The Measure of Our Love - Part 1

Welcome to the InTouch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Friday, March 8. God wants us to trust Him even when we don't get what we want. Today's lesson reminds us that obeying God is the measure of our love. If somebody were to say to you, I really love you, how would you respond to that? And how would you measure that love? Would you say, well, I would simply say, well, if they act like it, then I know that they would love me.

And what does it mean to act like it? So many times when we talk about loving people, what we really mean is that we need them. And so often when we say to God, I really love you, Lord, what we're saying is, I need you Lord. There is a distinction between loving Him and needing Him or loving someone and needing someone. How do you express love toward God?

And how do you and I know that we really and truly love Him? And the title of this message is Obeying God, the Measure of Our Love. And I want you to turn, if you will, to John chapter 14. And let's look at this text, John chapter 14. And I want us to read beginning in the 15th verse. He makes a very, very concise, clear statement concerning how you and I can know whether we love Him or not and how He measures our love for Him.

He says in verse 15, If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever. That is the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because He does not behold Him or know Him. But you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. After a little while, the world will behold Me no more. But you will behold Me because I live, you shall live also. In that day you shall know that I am in My Father and you in Me and I in you.

Now watch this. He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me. And he who loves Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.

Judas, not Iscariot, said to him, Lord, what then has happened that you're going to disclose yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus answered and said to him, If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words, and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father's who sent Me.

I want you to notice here that he states very clearly in this passage the same thing over and over again. Look in verse 15. If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. Verse 21, he says, He who has My commandments and keepeth them, he's the one who loves Me. Verse 23, If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word. Verse 24 says, If you don't love him, you won't keep his word. So it's very clear in this one passage, Jesus singles it all down to one basic issue, that if I love him, I will keep his commandments.

Now, if you'll think for a moment, some things that Jesus said. Let's stay in the book of John and go back, if you will, to the fourth chapter for a moment. In the fourth chapter, what I want you to see is that Jesus was a man committed to obedience to the Father.

Why? Because he loved the Father with an untarnished, unalterable, enduring, eternal love, nothing between the two of them. And so he says in chapter four, verse 34, Jesus said to them, My food is to do the will of him who sent me to be obedient to him who sent me and to accomplish his work. He said, Listen, more important to me than eating and all these other things. The most important thing in my life is to obey my father to do his will.

That's why I came. Chapter six, look, if you will, in verse 38. Here he says that a little different way. Jesus said, For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. He said, I came down here to this earth to be obedient to the Father.

That's my very reason for coming. Then if you look in the eighth chapter and the twenty ninth verse of John, here he says, And he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him. Don't you wish you could say that? And I bring this verse to your attention pretty often.

Don't you wish you could say that? I only do those things that please the Father. And then if you recall the most dramatic, I believe the most dramatic illustration and demonstration of Jesus struggling with obedience in this area, not because he was trying to decide whether he would or whether he was not. He was asking the Father, Is there any other way for me to do what you want me to do other than go into the cross? That is, listen, not just going to the cross, but being separated from you.

That was the issue with Christ, not the cross, but the separation, which was payment for our sins. And in that course of the Garden of Gethsemane, what do we see him doing? But we see Jesus Christ absolutely committed to the Father.

He said, Let this cup pass if possible, but not my will but thine be done. Jesus modeled perfect obedience. Jesus modeled beautiful obedience for all of us. He was a man of obedience. And he says in this passage, If you and I love him, we will obey him. That's his measuring rod of obedience, not some other things.

Now, there's some things that you and I could come up with. Other people come up with and say, Well, I'm sure I love God. Well, why do you know you love him? Well, I go to church faithfully. And so you say, Well, isn't going to church and doing these things an act of obedience?

It is, but that's not all obedience requires. And so what I want us to see here is that God measures love for himself by our obedience to him. And the second thing I want you to notice here is that God very specifically measures our love by our obedience to his word. So therefore, the Word of God suddenly takes on extreme importance to me if I'm going to live a life of obedience to God. Because he says in this passage, If you love me, you will keep my commandments. He says, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word. So what is he saying here, that there is a definite relationship here between our obedience to him and his precious word. Now, there are a lot of people I'm sure who really truly believe that they love God because they go to worship services and they get on these highs and and we're praising the Lord and we're singing and sometimes people lift their hands and and they think that's a sign that they love God. Let me tell you something, you can walk in a worship service and I've been in services that are so high pitched and high powered and the music's fantastic and people are praying and things are going on and you get caught up and all that and you feel absolutely fantastic and you walk away and you say, wasn't that a great service I feel better than ever before. That's no sign you love God.

Now watch this. Many people go to church because they really love God and they want his word and they want to be instructed. They want to be challenged. They want to be built up.

A lot of people come to church because it makes them feel better, has nothing to do with their love for God. It has to do with their own sense of need. They need something. They want to feel better. They want to be encouraged.

They want hope. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm simply saying you have to distinguish between if it's a matter of loving God or wanting something that God has to offer. And so everything that comes across as loving God's not loving God. You can sing and shout and praise and jump up and down and have a fantastic wonderful time and go out and live like the devil. Or while you're praising God, things going on in your life that you know that are not right and you think if I'll just praise a little bit more and just shout a little bit louder and just do a little bit more than God's going to, I'm finally going to convince him that I love him. The only thing that convinces God that I love him is that I obey him. All that other stuff is stuff and empty words unless I am at least attempting to be obedient to God. Because that's the bottom line with him.

We've got all kinds of lines. God has one bottom line that's obedience. And so when you search the Scriptures and you begin to look and all these wonderful things that we think are fine, turn to Galatians, to James chapter 1. We think surely we ought to convince God that we love him. And you know I can look back in times in my life when I've been growing in certain areas and if you'd asked me if I love God I'd have said absolutely I'd die for him.

Well let me tell you what I discovered. I thought yes I would die for him. But you know what? I may die for him physically quicker than I would be obedient in some other area. And so everything that we think is obedience is not obedience. Now look in James chapter 1 verse 22 he says, now look at this, he says, But prove yourselves. Doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves are deceived. He says listen, you can hear the word and feel good but that doesn't mean that you're being obedient to God. He says don't be deluded or be deceived. For if anyone is a hearer of the word not a doer, not obedient to it, he's like a man who looks at his natural face in the mirror.

Once he's looked at himself and gone away, he's immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man should be blessed in what he does. This man or woman should be blessed in what they do if we are not, listen, just hearers but doers.

Now I want you to think about something. You can go from one Bible study to the other. You can go from one prayer group to the other and you can get more and more knowledge and more and more understanding and more and more prayer and all of that and still not love God. There is no substitute for loving God and the only thing that bears witness to my genuine love is that I am obedient to God. That my heart is bent toward Him. I desire to obey Him. I long to obey Him. I attempt to obey Him. I try to obey Him. I do obey Him.

These other things are fine but you see, you can get all helped up and excited and this is why a lot of stuff is just stuff. It is not really genuine true worship. You can't be living in sin being disobedient to God and not committed to Him and walking obediently before Him.

I don't care how many songs you sing, how much praise you do, lifting your hands, shout, speak in tongues, you name it. If you're not obedient to God, you are not loving God. Now who said that? Not I. Jesus said, you know what Jesus said? He said, I'm just telling you what the Father told me. That's what Jesus said. He said, these words are not mine.

I didn't do this on my own initiative. He says, I'm just telling you what the Father said. And so look if you will in the 12th chapter of John, back to John chapter 12.

Look if you will in verse 49. He says, for I do not speak on my own initiative but the Father himself who sent me has given me commandment what to say and what to speak. And so one of the things the Father told Jesus to say was, He said, Son, you tell them that those who love Me will obey Me and if they're not obeying Me, they don't love Me. Now watch that because I'm coming back to that very, very important point. Now, His method of measuring our love is directly related to His Word.

Now let's look at a couple of things here. Look if you will in verse 15, first of all. He says, if you love Me, you will keep My commandments. Now what does it mean by commandments? Well, what is a commandment? Listen, a commandment is an authoritative word or series of words given by God for obedience on the part of the hearers and the listeners.

His commandments are an authoritative word or series of words given by God to be obeyed on the part of the hearers or the listeners, that is, the readers or the listeners. So it isn't something I am given to consider. It isn't something I'm given just to understand. It is something I am given to obey.

Now, what I want you to see is this. There is a difference between hearing it and thinking, fantastic. Seeing it, believing it, being excited about it and thinking, well, I understand that. There's a difference in all of that than doing what it says. And there are many people who understand truth but who do not do what they understand. And all of us know more truth than we live up to, amen?

We all know more truth than we live up to. But the will and purpose of God is that we live up to this truth. And you see, one of the exciting things is in this passage, look in verse 16 now, still in John 14. As soon as he said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments, the very next thing he said was, look, and I will ask the Father, he will give you another comfort of the help of the Holy Spirit, that he may be with you forever. That is the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it doesn't behold him and know him, but you know him because he abides with you and will be in you.

What was he saying? This is a wonderful expression of the love of Christ. He just got through saying, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments and I'm going to send the Holy Spirit with a person of the Trinity, he'll be in you with you and upon you and he will enable you, strengthen you, guide you, guard you, protect you in order that you will be able to be obedient to my commands.

He knows we can't do it apart from him. This is why he said those disciples, sit down in the city of Jerusalem until you be endued with power from on high. They couldn't do the work God called them to do, couldn't live the life God called them to live any more than we can. And so he said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments and I'm going to send the Holy Spirit so he'll live on the inside of you, enable you, give you understanding of the Word, what obedience is all about, enable you, strengthen you, warn you, challenge you so that you can do exactly what I just said and that is obey me. And so, you know, there have been times when I've given God excuses.

He didn't accept any of them. Now, Lord, if so and so, I wouldn't have done so and so, no, because you see, we have the Holy Spirit who is our teacher living on the inside of us and therefore we really are without excuse. We may have moments of weaknesses or areas of weakness or stumble or fall or whatever it might be, but we do have the Holy Spirit living on the inside of us who has promised to enable you and me to do and to be what God has called us to be and to do. So he says, my commandments are my authoritative words given to you for obedience. Now, Jesus used another word here in the 23rd verse.

He says, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word. That is whatever he says, every command that he gives, you and I as children of God are responsible for carrying it out, for being obedient to him. Now, somebody says, well, you mean to tell me, man, I look into the Old Testament, I go all the way back to Genesis, you mean to tell me that I'm responsible for all of that?

Well, let's look at it a little different way than that. I mean, first of all, that does not include all those ceremonial laws that God gave the nation of Israel, that they were to fulfill the tabernacle and then to the temple and so forth. All of those ceremonial laws were fulfilled in Christ. Secondly, those specific commands given by God through his prophets to the nation of Israel that applied to them only something does not apply to us, but all of those moral laws apply to us. Now, you say, well, what about the Ten Commandments?

Indeed, they do, except the one on keeping the Sabbath day holy. As believers on the resurrection of Christ, the New Testament church began to serve and to worship the Lord on the first day of the week. So we as believers, we worship him on the first day of the week.

The day is not important. The important thing is that you and I worship him together. And so all the rest of those along with that one applies to us. Plus everything Jesus said, plus all the things that the Apostle Paul said. What command in the scripture from the Apostle Paul, what command that the Lord Jesus Christ gave, can we say, well, that doesn't apply to me. Now, there may be some cultural things that were going on in that day that were not moral laws that apply to those particular people.

There may be some of those exceptions, but they're rare. But for the most part, all of this law of God is given to us as he calls them commandments and as he calls them his words. Now, I want you to think about this for a moment. If loving God means that I must obey him, then the question is, how am I going to obey him? Well, if I'm going to obey him, I've got to get in the Word and find out what he says. You see, one of the reasons I know that just simply serving God doesn't mean you obey him because there are men who stand behind pulpits all over the world. First of all, they don't believe that's inspired, infallible, inerrant Word of God. Secondly, they don't believe the new birth is absolutely essential. They don't believe in the bodily resurrection. They don't believe that Jesus Christ is coming again. And there are many other things they do not believe, basic things that allude to whether your person can be saved or not. So they stand behind some pulpit somewhere and open the Bible, read a verse, shut the Bible and give a lecture. Or they may leave the Bible open.

Or they may not even bring it to the pulpit, but they do what they call giving a sermon. These men don't love God. You can't love God and ignore the Word of God. You can't love God and shut the Bible. You can't love God and not believe this book. You can't love God and not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

You can't love God and believe all those errors. You may have some respect for God. When we say love God, you see, he didn't say, if you fear me, keep my commandments. He says, if you love me, keep my commandments.

If we fear him, I don't mean being scared. You see, one of the reasons some people obey God is they're scared to death. Oh, if I don't know what God's going to do. Now listen, all of us obey God at times because we don't like the consequences of disobedience.

I'll tell you how you can know whether you're growing or not. When you're obeying God, not because you're afraid of the consequences, but because you love him. You just want to do it because you love him. If when you sinned and you were frightened for the consequences, you felt guilt and you did it to yourself and that's what bothered you most, you were a child.

But if you have moved to the point where what hits you first is you did it to him, then you know you're growing and that your heart really is bent toward being obedient to him. Thank you for listening to The Measure of Our Love. For more inspirational messages like this, visit our online 24-7 station. And if you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.