Love God [upward discipleship]

Psalm 19 NIV

For the director of music. A psalm of David. 1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. 3 They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. 4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. 5 It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. 6 It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth. 7 The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. 8 The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. 9 The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The decrees of the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous. 10 They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb. 11 By them your servant is warned; in keeping them there is great reward. 12 But who can discern their own errors? Forgive my hidden faults. 13 Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me. Then I will be blameless, innocent of great transgression. 14 May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.

Here we go with three weeks left till we begin the season of Lent. And I want to take these three weeks to lay the groundwork for some visionary behavior. Here is what I mean by that. Sometimes we talk about what it means to be a follower of Jesus, and we have a vision of what we want that to look like. I have some kind of a picture in my head of the kind of Christian that I aspire to become. This is true for us as a church. As a community of believers we carry a vision of what desire for all of our members in this church family to grow into and embody as a part of our identity in Christ.

Or to put it another way, we have a vision of what discipleship looks like. And I want to break this down over the next three weeks in a way that makes this vision of discipleship clear and understandable. This is why; often we over-complicate religion and make discipleship a complex and confusing system. It shouldn’t be that way. We proclaim through scripture that we are saved by grace through faith. This means we proclaim that God himself has done the complicated part of religion. Our part of following Jesus as his disciples shouldn’t be so complicated.

And so, I am calling this series “simple.” Let me be clear about what I mean by simple. Simple does not necessarily mean easy. No one ever said that following Jesus is always easy. But following Jesus should be clear. I ought to have a clear picture in my head of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. That’s what we mean by simple.

Now let me tell you what my earnest desire is for all of us here. I want our picture of Christian discipleship to be so very clear that if anyone ever comes in to visit this place and asks anyone here what it means to be a disciple of Jesus here at this church, we would all give the exact same answer. Because we know; because we all have a clear picture—a vision—for what following Jesus here in this place is all about. That’s what we mean by simple. It means we all get it; we all understand; and we are all on the same page together and all moving in the same direction.

The first disciples all had that. The very first followers of Jesus who led the church forward after Jesus ascended into heaven had a clear picture of what it meant for them to continue on as followers of Jesus and become the community of faith. And the church grew and expanded because they all had a clear simple vision of following Jesus together.

Here we go, then. In the next three weeks let’s unpack three clear, simple dynamics of following Jesus together, of what it means for us to be the community of faith living in discipleship together.

Discipleship Directions

The first thing I want to do is give us a road map for the next three weeks that will help make this memorable. Because I want a vision of discipleship to be clear and simple for everyone here, then it should be something that we can all easily remember. So, in your notes is an outline with a triangle on it. For those here who are visual learners, maybe it helps to have a picture to go along with this. Here is what we are going to do. In the next three weeks I am going to take our church mission statement and show how it fits in the three directions of this triangle to give us a clear and simple vision of following Jesus here together as a community of faith in this church. Our mission statement says this: that Fellowship Christian Reformed Church exists to love God, to grow in relationships, and to serve our local community. Three actions: love God, grow relationships, and serve community. Today we look at the first one of those actions, loving God. And we are placing it in the triangle picture as the upward direction of discipleship. This is the part of following Jesus that looks upward to God as he reaches to us in relationship. In the next two weeks we will be talking more about the in and the out directions that have to do with growing and serving. But for today, let’s just focus on the upward piece of discipleship that is about loving God.

To be a disciple of Jesus means that we love Jesus. This is not a surprise. We sing about it all the time when we gather for worship. Our worship songs are filled with language that expresses God’s love for us and our love for God. A loving connection with God is at the heart of our mission. The first disciples knew this clearly. And today I want us to focus the rest of our time on what it means when we say that we love God.

The apostle John writes about this in the book of Revelation. It is the message of Jesus to one of the seven churches addressed in Revelation 2. He writes this.

Revelation 2:2–4 NIV

2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. 3 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. 4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first.

At the very beginning of a relationship with God is a clear vision to know his love for us and to respond in love to him.

I cannot love God if I do not know God

Embracing God’s love for us and responding in love to him is at the heart of our upward discipleship. But here is the central thought of this upward movement. I cannot love God if I do not know God. In order to love God, I first need to know God.

When I first got to know Laura way back before we were married, it was a relationship that first grew as a friendship and became closer the more we got to know each other. This is true of all close friendships (not just married partners). As we grow closer in friendships with others it comes with opening up and knowing one another. In those early months when I met Laura it was a relationship in which I was getting to know her. I got to know her hobbies and interests. I got to know her family. I began to understand how she responded and reacted to certain situations; the things she liked and the things she didn’t like. This is all part of the process in getting to know someone. And our relationship of love today still draws heavily on the ways that we know one another. I could not have a relationship of love with Laura if I did not know her the way that I do. I could not have close friendships if I didn’t take the time to get to know the lives of those other people. Love means I have to know something about who you are.

This takes time. I’ve been here in Michigan now for a year and it feels like there is still so much I have to learn about so many of you here. Getting to know a whole bunch of new people takes time. And our relationship with God is something that grows over time as well, as we get to know him and know his love for us. We work at it. Knowing God is a continual process. It is an ongoing process. It is always there before us. This is why we define it as part of our mission statement. This is why we picture it as a direction and action of discipleship. As followers of Jesus we always want to keep this in front of us.

Knowing God is not a mystery. God wants us to know him. God reveals himself to us so that we can know him. All religions struggle with this question. All religions ask, who is God and how do I know him? The pagan religions of the ancient world struggles with this question because they chased after idols and made up mythologies in which their gods could not be known. In the pagan religions of the ancient world the gods did not reveal themselves. The gods could not really be known. And because the pagan gods did not reveal themselves and could not be known, the people who followed those religions never exactly knew what it was their gods wanted. The pagan religions were never built upon any kind of love because those false gods could never be loved. Those gods could never be loved because those gods could never be known.

But our God—the true God—shows himself to us. The triune God of the Bible is a God who reveals himself. This is a God who can be known. And because God reveals himself and because we can know him, we can live as followers of God who can in fact embrace a true love for God. He has revealed his love for us and we can know this love ourselves. This is the clear and simple upward direction of our mission and our discipleship. We can love God because God has made his love known to us.

Let me bring this to the big question of the day for us then. How do we know God? If our mission of becoming disciples of Jesus looks to point upward and embrace a love for God that comes from knowing him, how do we do this? Psalm 19 points to two ways in which we know God. Verses 1-6 show us that God reveals himself in the world in which he has made. And verses 7-11 show us that God reveals himself to us through his Word. Our doctrines acknowledge this as well. Belgic Confession article 2 affirms this.

General revelation

First of all then, we see evidence of God revealed to us in the creation itself. In our theology we call this general revelation. David puts it so poetically in those first seven verses of Psalm 19. The Belgic Confession uses some poetic imagery as well.

We know God by two means:

First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, since that universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book

in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God:

God’s eternal power and divinity, as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20.

All these things are enough to convict humans and to leave them without excuse.

But God’s revelation of himself through nature only goes so far. There is only so much we can learn about God by looking at the world around us. It is enough for us to know that there is a creator, but more is needed to truly know God’s love.

Special revelation

David refers to this in Psalm 19 as being the law of the Lord. It is through his revealed Word that God truly makes himself and his love known to us in such a way that we can embrace a response of love to him. Article two of the Belgic Confession goes on to put it this way.

Second, God makes himself known to us more clearly by his holy and divine Word, as much as we need in this life,

for God’s glory and for our salvation.

Let’s break it down and make this very clear. I cannot love God if I do not know God. And I cannot know God if I do not read scripture. It is through spending time in God’s Word that I get to know him. And in getting to know God through his Word, I am pulled and drawn by the Holy Spirit deeper into embracing his love—God’s love for me and my love for God.

It is not a mystery. I do not have to seek God out and try to discover for myself who God is. God has already reached down in love and revealed himself and made himself known to us. The one singular best thing that any one of us can ever do to receive and embrace this loving connection to God is to regularly spend time in his Word—which he has already given as his revealed gift to us. Could God possibly have made this angle of discipleship any simpler? I don’t see how. Spending time in scripture is the one thing that every single one of us can do that helps us to know God and strengthen the connection we have in the love he has revealed and given to each one of us.

I needed to rediscover this. I’ve had quite a bit of down-time the last several weeks with recovery from surgery. It forced me to a place in which my daily routine was slowed down and I had all the opportunities to spend significant time each day with God in scripture. But I know this is not true for many of us. Most of us do not have a forced break from daily routines that provide us with an open opportunity for this kind of discipleship activity. For most of us, getting into the Word of God—whether it is for the first time or getting back into it—is something that will require an intentional habit.

So, if this is you. Can I leave you today with one suggestion of a place to begin? If you desire to leave this place today with one practical step you can take to get deeper into the Bible, let me suggest you start with this: Psalm 119.

This isn’t about a Bible study or theological undertaking. This is simply about getting into the word of God with the goal of embracing a deeper connection with God and his revealed love for us through his Word. It is about establishing a habit of regularly spending time with God in scripture. And the best place I can think of to begin with that is through Psalm 119.

Psalm 119 is about one thing. The theme of Psalm 119 is about the psalmist’s love for God’s Word. It is one stanza after the next declaring a love for knowing God by the way in which God reveals himself through his perfect Word to us. If I want to go from this place today with one practical step to enter into a deeper love for God and for his revealed Word to us, then it would be good to start with Psalm that talks about just that very thing.

Maybe some of you know that Psalm 119 is quite long. But it breaks apart quite easily into pieces that can spread over several days. Psalm 119 is an acrostic poem that follows the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. So, there are 22 sections—one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet—and each section has only eight verses.

Here is my challenge for us today. Take a look at it over the coming weeks. In three weeks we begin the season of Lent leading up to Easter. Fellowship Church is going to be offering a daily Bible reading plan for the season of Lent that is based on Psalm 119. Hang onto that idea for a few weeks while we finish this sermon series though the other two simple directions of discipleship—because we are going to tie all of this together before Lent begins in March.

But between now and then, skip on over to Psalm 119. Take a look at it. Notice how the theme of knowing and loving God continually pushes through in the psalmist’s dedication of embracing the revealed Word of God over and over again. It is a great place for us to go for our daily reminder that we love God by knowing God, and that we know God by the way in which he has revealed his faithful and eternal love to each one of us.