The God Who Commands Our Emotions
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.400 | To obey God is to love God, right?
00:00:09.200 | Well, it depends on what you mean, as John Piper explained in his message titled,
00:00:13.800 | "What Jesus Demands from the World," preached at the Gospel Coalition 2015 Conference.
00:00:20.000 | Here's what Pastor John said.
00:00:22.600 | And how many people have you ever heard say loving God or loving Jesus is obeying Jesus?
00:00:34.400 | Basing it on the text, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments," John 14, 15.
00:00:43.200 | "If you love me, you'll keep my commandments."
00:00:47.600 | That text says the opposite of that.
00:00:52.600 | An "if then" sentence doesn't say that the "then" or the "if" are the same.
00:01:01.200 | If I'm hungry, I'll eat lunch.
00:01:03.000 | It doesn't mean hunger is lunch.
00:01:06.800 | "If you love me, you'll obey," doesn't mean love is obedience.
00:01:11.000 | It means, in fact, it comes before and enables.
00:01:15.800 | If you love me, you will obey, but they're not the same.
00:01:19.600 | Love goes first, underneath, holding up, staying in the yoke, abiding, enjoying, treasuring,
00:01:27.400 | marveling, being entranced by, being filled with.
00:01:34.400 | And out of that, a good tree bears good fruit.
00:01:39.600 | A bad tree bears bad fruit.
00:01:42.200 | Make the tree good.
00:01:44.000 | That's another command that's off later in the book.
00:01:49.600 | So my answer to the second question, what is this love, is first, it is not synonymous
00:01:56.600 | with obedience.
00:02:00.080 | What is it?
00:02:01.080 | Well, how about Matthew 6, 24?
00:02:03.160 | No one can serve two masters.
00:02:05.880 | Either he will hate the one and love, love the other, or he'll be devoted to the one
00:02:12.720 | and despise the other.
00:02:14.640 | What kind of language is that?
00:02:17.040 | Hate love, despise devotion.
00:02:19.040 | That's real heart-laden, emotional, affectional language, right?
00:02:25.000 | And that's the way Jesus talked about whether you love God or money.
00:02:30.800 | Are you sold out in such a love affair with money and what it can buy that Jesus is not
00:02:39.560 | your highest treasure anymore, or is Jesus so completely satisfying as your highest treasure
00:02:46.200 | that money is not in that idolatrous position?
00:02:49.480 | Those are your two options.
00:02:51.240 | So love in Jesus' talk is not doing, it is treasuring.
00:02:57.440 | Did you treasure me above everything?
00:03:01.120 | And that brings us back to 1037 in Matthew, right?
00:03:03.720 | If you love me less than your mom and dad, if you love your children more than you love
00:03:09.760 | me, those are relationships of great.
00:03:12.880 | I love my kids.
00:03:13.880 | I die for my kids.
00:03:15.440 | I enjoy my kids.
00:03:16.440 | I treasure my kids.
00:03:19.120 | That's the talk.
00:03:20.120 | That's the language.
00:03:21.120 | That's the affectional, emotional dimension.
00:03:24.720 | When I was a junior at Wheaton ages ago, '67, it was the fall of '67 or spring, I can't
00:03:32.320 | remember which.
00:03:33.320 | '67.
00:03:34.320 | Miller Derrickson was my teacher in apologetics, and we were reading Joseph Fletcher's Situation
00:03:38.560 | Ethics, a very bad book.
00:03:40.600 | And he knew it was bad, and he loved to assign...
00:03:43.880 | He assigned four bad books.
00:03:45.720 | And we read them, and we were supposed to critique, and he would come into class and
00:03:48.240 | play the bad guy.
00:03:49.240 | It was a very exciting class.
00:03:51.000 | I loved it.
00:03:52.280 | And Joseph Fletcher argued love cannot be an emotion.
00:04:00.180 | It can only be an action or an act of will.
00:04:04.760 | Why?
00:04:05.760 | It is commanded.
00:04:09.560 | And you can't command the emotions.
00:04:11.840 | Turn them on, turn them off, turn them on.
00:04:14.920 | They don't work like that.
00:04:17.000 | That was the argument.
00:04:18.000 | And I can remember, I mean, I'm just a brand new budding theologian.
00:04:23.920 | Like don't know anything.
00:04:25.920 | 21 years old.
00:04:28.040 | And I grew up in a home where we read the Bible every day and believed it.
00:04:33.080 | And one of the glorious things about growing up in a Bible-believing home where you read
00:04:37.120 | the Bible every day is that it affects your olfactory, your theological nose.
00:04:43.160 | So you smell stuff before you can understand how bad it is.
00:04:49.000 | Something's wrong here.
00:04:51.160 | This smells wrong.
00:04:52.980 | And you can't say it.
00:04:53.980 | Isn't that wonderful?
00:04:54.980 | A lot of you are, you know, not theologically educated, but you've got great noses.
00:05:00.380 | You walk into a room or something and they're talking about it and you're like, "That's
00:05:05.060 | not right.
00:05:06.060 | Not right."
00:05:07.060 | And they say, "What's wrong with it?"
00:05:09.580 | You say, "I'm just not sure.
00:05:12.020 | I'll go study up on it, but I know something's wrong here."
00:05:15.300 | So I'm sitting in that class and, "That's not right."
00:05:20.300 | You know what was not right about it?
00:05:23.020 | The New Testament commands the emotions everywhere.
00:05:26.140 | I mean, duh, you can't command the emotions?
00:05:32.620 | Give me a break.
00:05:34.660 | We're commanded to be grateful.
00:05:36.340 | We're commanded to hope.
00:05:37.660 | We're commanded to rejoice.
00:05:38.660 | We're commanded to be sorrowful and weep.
00:05:41.020 | I mean, you know what?
00:05:42.020 | I've got a list of what, 15 emotions from the New Testament, including Jesus, which
00:05:47.300 | God commands.
00:05:49.300 | Which is why Augustine says, "Command what you will and give what you command."
00:05:53.180 | Because premise number three in Fletcher's argument is true.
00:05:58.060 | You can't turn them on and off, which is why people think they can't be commanded.
00:06:03.180 | It makes us feel helpless.
00:06:04.900 | You're commanding me to be happy in Jesus?
00:06:06.460 | What do you expect me to do?
00:06:08.020 | Kind of start jumping up and down and hope it happens?
00:06:12.500 | That's the kind of response you get.
00:06:14.020 | No, he expects you to be born again.
00:06:17.100 | Be a new person.
00:06:18.700 | And yes, it's beyond your control.
00:06:20.260 | And yes, we are desperate.
00:06:22.180 | And yes, we need to pray for revival in America.
00:06:26.100 | Nothing we do is going to turn this land around or your church around or your soul around.
00:06:31.020 | God will turn it around and we have to ask for miracles, the Spirit to fall on us so
00:06:36.760 | that we are changed.
00:06:41.140 | This clip comes from John Piper's sermon, "What Jesus Demands from the World," preached
00:06:45.660 | at the Gospel Coalition Conference on April 14th, 2015.
00:06:49.380 | You can download the entire message from our site at DesiringGod.org.
00:06:54.140 | The sermon clips in this podcast typically come from you.
00:06:57.340 | And this one comes from listener Ty Schimansky.
00:06:59.820 | Thank you, Ty.
00:07:00.820 | And if you have a favorite clip from a John Piper sermon, send us the name of the sermon
00:07:04.340 | and the timestamps of when and where the audio appears in the audio recording, and we will
00:07:09.260 | share it on this podcast and give you credit, of course.
00:07:13.620 | Tell us the details at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org and put the word "clip" in the subject
00:07:18.900 | line.
00:07:19.900 | Well, at Desiring God, we believe in functional differences between men and women, but not
00:07:25.740 | because it's easy.
00:07:26.820 | No, egalitarians have it easy.
00:07:29.140 | Complementarians have a lot to think through because this functional distinction in Scripture
00:07:34.060 | raises a number of questions about how men and women relate in the church, in the family,
00:07:39.020 | and in the workplace, and all in a way that honors God's creative, intentional distinctions.
00:07:45.780 | Tomorrow John Piper will respond to a question from a woman who wants to serve in the police
00:07:49.860 | force but wants to know if this violates any biblical principles.
00:07:53.260 | We'll have to think it through tomorrow.
00:07:55.220 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:07:56.220 | We'll see you tomorrow.
00:07:57.180 | [END]
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