In 2015, Pastor John recorded a series of devotionals based on his 2006 book titled What Jesus Demands from the World. And it was in one of those devotionals that he made the point that you don't know God if you don't love Christ above all else. This point and this devotional really impacted a podcast listener named Tim, who lives in Australia.

He suggested this clip for the podcast. I'm glad he did. Here now is Pastor John to explain. We all know what Jesus answered to the question, "What's the first and great commandment?" Matthew 22, 37. The first and great commandment is you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind, and other gospels say, and strength.

So loving God with your heart and all that you are is the first and great demand of Jesus. And then in Matthew 10, 37, it's interesting how these verses are rememberable. 22, 37, 10, 37. Whoever loves mother or father more than me is not worthy of me, Jesus says.

Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. So now you've got two powerful, deep, life-transforming commands. Love God the Father with all your heart, soul, mind, strength, and love Jesus more than you love children, more than you love parents, surely more than you love anything.

And my question is, what should we think about those loves? In fact, I have four questions. One would be, what's the relationship between them? Another would be, what's the nature of the love? Another would be, where does it come from? How do you get to be this way? And the last would be, how important is it?

So let's take those one at a time. What's the relationship between loving God and loving Jesus? Now you may think, why is that a big deal? Well maybe the reason it's on my front burner is because it is massively relevant for Muslim evangelism. I bet you didn't think I was going to go there.

Like what? Listen, one of the big issues we face over and over again in a multicultural situation where lots of religions are coming together is, don't we all worship the same God? You go through Jesus, I go through another prophet. So here's what Jesus says. John 8, 42. Jesus looked right into the eyes of the Pharisees, the Jewish leaders, and said, "If God were your Father, you would love me." I mean, he's saying to the most religious, the most God-oriented, Old Testament-saturated people on the planet, you don't know him.

He's not your father. In fact, he goes so far as to say, you're of their father, the devil. I mean, this is just mind-boggling. What's the litmus paper for knowing whether somebody is a lover of God? Answer, do they love Jesus? Do they embrace Jesus for who he really is?

Not just some human teacher, not just some prophet alongside other prophets, but I am the son of God. So that's the first one. John 8, 42. What about John 5, 42? There it is again. 8, 42 and 5, 42. Jesus says to those same leaders, "I know you don't have the love of God in you.

I have come in my Father's name, and you don't receive me." You see the implication? You don't have the love of God in you. How do I know? You don't receive me. So here I am dealing with a Muslim person who says, "Oh, I worship the true God just like you worship the true God." Jesus would say, "You don't know the true God if you don't receive the son of God." So the relationship, the answer to the first question, what's the relationship between loving God and loving Jesus?

You can't have the one without the other. Loving Jesus is the test of whether you love God. Loving God is the test of whether you truly love Jesus. So here's the second question. What is the nature of this love? Now here's what I have in mind. Is love mainly doing what Jesus said?

So you love Jesus if you do what he said? Or is it deeper and have to do with the heart and the affections? He said, "If you love mother or father more than me, you're not worthy of me. If you love son or daughter more than me, you're not worthy of me," which means he's thinking of the love of Jesus like the love of your children.

Well you don't love your children by doing what they say, right? They are your treasure. You would die for these children. They are precious to you. You won't sell them for billions and billions of dollars. Your children are your treasure. If Jesus isn't a better treasure, a higher treasure, you're not worthy of Jesus.

I had a teacher in college who made me read a book called Situation Ethics. And in it, the argument was made, and every student seemed to be so wowed by this argument. Love cannot be an emotion or an affection because it's commanded and you can't command the emotions. And I'm reading, I'm 20 years old, and I'm reading this thinking, "That doesn't sound right to me." Well it's not right, and the reason it's not right is because premise number one is false.

Of course Jesus commands the emotions. The Bible is filled with commands of the emotions. We should fear, we should be thankful, we should be compassionate, we should be earnest, we should fear the right things, we should hope. All those are emotions. Of course God has the right to command our emotions.

The fact that we're so corrupt and so dead that we can't do the right emotion is not God's problem. That's our problem. It's our corruption. So the question is, isn't love for Jesus more than doing? And people will quote what, I think it's John 14, 15, if I remember correctly.

John 14, 15, which says, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." And I've had so many people say to me, "There, right there, it says so. If you love me, you'll keep my commandments." There it is. Love is obedience. It's not feeling any particular thing for Jesus, it's just doing what he said.

To which I respond, "That's not what you just said it said." It says, "If you love me, then you'll do this other thing called keeping my commandments." Loving Jesus is deep and foundational and transformative because you treasure him above all things. And then because of that, you do all that he commanded.

So my answer to the question, what's the nature of the love? Is yes, of course it would include obedience, but oh, it is not less than being transformed by a love of treasuring, admiring, delighting in, being satisfied by this most beautiful treasure of all. Like Paul said in Philippians 3, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Jesus.

Third question, where does that come from? And let's just get one answer from Jesus. How do you get to this place? Remember the story in Luke 7 about the Pharisee who asked Jesus to come to dinner? And so here he is, he didn't wash Jesus' feet, he didn't kiss Jesus, he didn't do anything to show affection for Jesus.

They're reclined around the table. You remember how they ate in those days? The table would be about that high off the ground. You'd lean on an elbow, your feet would be sticking out behind you and you'd eat like that. And suddenly there's this woman of the street, a prostitute, leaning over Jesus' bare feet, weeping, and the tears are falling on his dirty feet, and she's taking her hair and washing Jesus' feet.

I mean, this is incredibly provocative. And the Pharisee is bent out of shape and says, "If you knew what kind of woman that was, if you were a prophet, you'd know." And Jesus said, "Let me tell you a little story, Mr. Pharisee, Simon. A man had two debtors, one owed him $5,105.

He forgave them both, which will love him more." And the Pharisee says, "Well, the one that he forgave more, I suppose." And Jesus said, "That's right. When I came in here, you didn't kiss me, you didn't wash my feet. She from the time I came in has wept over my feet, washed them with her tears, wiped them with her hair because she has been forgiven much." So where does it come from?

What's your answer to that question? Where does it come from? It comes from being stunned by being loved by God, right? It comes from being overwhelmed by the person of Jesus dying on our behalf and rising again, though we have no merit at all in ourselves. When that grips you, then you will taste what it is to treasure Jesus and delight in Jesus and be satisfied in Jesus, which leads to the last question.

How important is that? That Jesus said, "If you don't love me more than you love your parents, you're not worthy of me. If you don't love me more than you love your children, you're not worthy of me." What does it mean not to be worthy of him? It means you won't have him.

If you don't love Jesus, you won't have Jesus. Paul put it just as starkly as possible in 1 Corinthians 16, 22. He who does not love the Lord, let him be accursed. Christianity, what Jesus demands from us is not most deeply and most fundamentally decisions of the will. That's later.

Deeply and most fundamentally is this new birth, deep, profound transformation of what we treasure, what we love. And if it isn't Jesus, then we're not worthy of Jesus. And being worthy of Jesus doesn't mean deserving Jesus. It means being suitable to be in his presence. When he's your supreme treasure, that's where you belong.

So Father, I ask that love would be awakened because of what you have done first. We love you because you first loved us. We praise you for that. And as these friends discuss this massive issue of loving you and loving Christ, make it happen. I pray in Jesus name.

Amen. Yeah. Amen. This next quote is from a video that was sent to us by Tim in Sunshine Coast, Australia. That sounds like a beautiful place. Tim writes, "Hello, Tony. This clip is from John Piper's devotional that was transformational for me a few years ago and when I first came to truly understand how much I was loved by God and how I was saved despite my wretched past.

I had always understood if you love me, you will keep my commandments as doing good works to prove that I love God or which I had failed miserably up to then to do. Oh, what a joy for me to discover that God had transformed my heart. I love Jesus.

I long to do his commands. I'm saved. Thank you, Jesus. I hope this is an encouragement to others as it has been to me. Amen. Thank you, Tim. And you can download that full book, What Jesus Demands from the World, John Piper's 2006 book, What Jesus Demands from the World.

You can download it right now at DesiringGod.org/books. Thanks for listening to today's sermon clip. Our clips are crowdsourced. You tell us what bits of Piper's sermons changed your life and we share that clip with the APJ audience. If you've got one, email me. Give me your name, hometown, the sermon title, the timestamp of where the clip happens in the audio and tell me how it impacted you.

Put the word clip in the subject line of an email and send it to me at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. That's our email address, AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. So we know that one day Christ will return to earth to physically rule over the nations. We long for that day when he rides on his white horse, his eyes like a flame of fire, clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and all in order to finally rule over the nations with a rod of iron.

That's what we were told to expect in Revelation 19. But does Christ rule over the nations right now? And if so, how is that rule different from what it will be eventually? It's a great question. We are rejoined in studio with Pastor John for that when we return on Friday.

I'm your host Tony Reinke. We'll see you then. We'll see you then.