Parkview Training Podcast

Parkview Church, blessings to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. My name is Wade. I am the pastor for college students here at Parkview, and we are continuing our series in defining a whole disciple. And so far what we've learned is that a whole disciple is a forgiven child of God who is taking the next step to learn Jesus, love Jesus and live Jesus. So now we're in the second main segment of loving Jesus and we're looking at the first aspect which is loving Jesus passionately above all else. The assumption underneath this aspect is that we as humans are designed by the Lord of love. To love. Very simply, we are lovers. Our hearts are built by God to love. Jesus makes this clear in Matthew 22, you're probably very familiar with this passage. It's the greatest commandment. The question Jesus was posed to Jesus of what's the greatest way a human could worship their creator and redeemer, Lord? Jesus' answer is love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. First and foremost, to Jesus is loving God above everything else in life. And this makes sense. It makes sense because we're made in the image of the God who is love. The Christian Church throughout history has always confidently confessed that God is Trinity. One God in three persons blessed Trinity, as the great hymn says, holy, holy, holy. The Father loving the Son Jesus in the joy of the Holy Spirit. This is who God is. In John 17, as Jesus is praying to the Father, here's the son praying to fa to the Father. And Jesus says this, father, the love which you had for me before the foundation of the world. And then earlier in John 16, Jesus says that he will send the Holy Spirit to his disciples so that they might know him.
So according to Jesus, the Bible is the true story of the Father passionately loving Jesus, the Son in the joy and power of the Holy Spirit. That is the father's greatest passion. God's greatest passion is to love his son Jesus passionately above all else. In fact, Proverbs 8, this is an amazing passage of scripture. In Proverbs 8, Jesus is personified as wisdom and there's a scene of wisdom being part of the creation of the world and wisdom speaks personifying Jesus. And wisdom says I was beside God like a master workman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him, always rejoicing the world he made and delighting in the children of man. And so according to scripture, this God, father, son, and spirit, they are a united team that overflows with love and delight for one another and then into the world that they have made.
And so here is where we come in. We humans made in his image are built to run on the fuel of God's love. We've disconnected ourselves from this love through sin. And sin is simply choosing to love lesser things more than and above God. That is why our hearts are so broken. Why hate and evil and selfish indulgence just pour out of our hearts just as much as real and authentic love. But the Lord shows more grace for sinners like us through the gospel. This is his plan from all eternity to draw sinful, rebellious men and women into his glorious love forever through Christ. Romans 5:8 says it like this, God demonstrated his love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. The great theologian Augustine said that the cross of Christ is God's pulpit of love. The cross of Christ is the pulpit of God's love, God the Father preaching the depths and lengths and widths of his love for needy sinners through Christ his son.
So here's the point, as it says in 1 John 4 you may be familiar with this passage. It says that we love because God first loved us. We were made for the love of God. We were made to love God above all else. And though we've fallen short of this glorious love because of our sin, God has done everything necessary in the gospel of Jesus to make us people who love Christ. Psalm 116, such a sweet psalm, the psalmist says, I love you Lord. It’s a psalm declaring the psalmist love to the Lord. And they gave reasons why I love you, Lord, for you are gracious and you have delivered my soul from death. It is God's gracious love for hell deserving sinners like us in the gospel delivering us from death through Christ's death that ignites our love for Christ above all else. When we were at our worst, God loved us the most.
So think of it this way, Parkview, loving Jesus Christ above everything else is inevitable If you are Christian because God does that work of love in us, that is God's priority for our life because it is his priority. It is God's number one agenda on his task list is to love his son Jesus forever. And so he wants to bring us into that and he has invested all of his holy resources of his love into us by the Holy Spirit to guarantee that we will be the sorts of people that love Christ passionately above all else. That is why he sent Christ. That is what He's doing now by the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in the church. And that is what we will finally accomplish in all eternity, where it says in Revelation 7 that all of God's redeemed people surround the throne of the crucified, risen lamb of God, where every tear is wiped from our eyes and sin is finally and fully cleansed from our hearts and we cry, salvation belongs to the Lord, blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen. That is loving Jesus passionately above all else. And that is where all of human history is heading. And by his grace for his glory, if we trust Jesus Christ with the empty hands of faith, that is where God is taking us. It is inevitable that Christians love their Lord Jesus passionately above all else. You could think of it this way, this is so exciting. It means that the heavenly Father never gets bored with Jesus. He never gets tired of enjoying and honoring his son with all of his heart. In fact, there are millions and millions of angels constantly worshiping Jesus because Jesus is just that endlessly delightful. Jesus is that fascinating. Jesus is that interesting that he deserves an eternity times eternity to simply just explore and behold the wonder of his glory that draws out of our hearts love for him.
We could say it like this. The Father is having so much gospel fun right now, loving his son Jesus, in the joy of the Holy Spirit that he wants to share this holy fun with us. And so he sends forth the Holy Spirit into our hearts. Romans 5:5 and the Holy Spirit sheds abroad in our hearts the love of God. And then we respond in love for Christ. So to love Christ passionately above all else is what you and I were made for as Christians. This is real authentic Christianity. Christianity 101, normal, ordinary Christianity is falling in love with Christ because that is what the Heavenly Father has been doing inthe joy of the Holy Spirit forever. So what does this mean for us then practically? Well, we could say many things about reading our Bible is a means by which we love Christ, or praying is a means by which we pour our hearts out in love for Christ or developing friendships is a way in which we grow in love for Christ together.
But what I want to focus on is our approach to Sunday morning worship at Parkview Church. We are so weak and our love grows cold for Jesus during the week. And as the great hymn says, prone to wander, Lord, I feel it prone to leave the God I love. And sometimes our hearts toward the Lord feel like an ice box. But remember Christian brother and sister, the Father is always loving Jesus. God the Father is always thrilled at Jesus. He's always fascinated and delighted in Jesus. He's always discovering something amazing about Christ and he's having tons of fun doing it, and he wants to invite us into that joy, into that love for Christ. And that is why Sunday mornings exist. Sunday mornings exist at Parkview Church as a gift from the Heavenly Father to help you love Jesus, His son. Sunday morning worship is the Holy Gospel party that ignites love for Christ that carries with us throughout the whole week.
Think about the songs that we sing. That's when you get to praise Jesus and rehearse his great love. When you hear the sermons preached and God unfolding his word to you, what he is doing is he is preaching to you about the endless love of Christ for you from every text of the Bible so that you might respond in love for Christ in obedience and witness to the nations. in communion, Jesus shares a meal with you. You get to have a fellowship meal with your Lord Jesus where he reminds you of his great love for you to the point of shedding his blood on the cross for your sins. And then before and after the service, we get to enjoy fellowship and friendship with our fellow Christians and we get to encourage each other to keep loving Christ, to keep moving forward, to keep growing in the Lord and to express our love for him by the way that we treat one another.
So let's make it our aim to love Christ above all else, especially on Sunday mornings at Parkview Church. Now, a few resources, there's just two I want to talk about. The first first is this, if you are getting established in the Christian life and you are taking your first steps of growing or you want to grow even more, my encouragement to you is to read a book entitled Gentle and Lowly by an author named Dane Ortlund. And for me, this is probably the very best book that I could provide for you that Parkview could give to you for you to see chapter by chapter a stunning, fresh picture of how lovely and wonderful Jesus is, gentle and lowly by Dane Ortlund. And then for those of you who are wanting to equip other Christians to grow in Christ and to develop their love for the Lord, I'd encourage you to read a book called Delighting in the Trinity by Michael Reeves.
Oftentimes, the Trinity is a bit of a foggy, confusing doctrine that feels sort of like we can kind of put it in our back pocket and not use it very much. In fact, the Trinity is the Christian life and you can't be a Christian unless God is father, son and spirit. So that book for me was hugely important in seeing how much joy God has for us as Christians. So I'll close with this quote from Robert Murray McShane, a pastor of the 19th century in Scotland, and he wrote this letter to one of his friends who needed encouragement and he said this, learn much of Jesus. We might say love much of Jesus for every look at yourself. Take 10 looks at Christ. He is altogether lovely. Such infinite majesty and yet such meekness and grace and all for sinners, even the chief live much in the smiles of God, bask in his beams, feel his all-seeing eyes settled on you in love and rest in his almighty arms. Let your soul be filled with the heart ravishing, sense of the sweetness and excellency of Christ and all that is in him, Parkview. This Jesus truly is worth loving, passionately above all else. The Lord be with you.