God really is not mentioned here. It's the hatred of everything else that is mentioned, right? It's interesting, isn't it, why Jesus would use the word hatred? Because won't the Spirit of God speaking by the Apostle Paul say, husbands, love your wives? Yeah, yeah, he will say that. So how can we at the same time love and hate our spouses? How can we at the same time do that? What does that mean? What must be unpacked here? Beloved, what Jesus is saying, two things. The first thing that he's saying is that the love that you have for God, again, it is a love of eclipse. It blots out all other loves because of its strength, intensity, and object. The love that we have toward God must blot out all other loves. Now, I'll get back to that in a moment because that still sounds a little bit dissonant to our ears, I understand. But when Jesus talks about counting the cost and building the tower, this is exactly what he means to say. What if In your saying, I love God, God takes away one of those dear things. Will you say at that point, I still love God? Will you not rather hold these things in a kind of way that is so far from the love that you have for God that Jesus, by way of hyperbole here, can call it hatred? Jesus is not telling you to hate your children or your spouse or your loved ones. What Jesus is telling you is to love them because you love the Lord. And then if you love the Lord like you ought to love Him, then beloved you will love your wife, husband, children, brethren, as you ought in the Lord, and they will not become stumbling blocks to your being a disciple of Christ and loving Him. Typically, when we talk about this, we think of idolatry, don't we? That here's something that God has taken away from me and it has caused me to stumble because I thought he would never take that away from me. I love it so much. What is that thing? Whatever it is, beloved, it's an idol. And it has become a stumbling block to your being a disciple of Christ, to your loving of him. And many people have stumbled over such things, whether it be their spouse, their children. I think we live in an age when Christian parents are taught in many places to dote on their children, almost to idolize them. We ought to be very careful with that. Remember the old Pastor Todd illustration about turning corners, right? Sometimes we have to turn a lot of corners. where we realize that things I thought I could live without, suddenly here I am, or couldn't live without, here I am living without them, and the Lord has taken away all those things I thought I couldn't live without until I finally understood that he's the only thing I can't live without. He is the love. And sometimes in this counting of the cost, like Jesus will go on to say here, This man didn't finish, why? Because it was simply too costly for him. The Lord took something away, that's too much cost. I don't know that I can follow anymore. Beloved, many have fallen on that stumbling block. Some have not hated their own lives as they ought. You'll remember the great lament of Thomas Cranmer, when brought before Mary Tudor and had the opportunity to confess Christ or the Pope, that at his first interview, he confessed the papacy instead and was restored to his position. And at his second interview, confessed Christ instead. And when he went to the state, thrust in that naughty, sinful, wicked hand first. into the flames. He didn't count the cost. He had a greater love. He had more love for his life than he did for Christ in the first instance. Well, beloved, these are real world things, aren't they? A good principle of self-examination, perhaps, is to sit down and write out those things that are maybe too costly. Present them before the Lord and ask the Lord to eclipse them with your growth and love toward him. We can grow in love, beloved. Our love for God can grow into that kind of eclipsing love. And let me give you a little bit of assurance here. Your relatives, your wives, your children, your husbands, your spouses, your beloved brethren, they will not be the worse for you entertaining that eclipsing love. They will be the better for it because you will love them in truth. You will love them according to God and his love. Oh, that's important to remember, isn't it? I remember when we were young teenagers in churches that if you had a romantic interest in a young lady, you might give her a card that was telling her that. And at the end of that, we would always look to the signature first. We'd want to know whether they said, love so-and-so, or love in Christ so-and-so. You remember that? Some of you remember that, maybe. Right? We're a little bit let down when someone said, oh, I love you in Christ. Whereas that should have overjoyed us above anything else. Because when we are loved for Christ Jesus' sake, that's the best love. That's the greatest love. And so what does the Lord do? He says, love me with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and everything else as hyperbolically considered hatred by comparison. And what I will do is I will bring your loved ones back to you in my love. And you and they will be the better for it. And there will be no tower that can be built that will be the smashing of which will cause you to stumble. Isn't that wonderful? That's the kind of love. that we ought to have toward God. This is what Christ is commanding then in Luke 14. And it's not just with regard to our loved ones. What does he say? It's with regard to our own lives also. So that whosoever cometh to me and bear not his cross, the cross was an instrument of self-denial and torture in the days of Christ. And so we must remember then that even our own lives must be less dear to us than the love that we have toward God. This is what is commanded. We must ask for that kind of love from God. There are several other things that I want to mention to you on this, and that is that, like we said a moment ago about your relatives, that they are best served when you love them in the Lord. That's really the best signature at the bottom of the card. Your own lives are best served when you love your life in the Lord or because of the Lord. When you are doing what Christ did when he walked in this world. You know, our Lord Jesus Christ did not haphazardly hazard himself. He didn't do that. The Apostle Paul didn't do the same, right? He was let down in a basket over the wall in Damascus. There were times when they wanted to kill Jesus right then. They were gonna throw him off the prow of the hill in Luke 4 when he told them that the Lord was bringing his kingdom in and they just might miss it. They were ready to throw him off the prow of the hill. He passed through them. My time has not yet come, he would say. But when that time did come, Notice that he loved his own life not, but instead gave up his will to his father. He owed himself as a man the sixth commandment consideration to do everything he could for the preservation of his life. And this is what we see in the Garden of Gethsemane. This is Christ acquitting himself of the sixth commandment. And then finally, not my will, but thine be done. He did not love his life such that he should lose it, but that he should gain it, because he loved his life in his father. This is how we should love our own lives, beloved, in that same way. We will be the better for it. We don't want to think of it only in this way, but it is most certainly in the best interests of our loved ones, in the best interests of our own lives, that we love our lives and our loved ones in the Lord. It's not only that, but it is that. No one around you will ever be the worse for the wear if you love the Lord your God with your heart, soul, mind, and strength first. Okay? All right, let's move on to a couple more considerations here. Turn back with me to first, sorry, to Philippians chapter one, the first chapter of Philippians. And we will hear some characteristics of this love that the apostle mentions. Verse nine, and this I pray that your love may abound yet more and more. Okay, so first of all, we want our love to be a growing love. We want it to abound more and more. Sometimes when we think of an abundance of something, we think that's enough. I have an abundance, that's enough. Paul says, I want your love to abound more and more. If you have an abundance, great. I still want you to have more. Why? Because Paul knows that the standard is what? All your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Right? Okay, so how is it going to abound? It's going to abound, first of all, in knowledge. And so the first characteristic of this love is that it is a knowing love. It's a knowing love. What do we mean by it's a knowing love? Let's hear what Paul says. That your knowledge, that you may abound more and more in knowledge and in judgment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense until the day of Christ. Notice that the Apostle Paul, in talking about a growing in love, doesn't say I want you to grow in your palpitations toward God. It's not necessarily It does involve the affections, beloved. But the affections must not lead, they must always follow. And so, this knowledge that you must have in order for your love to abound is, it is a knowing love. You know him who is from the beginning. You are advancing in your knowledge of who God is. You're taking hold of him in his attributes. You're taking hold of him in his mercy, in his triunity, in his holiness. Your love toward God advances in knowledge as it advances in all other graces. And so the first thing is that it is a knowing love. Second, it is a discerning love. Well, don't we need discernment in our life? We most certainly do. Often the love that we have is a very indiscriminate kind of love, an undiscerning kind of love. But the Apostle Paul makes it clear here. Notice what he says in verse nine, or verse 10, that ye may approve the things that are excellent. So there is a morality to this love. It's a knowing and a discerning love with regard to what's right and wrong. So it's not just a knowledge, it's not just growing in knowledge, like we said before, of what is right and wrong, not just growing in knowledge of God and Christ and so on, it is that, but it is also a knowledge of what is right in all of that. and a pursuit of it, that is, right? That's what's implied in the passage, that when we grow in this kind of judgment, in this kind of discernment, and we grow in the knowledge of proper morality, that that's what we're going to pursue. This is what we're going to love. We're going to love what's right. We're not going to have that that carnal love that we must sometimes tamp down because it's for the wrong thing. Third, it is a pure or unhypocritical love that you may be, what does he say there in verse 10, that you may be sincere and without offense until the day of Christ. So it is a sincere kind of love. It is unhypocritical. It embraces without doubt all the things of God. It's something that rises up from a heart purified by faith. Notice it is a love also that is void of offense. Well, That's certainly something that we ought to pray for, that we would be void of offense toward God, although we know that we're not going to be, that we're going to have times where we are offensive to our Heavenly Father. Our sin is an offense, an affront to Him. And so part of that sincerity and part of that being without offense is that it is a judging love with regard to ourselves. This love that Paul is praying for is a love toward God that encompasses our own behavior, such that when we sin against Him, we will be grieved as He is grieved, that we might confess and forsake our sins and beg His forgiveness in Christ, and learn to walk in new obedience. This is what love toward God is, beloved. It is not a love of the perfectionists as they say it is, that on such a date I was entirely sanctified, I don't sin anymore, no. It's an honest, a sincere, an open, a candid love that comes to God often with tears of confession. And if those sins are besetting with fasting and with seeking the help of others, It is a love that is raised up in a certain sense to mimic the love that God has toward that which is right and wrong. Well, these are convicting words. But beloved, you are promised here by the apostle in his prayer for the Philippian church that we can pray for one another in these things and for ourselves in these things and make progress in them. Remember how we started, we said what a mercy it is from our God that we might grow in these things. Void of offense then. And then finally notice what he says, until the day of Christ, in verse 10. So it is a persevering love as well. It's until the day of Christ, and nothing short of it. True Christian love that comes from God, that loves back to God because He first loved us, is a love that perseveres. It is a love that never wears out. Love, what? Never fails, 1 Corinthians 13. And we might say that it is a love that in the mean, perhaps not in every instance, but in the mean, that is in the average, it grows. We're moving in that direction. We're seeing progress in our love toward God in all of these things that Paul is talking about here. So, let's read those two verses again with that brief explanation so that this can sink in. And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that is, that you might love what is good, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ. Then notice the increase once again in verse 11, being filled with the fruits of righteousness. So it is a love that grows in its practice, being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ. We don't do these things on our own, beloved. So what did we see? It's a knowing love, it's a discerning love, It's an approving love. It's a sincere love. It's an inoffensive love. It is a growing love in that it is filled with the fruits of righteousness. And it is a humble love because it recognizes that it is by Jesus Christ unto the praise and glory of God. Seven things there. Paul says about the love that ought to be present among us. It's filled with the fruits of righteousness. Yes, it is imperfect, but it is true obedience to the Lord's commands within and without, with the heart and with the hands and with the mouth, as we heard already in Deuteronomy chapter 30, right, and Romans chapter 10. It is... It is in accord with the righteousness of God, that is His faithfulness to us and His work in us. And so it is recognized as the love that comes to us from God. And if I might add one other. of this kind of statement. We've said it's a knowing love, it's a discerning love, and so on. In 2 Corinthians 5.14, Paul will say that it is a constraining love. The love of Christ, he says, constraineth us. That is, it shuts us up to a particular duty. It shuts us up to a particular course. This is how we know that the love that we have is indeed of God. In 2 Thessalonians 3-5, Paul prays for the Thessalonian church. Listen to what he says there. And the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into patient waiting for Christ. That's another prayer that we can pray. Not only that our love would abound more and more, but that the Lord would direct our love into himself or toward himself. That everything else would be eclipsed by that love that we have for him. So, with all of that, let's talk about a few more characteristics of this love before we close. So other characteristics of right love toward God, We love God because of the good that he does for us. Now we want to be careful here when we say this. We have invaded before against what we would call a mercenary spirit in our love toward God. And we don't want a mercenary spirit. We don't want to be like Satan accused Job of being. Does Job love God for naught? I don't know, he's got a pretty big house. Got a pretty good estate. Got a pretty good family. Got a lot going on for him. Does Job serve God for naught? We don't want to be like that. We don't want to fulfill that kind of accusation in ourselves. Obviously we don't. But having said that, there is a proper love for God that glorifies Him and not ourselves because we recognize the gifts that He gives. God is lovely. worthy of our love for what he does give to us. We must admit that. God brings to us what? Well, his only son, his spirit, his law, his commandments, the fellowship of the saints, his word. I mean, we could go on and on, right? The great acts of God in history to encourage us, written down and preserved for us that we might be encouraged by them in our day. God brings us many wondrous things, beloved. And because God brings us many wondrous things, we love him for it. But when we love him for it, it is for his sake and not our own. It's not a mercenary kind of love. Well, I'll come to God if I get what I want. Right? Not like that. But we come to God and we recognize that he is indeed a great giver. And the benefits that God gives only serve to lift up our love toward him the more. Certainly, we can say without fear of contradiction, what? That if we fail of arriving where God would have us, that it is where we are, not where he is. He has given us beyond what we can ask or think. He has given us everything that we need, and that, beloved, focusing on that. will help us to love God more, to increase more and more, especially when we remember what we truly deserve and what kind of service we have returned to him for his gifts. Remember the story of Samuel Miller? Samuel Miller had spent 50 years in ordained ministry, and in the 50th anniversary of his ordination, some friends of his came and said, you should celebrate. You've had a long and fruitful ministry in the Lord. You should have a party. Celebrate. Do something, Samuel. Well, if you know him, you know he was a pretty austere man. And he said, you know, I think that instead of throwing a party, I will turn aside and weep in secret places that over 50 years of service to the best of masters, I've made so little progress in my own service toward him, that I think I would rather go and weep because I have returned such terrible service to the best of masters. Well, that's good, isn't it? That's encouraging. That's helpful to us. To remember such a story that when we remember how much God has given and what little we have done with it, still we have the mindset of what? That he is indeed the best of masters. So that's the first. We want to remember when we remember That we love God, we want to forget none of His benefits. In Psalm 16, 1, I love the Lord. Why? Because He has heard my voice. That the Lord bends His ear to us is a cause for love to Him. His benefits then do indeed lift up our hearts toward Him. Secondly, we want to love God for who He is, not just what He does for us. Right? And it is in this connection that we would say that it doesn't really matter what he takes from us. Because his glory, his holiness, his loveliness, his majesty, his power, multiply out his attributes. Those things simply, if he never gave me a glance are worthy of my love to Him, just because of who He is, even if He never looked my way. I ought to love Him because He is holy, because He is wise. We live in an age of celebrity, don't we? What do we have? We have people that are sports figures, people that are philosophers, people that are politicians, people that are this and people that are that. And people will say, oh, I love that man because, I love that woman because of some paltry attribute. Now take that and blow it into eternity. It's not God worthy of our love because of simply who he is, even if he never gives us a glance. Of course he is. Yes. So remember his attributes. Forget none of his benefits. Forget none of his attributes. Job will say in Job 13, 15, though he slay me, I will trust him. Why? Because Job knows who the Lord is. And that is lovely in itself. Third, we love nothing but for the Lord's sake. We remember the maxim of Augustine of Hippo. We use things and love God. Because if we end up loving things, we always end up using God. No, we use things and we love God. And this is what we saw in Luke chapter 17, right? that when we end up setting our love on things, then there will come a time when that thing will be taken from us. And we must say at that point, I love God and hate that thing. But if we love it instead, we will find ourselves trying to use God to get the thing back. And so we must turn away from things with our love, make use of them on our journey, on our pilgrimage toward heaven. And then we love the Lord. I'm hustling here toward the end. Number four, we love everything else with such a love compared to the Lord, such that all other loves can be called hatred by comparison. And we saw that earlier in Luke 14 with regard to our fathers, our mothers, our families, our own lives, our own reputation, even our own pride, beloved. Very often we end up loving our pride such that when we're offended, we end up in such a way that we lose the impetus toward forgiveness. Why? Because we've been offended. We've been deprived. Something hasn't come our way that we thought. God's providence wasn't to us as we thought it ought to be, so we withhold instead. Beloved, this is not love toward God. Our Lord Jesus Christ, as we said earlier, made himself of no reputation. Psalm 45 tells us it is out of ivory palaces that he came. into a world where he took on the temptations of Satan, the infirmities of human nature, indignities done to himself? Did Jesus Christ insist and stand upon his rights? Not at all. Rather, he came to serve, he came to forgive. And then fifth, we love God when in our meditations upon him and his works, our hearts are swept up toward him. That is here, finally, we want to have proper affections toward God. Proper affections. We need to be careful here. I have sat with people counseling them when they have looked me dead in the eye and told me that they are sinning, and they're going to go on sinning, and that they really love Jesus, that their hearts are swept up to him. Beloved, those things are incompatible, plain and simple. No, our hearts are swept up to God in the contemplation of his attributes and morality, in the contemplation of what he has given us, in the contemplation of who he is for who he is, if he never set a glance upon us. When we begin to look upon God like that and meditate upon him and who he is, beloved, the Lord God helping you, your hearts will be rightly affected and swept up to him. but not until. If it's for you, well then those affections will be twisted, marred, and carnal, pocked, as the old divines used to say. Rather we want then in our understanding of who God is, in understanding of what God does, in understanding what he has given to us in this world, and all of those things. We want to understand them in that context of what it means to love God. And when we do, when we love even our own lives in that way, his grace helping us, then our hearts will be rightly swept up in affection to him. Those affections will follow and not lead. So how do we have this kind of love? As we said at the outset, beloved, we cannot have that kind of love naturally of ourselves. But it is mission possible for those whose hearts are new in Christ. Our Lord Jesus said that in the days of the destruction of Jerusalem, that the love of many would wax cold. Times would be so hard. Why was that? because they were God's fair weather lovers, right? As long as things were fair, they were okay in loving God and professing him. But when those winds of persecution came, well, their love began to wax cold. So beloved, set your hearts on God himself. Set your hearts on his mercy in Christ. Set your heart, set your thoughts, set your meditations upon his own beauty. Feed upon his word so that when someone beholds the love that you have toward God, they will ask you, what have you been feeding on? And you will say, I have been feasting on the word of God and my love for God has grown. Let's stand and call upon his name. Our dear Heavenly Father, as the psalmist writes, so we say, O Lord, I will love thee. O Lord, I do love thee, or we love thee. And having made that confession true as it is, Lord, we also desire that our love would abound yet more and more, that we would have a knowing love, a discerning love, a sincere love, a persevering love, an upright love, a constraining love toward thee at all times, an eclipsing love, Father, help us not to confuse affection and love. But we do ask, Lord, that thou wouldst raise up our affections toward thee, rightly, sincerely, following after. We confess, Lord, that our love is not yet perfected. We also confess that we love thee through no virtue of our own, but because thou hast first loved us. As thou hast set thy love upon us then, Lord, we pray, cause that love to grow. As we feast upon thy word, as we meditate upon thy person and works, as we know thy grace in Christ, as we make use of the things of this world, in Christ Jesus' name we pray.