To obey God is to love God, right? Well, it depends on what you mean, as John Piper explained in his message titled, "What Jesus Demands from the World," preached at the Gospel Coalition 2015 Conference. Here's what Pastor John said. And how many people have you ever heard say loving God or loving Jesus is obeying Jesus?

Basing it on the text, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments," John 14, 15. "If you love me, you'll keep my commandments." That text says the opposite of that. An "if then" sentence doesn't say that the "then" or the "if" are the same. If I'm hungry, I'll eat lunch.

It doesn't mean hunger is lunch. "If you love me, you'll obey," doesn't mean love is obedience. It means, in fact, it comes before and enables. If you love me, you will obey, but they're not the same. Love goes first, underneath, holding up, staying in the yoke, abiding, enjoying, treasuring, marveling, being entranced by, being filled with.

And out of that, a good tree bears good fruit. A bad tree bears bad fruit. Make the tree good. That's another command that's off later in the book. So my answer to the second question, what is this love, is first, it is not synonymous with obedience. What is it?

Well, how about Matthew 6, 24? No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love, love the other, or he'll be devoted to the one and despise the other. What kind of language is that? Hate love, despise devotion. That's real heart-laden, emotional, affectional language, right?

And that's the way Jesus talked about whether you love God or money. Are you sold out in such a love affair with money and what it can buy that Jesus is not your highest treasure anymore, or is Jesus so completely satisfying as your highest treasure that money is not in that idolatrous position?

Those are your two options. So love in Jesus' talk is not doing, it is treasuring. Did you treasure me above everything? And that brings us back to 1037 in Matthew, right? If you love me less than your mom and dad, if you love your children more than you love me, those are relationships of great.

I love my kids. I die for my kids. I enjoy my kids. I treasure my kids. That's the talk. That's the language. That's the affectional, emotional dimension. When I was a junior at Wheaton ages ago, '67, it was the fall of '67 or spring, I can't remember which. '67.

Miller Derrickson was my teacher in apologetics, and we were reading Joseph Fletcher's Situation Ethics, a very bad book. And he knew it was bad, and he loved to assign... He assigned four bad books. And we read them, and we were supposed to critique, and he would come into class and play the bad guy.

It was a very exciting class. I loved it. And Joseph Fletcher argued love cannot be an emotion. It can only be an action or an act of will. Why? It is commanded. And you can't command the emotions. Turn them on, turn them off, turn them on. They don't work like that.

That was the argument. And I can remember, I mean, I'm just a brand new budding theologian. Like don't know anything. 21 years old. And I grew up in a home where we read the Bible every day and believed it. And one of the glorious things about growing up in a Bible-believing home where you read the Bible every day is that it affects your olfactory, your theological nose.

So you smell stuff before you can understand how bad it is. Something's wrong here. This smells wrong. And you can't say it. Isn't that wonderful? A lot of you are, you know, not theologically educated, but you've got great noses. You walk into a room or something and they're talking about it and you're like, "That's not right.

Not right." And they say, "What's wrong with it?" You say, "I'm just not sure. I'll go study up on it, but I know something's wrong here." So I'm sitting in that class and, "That's not right." You know what was not right about it? The New Testament commands the emotions everywhere.

I mean, duh, you can't command the emotions? Give me a break. We're commanded to be grateful. We're commanded to hope. We're commanded to rejoice. We're commanded to be sorrowful and weep. I mean, you know what? I've got a list of what, 15 emotions from the New Testament, including Jesus, which God commands.

Which is why Augustine says, "Command what you will and give what you command." Because premise number three in Fletcher's argument is true. You can't turn them on and off, which is why people think they can't be commanded. It makes us feel helpless. You're commanding me to be happy in Jesus?

What do you expect me to do? Kind of start jumping up and down and hope it happens? That's the kind of response you get. No, he expects you to be born again. Be a new person. And yes, it's beyond your control. And yes, we are desperate. And yes, we need to pray for revival in America.

Nothing we do is going to turn this land around or your church around or your soul around. God will turn it around and we have to ask for miracles, the Spirit to fall on us so that we are changed. This clip comes from John Piper's sermon, "What Jesus Demands from the World," preached at the Gospel Coalition Conference on April 14th, 2015.

You can download the entire message from our site at DesiringGod.org. The sermon clips in this podcast typically come from you. And this one comes from listener Ty Schimansky. Thank you, Ty. And if you have a favorite clip from a John Piper sermon, send us the name of the sermon and the timestamps of when and where the audio appears in the audio recording, and we will share it on this podcast and give you credit, of course.

Tell us the details at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org and put the word "clip" in the subject line. Well, at Desiring God, we believe in functional differences between men and women, but not because it's easy. No, egalitarians have it easy. Complementarians have a lot to think through because this functional distinction in Scripture raises a number of questions about how men and women relate in the church, in the family, and in the workplace, and all in a way that honors God's creative, intentional distinctions.

Tomorrow John Piper will respond to a question from a woman who wants to serve in the police force but wants to know if this violates any biblical principles. We'll have to think it through tomorrow. I'm your host Tony Reinke. We'll see you tomorrow. 1.5.1 Desiring God Desiring God 1.5.1 Desiring God 1.5.1 Desiring God 1.5.1 Desiring God