Anyone else have anything? I was with some folks a few weeks ago. This wasn't really the topic of the evening, but a statement was made and made me really ponder a lot of things for, well, three or four weeks now. And it brought me back to a book. It's been a long time since I've read this. Maybe some of you have read this. It was very popular in the early 90s called The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. It's summarized as follows. It says, Chapman explores the ways people give and receive love. It suggests that everyone receives love in at least one of five ways. Words of affirmation, acts of service, gifts, quality time, or physical touch. The way we receive love is usually the way we naturally express it. But if our loved ones does not receive love in the same way that we do, he or she can feel unloved. When we understand the love language of another person, we can more effectively communicate our respect and affections to him or her. He tried to get at the idea, and this is a Christian author, that we have different ways, as I just said, that we receive love and give love, but those ways aren't always the same. And so identifying how other people receive love best is important for us so that we can try love them and show them our affection and appreciation for them. I think it makes a lot of sense and it's a good foundation. But in the phrase that was said made me think of this book. Let me ask the question this way. What is God's love language? If you wanted to express to God how you loved him, how would you do it? If you wanted to demonstrate that you loved him, how would you do it? Well, I'll tell you one thing, at least currently, it's not physical touch. We can feel emotionally close, but we can't necessarily be physically close. You might think, well, quality time, that makes sense, and there's some thoughts there. Words of affirmation, I mean, that's just what we did, right? We sang praises to him, that's entirely appropriate. Acts of service, certainly. Gifts, certainly. We talked about that this morning too. But the phrase that was said that I thought was so interesting, it really caught me, this gentleman said, God's love language is obedience. God's love language is obedience. And so if we apply that to what this book referenced here, and think about it again, the way we receive love is usually the way we naturally express it. But if our loved one does not receive love in the same way that we do, he or she can feel unloved. When we understand the love language of another person, we can more effectively communicate our respect and affection to him or her. Obedience is not something we're naturally good at, is it? It wars within us in a terrible way. Because obedience is contrary to self. And if you go back and look at the very first commandment, the only commandment that probably didn't last and stand for very long because we were more concerned about ourselves. And that has carried down all the way since the fall through time. And we look back and see so much of the heartache and the troubles in this world is caused by disobedience or failure to be obedient to a God who told us how to live. And if we at points in our life are thankful, and we should be thankful for the things that God has done for us, the most clear way that we can demonstrate and communicate that love and affection back to God is by being obedient to Him. Not obedient to ourselves, but to Him. Obedience is the dutiful submission, if you will, to the commands of someone who's in authority. This, even in our current culture, seems to be something that's passing relatively quickly. And I'm sure every generation has complained about the one that's coming up, that they don't have obedience, they're not obeying the previous generation, so that's probably nothing new. This whole idea, probably because we have different styles of jobs and careers and things of this nature, we don't always understand what it really means to be obedient. Spend some time in the military and you'll learn what obedience is. Spend some time in a similar type of career and you'll do the same. So if God's love language is obedience, And just so you know that's, I mean that's, I think this is true, but I'm not saying this is the only way that you can express to God that you love Him. I do think He wants quality time with us. I do think that He wants acts of service, and I think that He wants gifts. But I do think obedience is really important. So, this is a love language that I think God has for us. But when I say that I'm curious, do you think that is a positive thing or a negative thing? When I said that God's love language is obedience, did it make you kind of cringe a little bit? Or is it one that made you go, ah? Because I think how we respond to this, and sometimes, many times in our lives, our initial response to something tells us a lot about what we truly believe and feel. Sometimes what initially comes to mind and what comes out is important for us to sit with. So what do you think about when I say that God's love language is obedience? Maybe you think that sounds negative. Anybody think it sounded negative? God has a pretty high standard, doesn't he? His standard is perfection. It is the highest standard. We think about what he said in Matthew. Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." I think we somehow think, and I think most people who are outside of an active relationship with God, and outside of the church, as I've said a few times recently, tend to think that religion and faith in God is a whole list of thou shalt nots, and don't do this, and don't do that. And there certainly is some of that, and there is great wisdom within here, and we know that there are things that we should not do, and we should be obedient not to do those things, but how often do we neglect to remember that what He tells us and commands us to do, if we would yet be obedient, the burden is actually lighter than what we put ourselves through. We tend to pile on ourselves all types of things. Guilt. Shame. Regret. On and on and on. All these emotions, these things that we hold to ourselves and we want to carry them around like there's some kind of prize or something. We want to busy ourselves with all types of things that keep us distracted from what the truth is. And yet His burden is light. How hard is it to be obedient to God? Well, I'll tell you, it's so hard we're never going to do it. Not perfectly. Not for very long. But at the same token, if we would just be obedient to what He wants us to do and truly focus on living into that, we would find that what He asks us to do when He helps us is not as hard as we thought it was going to be. And anybody who can look back on situations in your life will raise your hand and say, that's right. Even though the trial that you may be facing today and the struggle that you may be having today, it sure doesn't seem easy, does it? always seems like doing the right thing is going to be the easy thing. It's always the right thing. Psalms 40 gives us some good advice. If you want to turn there for a minute, Psalms 40. I'm going to read verse 5 through 8 I guess. Psalms 40, "'Many, O Lord my God, are Thy wonderful works which Thou hast done. And thy thoughts which are to usward, they cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee. If I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered." It's a beautiful verse. And it continues, "...sacrifice and offerings thou did not desire. Mine ears hast thou opened. Burnt offerings and sin offerings thou hast not required." Then said I, Lo, I come, and the volume of the book it is written of me. I delight to do thy will. O my God, yea, thy law is within my heart. You see, the psalmist understands something that's very, very important. While there are certainly commands and obedience that we should do, there are certainly times that we should sacrifice both of the things that we have and the things that we place above God. There are gifts that we should give. There are things that we should give up. Listen, what the psalmist is telling us here is that more important than offerings, more important than sacrifices, is obedience. Obedience. What has God told you to do? What has He told you not to do? What are you holding on to that you won't let go of even though you know that God is telling you through obedience to do this? And you should know now that I've just read it if you haven't been thinking about it or haven't been reminded of it through a personal experience that whatever He's asking you to do His burden will be light. Sacrifice and offerings. You could walk in here a millionaire and write a check to the church and give all of it away. And if you haven't given yourself to obedience with God, you're not any bit closer to Him. You could work your entire life and give something away to His work. And what He really wants is obedience. He wants that soft heart. He wants a willing servant. He wants someone to show Him and demonstrate to Him exactly what He did for us, which Jesus Christ, being obedient to the command of His Father, went to the cross, willing to die for our sins. And what God wants from us is obedience back to Him. Why? Because we love Him. Because He is the source of all that. And because He loves us in spite of ourselves we owe Him, it is our duty to be obedient to Him. He doesn't want, He doesn't have to have our money. He doesn't have to have our possessions. He doesn't have to have a lot of things, but He does have to have our obedience. Another translation reads that section in there, you have opened my ears and given me the capacity to hear and obey your word. God tells us what he wants us to do. God tells us. We have the ability to hear what we are to do. If you've never been saved, then God will tell you that you need to be saved, that you need to be obedient to Him. If you have been saved, then we need to open our ears and listen to what God tells us that we are to do, and maybe even what we're not to do. But we are to be obedient to whatever it is that He says. Obedience is vital. It's talked about over and over again in the Scripture. In fact, I've preached on this multiple times before. We're going to do it again. 1 John 5, I'll be in 1 John for a couple of verses. 1 John 5, 2-3. 1 John 5, "'By this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not grievous.'" See, we prove our love to Him when we are obedient to Him. Again, going back to that idea that there are different ways that we express love one to another, and different ways that we receive it. One of the things that we can do is prove to God that we love Him when we obey His commandments. I do think one thing is very important here, most of the time, maybe I'm just giving myself a way out when I start the sentence with most of the time. Most of the time, We should be obedient because we want to be, not because we have to be. And there is a huge difference. It's one thing to be obedient because I know I have to be. It's something else to be obedient because I want to be. Let me try and give you an example. How many of you pay taxes because you want to? How many of you give to the church because you want to? I pay taxes because I have to. I guarantee you tomorrow I would stop unless I could pick where they went. See, that's the difference. See we fail to remember that when we are obedient, yes we are commanded to be obedient, yes we are reminded that we prove our love to Him through obedience, yes we are told over, and over, and over again to be obedient, but we should be obedient because we love Him, not because we have to be. That's why we have free will. God could make us be obedient like that, but He didn't. Because love that isn't love isn't free. We demonstrate our faithfulness to Him by this. 1 John 2 talks about this, probably one page over, 1 John 2, 3-6. And hereby we do know that we know Him if we keep His commandments. that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him." Are you obedient to Him? Do you keep His commandments? Now we certainly know this isn't to perfection, none of us can do this side of eternity in a perfect way. The only one who has ever been able to do it perfectly is who? Is Jesus Christ. And the scriptures clearly reveal, as I pointed out before, that Jesus Christ was constantly looking up unto the Father to see what the Father did and then He would be obedient here on earth. That's how Jesus Christ maintained His obedience. Do you think it's any different for us today? No. Do you think if we're constantly looking internally that we're going to be on the right path? No. I listened to somebody over this last few days talk about ethics, and talked about ethics, and talked about ethics. And then lost the entire plot of the ethics because then he proudly proclaimed he didn't care what ethical standard you had, like whether you followed consequentialism or scriptures or something. If there's not a standard for ethics, then we don't have ethics, right? tell you where my standard is, it's right here. So if we know the standard that God has set before us, again not gazing internally by our own selves or propping our own standards up, and I really thought this was going to be a sermon for maybe next week, but I'll just hit a high point real quick here. We teach ourselves, we teach our current culture over and over again that the measure of a man is the measuring against himself. Well, if it's my feeling then it must be true. Well, I think this, or this is my experience, you can't argue with that. Well, listen, if we're trying to measure ourselves against ourselves it's not going to work. Jesus Christ is the standard, the law is the standards, the scripture is the standard. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandment is a liar, and the truth is not in him." Are you obedient to God? Or are you living by your own standards that you make up? Because it's pretty easy for me at different times to argue that not doing the right thing is the right thing. It's easy for me to fool myself into thinking that I'm okay to do something when I shouldn't, and so on and so forth. Obedience also glorifies the Father. 1 Peter 2.12 says, I think we forget the context in which this was We're to act in such a way by being obedient to God, by following the standard that He set out that the world looks at us and goes, those Christians over there are kind of strange, but I really can't say anything bad against them because they love each other, and they love other people, and they try to do the right thing. That's how the world knows who we are. We demonstrate love and we glorify Him. We also get blessings from it. I want to pick up on what I told the young ones this morning down here. Turn with me to Matthew 23. This is quite the chapter. Quite the chapter. and a half really, but quite the chapter because Jesus is calling out those who are the religious leaders of their day. I wonder how different it is today. Matthew 23 was a verse I read to the children this morning. It says, paid tithe of mint, and cumin, and dill, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. These ought you to have done, and not to leave the others undone." And let me skip a few and go to verse 27. "'Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like white sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but within are full of dead men's bones and uncleanliness. Even so, you also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and inequity. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, because you build tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous." And he goes on and on and on. Here's the point that I think Jesus was trying to get across to those and to us today, you may look really good on the outside. You may lead a life that looks very obedient to God, but the real question is, inwardly, are you obedient? See, that was what I did pretty much my whole life. Outwardly, I was very obedient. Pretty good kid. few things here and there like all kids have. Even at nine years old I thought, well, I want to be saved. Is that everything I was supposed to? Got baptized, what about my life? It wasn't until I was 18 years old that I realized God had never cleaned the inside. See, I looked really good on the outside. Everybody would have looked at me and thought, oh, good little boy, good young man, upstanding, the inside was not clean, because the only way to clean the inside is to let God do that. You can't look good enough on the outside, you're like, Jesus was telling His Pharisees, you're like a really pretty tombstone, but inside is disgusting. Or you always make sure you clean up the outside of the cup, and it says this in the same chapter, but inside is disgusting. This is a very interesting challenge for us today. Are you being obedient externally and failing to be obedient internally? Have you submitted to God? Have you given Him your heart? Have you said, you are the one and only thing that can clean the inside of me and as good as I may look on the outside, I'm disgusting on the inside because until we come to that point, you've accomplished exactly nothing. God isn't interested in how pretty you look on the outside until He's cleaned your inside. It's the inside that really matters. We are able to be obedient today because if anyone is in Christ, He is a new creation and the old has passed away and behold, the new has come. See, that's what happens once we're saved. The old has gone. The new comes. We put on the new man. We're able to be obedient, we're able to hear what God tells us to do and to be obedient. And if we don't, there's a serious problem. Luke 6, 46. Why do you call me Lord, Lord and not do what I tell you? Why do you call me Lord, Lord and not be, I'll change the word, obedient? Many, many, many people for thousands of years have called out to Lord and have never actually been obedient to Him the first time. And many others have failed to continue to be obedient after they've been saved. And you may look nice and fancy on the outside, but you're full of disgusting things on the inside. So, what is one of the primary ways that we express our love to God? Obedience. It's not His only love language. He wants time with us. He wants to hear with us. He wants us to give gifts. He wants to do these things. but he wants, demands, deserves, requires obedience. What is one of the primary ways that we prove who we are? Obedience. What is one of the ways that we demonstrate to the world around us who we belong to? Obedience. Is obedience God's love language? That's absolutely one of them. Absolutely. So that brings two very important questions. Are you obedient to Christ externally? Are you living a life outwardly to the public that is obedient to Christ? Some of us have other testimonies a little bit different than mine where they were living a life that was very outwardly disobedient. And God changed their inner life and they became a different person on the outside. Because what you can't do is change the outside and not change the inside. You won't be successful. So you have to really ask yourself, are you being obedient? Are you living as an example? Are you loving God by doing what He tells you to do? And are you loving God by not doing the things that He tells you to? Are you trying to make that happen outside in the world? But most importantly, are you being obedient internally? Because that's where it begins. It begins when you finally bow before an all-powerful God and give up and say, God, save me from all of this mess that I've been trying to do my entire life. Clean me, created me a new heart, oh God. And you call out to Him begging for forgiveness. And the moment that He does forgive you, and exchange, as the scripture says, your heart of rock for a heart of soft, no longer is it stone, but is it soft flesh. And you let God come inside of your life and live in you. Now your inside is clean and what do you do? You naturally begin to be obedient on the outside. Have you ever been obedient the first time? And for those of us who have, are you being obedient now? We're going to come to a close. We're going to sing a song. But you have a choice. Remember how I said I asked that question and you should pay attention to your first thoughts, your first feelings. God's love language is obedience. Did it make you cringe? Did it make you think of something specific? Did it make you think of the fact that you're not saved? Did it make you think of the sin that you shouldn't have or the thing that you should do? Now you have an even greater choice. What are you going to do about it? Because you can forget it and walk away, or you can be obedient. If God revealed to your heart at any time now and prior, certainly during this service, that you are lost and separated from Him, that you need to be obedient by responding to Him. That means you need to pray to Him and ask Him to help you. No question about that. If you've been told at any time during minutes or now of something you should do, then you should be obedient to that. Whether that's go to someone and tell them something or pray with them. Whether that's do something afterwards. Whatever it is that God told you to do, you should be obedient to it. Because to not be obedient to Him is to not give Him what He demands, what He deserves, and what is rightfully His, which is everything that we have. And so as we have a hymn, I invite you to be obedient. to do whatever it is that He wants you to do because I will trust that right now none of us are probably doing anything we shouldn't be doing unless we're actively being disobedient and not doing what He wants us to. So let's have a hymn, a time for us to reflect, a time for us, I say that a lot, a time for us to reflect. I don't know why I started saying that. Maybe I need to change it. I hope I remember next week. Let's not have a time to reflect. Let's have a time to be obedient. Let's have a time to be obedient to what God is telling us to do. What number? 219. Let's stand.