In this message, Pastor Matt informs us of three ways we can grow the love of God in our hearts. 1. By seeing God 2. By knowing God 3. By loving as God defines love
Authentic Love
What Is Authenticity?
What is authenticity? What is real and from the heart? In an age where everyone is seemingly selling something, we are drawn to what is authentic—what is real.
I think of a song like “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” Sorry, I just finished the book on it last week, so I promise I’ll go back to my normal once-a-year Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald reference instead of every week. But the song is about seven minutes long, has no chorus, and yet it was a hit because you could recognize that it was real—it came from the heart. The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down.
Now I pray that as a people and as a church we are authentic. In a world where so many things are fake, I mean, when I’m on a video call I have to tap a button that says, “Hey, don’t touch up my face.” I don’t need that! Maybe the software thinks I do, so it keeps putting on filters. We can’t even talk to each other with real faces anymore.
Did you know there are churches—I looked this up—that put autotune on their live streams? The notes you hear aren’t the notes people are actually singing; they’ve been digitally processed. We prize authenticity while, in some ways, being the fakest people in the world.
The Temptation of Inauthenticity
The temptation for me—and this is a classic pastor problem—is to look just a little more spiritual than I actually am: to mention the times I prayed and the successes, but downplay the failures. Even when confessing things, there’s always the temptation (I won’t name any names) to say, “Oh, it’s such a struggle today. I just can’t figure anything out. Look at my house—it’s a mess!” And you look at the house and think, “Man, it actually looks pretty good.” So they get credit for looking authentic and for things looking pretty good. There’s a trick to selling authenticity while actually being inauthentic.
We are a long way from a church of pews and suits where it was all about looking good on the outside and doing the right thing on Sunday morning. I truly believe you are here because you want to follow God from the heart—to live a life after God’s own heart.
True Religion from the Heart
The book of Deuteronomy is a book of true religion from the heart. As we went through these verses, I hope you noticed the repeated theme:
“Serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.” “Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers.” “And serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.”
Even the warning in 11:16: “Take care lest your heart be deceived.” We are called to follow God from our hearts.
Yes, our hearts can be deceived, and many people are authentically evil. Don’t follow your old heart that wants sin and vice. Authenticity by itself is not a virtue. The text tells us: “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart and be no longer stubborn.” Moses takes the Old Testament ceremony of circumcision—related to God’s covenant—and says that without a heart that is right before God, the externals are actually nothing.
The externals of religion can never replace what truly comes from the heart. You can’t just show up in church and be right with God. You can’t just get baptized and go through the motions. You can’t just take communion. True religion—to be right with God—requires a heart that is right with God.
The Heart That Loves
We need a new heart that is right with God. We need a circumcised heart. Why? Because of what a heart does. Scientifically it pumps blood, but that’s not what we’re talking about. A heart loves. That’s what it does. We love with our hearts.
And love is the chief command in this section of Deuteronomy:
“What does the Lord your God require of you? But to fear the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, to love him.” “You shall therefore love the Lord your God and keep his charge.” “I command you today to love the Lord your God.”
We’ve already covered the Great Commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” So we should ask: What exactly does it mean to love the Lord? I know what it means to love a brownie—I want to eat it because it’s good. But what does it mean to love the Lord?
Defining Biblical Love
Biblical love is a response to God’s covenant in which we prefer Him with our wills, enjoy Him with our hearts, and follow Him in our walk. There are three elements:
- Preference—what we choose.
- Feeling—what we feel.
- Action—what we do.
Action is the hardest part to sustain, but the easiest to decide on. You can sit in a sermon and say, “This week I’m really going to try harder.” But the other two—preferring God and enjoying God—are much harder. How do you enjoy God if you don’t enjoy Him? How do you prefer God if you’d rather have a brownie? Have you loved something if you don’t actually love it?
I remember a conversation years ago with a man in my former church. I was a young pastor, heavily influenced by John Piper, preaching a lot about desiring God. He came to me after the service and said, “I want to follow God. I believe in God. But I don’t know if I’ve ever loved God.” Loving God is the core command—the first and greatest. It sums up all the commands and leads to love of neighbor. It is vital.
Love is a decision, but far more than a decision. It is a heart action full of feeling, responding to the living God. It must come from the heart.
You see this in the New Testament. God will save those who are excited to see Him: “Christ… will appear a second time… to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.” If Jesus showed up tomorrow and it was an inconvenience, you would not be saved. And 1 Corinthians 16:22 is blunt: “If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed.”
So how do you love God if you don’t? How do you have authentic love from the heart if your heart prefers other things? It seems impossible. You need a miracle. Thankfully, God is in the miracle business.
The New Heart in Christ
This is the promise of the new covenant: “I will give them one heart and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.” To receive a new heart, you must come to Jesus Christ by faith. Faith in Christ is the only qualification. For the one who believes, all the gifts of God are yours in Jesus.
How to Grow Love for God
This text gives us practical guidance because none of us has a secret heart detector. Even with a new heart we still have mixed motives and remaining sin. So what do we do if we’re not sure? God gives us His Word both to show us love and to teach us how to love more. Deuteronomy gives us three clear steps to grow in love for God—even if you feel like you don’t love Him right now.
1. See God
To grow love, we must first look to God’s love. “We love because he first loved us.” God’s love always precedes ours.
Moses does exactly this: “Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day.” God loved first. He set His heart on you, and He chose you.
We see two elements of love in God Himself: feeling (“He set his heart”) and choice (“He chose”). Moses inspires love by reminding the people that God loved them first. That love is on full display in Jesus Christ: “Greater love has no one than this, than someone lays down his life for his friends.”
Long ago in Mexico, a 25-year-old railroad worker named Jesús García was on duty in the town of Nacozari. Sparks from a train ignited hay on a boxcar loaded with dynamite. Instead of running away, García jumped on the burning train, shouted for people to get away, drove it at full speed out of town, and told everyone else to jump off—just as it crested the hill. The dynamite exploded, killing him but saving the entire town. Today the town is called Nacozari de García. Ballads still sing his praises.
If that kind of sacrificial love demands our adoration, how much more does the love of Jesus Christ, who literally took the explosion for you on the cross? If you cannot love God right now, look to Jesus. Look to His salvation, His work, His person, His character. Look to the Gospels—again and again. See God displayed in Jesus Christ.
2. Know God
Seeing God leads to knowing God. To know God is to experience Him day by day.
The text promises blessing for those who obey: “If you will indeed obey my commandments… to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart… he will give you rain for your land in its season… that you may gather in your grain, your wine, and your oil.”
In the New Testament, all God’s promises are “Yes” and “Amen” in Christ—and the blessings are far greater than land. “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.” The deepest joy of a lover is being with the one they love. Heaven and earth are peanuts compared to being with God Himself.
When we love someone, we want to spend time with them. I remember dating my wife—long corded phone calls, sitting in the corner, talking about nothing just to be together. To be filled with love for God, spend time with Him in prayer and fellowship. Knowing Him leads to more love, and more love leads to more knowing. It’s a beautiful virtuous cycle.
3. Love as Defined by God
Being authentic is often seen as “being true to yourself.” But that can be as fake as the “official” Toronto Maple Leafs jersey I once found in a little shop in western Nepal (the chances of it being real NHL merchandise were less than zero).
Real authenticity carries the maker’s stamp of approval. We were made by God. If we are going to live an authentic life, we must live according to God’s instructions and God’s ways under God’s blessing.
True authenticity is not whatever crosses our minds or whatever “feels” right, because our hearts are often divided. In high school I watched kids dress like goths—black nails, heavy makeup—claiming to be “authentic” while simply following the latest trend.
Israel was told: “What does the Lord your God require of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.” We are in danger every day of being tossed by every wind of culture, every desire of the flesh, and every temptation of the devil.
How we love God and how we love our neighbors must be defined by God, not by whatever is blowing in the wind. True religion must be from the heart, but our hearts aren’t pure. That’s why we need hearts shaped by God’s Word.
God never separates inner feeling from outer action. He puts them together: “fear the Lord… love him” (inner attitudes) right alongside “walk in his ways… serve” (outer actions). Both are defined by God.
God executes justice for the fatherless and the widow and loves the sojourner. “Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” God’s commands flow from His own heart. He never says, “Do this because I said so.” He says, “Do this because I loved first, I served first, I gave everything first.”
That’s why Moses moves so easily from “circumcise your hearts” to the practical commands: “You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul… bind them as a sign on your hand… teach them to your children… talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise… write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
Just as I once poured over handwritten letters from my girlfriend (now my wife), so we pour over God’s letters—His Word—so our hearts can be authentically shaped by our Maker instead of the whims of the world.
The Test of True Belief
We put a lot of emphasis on belief: “Come believe in Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” But James reminds us there is a kind of belief that does not profit. Even the demons believe—and shudder. They believe the facts but cannot love.
The real test, if you are a believer in right standing with God, is this: Do you love God? Do you love Jesus Christ? I don’t have a heart detector for you or for myself. All I can do is hold up Jesus and ask: Do I respond in love? Do I walk in the love He has taught me—especially toward my neighbor?