Podcasts about Religious Affections

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Bible Texts Coming to the Mind, Not Always From the Spirit Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audiobook Date: 6/18/2025 Length: 8 min.

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Not All Spiritual Impressions on the Mind are Divine Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audiobook Date: 6/11/2025 Length: 8 min.

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Great Effects On the Body Is No Sign of Genuine Conversion Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audiobook Date: 6/9/2025 Length: 9 min.

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Fluent and Fervent Christian Talk is No Sign of True Conversion Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audiobook Date: 6/9/2025 Length: 5 min.

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Affections Raised High Are No Certain Sign They Are Gracious Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Sunday Service Date: 6/1/2025 Length: 12 min.

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Evidence that Sound Conversions Consist in the Affections Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audiobook Date: 5/27/2025 Length: 57 min.

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: True Conversion Consists Much in the Affections - Inferences Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audiobook Date: 5/28/2025 Length: 14 min.

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: What the Affections of the Mind Are Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audiobook Date: 5/27/2025 Length: 8 min.

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Concerning the Nature of the Affections and Their Importance Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audiobook Date: 5/23/2025 Bible: 1 Peter 1:8 Length: 7 min.

Equipping Hour | Christian Classics | Edward's Religious Affections by OrlandoGrace

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Holy Affections in Our Prayers, In Jesus, and in Heaven Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audiobook Date: 2/27/2025 Length: 13 min.

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: David, Paul and John Abounded in Holy Affections Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Sunday Service Date: 2/26/2025 Length: 9 min.

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: A Treatise on the Religious Affections - Introduction Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audiobook Date: 8/28/2024 Length: 15 min.

What I aim at in this treatise, is to show the nature and signs of the gracious operations of God's Spirit, by which they are to be distinguished from all things whatsoever, that the minds of men are the subjects of, which are not of a saving nature. If I have succeeded, in this my aim, in any tolerable measure, I hope it will tend to promote the interest of religion.

What I aim at in this treatise, is to show the nature and signs of the gracious operations of God's Spirit, by which they are to be distinguished from all things whatsoever, that the minds of men are the subjects of, which are not of a saving nature. If I have succeeded, in this my aim, in any tolerable measure, I hope it will tend to promote the interest of religion.

What I aim at in this treatise, is to show the nature and signs of the gracious operations of God's Spirit, by which they are to be distinguished from all things whatsoever, that the minds of men are the subjects of, which are not of a saving nature. If I have succeeded, in this my aim, in any tolerable measure, I hope it will tend to promote the interest of religion.

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Gracious Affections Soften The Heart: Evidenced in Tenderness of Spirit Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audiobook Date: 8/27/2024 Length: 19 min.

Focusing on the treatise called Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards, Pastor Nelson expounds on the signs of the Spirit amongst us. We're often led to believe that God shows or displays His power in a heated way. However, in the scriptures, we learn that God may not always be in the fire and earthquake.  Is the Lord glorified and exalted when we meet? In the end, who is the focus, Jesus or man?  These are questions to ponder as you listen to this edifying sermon.

In the First Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards preached extensively on religion that is true must be full of affection—not passion only—but that our minds would be possessed with an affection for God. Love primarily, but also a joy, gratitude and pervasive desire to share the love of God with others. Sharing from Jonathan Edwards's treatise, Religious Affections, Becky Tirabassi revives his list of 10 signs of religious affection! His list was a fire starter for an entire nation. Listen and be encouraged!   If you'd like to receive Becky's ebook, How to Lead an Extraordinary Prayer Meeting, just email: Media@BeckyTirabassi.com   If you would like Becky's 35th Anniversary Prayer and Bible Revival Bundle, CLICK HERE.   For sermons by Pastor Becky Tirabassi, or to visit Viewpoint Church, just click here. For daily encouragement to read through the Bible in a year, follow her daily @BeckyTirabassi on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube or Twitter.

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Without Fervent Affections in Religion We Are Nothing Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audiobook Date: 3/27/2024 Bible: Matthew 24:12 Length: 21 min.

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: True Affections When Raised High the Longing after God Increases Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audiobook Date: 2/3/2024 Length: 4 min.

A new MP3 sermon from NorthRidge Fellowship is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Jonathan Edwards: Religious Affections Subtitle: Prayer and Fasting 2024 Speaker: Brian Borgman Broadcaster: NorthRidge Fellowship Event: Teaching Date: 1/16/2024 Length: 68 min.

This was recorded this morning to assist a friend who is leading a class on this book. I thought that others may be helped by it.-T M S

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: An Introduction and Remarks on Jonathan Edwards's Religious Affections Subtitle: History of American Revivals Speaker: Thomas Sullivan Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Podcast Date: 11/5/2023 Length: 34 min.

Jesus came to heal our sin-sick hearts. The essence of our salvation is perfect righteousness and, ultimately, perfect obedience to the two great commandments. - SERMON TRANSCRIPT - As we make our way through the Gospel of Mark, we've seen again and again the evidence for His greatness, His person as the son of God. The primary evidence given, if we've been alive, as recorded in the pages of the Scripture, are his miracles of healing, the incredible healing power of Jesus Christ. He healed a leper with a touch, restoring his diseased and destroyed flesh instantly. He instantly and effortlessly healed a paralyzed man with just a word, and that man got up and walked and carried out his mat in full view of them all. He healed a man that was possessed by 6,000 demons with a word. The demons left that man and fled. He healed a blind man with a touch, with a small measure of his saliva. He healed a deaf man by putting His fingers in the man's ears and by breathing and saying, “Ephphatha", and instantly, his capacity for hearing was restored. There was no disease He could not cure. At that point there in Mark 7, they said He's done everything well. There was nothing He couldn't do. Every diseased human organ, Jesus understood and drove away the disease instantly, effectively, powerfully with a word-restoring health. In that word, “health", we're looking at the original purpose of the organ of the eyes to see, not to be blind, of the ears to hear and not to be deaf, of the legs that they would walk and not be paralyzed. I. The Greatest Disease Diagnosed and Healed The greatest organ of all, if we could use that word, is the inner self captivated in the words of this first and greatest commandment. The heart, soul, mind, strength, that inner self is the greatest organ. Therefore, also we would say the greatest disease of all is the inability of that organ to do what it was designed to do, to love God. Sin is defined as lawlessness, a violation of God's law. We have before us as we've had for two weeks now, this is the third week, the first and greatest commandment. This text tells us what God demands of us. What He demands is to love Him with all of our hearts, with all of our souls, with all of our minds, with all of our strength. And we don't. We don't. Jesus, the great physician of the human condition has ultimately come to heal that disease as well. Luke 5:31-32, “It's not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. I've not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” This is the healing, the ultimate healing work Jesus came to do. But unlike those physical cures, this cure will not be instantaneous in this world. God has willed to heal us from our greatest disease gradually, to heal us from our failure to love Him, to heal us gradually over a lifetime. Now if that healing has begun in you, if you are a Christian today, you already do love Christ, though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him [1 Peter 1:8], so that healing has begun. You do love God and you do love Christ, but you also know you don't love Him as you should, not yet. You want, you yearn for that healing to continue. That's what this sermon is all about. "God has willed to heal us from our greatest disease gradually, to heal us from our failure to love Him, to heal us gradually over a lifetime. Now if that healing has begun in you, if you are a Christian today, you already do love Christ, though you have not seen Him, you love Him." Back on April 15th, 2022, I began a long and, for me, arduous journey, the journey of memorizing the book of Ezekiel, probably the hardest book I've ever tried to memorize. Those who know me well and are close to me know that, in many ways, it eluded me. Don't ask how much it eluded me, but it did. It was hard work. Today, October 22nd, I complete that journey. I won't recite Ezekiel anymore after today. As I have immersed myself in this complex book, friends have asked, "In these 48 chapters, what has made the greatest impact on you?" There are many possible answers. Right away, in Ezekiel 1, we have a vision of the mysterious majesty and glory of God, really of the pre-incarnate Christ. We have cherubim, wheels within wheels, big huge wheels with eyes all around and just lightning moving back and forth among these holy creatures. They're almost indescribable. High above them, an expanse like ice, separating them from the throne of fire that's high above that expanse, and on that, a man as if on fire, the pre-incarnate Christ. That could be an answer. to this question. Ezekiel 1, a manifestation of the image of the likeness of the glory of God, that almost defies language. Or I could speak of Ezekiel 10, the moment when that glory rose up symbolically and departed the temple because of all the wickedness of the people there, moving out of the temple and out of the city of Jerusalem, making way for the Babylonians to come and destroy it. Or perhaps Ezekiel 37, the valley of dry bones in which the nation of Israel is depicted as long dead, very dry bones. Suddenly, by the ministry of the Word, by the ministry of the power of the Word in the Spirit, the bones start to assemble, and then flesh and skin comes on them, and they're up on their feet, but they're not alive yet. Then Ezekiel prophesizes again to the wind and the wind comes, and the breath comes by the Spirit and the pieces come alive, a vast army. It’s an incredible picture of resurrection. I could say all of that. But for me, I would say again and again, the most impactful experience I had in these 48 chapters of Ezekiel was in chapter 16. There’s some danger in me relating because it's just such at the core of my heart as I went over those verses. For 100 consecutive days, I went over Ezekiel 16; I was marinating in it. In that chapter, almighty God speaks of his marriage to Jerusalem and that the city represents his people. Ezekiel was in exile with the Jews in Babylon because of the nation's idolatries, the grievous idolatries. God gave Ezekiel a powerful word picture of His love relationship with the city of Jerusalem, representing the Jews, representing His people really in all time I think. God says that He found her a forsaken waif out in the field kicking about in her blood. As He walked by, He looked on her and said to her, "Live," and she came alive. She stayed alive and she began to grow. Later, He passed by and saw that she was of an age to be married. She was ready for love. God says, “I spread the corner of my garment over you and I entered into a covenant with you and you became mine.” Now what does that mean? You became mine. I married you, loved you. Then God lavished gifts on her. He gave her a beautiful robe, beautiful sandals for her feet, jewelry for her neck and for her wrists and her fingers, a beautiful crown on her head, and He fed her with the best of wheat and most delicious of honey and oil and all of the best things. She rose to become a radiant and a beautiful queen, but she trusted in her beauty and she used her beauty to become a prostitute. She was totally unfaithful to God, her husband, the lover of her soul. She plied her favors with anyone who passed by, anyone at all.Her fame spread far and wide as this beautiful queen, and people came and ravished her and used her. This went on and on. As her beauty was degraded, she eventually had to begin paying her lovers to come to her. Unlike any other prostitute, she didn't receive wages, but she had to pay out for them to come. God spoke to her in Ezekiel 16:32, "You adulterous wife, you prefer strangers to your own husband." God spoke judgment on her. He said He would bring those nations back to her, the ones that had ravished her, the ones she had whored with, and they would hack her to pieces and burn her to the ground. So as I was reciting that chapter day after day for 100 days, a basic principle that I take to the scripture that I would commend to you is this: whenever there's any revelation of the wickedness of any people in any passage of scripture ever, you should assume God is talking first to you. You should not say, "I thank you God. I'm not like those people." Don't do that ever. Instead say, "God, how am I like that?" Imagine going over that for three months, day after day after day. "How am I like that?" I believe that God was saying those words, not just over Jerusalem or over the Jews, but over all his people for all time. God is a jealous God. He tells us that again and again. He's a jealous husband who yearns after the affections of his wife. I have the same corrupt and wandering heart that that princess wife had in Ezekiel 16. I also realize, above all of that, what God wants out of this universe. What is the big picture? What do you want, God? "I want you to love me." That's what He's saying. "I want your love. I want your heart. With all of your heart and all of your soul and all of your mind and all your strength. That's what I want. That's what I'll have. I want you to love me above all of my good gifts and all of the pleasures of this world. I want you to love me above anything." Now, as heavy as that is, the incredible good news of the gospel is someday He will have what He wants. He'll have what He wants in me and all of you who are His children. We will be pure and faithful to Him in our affections. We will have a perfect marriage to God, to Christ forever. That's the good news. Despite the fact that we have not loved God, but have lusted after idols and we have given ourselves to them again and again, God has chosen to work salvation for us in Christ. He has chosen by our simple faith in Christ to pay for all of the idolatries of our entire lives, all of the corruption, and by simple faith in Christ to credit us with Jesus's perfect obedience to these two commandments. Justification by faith alone apart from works, complete forgiveness of sins just by believing in Jesus to give me that, and then to work in me progressively that I would more and more and more love Him with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength and sanctification. That's what this sermon is hoping to do for you. I said that the transformation, the healing of our hearts is not instantaneous. That's not entirely true, at some point, it will be. At glorification, He will do in an instant what we couldn't do in a lifetime, and He will make us pure and we will love Him. I'm looking forward to that. In the meantime, we have sermons like this one. We have the opportunity for God to work a healing work in us, a progressive healing work in us so that we will love Him. This tendency in Ezekiel 16 is not alone there in that chapter. You see it in Job as well. What was the accusation that Satan made against, frankly, both Job and God? "Does Job fear God for nothing? Haven't You put a hedge around him in all his possessions? Doesn't Job basically love You for his prosperity and his good gifts and not for You? If you take away all that, he'll curse You to Your face.” Isn't that the same message in Hosea where he had to marry a prostitute, Gomer, representing God's relationship to unfaithful Israel? At some point, Hosea had to buy Gomer's time, and God said, "That's what you, oh, faithless Israel are like. I have to block you in with thorns so you have no other option but to come back to me, your husband.” What was God saying there? Our hearts are consistently idolatrous. We're consistently going after and worshiping and serving the created thing rather than the creator who's forever praised [Romans 1:25]. That's what we go after. Augustine put it this way in his Confessions, confessions are written to God. This is what Augustine said, "He loves you too little who loves any created thing along with you, which he does not love for your sake." In other words, putting it in simpler terms, if we love any created thing more than we love God, we do not love God enough and we love that created thing too much. The problem is the Bible says this is what we do all the time. This is what the nature of idolatry is. Our hearts are prone to wander. Having been converted by the sovereign power of the spirit and to faith in Jesus Christ into a genuine love for Him, or you're not converted, we then continually regress from that love assaulted by the world, we go after other things and we don't love Him like we should. We repent and we come back into a healthy relationship with Him, and then off we go again. This is the regular pattern. Our hearts wax and wane in and out of love for Christ. In the hymn “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”, the hymn writer said, "Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, Lord, take and seal it. Seal it for Thy courts above." The central doctrinal concept here, this sermon, is that God alone has the power through Jesus Christ to heal our wandering loveless hearts. God alone has the power through Jesus Christ to heal our wandering and loveless hearts. Another hymn writer put it this way, "Spirit of God, descend upon my heart, wean it from earth, through all its pulses move. Stoop to my weakness. Mighty as Thou art and make me love Thee as I ought to love. Teach me to love Thee as Thine angel's love, one holy passion filling all my frame. The kindling of the heaven-descended dove, my heart and altar and Thy love the flame." Augustine, again, in Confessions, put it this way, "Give what you command, then command whatever you will." God, if You impart to me the thing You're commanding, then You can command me to do anything. If you just give by Your sovereign grace and power the thing You command, then command whatever You will.” In other words, “God, if You would work in my heart the ability to love You as you're commanding here with all my heart, soul, mind and strength, then You can command that. Give what You command. But I see that apart from Your sovereign working in me, I cannot obey this command. I will not obey it. So would You please work this in me?” God has the power to do it. There are numerous examples of God commanding something that can't be done, and then giving supernatural power to his servant to do it. Certainly commanding Peter to walk on water would be a good example of this. The clearest example for me is the apostle, John, on the island of Patmos. His feet are there on that rocky island, that tiny island of exile off the coast of modern-day Turkey. In Revelation 4, it says, "After this, I looked and there before me was a door standing open in heaven and a voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, 'Come up here and I'll show you what must take place after that.'" How are you going to obey that command? I mean, God, You could as easily command me to fly. Wait a minute, you are. "Come up here." “At once, I was in the spirit and there before me was a throne with someone seated on it". Wow. Do you not see the rhythm of that? Impossible command, power of the spirit, fulfillment. This sermon is not about some legalistic list of dos and don'ts. You do this and don't do that, you will have a love relationship with God. It's not that at all. It is, “I see the command, I understand what you're asking, but I can't do it. Would you please work this in me by Your sovereign grace?” That's what we're talking about. Ezekiel 36:26-27 says, "I will give you a new heart and I'll put a new spirit in you. I'll remove from you your heart of stone and I'll give you a heart of flesh and I'll put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws," which Jesus says are summed up in these two commandments. "I'll take out that dead unresponsive heart of yours and I'll give you a living heart. And then by my spirit, I will move you to obey these two great commandments." Oh, God, do that, so these two Great Commandments are clear. Of all the commandments [Mark 12] which is the most important one? Jesus answers, "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength." The second is this, "Love your neighbors yourself." There is no commandment greater than these.” When we're converted to faith in Jesus Christ, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit along with that new nature. The Holy Spirit works together with our new nature to fulfill the commands of God, to begin to fulfill those commands, and so we do love God. But what's the problem then? What's the problem? The problem is Romans 7. Are you familiar with that? You don't need to even know the words. You're living it every day. Romans 7:14 and following, we know the law is spiritual. The two great commandments are spiritual, Paul says. But I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. “I do not understand what I do for what I want to do, I do not do. And what I hate, I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength,’ the law is good as it is. It is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.” So Paul is speaking as a converted person. “It's not me that does it. I have a new nature, but I still have this problem. For I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do, this is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” That is the healing that we need. That's the problem. That wretchedness that we need deliverance from, Jesus has come to give it to us. That is the healing that the physician of the soul must do. The essence of our salvation is perfect righteousness, total conformity of the laws of God, and Jesus came to work that healing in us. Now, for me, I cannot do this heavy work today, this convicting work, this therapeutic work without thinking again and again about our hope in heaven. What is it going to be like when, at last, our hearts will do what they were designed by God to do? What will that be like? Heaven will be as Jonathan Edwards said, “a world of love”. This is what he wrote, "There in heaven, this infinite fountain of love, this eternal three-in-one is set open without any obstacle to hinder access to it as it flows forever. There this glorious God is manifested, shines forth in full glory in beams of love. And there this glorious fountain forever flows forth in streams, ye even in rivers of love and delight. And those rivers swell as it were to an ocean of love in which the souls of the ransom may bathe with the sweetest enjoyment in their hearts as it were be deluged in love." That's where you're heading. You're heading to an ocean of love and you'll be immersed in it and that's what you'll be and do forever. What that means is every bit that you can fight lovelessness and disobedience to this first and greatest commandment will be successful and rewarded. Don't give up, don't get discouraged, but just keep fighting for delight and for joy. Last week, I defined love... That has basically been three sermons on this first Greatest Commandment. The first is just tracing out how it relates to justification, sanctification, glorification, first week. Second week, what does it mean to love God? This week is therapeutic. What do I do if I don't love God enough? How do I love God more? It's a therapeutic sermon. Last week, leaning on Edwards’ Religious Affections, it said the soul has two great capacities. One is the ability to comprehend or understand something that it sets its attention to, to understand the world, spiritual and physical. Secondly, to be inclined or disinclined to everything it studies such as liking or loving or hating or disliking and hating. I saw it in terms of magnetic attraction, the heart is magnetically attracted or repulsed from things to a greater less degree. I laid it out in my mind and it's a number line of affection. That was last week. I ended briefly with five applications, all of them began with A: awareness is just seeing God's nature, seeing Him in creation, seeing Him in the word awareness, could just say knowledge, but it didn't begin with A. So I went with awareness. Secondly, approval. Unlike the demons who are aware, we approve of God, we are attracted to God. That would be another word we could use. Approval. Thirdly, worship and delight is amazement. There's a sense of wonder and amazement at the greatness and the majesty of God, a response. Fourth is ardor. A sense of burning, a passion, a fire. Then the fifth is action or obedience to God's word. So that was last week. II. Ardor: Fainting and Feasting: Psalm 63 insights Now what I want to do is I want to zero in on ardor. Turn to Psalm 63, and I want to look at that psalm and talk about ardor. We see two aspects of our pilgrimage in terms of loving God. This is mostly diagnosis at this point. Look at Psalm 63, which I mentioned briefly last week, but I want to dig into a little bit more now. Psalm 63:1-5, "Oh God, You are my God. Earnestly I seek You. My soul thirsts for You. My flesh faints for You as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I have seen You in the sanctuary and beheld Your power and Your glory because Your love is better than life. My lips will glorify You. I'll praise You as long as I live and in Your name, I'll lift up my hands, my soul be fully satisfied. As with the richest of foods with singing lips, my mouth will praise You." David presents himself as if in the desert; David had many desert experiences, literally physically in the desert. Here it seems to be more like a spiritual desert for him. He's in a spiritual desert situation. He's struggling in his relationship with God. He feels distant from him as a physical person is in a desert where there is no water. He's getting parched spiritually. It may well be many of you are feeling the same thing. You are in a spiritual desert right now. You feel distant from God, you feel dry. It's been a long time since you felt any sense of elevation or joy or delight in your relationship with God, and you're in a spiritual desert. Maybe you're going through a trial, maybe a medical trial, maybe a financial trial. I don't know. It could be a relational trial, and you feel like you're in a desert. You're wondering, "Where is God?" We have the word “fainting”. There's a fainting in the soul here. He says, "My flesh faints for you as in a dry and weary land." You've got a faintness to your relationship with God. You feel dry, you feel distant, but then you've got, also in the same psalm, a feasting aspect. Look at verse 5. He says, "My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food." Some translations even use the word “feast”. When God draws near and pours his love into David's heart and gives him a sense of his glory and a sense of his greatness, he feels like he's feasting at a banquet. How is God both water in a desert and rich and fair, as in a feast? David says in verse 3, "Because Your love is better than life, my lips will glorify You." “I have a sense that your love, God, feeling Your love, that you love me, and that you're pouring that love into my heart is better than anything else in the world. I'd rather have that than anything else, even than life itself. Your love is better than life.” What that means is, according to Augustine and to the things we've been saying, God is better than his gifts. He's better than the good stuff He gives you that satisfy your five senses. Those are good gifts. Every good and perfect gift comes from God, but God is better than all of them. Even if we were to take them all away, if God would pour his love into your heart, that would be enough for you. David has had, in his old covenant way, a spiritual vision of the greatness and the glory of God. Verse 2 says, "I've seen You in the sanctuary and beheld Your power and Your glory." So much of this is a spiritual vision to have a sense of the greatness of God. And so he said, "I've seen that and that is deeply satisfying to me." Then in Psalm 63, we have fainting to feasting, then back to fainting again and feasting. You're going to be that way the rest of your life and be like... I just want you to know that's normal. That's what we're talking about here. When you feel faint and weak, go after him like in Psalm 63, say, "I yearn for you. I'm hungry and thirsting for You. I want You, oh, God." That’s Psalm 63. III. Diagnosing Versions of Our Heart Disease There are various versions of our heart disease, and I want to talk about those different versions because you're going to be different in different places as you struggle in your walk with the Lord. The fundamental issue I've been asserting this morning is idolatry. The fundamental issue here is idolatry. John Calvin said the human heart is an idol factory. What does that mean? All of the problems that we're having in our relationship with God, our sinful tendency to stop loving God is not because your heart has stopped loving. Period. That's not why. This magnificent internal organ, your heart, soul, mind, strength inside of you is going to keep functioning in some way. But if you're not loving God, you're going to be loving some created thing. You're going to go after some creature. That's the essence of idolatry. When you love that created thing and not God as the giver of that created thing, that's idolatry. That's where the problem tends to come from. When we go after self or money or sex or pleasure or achievement or anything earthly, that's when the problem starts coming in our relationship with God. We have to see like, "Where is that happening for me? Where is the idolatry occurring?" It will then have an impact on you in different ways. It'll be different spiritual phenomenons that you can see. "That's the essence of idolatry. When you love that created thing and not God as the giver of that created thing, that's idolatry." The first I want to mention is drifting. You will drift in your relationship with God. This is Hebrews 2:1, "We must pay more careful attention therefore to what we have heard so that we do not drift away.” What is drifting? It's a gradual process whereby your heart is less and less in love with Christ. Your heart is less and less drawn after spiritual things, you're drifting. It's not immediate. It's not over across a weekend, but little by little by little through bad habits and the failure to do good habits through that, you are in a much worse place now than you were spiritually, a much worse place than you were a year ago. Little by little we love Christ less and less. Sometimes it's imperceptible, but it's always because of the same thing. The next chapter, Hebrews 3, tells the reason why. Hebrews 3:12-13, which says, "See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God, but encourage one another daily as long as it is called today so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness.” Putting all that together, the drifting happens when we are slowly hardened by sin's deceitfulness resulting in a heart state that's gradually turning away from the living God. All right. What's the remedy? Hebrews 2:1-4 says, "The remedy is we must pay more careful attention to what we have heard so that we do not drift away." That's getting back into the Word, specifically the Gospel. Pay more careful attention to Matthew or Mark or Luke or John. Pay more careful attention to who Jesus is. Pay more careful attention to Romans 1 through 8. The power of the gospel is the power of God for salvation. Look at how Romans 3 diagnoses sin. Look at Romans 3:21-26, which is the glowing heart of the gospel. How Jesus died under the wrath of God to take away His wrath and that we can tap into that only by faith. Justification by faith alone. Walk through that. Pay more careful attention to the doctrine of your salvation so that you do not drift away. Remedy one is draw close to God in the word. Pay more careful attention to what he's heard. Remedy two is the church. "See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God." We're surrounded by people. Without looking, you can use your peripheral vision and know that there are people near you. You're surrounded by people. This is the benefit of a local church. This is what the local church is for. In a good, healthy local church, we will notice changes that are happening in each other. We'll notice that people are behaving differently than they were three months, six months, nine months, a year ago. We will see to it that we don't let that happen. This is what it means in our church covenant. We'll watch over one another in brotherly love. We will go after people that we haven't seen in a little while. I mean, tonight, God willing, you're going to have home fellowship. This would be a good chance for you to say, "How are things with you? How are things in your walk with God? How are your quiet times? How's your heart? Do you feel like you're closer to Jesus now than you were a year ago? Are you growing closer? Do you feel like you're drifting away? What's going on?" "See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart." How is sin's deceitfulness hardening each other's hearts? It's very hard to see. You got to know each other. That's knowing and being known in the local church. We get to know each other. It's like, "What is going on with you?" We should care enough. That's the remedy. The third remedy is in the next passage, Revelation 2. Revelation 2 and 3 are Christ’s letters to the seven churches, as He's moving through the seven golden lampstands. Whenever you see the plural word, churches, you're talking about local church. He doesn't have many brides. There's one bride, the church. But they have churches and those are local churches. Jesus is moving through the seven lampstands representing local churches. The first is the church at Ephesus and He says good things about them, they’re doctrinally strong, they’re active, energetic. They're discerning. They're able to discern false doctrine. They have been persecuted and they haven't given up. “All that's good. But I hold this against you. You have forsaken your first love,” and then He gives the remedy right away. In the next verse, Revelation 2:5, "Remember the height from which you have fallen. Repent from the sins that cause you to fall from that height of affection and renew the things you used to do." Remember, repent and renew. What was it like for you when you first started walking with Christ? What was your heart like then? That's your first love. What was it like when you first started walking with Jesus, when you first realized His death for you, and you trusted in Him? What was that like? That was a height of affection that you're at, a height of emotion. Remember how that used to be? That height? Now look at you. You've backslidden. You're in a colder, more distant place. Remember how it used to be. Repent because He uses the word “forsake”, you have forsaken your first love. This wasn't an accident. I don't know how it happened. You forsook Him. You chose something else. So repent of that and do the things you used to do. How did you used to show affection for Christ back in those days? Then the distance and formalism, the coldness in Mark 7, quoting Isaiah, "Jesus said, ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain.'" What is that? That's just going through the motions. It's going to church because you go to church. It's what you do on Sunday morning. You're here, you're going through the motions, you're going through the patterns, but your heart is far from God. "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." He's looking at your heart. It's not just a lip thing, it's not a whitewashed tomb thing. It's what's really going on in you. We can get into that machine, can't we? We're just going through the motions week after week. What is actually happening? Part of it is we begin to think of the things of religion. Daily quiet times, weekly church attendance, Bible studies, different things we did to express our relationship with God as a burden. They start to be annoying. Malachi 1:13, it says, "You say, what a burden and you bring me injured and diseased animals, and offer them as sacrifices." It's the animal sacrificial system, but what do we learn? You don't bring me your best anymore and you think the whole thing's annoying. So you start cutting corners in your quiet time. You start finding a reason, maybe not to go to church from time to time. What's going on? You know what's going on, your heart is drifting. There's a dying aspect of your relationship with God. Those are three. Drifting, that forsaking the first love, and then there's that cold formalism where you're going through the machinery. IV. Fight for Joy in the Lord Finally, as we finish, I want to walk through probably the most clearly applicational passage you'll ever find on this topic. Turn to James 4, and I'm going to give you step-by-step on how to renew your heart affection for Christ. Again, keep in mind, you're going to see it in the verses themselves. This is not 7 steps or 10 steps to a right heart. That's not what's going on here. It's a deeply spiritual process in which you understand only Christ can heal your heart and give you love. Let's walk through it, James 4:4-10. It begins right away with this statement, "You adulterous people." That image is from Ezekiel 16. We're spiritually adulterous if we're going after the world, going after the things of the world. He says, "You adulterous people. Don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think that the scripture says without reason that the spirit that He caused to live in us envies intensely, but He gives us more grace?" That is why scripture says God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves then to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord and He will lift you up." Let's walk through these as we finish. Step one, admit that love for the world is the reason why you've stopped loving Christ ardently. Something in the world has captivated you instead of Jesus. Admit that. Step two, understand God's burning jealousy over your wandering heart. God is a jealous God, the spirit He caused to live in you envies intensely." He's jealous over it. He wants it. It is what He sent Jesus into the world to save us so that we would love Him with our hearts. That's what He's going after is the heart, and He's jealous over it. Understand God's jealousy [Ezekiel 16]. Step three, seek more grace for your hearts. He gives us more grace. If you're a Christian, you have already received saving grace, but you need more grace. The language here is very clear. He gives us more grace. So you had grace for justification, but now you need more grace to stay in Christ. So seek. Say, "God, my drifting, wandering, hard heart needs more grace. Would you give me more grace?" I really believe this is why Paul uses his formula in all his epistles. “Grace to you” at the beginning of the epistle and “may grace be with you” as you leave the epistle. You're entering the grace zone in Paul's epistle and you're going to have grace with you as you leave the grace zone. You need more grace through the Word of God, especially. Step four, humble yourselves before God to seek that grace. This is humbling. It's humbling for me to tell you that in 48 chapters, the most impactful was Ezekiel 16, and 16:63 ends with “you ought to be ashamed." It's like, "I need shame like I need pain. I won't need it in heaven, but I need it. I need to be ashamed in the way that my heart is wandering and drifting in idolatries, and it's powerful for me to feel that." This is humbling. Humble yourself before God concerning this, to seek that more grace. Step five, submit yourself fully to God. Submit yourself to Christ's kingship. Say, "This has not just been an optional thing that I've gone after idol. It's not any big deal. It's been rebellion." We've rebelled in our idolatry, so we should submit ourselves to God and to Christ. I have found, I don't know if you have, but I think you have, idols die hard. If your heart is wrapped up in some idol, it will not go easily. The only way you're going to kill it is if you submit to the kingship of Christ and grab the sword of the spirit and go kill it. These idols die hard. Step six, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Now, that's an image. How powerful is that? Say no to him. Tell him no with his temptations. His allurements, resist him. Put on the armor of God [Ephesians 6] and stand in the day of testing and resist and send him to flight. He's not fleeing from you. He's fleeing from the spirit of God in you, but he's going to flee from you. If you'll resist the devil, he will flee from you. Step seven, draw near to God in humble faith. The moment that Jesus died, the curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. Jesus has opened a new and living way into the presence of God. Hebrews 10:22 says, "Let us draw near to God in full assurance with a sincere heart and with full assurance of faith, having a heart sprinkled that cleanses from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water." Draw near to God, draw near to him, or again, Hebrews 4:15-16, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Step eight. This may be the least applied verse in American evangelicalism— Grieve, mourn, and wail. “Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.” Nobody wants to do that. But you understand the moment you sin, the Holy Spirit is grieved by it. If you're not, you're out of step with the spirit. Galatians says we should keep in step with the Spirit. If He's grieved over your idolatries, you should be grieved too. It should hurt you. It should make you sad. You should grieve over it. You can't repent without grief. There is a grief for sin. Step nine, humble yourself before the Lord, again, He says it twice. Grieve and come back to God in humility. Step 10, the good news, He will lift you up. What does that mean? He will lift you up into a healthy love relationship with Christ. He'll restore you. He'll feel your heart with joy and peace. That's the process. Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the remedies that you give us in scripture. We thank you that Jesus is the physician of the soul. We thank you that He looks at us honestly and tells us truthfully what we really are. He tells us what we have been, what we are, and what we will be. Lord, I pray that you would help my brothers and sisters here. Help us at home fellowship tonight, ask real questions and have that genuine fellowship that is so rich and powerful and needed. Help us, all of us, who have been drifting to get back into the word in ways that we haven't been recently. Help us to find ways that idols have crept into our hearts. Help us to repent from them and turn away. And above all, Lord Jesus, present yourself to the soul as a lover of our souls, the one who shed his blood for us and who loves us in ways that no one else can. In your name we pray, Lord Jesus. Amen.

God desires for our hearts to be captivated by his glory, loving him with our hearts, minds, and souls. And he also forbids us to love anything else above him. - SERMON TRANSCRIPT - When my wife and I were raising our kids, one of the things we did when they were very young was teach them a catechism. Catechism is a pattern of questions that are memorized and answers that are memorized. I still remember the beginning of the catechism, and the first question that we would ask is this: Who made you? And the answer would be given: God. The second question: What else did God make? Answer: God made all things. The third question: Why did God make you in all things? Answer: for his own glory. You've heard that your whole Christian life. What does that mean? God chose to put himself majestically on display in creation, and I would add in history, so that we could see his greatness and marvel at it and love it; that our hearts would be kindled with affection for him because of his greatness. So the fourth question is: How can you glorify God? Answer: by loving God and doing what He commands. That's what this sermon is about. God shines the light of his glory. We see it by the exquisite organ of the inner self, which we're going to talk about today, the heart, soul, mind. We perceive it by that exquisitely complex organ and that sight by faith is radiant and glorious, and we are moved by it. We are drawn to it. We're melted by it. It shows us the invisible God and we love him. Jonathan Edwards wrote these amazing words, "God is glorified not only by his glories being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by the understanding and by the heart. God made the world that he might communicate and the creature receive his glory. That it might be received both by the mind and the heart. He that testifies his idea of God's glory doesn't glorify God so much as he that testifies also his approval of it and his delight in it." Now, there's an analogy for us with physical light to the invisible light of God's glory. God created physical light. God said, “Let there be light,” physical light, and there was light. I have said for many years I've come to realize if God says let there be light, He must also say, “let there be sight.” If He's going to emanate light through the universe but nothing can receive that light, what good is that? He didn't do it for himself. He knows how great He is. He knows completely how great He is. But to put his greatness, his glory on display, the emanation of light, He must create light receptors and must create in that case of physical light, the eye. Physical light is received by the eye. Jesus said in Matthew 6:22-23, "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. If your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness." The invisible spiritual light of God's glory is also received by an exquisitely complex organ, the heart. The human heart along with the soul and the mind, those internal attributes that are in the text today, are receptors of God's glory. For years, I've said faith is the eyesight of the soul. I'm not backing away from that. I think it's true. But faith is a capacity that resides in the heart, soul, and mind, somewhere in there. It's a capacity of the heart, soul, and mind to receive invisible spiritual light. God created the human beings in his likeness, and our bodies have magnificently complex organs. The eye is a exquisitely complex, delicate organ for receiving light, and so also our other organs have their magnificent complexity. God created the inner nature, the true self of humans with this language, heart, soul, and mind housed in a physical body which is connected with strength that can move in this world and act and show energy. This is what we are. All of that capacity created in the image of God. God yearns, He desires your heart, your inner nature for himself. He made that for himself. He made your capacity to see and appreciate the light of his glory. He made that for himself and He's jealous over it. He wants it. Sadly, as we saw last time, sin has entered the world, corrupting that magnificent inner organ, so we're blinded to his glory. That capacity is still there, but it goes after created things and loves them in deeply corrupt ways, destroyed by sin. The salvation work of God is to heal and restore that inner nature so that it will do finally what it was meant to do and that is to love God, and that's what we're going to talk about today. God in His grace has begun this massive work of healing and of re-creation residing in the inner nature of man, the heart, soul, and mind to love God. "God yearns, He desires your heart, your inner nature for himself. He made that for himself. " I. The Two Great Commandments Look again at the text. Mark 12:28-34, "One of the teachers of law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, 'Of all the commandments, which is the most important?' 'The most important one,' answered Jesus, 'is this. Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this. Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.' 'Well said teacher,' the man replied. 'You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart and with all your understanding and with all your strength and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burn offerings and sacrifices.' When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, 'You are not far from the kingdom of God.'" We're in the midst of an overall series in the Gospel of Mark. We've come here to the last week of Jesus's life. He's dealing with a bunch of controversies and opponents, enemies that are trying to trip him up in his words. This man is not like them though. This man genuinely has a desire to know God. It's pretty clear from what Jesus says to him and what he says to Jesus. He comes and asks this question. Last week, we looked at the two great commandments, the positive commandments, love God, love others, but we also looked at the negative, the prohibitions, the “thou shalt nots” as well and saw that we can't just stay positive. Our hearts are so corrupt that we can't just say love and do whatever you want. We will mess that up. So I took that law, the law, both positive and negative and applied it to different stages of our salvation— justification, sanctification, glorification. That was last week's sermon. And by the way, this sermon that I wrote, I wrote yesterday. I never do that. I don't write sermons on Saturdays, but I didn't like at all what I had written before. So you can just discard that outline. I don't even know what it says. It's no one's fault but my own. That's what happens when you're gone all week in a Texas prison and you come back and you look at the sermon, it's like, oh, that's really not good. The problem was I gutted a lot of its best points last week and it would just be a repetition of a lot of the same things. It wasn't anything wrong, it just wasn't anything new. I thought we need to do something else. So I now conceive of the vertical aspect of the two great commandments to love God in a three sermon series. I described last week's sermon just a moment ago. II. What Does It Mean To Love God? This week's sermon is definitional. What does it mean to love God? That's what's in front of us. What does it mean to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength? Next week is more therapeutic. What do I do if I don't love God, and that sermon doesn't exist either yet. But it will, I promise. God willing. I want to talk about how can we be healed and how can we love God if we're distant, if we're drifting, if we're cold, or even if we're normal but we want to love God more? That's what next week's sermon's about. So now it's definitional. What does it mean? What does it mean to love God? The Hebrew word for love, “ahav”, it's interesting, three of the first four times it's mentioned. If we find where it's used, it's fascinating how it's used. They all center around the person of Isaac, interestingly. First the love of a father for a son in Genesis 22:2. This is the first use of the word “ahav” in the Hebrew Bible. "Then God said, 'Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love and sacrifice him.'" That should obviously remind us of God's statement at Jesus' baptism and also at the Mount of Transfiguration, “This is my son whom I love.” But that's the first use of the word “love” in the Bible, father for a son. The second is for a husband for a wife. Genesis 24:67, "Isaac brought Rebecca into the tent of his mother, Sarah, and he married Rebecca so she became his wife and he loved her." He loved her. The third use of the word “love” that I'm listing here is Genesis 27:4, and that's actually where Isaac says to his son, Esau, "Prepare me the kind of tasty food that I love and bring it to me to eat so I may give you my blessing before I die." That's fascinating word study here. The use of the word “love.” Love of a father for a son, the love of a husband for a wife, the love of a man for meat stew, like a savory stew. Same word. What is it then? What is love? We do the same thing in English. We do the same thing in our use of it. I love my wife. I love my kids. I love my job. I love my country. I love football. I love baseball. I love chocolate. I love the fall. The same word for a widely ranging array of things. I love Jesus. I love almighty God. Same word. How do we understand it? The number one mentor I've already quoted here on this other than the Bible itself of course is Jonathan Edwards. And Edwards wrote one of the greatest works that I've ever read, The Treatise on Religious Affections. In the context of Edwards writing that, 1746 was the first Great Awakening, a massive revival of religion. A revival of people's hearts toward Christ and I think the greatest revival of the last 300 years. There's lots of ferment about Christianity, lots of activities, lives were being turned upside down by the gospel. Things were changing, lots of transformation. Lots of criticism too. People criticizing it, not liking all the displays, the emotional displays. And then as the years went on, some of those people just reverted to the old way they'd been living before. And so the idea came up, what is the nature of true religion, of true Christianity? What is it? No one I think was better suited, better gifted or positioned to answer that question than Jonathan Edwards, pastor of one of the most significant churches in New England, the church in Northampton, Massachusetts. He was a seasoned pastor with a brilliantly theologically deep mind. He also had an amazingly deep, almost scientific gift of perception. He would study spiders and watch things they did. He thought they were magnificent, and he would write things about the behavior of spiders. He was scientific, but especially about religion, about things of the Bible. With this Great Awakening, there's all this ferment, emotion, all of this change and then other aspects, tears of joy, shouts of joy, people jumping up and down, throwing themselves on the ground, crying. What is it all? He wrote his treatise concerning religious affections to try to answer the question. He argued that true conversion toward true Christianity, true religion consists in religious affections or holy affections, which ultimately simply is love. It comes down to love, ultimately. What does he mean by affections? Edwards made this insightful remark, He said, "God has endued the soul with two faculties. One is that by which it is capable of perception and speculation or by which it discerns and views and judges of things, which is called the understanding. The other is that by which it is in some way inclined to them or disinclined or averse from them as liking or disliking or loving and hating, pleased or displeased, approving or rejecting. Those are the affections." The soul studies and comprehends the world around it as it becomes aware of its understanding and its nature, and then secondly is either attracted to it or repulsed from it to a greater or less degree. That's what love is, and then true Christianity consists in love. First Peter 1:8, speaking of Jesus, "Though you have not seen him, you love him. And even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy." That's true Christianity right there. [1st John 1:8] To love, truly love Jesus Christ. He argues that the soul is doing this all the time. It begins with perception. It begins with understanding, with knowledge, and it moves over to affection. The heart then moves toward or away from that thing. I want to give you an illustration from a recent experience I had with a friend of mine, Jeff Percy, who lives in Newfoundland. He came from Canada with his two teenage children, Maria and Luke, and brought them to an NFL football game. Luke, a child after my own heart is a big Patriots fan and they were playing the Jets. It was a rainy day and they're in the Meadowlands there at an NFL football game. While Luke was ardently into it, Maria couldn't care less. She didn't know much about American football, its rules. It didn't mean much to her. Third and long, what does that mean? Getting the first down with a great pass, what is that? Which team is which? What are the colors? It's just nothing for her. The heart studies and then, the more you understand, then if you are a fan, short for “fanatic”, you are going to be ardently involved in that. You're going to be passionate and jumping up and down about what's going on. So it is with everything. We start with the perception. The soul has the ability to study something with knowledge. Then the more we understand, then our hearts are kindled and our affections become engaged. "To love, truly love Jesus Christ. …It begins with perception. It begins with understanding, with knowledge, and it moves over to affection." Joe Rigney writing about Edwards' treatise said, "It's the inclination of the will that governs our actions." Some inclinations of the will are mild and minor. They barely register at all. Like choosing what socks to wear today. But other inclinations of the will are vigorous, persistent and lively, like choosing the person you're going to marry. Only the latter Edwards would term affections. It's the more ardent stimulations of the will. They're more vigorous and sensible. The soul has the power to affect the body. Sam Storms said in talking about Edwards' treatise, "Only the soul or immaterial element is capable of thinking and understanding and thus of loving and hating or experiencing joy or sorrow over what is known. The many physiological sensations we experience, the rush of blood, rapid breathing, goosebumps, chills down the spine and increased heartbeat, et cetera, those are the effects, the physical effects of affections.” The body is very complex. The mind, the heart, these are complex systems, but it has a physiological effect. Now for me, as I studied all this, a number of years ago, I started to see it from my own engineering background with two things. One is a magnet- attraction and repulsion- and the other is a number line of affections in which you lay out strong or weak affections or disaffections. That's how I tended to see it. We would say, like a bar magnet which has an N, north, and an S for south, and you have two magnets, and the likes repel. You can feel a force. If you put the N and an N together, you can feel an invisible force repelling, pushing away. That's repulsion or disinclination, disliking or hating. But if you turn one of them around and then they're opposite, there's an attract and you feel a force pulling them together. Then you take all of those arrays of things that you like on up to those things that you love, you put them on the positive side of the number line, so from your perspective over here on the right-hand side, and the higher the number, the more ardent your affections are for those things. Then on the negative side, the more ardent your disaffection, dislike, all the way up to, we would use the word hate. Zero would be perfect indifference, like Maria at the football game. But the more you learn, the more your heart starts to move one direction or the other, and so you have that sense of repulsion or attraction. I've always been interested in magnets. I was at a car parts store yesterday and there was this little telescoping magnet thing that you could reach out and pick things up. Some of you men know exactly what I'm talking about. As a matter of fact, when the guy was replacing the battery in my car, he did drop a nut down there and went and got that telescoping magnet thing. I said, "That's going to make it in my sermon." He's down there and it just gets attracted to it. Fundamentally, that's what our heart does. As you look at that number line, God stands over this whole process and demands, commands that He be uppermost in our affections. On the number line, He is by far, the farthest right thing because all of the entities that have existence in the universe are in two categories and only two— creator and creature. And there's an infinite gap between the two. Anything you love more than the creator is a creature and is the biblical definition of an idol. Romans 1:25, "They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the creator who's forever praised.” That is idolatry. John Calvin said, "The human heart is an idol factory. In our wickedness, in our sin, we are continually loving, created things more than the creator who's forever praised. Amen." It's what we do in our sin. Jesus Christ also similarly claims the top spot in our affections. Matthew 10:37, "Anyone who loves his father and mother more than me is not worthy of me. Anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” As a matter of fact, Jesus says in Luke 14:26 that our love of Christ should be so great, so ardent that anything else in the universe will seem like hatred by comparison. He uses that language to talk about things that in other places He tells us to love. “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” You need to understand what Jesus is saying there. He's saying by comparison, the gap between your love for Christ and everything else should be so dramatic that everything else is like hatred on the number line of affections. That's how I perceive love. It is to be having my heart genuinely attracted to God and the things of God. To love them, be drawn to them. We are told in scripture, using the same kind of language, that naturally we are repulsed from these things. The mind of the flesh is enmity against God [Romans 8]. It hates God and his things naturally. We are repulsed from them. "By comparison, the gap between your love for Christ and everything else should be so dramatic that everything else is like hatred on the number line of affections. " Now look at the text. Look at the words that Jesus used. "You are to love the Lord your God with everything you are." What does that mean? Well, with all your heart. What is the heart? The heart biblically is the core of your being and we understand the heart by the functions ascribed to it in the Bible. What does the heart do? There's a number of functions ascribed to the heart in the Bible. For example, it thinks. Proverbs 23:7 says, "As one thinks in his heart, so he is." The heart thinks, the heart feels. In Romans 9:2 Paul says, "I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart." So there's passion in the heart. It feels emotions. It decides. The heart makes decisions. Second Corinthians 9:7, "Each one must give as he has decided in his heart." That's about Christian giving. It decides, it makes decisions. It makes plans. Proverbs 16:1, "To man belong the plans of the heart." The heart makes plans. The heart desires or yearns. Psalm 37:4, "Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart." To some degree, if you look at that list of five things, it seems there's nothing left for anything else to do. The heart seems to do everything. And yet there are two more internal words. We're also to love God with all of our soul and with all of our mind. As I've meditated on heart, soul, mind and tried to discern a distinction, I just to some degree can't. I just honor and respect the fact that the Bible uses different words for these different inner attributes of the complex organ of inner self that He has made. We honor heart, soul, mind and then try to understand strength as well. What does it mean to love God with all of your soul? What is the soul? Sometimes the two phrases go together, with all your heart and all your soul. They just link together frequently in Deuteronomy. When Jonathan wanted to go The soul could be said to be the immaterial part of you, the nonphysical part of you that is attracted to God, let's say, that relates to God. It is with your soul that you have a love relationship with God. But keep in mind, we're told to love God with all of our hearts, so, so much for that. It's hard to distinguish between them. The Hebrew word “nephesh” seems to refer to the animating principle, the principle of life. That which gives us life. We are alive by the soul, the “nephesh”. In Genesis 1:21 it says, "God created great whales and every living creature." All these “nepheshes”, to mix up Hebrew and English. He created all of these nephesh, these creatures, but especially the human being. The word “nephesh”, translated “soul”, is mostly used for humans in the Bible. Genesis 2:7, "Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living soul, a living creature.” I don't know how to take a difference between the heart and soul, but those are different words, and they have different aspects that we can only perhaps know fully in heaven the difference. But it's all of your internal self, your heart, your soul together, loving God. It's like with every fiber of your living being, with all the parts that make you alive, the mystery of life with the core of your life, love God. That's what this command is. Then it adds the mind. The mind is to think and understand. It's the part of you that thinks, it reasons, it meditates. As I just said a moment ago, it understands. Christ is commanding that you use that intellect of yours, that mind of yours to love him. To think thoughts, good thoughts about him. Your intellect given fully to loving God, to delighting in the depths of God's word and the complexities of this book, trying to understand it. Loving God with all of your mind. Studying it. Your imagination. Using your imagination to worship and admire God. Your mental powers, your science, your philosophy, your logic, your deductive skills, your reasoning powers, powers of observation and argumentation. All that the mind can do, with all of that, love God. I like even the concept of inventing ways of loving God. Sinners invent ways of doing evil. They use their inventiveness in doing evil. Let's invent. I'm not saying invent religion. Let's do what God says. But it's just every day it's like, "How can I love you, God? How can I serve you today?" and you're thinking of different patterns. Then finally it says with all your strength. Now, home base in this for me is just your body. That you're going to use your muscles and you're going to exert them in your love relationship with God until you're tired, until you're even exhausted. You're going to love God with all your strength. You have no strength left because you have loved God so much. I think that's fine, but I think it's okay to use the word “strong”, going back to those other inner attributes like a strong mind or a strong will or a strong love. There's a strength aspect which I think is fine as well. Everything that you have, you're going to give it all to God. I like the image of being poured out like a drink offering that Paul uses for himself. Second Timothy 4:6, "I'm already being poured out like a drink offering and the time has come from my departure." The ultimate picture of this is Jesus on the cross. As they gamble for his clothing and his articles, whatever little he had in life physically, it's gone to fulfill prophecy. His life blood poured out. Everything He had to give, He gave to God and to us. This a picture of loving God with all your strength, hold nothing back, wholehearted devotion. I will praise you. Psalm 9:1, "I will praise you O Lord, with all my heart. I will tell of all your wonders." Or when David, when the ark was being brought in, it says, "He danced before the Lord with all his might.” He was really exhausted after it was over. Focus. Psalm 27:4, "One thing I ask of the Lord," David wrote, "this is what I seek. That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple." We have the tendency, don't we, to spare ourselves, to hold back. We often think we've done the best we can. We never do the best we can. We always have some reserve we held back a little bit. But you think about athletes. There are some pictures of athletes that really gave everything. I read a number of years ago about a woman that was competing in the Iron Man triathlon in Hawaii, which is just amazing. A 2.4 mile swim. Think about that. Swimming for 2.4 miles, then riding a bike for 112 miles and then you do a regulation marathon. At the end of that whole race, she had nothing left to give, but she wasn't at the finish line. She was leading, but she had her muscle cramp. There was no strength left, and she literally crawled on bloody hands and knees to finish third. That's a picture of giving everything. Loving God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength III. What Should We Love About God? What should we love about God? Well, everything of course. But I think these are some ways of understanding it. Love God's works, love God's word, love God's perfections, love God's son, God's purposes. It all starts with creation. Think of all the beauties of nature. It all starts with the beauties of nature. I'll never forget the first time that my daughter Carolyn saw the ocean in Nauset Beach on Cape Cod. She was quite young and she was born in a landlocked country called Kentucky. We brought her to see my mom on Cape Cod, and I knew what was going to happen. I had the foresight to look at her face as we crested the sand dune at Nauset Beach and then looked down at the pounding surf. There'd been a storm the day before so it was big. I watched her face and her eyes were as big as saucers. Wordlessly, for she had no words, she just kept, like saying, "Don't look at me, dad. Look at that. That's big." She had no words but big and awesome and dramatic. So it starts with creation. But then beyond that, at some point, faith enters and you stop looking just at the creation and you realize there is a creator behind it. Hebrews 11:3 says, "By faith we understand the universe was formed at God's command so that what is seen came from what was invisible." We know that by faith. So behind everything physical, we see there's a beautiful, awesome, wise, powerful creator who made all of these things. Isaiah 6:3, "Holy, holy, holy. Lord Almighty, the whole earth is full of his glory." We study like scientists who want to find God's glory everywhere, even the little things. Jesus said, "Consider the lilies of the field. They don't labor or spin. Yet I tell thee that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these." That's how God clothes the grass of the field. God made it. Who made you? God. What else did God make? God made all things. God made that flower. So we love it. We also see God's mighty works throughout history and there's an interaction between God's works and and God's Word. We start to interpret and we see God's mighty works in history. Psalm 111:2-4, ”Great are the works of the Lord. They are studied by all who delight in them. Full of splendor and majesty is his work and his righteousness endures forever. He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered. The Lord is gracious and merciful." So we study his mighty works in history and we do it through God's Word. We love his Word. "Oh, how I love your law." Psalm 119:97. "I meditate on it all day long.” Jeremiah 15:16, "When your words came, I ate them. They were my for and my heart’s delight , for I bear your name Lord God almighty." We see God through the Word. We see his works in history. We see with the Jews, with Israel, how He called out a people for himself and He rescued them with a mighty hand and outstretched arm with the 10 plagues, dreadful plagues and the Red Sea crossing. The might and the power of God, the pillar of cloud, the pillar of fire, and how He did awesome things and how He made the Jordan River stand up at flood stage so they crossed on dry ground. He made the walls of Jericho fall down of themselves. There's nothing that God cannot do. He cared for them in the desert before that with the feeding of man and water from the rock. Then throughout their history, centuries of history, God showed incredible patience with them and tenderness and mercy, but also sometimes judgment and wrath as He would bring in Gentile raiders or conquerors. We see the wisdom of God in all of that. We also talk about God's perfections, God's attributes. Then answer the question, what is God like? One of my favorite parts of new member weekend is we go through the doctrine of God. I made a list a number of years ago of the 26 attributes of God through a bunch of systematic theologies I read, and I think it's a comprehensive list. There's not going to be another 30 attributes that haven't been discovered yet. These are the ones that are revealed in scripture, and there are lots of supporting scriptures. They're just magnificent. Like God's self existence. That's what makes God different than everything else in the universe. God doesn't need a creator. He is the self existent one. He gets his existence from himself, not from the creature. We get our existence from God and sustained by food and water and air. God's immutability, the fact that He never changes. “I the Lord do not change.” He's the same yesterday, today and forever. He never changes. He can't improve or get worse. The perfections of God. We love these things. We love studying these things. The eternity of God. Psalm 90:2, "Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God." He's an ancient God, the ancient of days. Immensity, which may be the same as omnipresence. "Even the highest heavens cannot contain you," Solomon said. "How much less this temple I built." The immensity of God or the omnipresence of God, the omniscience of God. Great is the Lord and mighty in his understanding. There is nothing He can learn from you. Who has ever been God's counselor? Do you have any advice to give God? Would you like to teach God something? Remember that whole thing with Job? “Where were you when I made the universe? I wasn't asking your advice.” The infinite wisdom and the knowledge of God. His omnipotence, the fact that there is nothing He cannot do. We could go through the whole list and it would be delightful. But these are the perfections. If you love God, you love them. You love the God that's revealed in these words. But ultimately you love God's son, Jesus Christ. Because He's the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After He had, by his blood, provided purification for sin, He sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven. We love Jesus, especially the cross and the resurrection. Which when the Holy Spirit convicts you and converts you, He gives you a whole new vision of this disgusting, horrific bloody death. Suddenly it turns, and becomes glorious. Does it not? Does it not display the justice of God? Romans 3:26, "Because in his forbearance, he left the sins committed beforehand unpunished." God needed to display his justice so He could be just and the justifier of those who have faith in Jesus, but it's also the display of his love. God demonstrates his own love for us in this, while we're still sinners, Christ died for us. So the cross is a display of justice and love. But it's also in 1st Corinthians 1, a display of wisdom and power. The cross of Christ is the wisdom of God and the power of God. Power how? He saves a multitude from every tribe, language, people, and nation of all of their myriad sins in one afternoon. In one day, He takes away the sins of the world. That's power, friends, and we love it. IV. Applications What applications can we take from this? I was praying and thinking about this yesterday and sometime ago, recently, I was bit with the alliteration bug ,and I just haven't been able to get healed yet. So I'm going to give you five A's, and we'll close the sermon with these five A's. Awareness, approval, amazement, ardor, and action. That's what it means to love God. First, awareness. We learn about God from his Word and his world. We study and see, and we are aware of God, who He is according to his Word. Secondly, approval. We approve of what we learn. We are delighted in it. This makes us different than the demons. They're aware, but they hate him. We love him. We approve of what God does. One of the words that's used for approval is “amen". When you hear our brother or sister pray, we say amen. Meaning “I stand with that.” It comes from the Hebrew word “to stand.” Let it stand or I stand with it. I agree. So let it be. That kind of thing. Psalm 106:48, "Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting. Let all the people say Amen.” Let God be praised. Everyone says amen that we agree. Second Corinthians 1:20, "For no matter how many promises God has made, they are all yes in Christ. Through him, we speak the amen to the glory of God." That's an amazing verse. It's like we agree that the promises are glorious and we want them to happen. We're in with it, we agree. Or then the second to last verse of the Bible. Revelation 22:20, "He who testifies to these things says, 'Yes, I'm coming soon. Amen. Come Lord Jesus.'" So what's John saying? I want that to happen. I approve of that. I agree with that. Thirdly, amazement. We marvel at the greatness of God's works. Like the single Greek word, “the omega.” Oh in the doxology in Romans 11:33, "Oh, the depths of the riches, the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable his judgments and his paths beyond tracing out. Who has known the mind of the Lord? Who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to God that God should repay him?” What's going on in Paul as he's writing that? He's filled with amazement at the gospel. This is 11 chapters of deep theology. Oh, this is deep. Well, you're going to spend eternity in heaven saying, oh and oh and oh. God's going to be revealing his greatness to you again and again. You're going to be overwhelmed. Amazement is part of our love for God. We're amazed at who He is. Fourthly, ardor. I've used the word a number of times in the sermon. It means “fire, zeal." Nothing God hates more than lukewarmness. He'll spit it out of his mouth. If you're lukewarm, he'll spew you out like the Laodiceans. We are not lukewarm. He wants our hearts on fire. As the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, "Were not our hearts burning within us when he opened the scriptures to us." There's a fire, an ardor, a zeal. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor serving lord. Psalm 63:1 captures it. "Oh God, you are my God. Earnestly I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My flesh faints for you as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I am hungry for you, God. I am thirsty for you. I need you. I want you." Then finally, action. Simply put, you love God by doing what He tells you to do. You love God by obeying his commands. This is love for God, to obey his commands. In 1st John Jesus said, "If you love me, you will obey my commands." So action. What is he telling you to do? Do it. That will enhance your love for God. It will demonstrate love for God. That's what love for God is. So are you in Christ? Do you know him? Have you received the forgiveness of sins? You cannot love him without first faith in Christ. Trust in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then if you are a Christian, how is your love relationship with God? Next week we're going to talk about that and we're talking about how to remedy it and how to grow. We come now to a time for the Lord's supper. Time for us to celebrate this ordinance. I'm going to close our time in the word in prayer, and then I'm going to invite the deacons to come. Father, thank you for what we've learned today about what it means to love you with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Now as we turn to the Lord's supper, we pray for your blessing. In Jesus name, amen.

Resources mentioned in this episode:"“Revival” Is Back In America's Public Lexicon" by Hunter Beaumont"The Religious Affections" by Jonathan Edwards"Dynamics Of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology Of Renewal" by Richard Lovelace

"Introduction To Treatise On the Religious Affections - Jonathan Edwards" --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/cbtseminary/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/cbtseminary/support

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Religious Affections -sign 12- Practice is the better sign than just profession Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audio Book Date: 7/19/2023 Length: 17 min.

Practice is the best evidence of the sincerity of professing Christians- so reason teaches the same thing. Reason shows, that men's deeds are better and more faithful interpreters of their minds, than their words. The common sense of all mankind, through all ages and nations, teaches them to judge of men's hearts chiefly by their practice, in other matters- as, whether a man be a loyal subject, a true lover, a dutiful child, or a faithful servant.

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Holy Affections Have Their Fruit and Evidence in Christian Practice Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audio Book Date: 7/16/2023 Length: 34 min.

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: A Treatise On The Religious Affections - Introduction Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audio Book Date: 7/9/2023 Length: 16 min.

not discerned and distinguished, that the devil has had his greatest advantage against the cause and kingdom of Christ, all along hitherto. It is by this means, principally, that he has prevailed against all revivings of religion, that ever have been sheen the first founding of the Christian church. By this, he hurt the cause of Christianity, in and after the apostolic age, much more than by all the persecutions of both Jews and Heathens. The apostles, in all their epistles, show themselves much more concerned at the former mischief, than the latter.

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: The Religious Affections - Beget The Lamb-Like Temper of Jesus Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audio Book Date: 5/31/2023 Length: 33 min.

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: The Religious Affections - Appendix - Duty To Believe on Jesus Christ etc Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audio Book Date: 5/28/2023 Length: 32 min.

Letter to Thomas Gillespie, pastor in Scotland. 9-4-1747-But I conceive that there is a great deal of difference between these two things, viz. its being a man's duty that is without spiritual light or sight to believe, and its being his duty to believe without spiritual light or sight, or to believe while he yet remains without spiritual light or sight. Just the same difference that is between these two things, viz. its being his duty that has no faith to believe, and its being his duty to believe without faith, or to believe without believing. I trust there is none will assert the latter, because of the contradiction that it implies. As it is not proper to say, it is a man's duty to believe without faith, because it implies a contradiction, so I think it equally improper to say it is a man's duty to believe without these things that are essentially implied in faith, because that also implies a contradiction.

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: True Christianity Consists Very Much in the Affections of the Heart Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audio Book Date: 4/20/2023 Bible: 1 Peter 1:8 Length: 27 min.

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Treatise on the Religious Affections - Part 3 - First sign Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audio Book Date: 3/2/2023 Length: 24 min.

Affections that are truly spiritual and gracious, do arise from those influences and operations on the heart, which are spiritual, supernatural and divine.

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Having Many Religious Affections No Proof That They Are Gracious Affections Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audio Book Date: 2/21/2023 Bible: Matthew 13:20 Length: 11 min.

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Having Many Religious Affections No Proof That They Are Gracious Affections Subtitle: The Religious Affections Speaker: Jonathan Edwards Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audio Book Date: 2/21/2023 Bible: Matthew 13:20 Length: 11 min.