Love Through Discipline: How the Means of Grace Fulfill the Greatest Commandment

Introduction

Thank you for having me and allowing me the opportunity to preach here at Rothsay Baptist Church again. It is gracious to be with you, especially with my new son who was here last time but not out and about as he is now.

I will start this morning’s message with a hypothetical scenario. A married friend comes up to you and asks you marriage advice. Things just aren’t what they used to be. He states that they feel like strangers in the same house and that him and his wife barely talk to each other. You ask him what he is doing currently in his marriage, and he responds with, “Nothing really, just trying to make effort when I feel like or am inspired to.” We would be so shocked we would probably laugh at how ridiculous his answer is. We would say something along the lines of, “Well maybe you should take time to take her out.” “Maybe you should set aside time to talk with her everyday where you can go deeper into conversation.” “Maybe have her come with you when you do things, even boring things.” These ideas just seem to be something you would naturally do with the person you swore to spend the rest of your life with. Yet, God, whom we will spend eternity with and have vowed to serve, in most cases seems to be the first person we throw out when life gets busy.

Just like our spouses, or anyone important in our life, we need to create time to spend with them to maintain or even grow our relationship. This requires discipline, a word that many of us may find restricting or even negative. Discipline is not what we would normally consider as loving. Discipline is usually talked about in the context school or for the gym, not for relationships. But many of you who are married or are in the process of seeking marriage discipline yourselves for your spouse. Regular date nights, making time to talk every day, and even being present in a modern world full of distractions all require discipline. How much more so in a world that is fallen must we be dedicated to spend time with God when we have an enemy who prowls around like a lion? When we have a world who crucified the very Savior who came to save us? When we ourselves were once among the scoffers of Christ? Paul writes on this in his letter to timothy 1 Timothy 4:7b–8 “Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.” Godliness is something we need to train, it doesn’t come naturally. We are saved by grace through faith alone, but God has given us means to connect with Him such as reading Scripture with biblical meditation, prayer, fasting, fellowship, and evangelism. These means of grace are God’s way to build relationship and sanctify His body of believers.

We see this in the greatest commandment that Christ quotes from: which is found in Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Deuteronomy 6:4–9 ESV

“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 of 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.

We see that in this text that loving God demands our heart, soul, and might. We may also reword it to say that God’s love demands your affections, your sovereignty, and your life. Your affections, your sovereignty, and your life. Through faithful exposition I will also show how the means of grace, or spiritual disciplines, are used by God to fulfill this commandment.

Loving God Demands Your Affections

When we hear the word heart, in our modern culture, we tend to think of affections or emotions. Like in many of the Disney movies where it talks about following your heart, which is terrible advice, they tell you to do what feels right. This would be a foreign concept to the Israelites. In the Hebrew, the heart that is commanded to love God with is not just the heart as we know today. Heart then would be best summed up as combining our understanding of heart with the mind. This is why in Mark and Luke’s gospel accounts they put both heart and mind when they write about when Jesus quoted to the Pharisees what the greatest commandment was.

This clears up this idea that we should always be on some sort of “spiritual high” to love God. There need is a willingness and a conscious effort, but if you never feel anything like that I would be concerned. If we again use a marriage relationship as an example, over time you will not feel the same way as you did when you first started seeing each other, and that is a good thing. As one author put “do you remember when you were first in love and all of your thoughts were encapsulated with each other? Could you imagine feeling this way all the time? You would be unable to get anything done!” But if you never look at your spouse and admire them for simply being who they are and remember why you married them, then you will be cold to them.

God puts these promises, the commandments, on on the hearts of all who love Him. His goal is not that we simply memorize them for the sake of memorizing them, but for the sake of growing in affection of Him. We see in Psalm 51:17 “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” This Psalm was written by David after his sin with Bathsheba and how he was broken over his sin. It was the prophet Nathan calling David out along with the law of God that called him to repentance. Just like David, we need to be reading and meditating on the law of God. For it is the law of God written on our hearts and the work of the Holy Spirit that will convict us and make us turn to God. It is why the people of God were commanded to talk about all through the day. In the text you see the contrasts that exist, “when you lie down, and when you rise” “when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way,” shows that this should be happening constantly.

For this to happen we need to be not only reading the Bible, but we need to be thinking deeply. This is biblical meditation. When we hear meditation, we think of eastern meditation which is emptying our mind. This is only half of what biblical meditation is. Donald S. Whitney words it in this way, “While some advocate a kind of meditation in which you do your best to empty your mind, Christian meditation involves filling your mind with God and His truth.” This echoes what Paul tells the Philippians in his letter, Philippians 4:8 “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

As many theologians and puritans have written, as well as I have personally experienced, when you go into this kind of meditation it will lead to prayer and deeper worship of God. This will fuel the fire needed to keep your affections on Christ. To love Him as the Lord He is. This moves us from what the Pharisees had. They loved the law because they thought they followed it perfectly. Their hearts were hard and they thought that their actions would bring them merit and favor with God, but all it did was make their fall worse. They had known the law and the coming of the Messiah, but they still crucified Him. Our disciplines do not make us right with God, His death and resurrection did that, but they do allow us to grow in humility for the coming of Christ.

Loving God Demands Your Sovereignty