“One trouble with us today is that we know too many things. The whole trend of the movement is toward the accumulation of a multitude of unrelated facts without a unifying philosophy to give them meaning.”

A.W. Tozer’s words seemed, as they almost always did, to be the refreshing drink of water in a desert of Christian teachers propagating the thing he opposed: forever writing, teaching and sermonising disjointed pieces of the Christian life without connecting the parts to the whole. His words reflected a longing I had always had: always, at all times, come back to the main idea of Christianity.

But it was on this very point that I began to see there was little if no agreement on what the chief end or point of being a Christian was. Some suggested holiness. Others said evangelism. Some said worship. Some claimed it was to know God. Still others enshrined service for God as the chief purpose of life.

All the while, God’s Word put it very plainly. It shows us what God’s main goal is, and it shows us what our priority is to be. If we understand what God is doing, and compare it with what He has told us is to be our focus, we will understand our purpose and focus as Christians.

Well, God’s goal is fundamentally clear. His goal is to glorify Himself. That is, God wishes to display and enjoy and magnify all that He is both to Himself and His creation. God’s infinite worth, His excellence is to be known and responded to correctly.

Ephesians 1 tells us God chose us for His glory, He redeemed us for His glory, the Spirit sealed us for His glory. Ephesians 1:10 and 11 tell us the very point of the universe – in the fullness of time, God is going to unite all things under the headship of Christ. Jesus will be exalted as absolute supreme – to the glory of the Triune God.

Isaiah 43:6-7 tells us we were created for His glory. Over and over, we are told God saved His people for His own name’s sake – for His glory.

“For my name’s sake I defer my anger, for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off. Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.” (Isaiah 48:9-11)

“Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Lord GOD, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.” (Ezekiel 36:22-23)

“When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you.” (John 17:1)

Isaiah 43:25 tells us God forgives our sins for His own sake.

1 Corinthians 10:31 tells us that whatever we do we should do to glorify God.

2 Thessalonians 1:9-10 tells us the Second Coming of Christ will be for Him to be glorified in His saints.

“Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17:24)

“For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.” (Habakkuk 2:14)

“For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” (Romans 11:36)

The Bible is clear—God’s aim is to glorify Himself. And if that sounds selfish to you, the answer is that the rules of the creature do not apply in the same way to the Creator. It is a sin for a human to glorify himself, because he is not the most glorious one. But if God acted as if He were not the most glorious one – He would be untruthful. If He valued anything more than His own glory – He would be unrighteous. And that would not be to our advantage – for what would we do if God were unrighteous, or if God were untruthful or unjust. God loving His own glory, and working all things toward that end is the health and stability of the universe.

So that is unifying philosophy 1. God’s main priority is to glorify Himself.

But what is then our main priority? Well, Jesus put it very plainly when asked that exact question.

“And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.” (Matthew 22:35-38)

We are told, in no uncertain terms – that our goal, our main purpose is to love God with all our heart, soul and mind. This is unifying philosophy 2. All that we do, must be toward the aim of loving God with all of ourselves. And if we harmonise Scripture with Scripture, we must conclude that God’s goal of being glorified is achieved in our lives when we make this our focus. In other words, God’s command to us to fulfil His goal of glorifying Himself is to love Him. Loving God will glorify God.

But here is where we ask the critical question – the question we will seek to expound on all weekend. What does it mean to love God – and how do we do that? If we answer that question, and implement its implications – we will be fulfilling God’s great goal for Himself and for us. Our Christian life will not be a complicated puzzle of unrelated parts, but a unified whole.

Over the years, many have tried to define love in a way which suits their particular personality, temperament, culture or even church.

• The intellectualist tries to hijack the meaning of loving God, and claims that loving God is the accumulation and processing of facts about God. He says, “The more theology you know, the more studying you do – the more you love God.” He dismisses emotions as incidental, and exalts knowledge above all.
• The emotionalist tries to hijack the meaning of love and tells us that loving God is all about emotional experiences. He says, “The quality of my spirituality is as great as the intensity of pleasant emotions I feel.” He dismisses truth and even obedience, and can often create His experience out of thin air. As Tozer put it, people like this often simply have a low boiling point – just about nothing can send them on flights of imaginary ecstasy.
• The hard-driving willpower man, whom I call the ‘volitionist’, tries to hijack the meaning of loving God and tells us that loving God is all about obedience. He says, “All that matters is obedience, self-denial, sacrifice and commitment. Emotions are side-issues. Studying is impractical. Let’s get out there and be practical.” He is often miserable in his obedience, but thinks that miserable obedience is somehow virtuous, like a sign of sacrifice for God.

Well, none of these will do. Jesus explicitly said that our love was to be with all of our heart, with all of our soul, and all of our mind. We are to love God with 100% emotionally, volitionally and mentally. We cannot try and separate the parts of our selves into units, and say – 25, 25 50 – or 75, 15, 10. No – it is to be a wholehearted triune response to the triune God.

But we have not yet answered what it means to love God. We are not satisfied with the answer of the intellectualist, emotionalist, or ‘volitionalist’. But what is the answer?

I think we will find the answer if we try to understand how our goal of loving God achieves God’s goal of glorifying Him. God’s goal is to be glorified- so somehow, the act of loving God must mean that we achieve this.

Now here is where I ask you to apply your mind and think hard with me. What kind of love can we give God that will glorify Him?

God’s glory is His excellence – His worth on display. When God is glorified, it does not mean that His intrinsic worth grows. It means that the value of God – His worth – His price, as it were is shown. The value, the worth, the price of God in comparison to all other things is shown to excel them – He is shown to be most worthy, most precious, most valuable. Now – again I ask you – what kind of love will show God to be the most valuable One of all? I answer – love in the form of treasuring God.

Treasuring God. When you treasure something, you know its value, you delight in its value and you seek to protect or boast in its value. When you treasure something, there is intellectual appreciation of its worth, there is emotional delight in its worth, and there is volitional response to its worth. This I believe is what it means to love God. It is to treasure Him as our greatest value, prize Him as most precious, value Him as the most worthy one. If by loving God we mean to treasure Him, then we will magnify His worth. We will display His value. We will show forth His glory.

I’d like to offer some Scriptures to try and prove this is what I believe loving God is. Let’s see what loving God cannot mean.

In Psalm 50:11-12, God says, “I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof.” From this we see, loving God is not selflessly trying to bring things to God with no joy in it. Other humans have needs. We seek to meet those needs. Often, in so doing, we do not have much desire or joy in doing it. We are the benefactors, they are the beneficiaries. But this is not what it means to love God.

God has no needs. He tells Israel – I have no needs. I do not ask for these sacrifices out of some deficiency in myself. If I could feel a need, I certainly wouldn’t need you to bring something to me – since I own it all anyway. God is trying to tell Israel – your love for me was not meant to patronizing. You are not meant to think that you are adding to God. To act as if you loving Him somehow fulfills Him, somehow makes Him better, somehow completes a void inside God is unbiblical. It demotes God, and it exalts man.

Instead, we again return to what I believe is a Biblical description – treasuring God. In this state – God is my benefactor, I am always the beneficiary – so I treasure Him.

Along similar lines, we read Acts 17:25: “Nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.”

God is not served by men’s hands – as though He needed anything. Love for God is not doing things for Him, as if He could not do them Himself. It is not an endless labouring for God, with no real purpose – hoping God somehow takes note of our toil. See, those who love God will serve Him, but not all who serve Him love Him. Many serve God like convicts at the rock quarry. Just hammering away. None of it seems really sensible – it’s just a daily grind, just a slog – keep hammering away- and somehow hoping it all adds up to love for God.

Or worse – a conscious, dedicated service of God – that really believes apart from my service – God would lack. I have to do this – because God needs the help. God needs workers. God needs soldiers. If you think that loving God is serving Him in this way – you’re wrong. When this is your attitude – you demote God. You make Him out to be an impotent God – who needs human labour to accomplish His ends. The Biblical view is that God is an omnipotent God who uses humans only so that they can get to know Him better. David himself said in I Chronicles 29:14: “For all things come from you, and of your own have we given you.”

“For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” (Romans 11:34-36)

So, in the human realm, loving someone may mean giving them things because they lack. It includes being merciful, helpful. But God needs no mercy, no help, no compassion, no extra energy, not additional manpower.

So once again – we come back to this: I believe the description of love that best harmonises with our goal of glorifying God is to treasure Him. It is when I respond with all that I am (mind, emotions, will and body) to all that He is, says and does.

To mentally, emotionally and volitionally be treasuring, prizing, desiring, seeking, honouring, savouring, delighting, cherishing, adoring the value of God.

Let me say, apart from Jesus and the cross, there would be no treasuring of God. We talk about treasuring God in Jesus Christ, because apart from the advent of Jesus and the cross and the resurrection, there would be no way of treasuring God. God would only be ‘my Judge’. I would only look at God with fearful terror, the One I have offended and can never pay back. But in Jesus Christ, I can love God. I can treasure all the goodness of God as it is mine.

Very importantly- treasuring implies a form of glad possessiveness. I treasure what is mine. I can admire what is not mine. I can respect things of great value which I do not own. But I can treasure only what is mine. And the glad truth is – when you have repented of your sins and received Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, you can say – God is mine.

What this means is that loving God is not indifferent to its own joy. It is an intentional treasuring. You could say that in treasuring something we have a sanctified self-interest. We desire the joy, the purpose, the fulfilment of treasuring God. In fact, no one can treasure something in any other way. When a human tries to observe, analyse, reason and conclude something or someone’s value, they first examine it objectively, but then they use their personal, subjective joy as the main and final measuring stick. I cannot speak of ‘treasuring my wife, but not for myself’. Treasuring immediately suggests I am involved- I have calculated the gain she is to me. As long as we are humans, treasuring must necessarily be a subjective view of an objective fact. The closer I get to the objective value in my subjective expression, the more truthful and righteous I am.

You may know the value of some other things – but if they are not yours, you probably don’t treasure them. And the glorious truth is – we are to treasure God for all He is for us in Christ. Loving God is not the cool admiration of a painting, it is a personal, possessive treasuring of all that God is now for you, since He is yours in Christ.

Thomas Brooks, a Puritan, said it as follows, ‘that is as if he said, You shall have as true an interest in all my attributes, as they are my own glory… My grace, saith God, shall be yours to pardon you, and my power shall be yours to protect you, and my wisdom shall be yours to direct you, and my goodness shall be yours to relieve you, and my mercy shall be yours to supply you, and my glory shall be yours to crown you. This is a comprehensive promise, for God to be our God; it includes all.”

A.W. Tozer: “In no other presence and before no other being can I kneel in reverent fear and wonder and yearning and feel the sense of possessiveness that cries “Mine, mine!” They can change the expressions in the hymnals but whenever men and women are lost in worship they will cry out, “Oh God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee” (Psalm 63:1) Worship becomes a completely personal love experience between God and the worshipper. It was like that with David, with Isaiah, with Paul. It was like that with all whose desire has been to possess God. This is the glad truth: God is my God. Brother or sister, until you can say God and I, you cannot say us with any meaning. Until you have been able to meet God in loneliness of soul, just you and God – as if there was no one else in the world – you will never know what it is to love the other persons in the world.”

See, an unbeliever could be shown all the beauty of God – all His power, all His wisdom, all His righteousness, all His love, all His joy, all His goodness, and he would not love it in return. Because if it is not his, he can only admire it from a distance. I can admire something that is not mine, but I can only love in the sense of treasuring what is mine. This is the grounds for rejoicing. God’s love is that He allowed me to come to know the joy of knowing Him. He would have been as glorious without me knowing Him. But His love wanted my joy, and so He allowed me to come to know Him.

So now God’s glory is not something to be merely impressed with, like when we see pictures of Mount Everest, it is something to be delighted in, because that glory is directed at me as a believer.

God is not glorified if you have no joy in glorifying Him. God is not magnified if you act as if you have no interest in His magnification. God is not praised if you have no personal joy in praising Him. He is full and complete. How could your disinterested service benefit Him? How could your joyless obedience add to Him? How could your cold, heartless self-denial and commitment worship Him?

This glory of God is treasurable because of the fact that it is exercised in our direction, we treasure our organic link to the glorious God. We find our every need and desire satisfied in God.

So we actually treasure all God is (His glory) for us (our good) in Jesus Christ.

There is more than one Scripture that indicates God wants us to approach love in this way.

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.” (Matthew 13:44-46)

Notice God compares finding life in God as a financial transaction. A man gives up all he has – to gain the value of what God offers. He so treasures the grace of God, it is worth all he has. Likewise the second parable. A man finds one pearl, of such great value, of such price so as to give up all his previous pearls – to obtain this one.

A key verse which helps us see that loving God is treasuring Him is when Jesus was in fact teaching on money.

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:19-21)

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. What does that mean? Whatever you treasure, whatever you value – that is the thing where your heart lies – it is the thing you love. If a man treasures earthly things – it’s because that’s what he loves. If you look into his life and see poverty of character, but a storehouse of earthly goods – that tells you where his heart is – what he loves.

In the same way – if your treasure is God and His things, that is where we will find your heart. That is what you love. I think we have a pretty clear statement here – that what you treasure is what you love and vice versa.

God’s glory is the supremely valuable. Our loving Him is treasuring Him above all else.

Now the rest of our time together is going to be spent looking at how that will happen. And what is our responsibility?

In a broad summary it is this: We will only treasure God when we see His glory. Anyone who sees God’s glory and knows it is in his or her favour, treasures God’s glory.

We will see the glory of God in the face of Jesus, as the Holy Spirit reveals Him to us. The Holy Spirit will use the Scriptures in conjunction with prayer, He will use Sanctification and Service, and He will use Sacrifice and Suffering. Three main areas. The Word and Prayer is His Voice, or His Word. Sanctification and Service is His Hand – or His Works. Sacrifice and Suffering are His heart – or His Worth. In these areas – we will see the glory of God in the face of Jesus. And as He is increasingly revealed to us, we treasure Him. We will respond to His loveliness with adoration. Every part of us will adore Christ.

Our responsibility is humble faith. The Holy Spirit reveals Christ to the humble seeker. Humility faith is the environment, the atmosphere, in which we come to love God. It is the only ‘safe’ posture, because it is here that God’s goal, and ours can remain intact. When we are humble, God can get the glory, and when we exercise faith, we can see that glory and delight in it. As we in broken, empty, neediness, seek Him, as we come in soul-hunger, God is pleased to reveal Christ to our spiritual eyes. When we see Him, we love Him.

But those with hard, proud, sin-treasuring hearts, do not see Him. They only hear about Him from others. When we get into our place under God – when we confess the reality of our true state before Him, and consequently thirst for all that He is for us in Jesus, God will satisfy our hearts in Him. Humble faith will lead to treasuring love.

Objection: Doesn’t talking about God as value, and one that we must treasure – doesn’t this link us with the prosperity Gospel? Doesn’t it make God out to be just another consumable? Doesn’t it encourage a selfish form of Christianity?

What keeps treasuring God from being consumerism is one word: grace. Grace always keeps before us that God was out of our reach, out of our control, out of our ‘price-range’. A consumerist sits in the ‘control’ seat, he or she is at the center, choosing what they want and how they want it. Grace reminds us – this was not my doing, I didn’t cause this, I didn’t originally seek this. God came near. When grace is the atmosphere, when we keep God’s grace in mind, the treasuring of God is always humble, grateful, submissive awe, never selfish, consumerist, materialism.

So, there is a simple unifying philosophy for the Christian life: Love God to glorify God. Love all He is for you in Jesus Christ by submitting to the Holy Spirit.