Love Feels No Loads, I John 5:1-6
Introduction
A discus thrower developed his skills alone in his highland village in Scotland. This was in the nineteenth century, before the days of professional trainers. He made his own discus from the description he read in a book. What he didn’t know was that the discus used in competition was made of wood with an outer rim of iron. His was solid metal and weighed three or four times as much as those being used by his would-be challengers.
This committed Scotsman marked out his field the distance of the current record throw and trained day and night to be able to match it. For nearly a year, he labored under the self-imposed burden of the extra weight, becoming very, very good. He reached the point at which he could throw his iron discus the record distance, maybe farther. He was ready.
The highlander traveled south to England for his first competition. When he arrived at the games, he was handed the official wooden discus—which he promptly threw like a tea saucer. He set a new record, a distance so far beyond those of his competitors that no one could touch him. For many years he remained the uncontested champion.
Transition
In today’s text we are instructed that for those who love God, His commands are not burdensome. Just as the Scotsman’s strength for throwing his discuss was increased by the heavy weight of his training, so too, our strength, our endurance for carrying out the commands of God is increased by our love for God.
This morning I want to talk to you about our greatest source of strength for living out the Christian life; namely, learning to rest in God as we are empowered by genuine and pure worship of God. The Christian life, with its high ideals, ethics, and morals, the commands of God, are difficult, without a doubt impossible to attain apart from the presence of God dwelling in us, and apart from us learning to rest in the very sovereign grace of the God who created us.
Exposition
Today’s text reads, “If you love the Father, you will love His children.” What does it mean to love God? The idea of loving God is intrinsically linked to the idea of worship; adoration of the divine; intimacy with the very one who created us and sustains us; giving us the very breath of life. What is worship and how do we do it?
Praise is cheap today. Everything receives praise! Turn on the television or any radio station and listen in as the latest gadget is praised as breakthrough technology that will enhance our lives. Or listen to the gloating of the latest brand of toothpaste, breakfast cereal, or movie star.
Our overly commercial culture has exhausted with its praise of everything; at the same time the culture has elevated everything to a high status of worth and as a result deflated the very idea and meaning of worth. It is not, therefore, simply enough to praise God in the same fashion as we do every other appendage to our life; as though God were merely a facet or apparatus to our lives.
God is worthy of praise, adoration, worship, because He is holy. He is perfect, righteous, and just; deserving of adoration. He is wholly different from every other thing in our experience and all that we are, all that we ever hope to become, is completely contingent upon Him. He is intrinsically holy because all of reality is contingent upon His character!
I say this in stark contrast to the message emanating from the modern culture which tells us that we are the measure of all things. The modern culture elevates self to such a high place that men and women are necessarily disappointed by our own lack of ability to live up to the status we ascribed unto ourselves.
Indeed, it is a matter of the clay having assumed the role of the potter. It is a matter of the culture having replaced God with a million little gods; all named “me.” Where is worship to be found in such a culture? Where is connection with the divine to be found in such an utterly disconnected society?
In the modern culture, it occurs to me, we are inundated with so much information and distractions that seldom do we find time for connecting with God. How many are those who are even unable to make time to attend Church on any kind of regular basis on Sunday morning to spend time in worship?
Many have job schedules that necessitate working on Sunday. Others are compelled that they need that time to rest or relax from a busy week. The suggestion that one cannot make it too church to worship God belies a total and complete misunderstanding as to the very nature of worship.
In Genesis we see that God created the world in six days and on the seventh day, He rested. God commanded the Israelites to do likewise; to work for six days and on the seventh day take rest and worship the Lord. You see, the ideas of rest and worship are intrinsically linked together in the Bible.
On the same day that we are to rest, God has also instructed us to worship. Why the connection? The connection is that we have been created not primarily to operate as “beasts of burden,” always working and doing, maintaining and building. We have been created to find rest in the Lord; to find comfort and solace from this life in the life of God; we have been created to worship.
This is what Jesus is saying in the familiar passage found in 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." (NIV)
If we are to learn to find the rest that God has for our souls then surely we must learn what it means to worship God. Is worship an action? Is worship something which is done only on Sunday mornings? This morning I would suggest to you that worship is a state of being just as much as it is a volitional act of the will.
The Three Stages of Worship:
(1) Recognition: Worship is the recognition of who God is. That is, genuine worship flows from the recognition that God is intrinsically praiseworthy. Worship begins with a heart that recognized the overwhelming, exceeding value and beauty of God’s nature and character. Worship is ascribing the unsurpassable worth of God in adoration.
This is what it means in the Bible when it says that “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”(Proverbs 9:10 NIV)
In this context, the fear of the Lord has to do with the full recognition of both His wonderful grace and His mighty power.
The fear of the Lord in the biblical context is the full recognition of who He is. Worship begins here because it is in recognizing who He is that we are able to rightly ascribe the value due His name. How can we worship a God whom we do not first name and describe? Is it enough to merely worship an unknown, unnamed, deity?
Is it merely enough to say, as do so many in our day, that we worship the mystic force which must have created the universe, though we do not know who He is, from whence He came, or any detailed account of His character? This is known as natural revelation. It is the fingerprint of God which we see on all of His creation that compels us toward the God of the Bible.
Worship begins with the fear of God in general but genuine worship must move past the point of vague recognition unto the place of knowing God. It is in this regard where the modern culture stifles worship. The modern worldview is quite comfortable with vague and ambiguous conceptions of god; it is when He is given a name and a source of specific revelation that problems arise.
The modern culture with its sterile function driven humanity have brought into question the very concept of what it means to be human. And without knowing what it means to be truly human, how can any man or woman relate rightly to the God who created him? The modern culture has psychology which examines the mental makeup of the human animal while so often denying the spirit.
The modern culture has medical treatment which treats that which ails the flesh of the human animal while so often denying the soul. Modern technological advancements have created a society which is constantly connected through television, cell phones, and the internet, and yet we live in a culture where more and more people feel disconnected isolated, abandoned, and alone.
We have the greatest communication technology ever seen in human history and yet we have lost our ability to communicate with one another on any meaningful level. We are always speaking and yet never saying anything.
The vague god of the modern worldview, the politically correct god who perhaps set all things into motion and then got out of the picture while evolution did the rest does not have the power to satisfy the hearts of hurting people.
The nameless, faceless, unknown god of the modern worldview is empty, vain, and altogether unappealing for anyone who wants to move beyond hazy concepts of impotent deities into the wonder and beauty of knowing the God who created the universe, the galaxy, the world, and all that is in it.
(2) Relation: The second step in the growth process toward genuine biblical worship is to know the God you worship. Worship is relating to the God of the Bible. Knowing God is personal, intimate, and attainable for even the least spiritual among us. Jesus said that if we have the faith as a mustard seed, a tiny little seed, then we could move mountains. Faith need not be mountainous to be powerful; God is available and knowable for us all.
In Acts 17:16-34 is recorded the account of the Apostle Paul speaking to the philosophers at the Areopagus. There the philosophers had erected statutes to all of the known deities of their time. In order to “cover their bets” they had not failed even to make mention of a sort of “catch all” deity. They even wanted to give honor to any god that they had failed to mention.
There are a few folks in our day that give honor to a “catch all” deity as well, are there not? What of the person who does not truly believe in Christ yet attends church one occasion to take communion so that they have “covered their bets?” What of the person who is baptized in an attempt only to purchase a little “fire insurance” just in case this whole God, Heaven, and Hell thing turn out to be true?
Paul tells these philosophers that he has come on behalf of the only god they had failed to mention; Yahweh, the God of the Bible who had revealed Himself fully in Jesus Christ. Today, as in Paul’s day, there are far too many people honoring vague conceptions of God which have not basis in reality and no basis in truth.
If Christ claims to deity are true then we should worship Him as God. If they are not then we should embrace the modern culture which says that there is no meaning. Indeed, we must let go of nameless deities and embrace Christ! We must embrace the biblical message that God has revealed Himself to us.
(3) Resting: Resting in God is the final step in the process of biblical worship. First we recognize that He exists, then we move into a place of understanding who God is in such a way that we might learn to relate rightly to Him, then we find our ultimate satisfaction in knowing Him and being known by Him. Resting in God is about learning to place our total dependence upon Him as sustainer.
Recognition that He is compels us toward a belief that He is, relating to Him allows us to know that we are His children, but resting in Him allows us to know that no matter what comes our way, we are His. Too many Christians, I am afraid, have traded addictions to the world for addictions to God.
I know of many believers who have abandoned unhealthy addictions in the secular world only to embrace an addictive lifestyle in their relationship with God. These are the believers who always seem to be working to earn God’s approval, God’s favor, rather than finding rest in God’s love and mercy.
There are also many Christians who have embraced a Christian lifestyle, a Christian ethic, and a Christian morality, but have failed to embrace Christ offer to find rest for their souls. In all of their doing, in all of their striving to please God, they have committed the offense of the Pharisee, which is to focus so much on keeping God’s Law that we forget to keep the law of the Sabbath; the law of resting fully and completely in God.
We have been created to live lives of perfect fellowship with the Father. We have been created to find our ultimate satisfaction, our ultimate security, and our ultimate rest in the love of God the Father as it has been expressed through God the Son, Jesus Christ! Jesus said, “Come unto me and find rest for your souls.”
He did not say, “Come unto to me and you will be more heavily burdened.” O, how many believers carry loads that they were not meant to carry! This is partially because we are all too often not finding our rest in God and it is partially because we often fail to find rest in one another!
Illustration
An American missionary who was walking down the streets of a Chinese city was greatly interested in the children, many of whom were carrying smaller children upon their backs and managing at the same time to play their games.
“It is too bad,” the American sympathetically said to one little fellow, “that you have to carry such a heavy burden!” “He is no burden,” came the quick reply; “He is my brother.” “Well, you are chivalrous to say so!” said the man, and he gave the boy some money. When the missionary returned home he said to his family, “A little Chinese boy has taught me the fullest meaning of the words, ‘Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.’ ” He recounted his interview and added, “If a little Chinese boy can carry and care for his brother and refuse to consider him a burden, surely we ought not to think it a burden to carry our brother, the weak and the needy ones, who look to us for help. Let us rejoice as we carry one, and say, by our actions, ‘He is no burden; he is my brother.’ ”
Conclusion
The second key statement in today’s scripture reading is, “If you love the Father, you will love His children.” Christ carries our burdens directly as we enter into the rest of God through living a life of worship, living in a state of constant adoration to God our father. He also carries our burdens as we carry one another’s burdens. Patience, joy, hope, love for the brethren, that is, fellow believers.
These ought to be characteristics that define our lives as followers of Jesus Christ. This has never and will never come over night in the life of any believer. But to the extent that we live in the rest of God through pure and genuine worship, to that extent, we will find ourselves being shaped into those people who love not only God, but also love fellow brothers and sisters in Christ!
Benediction
Our Pilgrim Fathers said that as we are infused by the love of Christ God’s law takes on new life. For those who have encountered grace the keeping of God’s law becomes a delight because we are filled with the light of the law; the love of Christ. Law without love is drudgery; love without law is mere sentiment; because it lacks definition.
Today as you go, may the light of Christ go with you; may you find rest for your souls as you glorify in God; our creator and sustainer. Amen.
