Maybe you've heard the old saying, the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. Organizations, businesses, and various other groups will sometimes formulate a mission statement. What is their purpose for existence? The main thing, why they are there, what is the prime directive? What's the main thing in the Christian life. What if someone you know became a Christian just last night, shows up at church and says, I've got saved, I believed in Jesus, and you rejoice with him, and he says, now, what do I do? What would you tell him is the main thing never to forget in living the Christian life? The main thing, brethren, is very simple. The main thing is to love God. And yet we forget it. We need to be reminded of this, and that's why I thought I'd bring this message on the first Sunday of a new year. The main thing. I've preached on this subject from time to time over the years. Some of this will be repetitious. You've heard it before. You need to be reminded. But for some of you, this will be a new message on the main thing. And I have three points and three or four Bible verses we'll all look at together. First turn with me to the Gospel of Mark chapter 12. And the first point to remember is this, loving God is the main thing. On this occasion, The Pharisees came to trick Jesus, but one of them stepped forward who was close to the kingdom of God and was thinking about Jesus. So he asked Jesus, Mark 12, 28, which is the first or the most important commandment of all? Verse 29, Jesus answered him, the first of all the commandments is here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment. You may wonder, why didn't Jesus quote one of the 10 commandments? After all, there are 613 commandments in the five books of Moses and there's hundreds more elsewhere in the Old Testament and then in the New Testament. Why didn't he quote one of the Ten Commandments? In a way, he did. And these rabbis would have noticed that. Would you have noticed that? Loving God is in the third commandment. I hope you have memorized the ten commandments. The third one is you shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. God will not hold you guiltless that takes his name in vain. And it says he will punish people to the third and fourth generation, those that take his name in vain, but he will show mercy to thousands to those that love him. and keep his commandments. It is in there. This is the Mount Everest of all the commandments. Our greatest duty and our greatest privilege, brethren, is to love God. Now, we're not saved by loving God. Because as Jesus says, this is the summary of the law. So if we're saved by loving God, we're saved by the law. And it doesn't work like that. For example, nobody could ever love God at every single moment of his whole life to be saved. We're saved by faith and repentance, not by love. But when we are saved, this is our prime directive. You see, the unbeliever has never really loved God. He has never kept this commandment. He hates God. Bible says they are lovers of self, not lovers of God. The unbeliever needs to repent of sin, including the sin of not loving God, and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and then he gets saved. You see, you can't love someone that you don't know. So if you're an unbeliever, repent, believe, and then you will know God, and then you will love God, and you go on loving God. You see, we are saved in order to love God. We're not saved because we love God. We need to get the order. God chose us, redeemed us, and saves us to make us lovers of God. I dare say to make us God lovers. Now, loving God is the main thing. It's not the only thing. Do not misunderstand me this morning. I know what I'm saying. Don't misunderstand me. Many years ago, I preached a message along these lines in another church, and there was a man that didn't particularly like me, and he started spreading a rumor that Kurt Daniel was preaching, well, just love God and nothing else matters. You can do whatever you want to even sin. Well, I heard that rumor, and I confronted him. I said, I didn't say that. And he said, yes, you did. I was there and I heard it. And I said, well, I was there too and I said it. And I know what I said and I know what I meant. You've misunderstood me. You've slandered me. Now, in those days, we record the messages on cassette. I got the cassette and I found the place that he misunderstood. And I said, get a listen to this. And I expect an apology. It's easy to misunderstand this. Loving God is the main thing, but it's not the only thing. as we shall see. But for some people it's not even the main thing. And yet in the Bible it said that. Jesus says it's the first of the commandments. It's the first of the nine fruit of the spirit according to Galatians 5.22. It's the chief of all Christian virtues according to 2 Peter chapter 1. It's the most important attitude we should have because it's the main thing. Now let me define it as we begin. Loving God is this, a deep and true affection for God in which we cherish God and hold him dear to our heart above everything else. That's it. So simple even a child can understand it and do it. It's to be conscious, deliberate, with our whole heart, willingly, emotionally, personally. Because God loves us one-on-one, He wants us to love Him heart-to-heart. And that's where it has to start, on the internal attitude of loving Him. For example, David in Psalm 18.1 said, I love you, O Lord. Notice the personal pronouns. I love you. And of course, we all know those are the three wonderful words. I love you. We all love to hear them. We all love to say them. David said, I love you, O Lord. Now let me ask you, in your prayers, do you ever say those three words to God? Do you ever pray and say, Lord, I love you? And before you even ask for anything, even before you worship or confess your sins, say, Lord, I love you. I really do. And you think of his love for you, and you say, I love you, Jesus. Do you ever say, I love you, Father? I love you, Holy Spirit. You see, God is a trinity, and we are to love the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The great Samuel Rutherford, who lived about 400 years ago in Scotland, who wrote enormously about the love of God. He said, I don't know which member of the Trinity I love the most, because when I concentrate on the other one, my mind goes over to the others. And you can't love one without loving the others. Love God personally from the heart and tell him so. Now, everything in the Christian life is, as it were, a means to an end. This is the goal, the end. There's nothing beyond this. Yes, it does produce obedience and holiness, but this is the Mount Everest. This is the best. This is the main thing. It's the centerpiece of all spirituality. Now let me also explain it like this. The delightful duty of loving God includes two things. Number one, we are to love God quantitatively more than we love anyone or anything else in the world. You got it? He has to come first. The Lord Jesus said this, He that loves father or a mother more than me is not worthy of me. You have to love God more than others. He has to be number one in all of your affections. Secondly, you also are to love God qualitatively different than you love anybody else. Why? Because God is different than anybody else. Just like you reserve a special love for your spouse that you don't share with anyone else because he or she is your spouse, the same way, dear brethren, you reserve a special kind of love for God that you do not bestow upon anybody else because this love is a worshipful love. It's where you look up to God in worship and in love. It's a loving worship that theologians call adoration. So we love God quantitatively more than others and qualitatively different than others. Now this is the chief virtue, this is the main thing in the Christian life, even greater than faith. And you might say, now wait a second, Pastor, aren't you kind of going a little bit too far? No, I've got good biblical basis for this. You remember 1 Corinthians 13? And he lists three great Christian virtues, faith, hope, and love, and he says, but the greatest of these We are saved by faith, not by love, but by faith we learn to love God. So it's even greater than faith. Now it's related to obeying God because it's one of his commandments. And we do not truly obey the other ones until we obey this one. But it's not exactly the same thing as obedience. I need to clarify this. Jesus said in John 14, 15, if you love me, Keep my commandments! Unfortunately, some people misunderstand that, and they say, well, that's all love is, is simply obeying God, and they've missed the main thing. My mind goes back years ago when I was leading a Bible study for, oh, about a dozen preachers, and I got off on this subject, and I said, now, loving God produces obedience, but it's not just obedience. And one of the preachers that was kind of of a crusty disposition says, no, no, no, Kurt. All that you're saying is kind of too emotional. Loving God is only obeying God, that's all it is. And I said, oh, so love and obedience, those are synonyms. Yes. I said, do you love your wife? Yes. Are you called upon to obey your wife? He said, now wait a second, that's different. And I said, do you love a hamburger? Oh, yes. Do you obey the hamburger? No, love and obedience are not synonyms. Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments. Love is the main thing that produces the obedience. But it didn't quite sink into this preacher's heart. And I remember thinking, he needs to learn the lesson of what love really is that produces the obedience. Well, a few years later, he learned the lesson. He got sick, very sick. He was on death's door. He was in the hospital, clinging on to life. And I went and visited with him, and I sat there with him. And a wonderful change had happened to him in the hospital. You know, this is one of the joys of being a pastor is getting to hear what people will share in the hospital or when they're lonely or going through something. And something in their heart just breaks forth. Well, what happened with him was he was on death's door and in a lot of pain. And Christ came and visited him with love and with mercy. And when I was there, I said, how are you doing, brother? And he just started weeping. He says, oh, Kurt, God is so good. Here in the bed, I'm just wracked with pain. And God's filling me with his love and with tears. He said, I love God so much. He loves me. Oh, Kurt, do you know the love of God? And I was thinking, he has learned the secret of the main thing. Have you learned that secret? Loving God is the most important thing of all. And sometimes we forget that and our hearts grow very cold before him. Never forget the main thing. Now Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments. And we know that we should obey God, do certain things and not do other things, but it's not always easy. Start with loving God and you will find it easier to obey him. For example, someone said it's like greasing the wheel on the wagon, it makes it run more smoothly. When you love God, you will find it easier to obey. Now, let me tell a story that I learned from a friend of mine. Years ago, I knew a Christian named Steve who was a Jewish Christian who pastored a little church in Brooklyn, New York. Brooklyn is a very interesting city, and I visited him once and spent an afternoon. He told a story that I'd like to relate as an illustration. He said that in Brooklyn, the two largest groups of people are the Italians and the Jews, and they have different temperaments, and they raise their children a little bit differently. Now, this was coming from a Christian Jew. He says, The Italians teach their children to do certain things and obey their parents in a certain way. And he said, take for example, if there's a little Italian boy that doesn't want to eat his breakfast. Okay, so you have little Tony sitting at the breakfast table, and the mother, Maria, fixes him a bowl of oatmeal and says, eat your breakfast. And Tony says, no, I no want to eat of the oatmeal. And the mama says, you'll eat the oatmeal if you know it's good for you, Tony. You'll eat it and you'll like it. I don't want to eat of the oatmeal. So she lifts up her hand and says, you eat the oatmeal or I smack you upside of the head, Tony. And I've done that before. Eat of the oatmeal. I'm your mama, you obey me. The boy says, OK. Because he didn't want to get hit. So he says, yes, mama, I'll eat of the oatmeal. Mama turns around and he says, mama mia, I hated the oatmeal, but I'm going to eat it anyway. And he grows up hating oatmeal. because he's always pictures the mother about to hit him. Then Steve said, Jewish children are a lot different than that. He says, now, the little Jewish boy Irving sits down at the breakfast table and the mother says, here's your oatmeal, Irving. Irving says, I don't want to eat oatmeal. And the Jewish mother says, you don't want to eat the oatmeal. a slave to make you that bowl of oatmeal. You don't love your mother? Oh, phone the newspaper. Headline, Irving doesn't love his mother. Oh, Irving, you break my heart. Oh, phone the doctor. I'm about to have a heart attack. You don't love me? Little Irving starts crying. Mama, you know I love you. If you love me, Irving, eat the oatmeal. Yes, Mama, I'll eat the oatmeal. And Steve said, Jewish boys grow up fatter than Italian boys in Brooklyn. They eat more oatmeal because they know their mother loves them and he loves the mother and eats the oatmeal. Brethren, eat the oatmeal. Jesus said, if you love me, do what I command you. Unfortunately, to use that story again, some people are not Christians and they hear God thunder, obey me, love me, And it's like God says, you obey me or I punish you. And even if they do it outwardly, inwardly, they're saying, I hate this. I don't want to do this. But a Christian is like that little Jewish boy. God plays with us and says, I love you. And if you love me, you will show it by obeying me. That's why I say, Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments. Start with the love and you'll find it easier to obey him. The degree to which we obey God is the same indicator how much you love God. How much do you love God? It shows in how much you obey God. So if you say, well, I love God, but you're not obeying Him, no, no, no. You obey Him as much as you love Him. Now something else that being the main thing is that it's even greater than worshiping God. On another occasion, I was speaking with a young man that He was kind of an up-and-coming theologian. Oh, he loved to study the Bible and deep theology. And I was talking to him once and I said, Joe, what's the main thing in the Christian life? And he said, well, Westminster Shorter Catechism says, and I quote, the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. And I said, well, that's good, but that's not the main thing. He says, but that's the Westminster Shorter Catechism. And I said, well, I've got a higher authority. Jesus said the main thing is to love God. And he got real quiet and I said, but they're not opposites. We are to worship God in an attitude of love. You see, it's a loving worship, but if it's a worship without love, it's not acceptable to God. Loving God is even more important than worshiping him. And we call that adoration. Now this is also part of holiness because God says, be holy as I the Lord your God am holy. He commands us to and he enables us to. That's what's called sanctification. The Holy Spirit works holiness in us. But loving God is the jewel of the crown of holiness. And without this, there is no true holiness. I've several times quoted my favorite theologian, Jonathan Edwards, and he said something that is extremely profound, but very simple, and he said it like this. If holiness in the creator mainly consists in love to himself, then holiness in the creature must consist mainly in love to himself. to the Creator. What does that mean? God is holy, and holiness means a revulsion against anything unholy, sin, wickedness, evil. God hates it, God despises it. I hate to say that's the negative side of this, but it is a negative thing. It's a revulsion. But wherein did holiness consist in God before there ever was such a thing as sin? Back in eternity, before He created man or angel, God was holy. There was no sin. The holiness in God consisted in the love of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, a perfect love, and therefore, it hated anything that intruded upon that love. God is love. And Edward saw that, and he was absolutely right. Holiness in God is mainly loving God, and he said, if God loves God, and that's the essence of the dynamo of his holiness, In the same way, holiness in us is mainly in loving God. Now why do I say that? Because some Christians misunderstand this and they kind of set love on the side and they strive for holiness. Well, that's good, but love has to be part of it. It has to be a loving holiness. And so with some of them, holiness to them means abstaining from certain things that God says is wrong. They concentrate on the Ten Commandments. You shall not steal. You shall not commit adultery and these other things. And they say, but I obey God. And this is the path to holiness. Someone wrote a book a few years ago called The Pharisees guide to holiness, saying some people think Christianity is simply abstaining from certain sins. And there are sins that we should abstain from. We shouldn't lie. And so a person says, I'm growing in holiness. I don't lie. I don't steal. I don't commit immorality. I don't do drugs. But do they love God? No. Therefore, that holiness is not true holiness. It's like the Pharisees. So brethren, it's to be a loving holiness. Yes, we are to refrain ourselves from certain sins, but it's because we love God that we refrain from those things. That's the dynamo of love and holiness. It's also part of gratitude. We show our gratitude to God for saving us by loving him and then it follows with obedience. But we love because we have been forgiven. You remember the story, Luke chapter 7. The woman that came in, a woman that had lived a filthy life, Jesus forgave her. She comes in and weeps on Jesus' feet to show her love and her gratitude. And Jesus said, he that has been forgiven much loves much. We have been forgiven, much that should move us to gratitude, to love God, and to show it. Now let me give you an illustration that I gave on Sunday night a few weeks ago. As I've heard it is a true story, oh sometime around 1850 down in my hometown of New Orleans. I wasn't around then, that was a hundred years before I was born. But the story is that there was a man from England traveling in the United States, came over on a ship, docked at New Orleans, got off and was arranging to take a stagecoach out west and then somewhere else. And he happened to wander into a certain part of the city, the slave market. and slaves were up for sale, chained, shackled, treated like animals. And the man said, that's not right. That ought to be abolished like we abolished it back in England. He went up there and he saw this poor woman in chains, and he had pity on her. So he outbid everybody else and bought her. Well, this woman had been so mistreated by her various owners, now she thinks the new owner is going to mistreat her, and so she is like a wild animal. And what he did was he had the bill of sale, And he says, I bought you in order to free you. And he gave her the key to the chains and said, you are free. And I will help you out. I will give you money to buy new clothes, food. I'll get you help starting a job. Nobody had ever treated her like this. And she said, you mean? I'm free. And he says, you're absolutely free. Well, she started crying and she said, nobody has ever treated me like this. Nobody was ever a friend of me and I'm free. And she fell down weeping and she said, I will now serve you for the rest of my life absolutely freely. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And that's a picture of us. Christ frees us from the chains of slavery. And he says you're free and out of gratitude we say I will freely serve you and love you all the days of my life. Now I hope that story is true but you see it's based upon something in the Bible. Exodus 21 and another place in Deuteronomy talks about if there's a person in Israel that couldn't pay his debt he has to work it off as a bond servant. Sometimes it's translated slavery. But either when it's paid off or on the jubilee year, he has to be set free. But it's interesting, it says, if at that moment when he is set free, if he doesn't want to go free, and he goes to the master and says, but master, I love you. You're a good master. I don't want to be set free. I want to continue to serve you freely. And Moses then gives an interesting law. He says, take that man over to the doorpost. and put his earlobe against it and get out this instrument that looks kind of like an ice pick and pierce it through into the wood and pull it back out again. Boy, talk about ear piercing. And they say, and then you put a little earring in there and you are now a slave of love to that master all the days of your life. Brethren, as Christians, we've been set free from sin, but we are love slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because He has saved us and He has freed us and He has made us His bride, we gratefully love Him and we say, Lord, put it right there. Open my ears, open my heart. I want to serve You out of love for the rest of my life. We're His love slaves. Brethren, this is the main thing in the Christian life, is loving God. And without it, we are nothing. People often miss this. Years ago, I was leading a Bible study in another city. And it was all a bunch of teenagers and young adults and a few college students. And, you know, they were tricking me with questions like, well, Dr. Daniel, which comes first, the millennium or the second coming and things like this? And I said, well, let me tell you what the Bible says. And then I noticed a young lady sitting over on my right. And she says, I have a question. And she wasn't smiling. She had kind of a troubled look on her face. I don't know if she was a believer or not. And I said, what's your question? And she said, What does God really want from me? And that warmed my heart. And so I spoke to her, kind of like a father, and I said, my dear, what God really wants from you the most is your love. Because He loves you. Love wants love in return. And I said, He really does love you. And He really wants you to love Him back. And I could tell from the look on her face she had never thought of that. And I said, think about it. He really wants you to love him. Brothers and sisters, I say the same thing to you. That's what God really wants most from you is for you to love him. Now some Christians are good examples of this. Think of the people in the Bible that stand out as great examples of Christian virtues. Abraham, the faith of Abraham. Job, the Bible talks about the patience of Job, the courage of David going out to fight Goliath. Have you ever known a person you would say, that is a good example of a God-loving Christian? Do you know someone like that? Do you see someone like that in the mirror? Would someone say, that's a Christian that really loves God? We should all be like that. And it's not always the sort of people you might expect it of. Now let me tell you a story about a man that I knew and I've mentioned him before. I was saved at age 20, and within a few weeks I got to know a man that got saved at the same time, and he was 48. His name was John Aberdee, but everybody called him Big John. He stood about 6'8", and he had just got saved out of a very, very tough wild life. He had spent many years in prisons. And in the mental hospitals, he lived by his fists. He wasn't very smart. In fact, he left school in the sixth grade, never learned to read or write. And he got by real tough. What he'd do is he'd hang around bars at night, and when a guy came out that was drunk, John would grab and drag him to the alley, beat him up, and steal his money. That's how he got by in life. Really tough guy, Big John. And he walked in a strange way. They used to call him Frankenstein because people were afraid of him. He walked in a strange way because he had only half a foot. He lost it once while running to catch a train and jump into the boxcar. He fell under the train and cut his hat. So he walked in a strange way, real tough. And then one day, a preacher friend of mine, Mike, told him about Jesus. And lo and behold, Big John got saved. And he had the heart of a child, and he really loved Jesus. Oh, he had to learn some things to behave socially in a different way, but he had the heart of a child, a childlike love for Jesus. And since he couldn't drive, I'd often pick him up and go to Bible studies in different churches. And I remember once I phoned him and said, John, let's go to such and such a church tonight. So we went there. And I was sitting next to Big John. There was about 200 people there. And the preacher said something about Jesus dying on the cross and Jesus loves us. And Big John starts to cry. I'd seen John cry many, many times. And when John cried, you could hear it throughout the building. He was crying real loud. And he'd grip the chair and he'd say, oh, Jesus, thank you for loving me, dying for me. Jesus, I love you. I love you. Big old tears. And I'd just sit there with my hand around him, patting him on the back. And people were trying to pretend they didn't hear it, but you know what it's like. When you hear something at the back, people would kind of look over their shoulder like, this is embarrassing. One of the deacons came up to me, is everything okay? And I said, everything's just fine. He said, you know, your friend is kind of causing a scene. Could you maybe stop him and take him out? And I said, not me. And he said, well, what's wrong? I said, mister, if you knew what he got saved out of and how much he really loves Jesus. You and I would both be crying like this man, he really loves Jesus. Deacon just nodded and walked off. Sometimes I think I learned more about loving God from that old man, Big John, than anybody I've ever met. Even the great theologians and sermons that I've heard, he had a childlike love for God. Many years later, he died and went to heaven. And when he got to heaven, he fit in, because heaven is a world where everybody loves Jesus. We need to be like that and love God. And that's our first point. Loving God is the main thing. Turn with me and your Bible next to 1 Corinthians 16. The second point is this, not loving God is a terrible sin. If loving God is our greatest duty, not loving God is a terrible sin, and we often forget that. We think sin is doing what God says don't do. Thou shalt not? Well, okay, don't do that. But God gives His positive command to love Him. Not loving God is a sin. Unbelievers do not love God even when they pretend to. Now look at 1 Corinthians 16, verse 22. If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed. Accursed means he's under God's curse, under his wrath, he's headed to hell. If a person doesn't love Jesus, he's under God's curse. That's how important it is. It's parallel to something Paul says in Galatians 1, if any man preach another gospel, let him be accursed. He's preaching poison, he's under God's curse. And you say, that's right, let him have it. But here he says, if someone does not love the Lord Jesus, he's under the curse of God. It's that important. Christians do not always love God as they should. And they incur God's grief and displeasure. Matthew 24, 12, Jesus said, the love of many will grow cold. What's the temperature of your love? Is it blazing hot or is it just cold? And you say, well, I don't hate God. But do you have a fervent love for God? Revelation 2.4, Jesus said, I have this against you. You have left your first love. You know what first love is like. It's like that honeymoon stage when a Christian gets saved and he just loves God kind of like Big John, just you're filled with love. And some of you can remember your first love when you were first saved and you'd weep like Big John and say, thank you. And you were just so happy. And then later you grow in the Christian life and your love grows cold as you learn more about the Bible and go to church, raise your family. But your love has grown cold. You've left your first love. No Christian is more spiritual than his love for Christ. And we put things in its place and we forget this is the main thing, brethren. No Christian is more spiritual than his love for Christ. Now turn back just a few chapters to chapter 13. 1 Corinthians 13, the so-called love chapter. I've already quoted it. We're at the end, he says, the greatest of these is love. And though he is particularly talking about loving other people, remember Jesus said loving God comes first. So look what he says in the first three verses and apply this to loving God. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love for God, I becoming a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. Though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, but have not love for God, I am nothing. Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love for God, it profits me nothing. Notice he says nothing. Nothing does not mean a little something, brethren. If you don't love God, all your knowledge and all your service is nothing. Notice he says knowledge, theology, wisdom, or prophecy, he says here. Maybe you know, you can write out a chart by memory of when Jesus is coming, who the Antichrist is, the Millennium, the Tribulation, you know all these details. If you don't love God, you can tear that up and throw it away. It means nothing if you don't love God. What about theology? I love theology. I can read it by the hour. I'm writing theology books. I've got three degrees in theology. All that means nothing to me. Nothing if I don't love God. It's not important. or serving God, evangelism, helping other people, visiting the poor and the sick, giving money to charity, raising a family. All those are good things, but if you do them without loving God, it's like he says here, giving your body to be burned. If you don't have love for God, it profits you nothing. Do we realize how important this is? Without this, everything else is nothing. I heard a preacher pray this once and I'll never forget it. He said, Lord, never let my knowledge of you surpass my love for you. Some people have a lot of knowledge about God. Big heads, tiny hearts. Yes, knowledge is good. Not as good as loving God. That's the most important thing. Or, not only knowing the Bible, and memorizing Bible verses, but being prepared to explain to defend the gospel. There are some people that are very interested in reading apologetics, that is, the defense of the Christian faith, and they can argue with the cults and with the liberals and with the atheists, and sometimes they argue, then they want to argue about everything else in the Bible, they want to defend it all, and there's a place for that, but are they more interested in fighting for the faith than loving God? They're more known for being a fighting fundamentalist than being a God-lover. They've got their priorities wrong. This is the main thing, and it should never be usurped by other good things in the Christian life. Now, some people offer excuses. And they say, well, this loving God, that's this lovey-dovey. I have one person say, well, that's just a lovey-dovey spirituality. And they say, you know, The Bible says we shouldn't go by our feelings, and you keep talking about these feelings, this emotional love for God, and they'll even say things like, well, you remember old man Isaac in the Bible, and he went by his feelings and mistook Jacob for his brother, and look what happened when he went by feelings. I heard A.W. Tozer address that and said, yeah, but remember that woman in the New Testament that touched Jesus and was healed, and it said she felt in herself that she had been healed. So the people that say feelings have no place in the Christian life are dead wrong. I don't know about you, I don't want an unfeeling religion. And neither does God. God wants us to love him with our hearts and with our feelings, deep down. He doesn't want cold love. Here's another excuse, particularly from men. Some men that want to get a little macho and say, you know all this loving Jesus? Well, he's another man. Sounds kind of effeminate to me, preacher. And so they think they're a macho man because they keep their love bottled up and they don't know how to love their wife and their children. They've never said those words to their wife. Honey, I love you. I'll die for you. Son, I love you. And they think they're macho. You know what the American male thinks macho and maleness is? Drinking beer, watching football on Sunday and say, hey, I'm a man. That's not a man. That's a wimp. A true man knows how to love and will express love to another man in the right way. There's nothing effeminate about that. Loving your father, your son, your brother, that's a true masculine thing. So the person says, well, that sounds too effeminate. They don't know. They've never said that they love the Lord Jesus Christ. They don't know the meaning of love. I'll give you an example. A good example was my father. If there was a man's man, it was my dad. He grew up as a cowboy on a ranch. You know, he could ride a horse at age four. He rode in rodeos. Went off to college, became the student body president, loomed with a man that was a Heisman Trophy winner, TCU. And then for three years, he was a jungle explorer in South America, battling wild animals and uncivilized savages. Man's man. Then he went into World War II. He was a spy. He was in the invasion. He was in the Battle of the Bulge. A man's man. And yet I can remember the treasured memories, hundreds of times my father would take me and say, son, I love you. And I'd say, dad, I love you too. Nothing effeminate about that. And the last words he said to me before he died was, son, I love you. And my last words to him was, dad, I love you too. If we can be like that in the human realm, how much more so with our savior? If he died for us, if he loved us enough to take our punishment, we should not be ashamed to say, Lord Jesus, I love you with all my heart, with all my soul. I love you, Jesus. Nothing effeminate about that. That's the height of true spirituality. Now admit it, brethren, and confess it, none of us truly love Jesus Christ as much as we should. Even in our most spiritual moments, when we think we do, we don't love him nearly as much, and we're reminded of that in the Bible. We should love him more. But if you're a Christian, you do love him some, and you may be able to remember when you did. For example, I like to ask Christians, when did you feel closest to God in your Christian life? And I've sometimes asked Christians, in your Christian life, when did you love Christ the most? And I've heard some of the most wonderful stories. Usually they have to get out a handkerchief and wipe their eyes and say, oh, I was in the hospital or something going wrong, and I just learned to love Jesus even more. That's our second point, not loving God is a terrible sin. Number three, God helps us rekindle our love for him. Turn with me to 1 John chapter four. Loving God is not always easy. Now you've all heard the phrase tough love. It's like you love someone enough to tell them the hard news or something like that. This is what I call hard love. You say, well, explain that to me, pastor. It should be easy to love God. Why do we find it hard to love God? Sometimes because we don't feel like it, or we're going through a problem in our life. The problem's not in God, the problem's in us. We need to learn how to get over that and to love him anyway. Now, here's what the Bible says, before we look at 1 John, Deuteronomy 13 says, the Lord your God is testing you. to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. God said that when the Jews were out in the wilderness, dry, dusty, about to starve out there. God says, I'm testing you. You see, back at Mount Sinai, you said, we will serve the Lord and we will love him. And God says, I'll put you to the test. On Sunday morning, we'll sometimes sing a hymn. Lord Jesus, if ever I loved you, tis now, and other wonderful things, OK? Tuesday afternoon, God puts us to the test, throws you into a trial to see if you really meant it. That's why I call it hard love. And the true love is expressed to God not on the mountaintop, but in the valley, in the deepest trial and depression and affliction, and you're in pain, you're in tears, and then you say, Lord, I still love you in spite of what I'm going through, in spite of the pain or the family problems or jobs. Lord, I feel like I'm at the bottom of the well, but I still love you, Lord. Can you say that? That's the true proof of love when you love him in spite of everything. You say, Lord, I love you anyway. Now look at 1 John 4, which is also the love chapter. Look at verse 19. We love him because He first loved us. We cannot work up love when we don't feel like it. God rekindles the love in us. We love as a response to His love. So if our love for Him is growing cold, get back to the warmth of His love and respond properly. Remember His love for you and then repent and respond. And what's the greatest display of His love? The cross. God loves us so much that he sent Christ to die for us. God demonstrates his love for us, Romans 5.8 says, in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us. So when your love gets low, get back to the cross. Romans 5.5 says something else. It says the love of God is poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. The Bible says the Holy Spirit helps us in our need of prayer. He helps us in our need of love. So pray, Holy Spirit, fill me again with your love so that that will help me love God in return. Now be honest about this. Don't pretend to love God when you don't. Be honest. Ephesians 6.24 pronounces a blessing. Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. In other words, honestly. Here's another lesson. How can you love him if you don't see him? You say, boy, if I had a vision, I'd really love God more. No, no, no. The Bible says we walk by faith, not by sight. But here's another verse. If you're taking notes, 1 Peter 1.8. Whom not having seen you love. Many years ago I heard a sermon on that verse by the great Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, and he says, Christians need to learn to love Christ by faith. And he's right, and our love for God might rise and fall, but it can rise up again. And we're to love God for who he is, for what he is, and for all that he is. Because the Bible says God is love, and he shows his love to us through Christ. If the love of God comes to us from Christ, it is to return back to God through the Lord Jesus Christ. So concentrate on Jesus and meditate upon him. And then God will be delighted to give us those special seasons of a very close love with Him. Just like a husband and wife like to surprise each other with a little love gift that's unexpected, God loves to do that with His children, with His bride. You're riding down the road or you're walking down the street, and all of a sudden a Bible verse comes back to your mind, you find your heart strangely warmed, and you're in love with Christ all over again. Sometimes God surprises us with love visits. So, brethren, nothing's more important than loving God. And lastly, when we're enjoying this relationship of His love for us and our love for Him, we're enjoying a foretaste of heaven. What will we do in heaven? We'll be loved by God and we'll love Him in return. forever. Because you see, dear brethren, loving God is the main thing. Let us pray. Father, help us to love you. Holy Spirit, warm our hearts so that we would fall in love with you and the Father and the Son over and over again. Forgive us our lack of love. Kindle the coals of a fervent love for God in our hearts so that we would be known as lovers of God and not lovers of self. Thank you that you first loved us and we love you because you love us. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.