Learning to Love God

“It doesn’t matter what you are, it only matters what people think you are.”

One day a tired executive got into his Ford station wagon in the long-term parking lot of a busy airport. He had just returned from a lengthy business trip, and he was exhausted.

Absent-mindedly, he started the car and put it in reverse. But he didn’t notice the bright yellow sports car tucked into a parking place immediately across the aisle from his. The crunch of crumpled metal and the sound of breaking glass brought him back to reality.

With a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, he climbed out of his car and found to his dismay that he had caved in the front fender of a very expensive little Porsche Carrera. There was no sign of the owner of the car, and this being an airport parking lot, the owner might have been a thousand miles away at that very moment.

Some pedestrians had witnessed the accident. There were some passengers waiting for a hotel shuttle bus across the way, and they too had seen what had happened. The man got the distinct impression that people were watching him to see what he would do next.

So he got out a piece of paper and spent the next few minutes writing out a note for the owner of the Porsche. He carefully folded the note, placed it under the windshield wiper of the sports car, and drove away.

The next day, the owner of the Porsche came back to his car in the parking lot, only to find the front fender caved in and the headlight smashed. As he surveyed the damage, a fluttering piece of paper on the windshield caught his eye. He unfolded the note, and this is what he read.

To the owner of the yellow Porsche,

The people who are watching me right now think that I am leaving you this note to give you my name, phone number, and insurance information. I’m not. Sorry about your car. Better luck next time.

The man who wrote that note was more concerned with appearances than he was with substance. He was more interested in leaving the impression of integrity, than he was with actually being a man of integrity. His motto was “It doesn’t matter what you are, it only matters what people think you are.”

Those words were first spoken by the father of President John F. Kennedy, by way of advice to his son. And from what we know of JFK’s personal life, it appears that he followed his father’s advice. Joseph P. Kennedy’s words became the rallying cry for a generation which grew up to value appearance more than reality.

And that temptation can be true of Christians as well.

It’s so easy to set your focus on keeping up appearances - going to church, doing all the things that good Christians are supposed to do. And people think that you are a fine, upright Christian.

But somewhere, you’ve lost sight of the substance of Christianity. You’ve put all your effort and energy into keeping up an image, when what you really should have been doing is devoting yourself to cultivating true spirituality - a spirituality that comes from the heart.

And so you become a hollow person; a hollow Christian with a veneer of spirituality but without any inner reality. You become a phoney. The danger of hypocrisy - spiritual phoniness - is what the book of 1 John is all about.

If Joe Kennedy’s motto was “It doesn’t matter what you are, it only matters what people think you are”, the motto of 1 John is just the opposite: “It doesn’t matter what people think you are; it matters what you are.” And what you are as a Christian matters most of all.

When you boil the message of this powerful little book down to its barest essentials, here is what you’ve got: A genuine Christian is a person of whom three things are true…

1. He believes that Jesus of Nazareth is God. There’s a belief component to Christianity - you have to believe certain things about Jesus in order to be a Christian.

1 John 4:15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God.

1 John 5:1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God

In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, the Christ, the Anointed One who came from heaven to earth to redeem us from our sins. If you don’t believe that, you cannot be a Christian.

But being a Christian doesn’t stop there. It’s not just a matter of believing certain things. Your belief has to have shoes on. It has to make a difference in the way you live and the way you relate to other people, or it isn’t true belief.

And that brings us to our second component of genuine Christianity - the social component.

2. A genuine Christian loves other people. His life operates on the basis of that “love power” we talked about last week.

In his relationships with other people, a genuine Christian is always going to go for what is good for them, not what’s good for him. He’s going to be a giver, not a taker. The well-being of the other person is going to be his first priority. After all, that’s what love is.

1 John 3:14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death.

1 John 4:16 God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.

1 John 4:20 If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.

So love for other people is the second hallmark of a true Christian. What’s number three? It’s obedience.

3. A true Christian is a person who obeys God’s principles for living. Being a Christian is not just a matter of believing certain things about Jesus, and trying to love other people. There’s also a moral component to Christianity.

Being a true Christian means being committed to living your life according to what God wants you to do, not what you want to do. It means submitting your will to His will. It means obeying the principles for right living that God gives to us in the Bible.

You see, to be a genuine Christian, you have to start thinking more about character than charisma. You have to begin to understand that it matters what you are in your private life. It matters how you live. It matters what you do when no one is looking. It matters whether you cut corners, or play fast and loose with the rules. Because to be a real Christian is to understand that God is watching.

1 John 2:3-4 We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

1 John 3:24 Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them.

1 John 5:3 This is love for God: to obey his commands.

So if you really love God, you’ll do what he says. It’s that simple.

What have we learned so far? We’ve learned that a real Christian is a person about whom three things are true:

1. He believes that Jesus is the Son of God and the Savior of the world.

2. He’s committed to loving other people, and looking out for their well-being.

3. He’s a person who obeys God’s commands.

There’s a doctrinal component, there’s a social component, and there’s a moral component to being a Christian. And if one of them is missing, the Bible says you’re a phoney. You may say you’re a Christian, you may think you’re a Christian, but you’re systematically kidding yourself.

Let’s focus in on this third component for the remainder of our time this morning - the component of obedience.

Over and over in the Bible, from beginning to end, God tells us that He wants our obedience. He doesn’t want our sacrifices, He doesn’t want our religious services, He doesn’t want our verbal expressions of love and devotion; He doesn’t want us to do great projects for Him.

He simply wants our obedience. Because only our obedience shows that we truly love and honor Him.

1 John 5:3 This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome

The word “obey” in that verse means literally “to keep, to guard, to keep close watch over”.

A missionary with the Wycliffe Bible Translators was working in a remote area with a tribe of Indians. He was translating the New Testament into their language. But he was struggling to find the right word in the tribal language to express the word “obey”.

One day, the missionary whistled for his dog. His dog came bounding over to him from the other side of the village. The chief was watching and he said to the missionary “Your dog is all ear”. The missionary realized that he had just found the right word for obedience - the word that the chief used that meant “all ear”.

When God speaks to you through the Scriptures, are you “all ear”? Do you jump to do His will. Do you set aside what you are doing to do what God wants you to do? Or do you say “Not now God. I’ll get around to it someday, but not now. I want to do my own thing right now.” We have a saying in our house about that kind of response: “Delayed obedience is disobedience.”

On June 6 we’re going to celebrate the 50th anniversary of D-Day. One of the great British generals who helped to mastermind that great invasion was General Bernard Montgomery.

Monty was an eccentric, strong-willed leader. He wasn’t always easy to get along with. But his troops loved him, and he was a genius at tactics and planning. He never went into battle until he was sure his soldiers and his supplies were well prepared.

During the early part of the war, Winston Churchill assigned Monty to take over command of the struggling British army in North Africa. The German General Rommel, the Desert Fox, was at the door of Egypt with his Afrika Korps, and the Suez Canal was the great prize he coveted.

Montgomery found the Eighth Army in disarray. The morale of the troops was low. The lines of communication were terrible. But worst of all was that he discovered that orders from headquarters were not being carried out swiftly and without question.

He quickly made it his business to instill a sense of obedience in his officers and his troops. He made it clear that he expected his commands to be carried out. He wrote to his officers: “Orders no longer form the basis for discussion, but for action.” And it was because of his decisive approach to the issue of obedience that the British Eighth Army was able to defeat the Germans and turn the tide in North Africa.

We cannot play games with God in the area of obedience. We cannot say that we love Him if we do not obey Him. A lot of church-going people will tell you that they love God, but when you look at their lives, you’ll find that they are really living according to what they want to do. They are really following their own agenda, not God’s.

True Christianity is all about doing it God’s way out there in the world - in your place of employment, in your school, on the playing field, and at home. What you do in those places reveals whether you’re really a Christian or not. Anybody can appear to be a Christian at church.

The principles for right living are found in the Bible. God has given us the Bible to tell us how to live. He’s given us His Word, not to make us smart, but to make us holy. God knows that holiness is what’s best for us. That’s why God wants us to obey it - because He loves us and has our best interests at heart. So what are you doing with your Bible?

During the time I was in college, I was dating a beautiful young woman whom I later married. The only problem with our relationship was that she lived in Montreal and I was going to college in Toronto, 350 miles away. Although we spent much time apart, our love for each other grew stronger.

That’s because we wrote lots of letters. (I was too broke to afford long-distance telephone calls!) Every day, I would check my mailbox to see if a letter from Carolyn had arrived. Almost every day there was one, some days there were even two!

Now can you imagine if I had taken those letters out of my mailbox, and taken them back to my dorm room and put them on the shelf unopened? And never bothered replying to them? After a few weeks, I would have had a big collection of unopened, unanswered letters gathering dust. I’m sure you’d begin to wonder how much I really loved the person who was writing those letters.

Yet this is what many of us do with the Bible. The Bible is like a love letter from God to us. But so many of us don’t even open it. It just sits on the shelf, gathering dust. And if we don’t read it, how can we possibly obey it?

Maybe we neglect the Bible because we’re afraid of it. We’re afraid that if we get serious about obeying the Bible, God is going to turn us into some kind of a weirdo. A holy Joe. A religious fanatic. A fundamentalist. A Bible-thumper.

Yet look at Jesus. Of all the people who ever lived, Jesus was the only one who obeyed God’s Word perfectly in everything he ever did. What kind of a person was he?

Well, when you read the NT, you find out that Jesus got along great with sinners. He was holy, but his holiness had a down-to-earth quality about it. His holiness didn’t isolate him from other people. It didn’t make them feel uncomfortable in his presence.

In fact, quite the opposite: the common, everyday, ordinary people loved Him to pieces. They were attracted to him. They invited him to their parties and their banquets. Far from avoiding him, they wanted him around. There was something magnetic about him.

As a matter of fact, the only people who didn’t like Jesus were the fundamentalists; the religious fanatics, the holy Joes. Isn’t that weird? The holiest person who ever lived was the one that the sinners loved the most and the religious people loved the least.

Satan wants you to believe that if you live according to God’s commands, you’ll turn into a religious freak. That’s a lie.

1 John 5:3 This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome

The word that is used in that verse - “burdensome” - means literally “a heavy, crushing, fierce, oppressive weight” The KJV says “grievous”. The commandments of the Lord are not meant to oppress us, to weigh us down, to crush our spirits.

Matthew 11:28-30 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Jesus took that image from the world of agriculture. When a farmer wanted to break in a young bullock, he would harness it to the same yoke as a mature ox. Then he would hitch them both up to his plow. The bullock, dwarfed by the ox, would not actually be pulling the weight of the plow. The ox had the entire load, but the bullock moved along as a part of the team, and got the hang of being harnessed to that yoke.

That’s the way it is with us when we obey the Word of God. It is as though we are getting into harness with the Lord, and he takes the weight of our world upon his broad shoulders.

Living in obedience to the Scripture is liberating. It gives you a light heart. It gives you rest for your soul. But living in disobedience makes life extremely complicated. It is a stressful, nerve-wracking, anxiety-producing way to live.

So which way are you living this morning? Are you walking in obedience to the Word of God? Are you showing God you love him by obeying him?

John 14:21 Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me.

We started off today with a car story, so we might as well finish with one.

Several years ago, when we lived on Long Island, Jonathan and Peter and their friends were out playing baseball on the street in front of our house. They were using a hardball, which wasn’t a real good idea, as there were several cars parked nearby.

As it happened, Pete threw the ball to Jonathan, and Jay missed it. The ball smashed the tail-light of one of the cars parked on the street. Now there were all sorts of cars in that neighborhood: Fords, Chevys, Dodges, and Toyotas. But the car that my boys smashed the tail-light of happened to be my neighbor’s black Mercedes. The most expensive car on the street.

Since nobody had seen the it happen, some of the neighbor kids suggested that they all just run away and make like they didn’t do it. But Jonathan came into the house and told me what had happened. We both knew that the only thing for a Christian to do was to own up to it. So together we went over to my neighbor Bob’s house, and rang the doorbell.

When Bob came to the door, Jay apologized for what had happened, and we handed him what remained of his taillight. I asked Bob to have the repair done, and I would pay for it. Bob was very nice about it, but he did say that, since it was a Mercedes, a new tail-light was going to cost in the neighborhood of $150 - 200. (That’s one good reason not to own a Mercedes!) So I swallowed hard and said “That’s OK. Whatever it takes.”

Well, a few days later, Bob came over to me and I was getting ready for him to hand me the bill. But he said “Hey, about that tail-light. You can forget about it. Last night my wife and I were out to a restaurant in the Mercedes. They had valet parking. The idiot who parked my car smashed in the whole rear end, including the taillight.”

Yessss! Thank you, Lord for valet parking!

When you do things God’s way, He’ll take care of you.

Obedience. If you love God, do what He says. That’s not very complicated is it? This isn’t nuclear physics we’re talking about here. Just trust and obey.

Turn to number 318 in your hymnal.