God’s Love Language

Love is an interesting thing. We feel it as an emotion, we commit to it as a choice, and we do it as an action. But possibly even more interesting is that people seem to respond differently to different types of love. These different forms of love are called love languages. And Gary Chapman, the proponent of this concept, divides these love languages into five different categories. There are acts of service. There is gift giving, physical touch, words of affirmation, spending quality time together. The idea is that each person responds to these different forms of love differently. Somebody may respond more to receiving a gift than words of affirmation, or somebody may prefer spending quality time over physical touch. We can say that God has a love language, too. Something that he responds to well, something that he wants us to do to show him love. Today in our reading, God laid out his love language. And he laid out what he wants us to do. So let us learn the love language of God. To love his word and to wear his word. Deuteronomy, the book of Deuteronomy is Moses’ farewell speech to the Israelites. After this, he’s going to go up on a mountain and die. So he reminds them and he teaches them about what God has done for them and what God wants them to do. He reminds them of the Exodus, of God, bringing them out of Egypt. He reminds them of their safe passage through the divided Red Sea and the devastation that he brought on the Egyptian army. He reviews the Ten Commandments. And he reminds them of the covenant, of God adopting them as his people. Now in our reading, Moses is telling them everything in the covenant that God wants these people to do. He says, “These are the commands, decrees, and laws. The Lord your God directed me to teach you.” Now, some of you might be thinking, “Moses, what are you doing? You just told your people everything that God did to show love to them. Why are you now giving them commands? Nobody likes laws. Stick with the good news.” This couldn’t be further from what Moses is doing. In fact, he goes on to say, “So that you, your children, and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live. By keeping all these decrees and commandments that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life.” These laws were intended to bless them, not to burden them. God knew that through the obedience of these longs, his people would enjoy a long and prosperous life. And these laws, they serve a double purpose. Yes, God gave them to the Israelites to create order so that they may enjoy a long and prosperous life. But he also gave them as a guide for the love language of God. He gave them as a way for us to show his love. “Here, 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 strength.” Moses is in essence saying, “The Lord our God is the true God, the only God. There is no other God. And he is worthy of all praise and honor. So love him. Love him with every part of your being.” God says the same thing to us. “Here, O Atonement, I am your God. I am one. Love me with all of your being.” What a fantastic thing to hear. The Lord is our God. He watches over us now, and he watches over us forever. So let us love him. Let us show him his love language. But how do we love him? I mean, how do we show our love to God? Is it the praises that we sing here in church? Is it the hour that we come to church on Sunday morning to hear his word? Of course, these are ways that we show love for God, but it’s not the only way. We show love for God when truth comes out of our lips instead of lies. We show love for God when our money is used to serve and provide for family and others, instead of being greedy and hungering for it for ourselves. We show our love for God when we obey the commands and rules that the government or our parents lay out for us. We show love for God by obeying his word. So love his word. Obey his word. Align your thoughts, your words, and your actions perfectly with his word. This is how we show our love for God. This is the love language of God. But that’s easier said than done, isn’t it? Align your thoughts perfectly with the word of God. Align your actions and your words perfectly with the word of God. Are you kidding me? We can’t do that. We all still have sinful natures that pull us away from God and pull us toward sin and temptation. Worse yet, if I’m being honest, my sinful nature doesn’t want to show love to God. It wants to show love to itself. It wants to follow its own love language. I can hear its complaint right now. I don’t want to follow these rules. These rules just confine my life and limit the amount of joy I have. I don’t care what God says is right or wrong. I’m going to follow what I want. I’m going to love myself. And I know that you probably haven’t thought those exact words. I mean, who would? But what about your pet sins? Those sins that we do over and over again as habit. There’s a reason they’re called guilty pleasures. When sin becomes habit, when we do it more and more despite knowing that God says it’s wrong, we don’t show love for God above all else. We show love for ourself above all else. We actually become our own idol. Love, God, above all else, you shall have no other gods shattered. We shatter the law of God every day. It’s like a glass vase that we throw onto the ground and shatter into a million pieces. And the pieces glitter up at us as a reminder of all the times that we’ve broken the law. All we can do is stare at it. But as we stare at it, somebody starts walking towards it, somebody that is Jesus comes, and he starts slowly picking up the pieces and putting them together with the sound of a clink. He puts them together when he obeys every law perfectly in our place. You shall not covet, clink. His priority was always people and never possessions. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. Calling himself the truth, he never lied and always spoke the truth. You shall not steal, clink. He says, “Give to God what is God’s, and give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” And in doing this, he’s protecting the property of others instead of trying to steal it for himself. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not murder. Honor your father and mother that it may go well with you. Clink, clink, clink. He kept those too. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Clink, you shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God. Clink, you shall have no other gods. Clink. Jesus, who commands us to love God above all else, practiced what he preached and obeyed the laws perfectly out of love for his father. He did all of this with his servant’s heart. He obeyed the law. He never wanted to go away from the law. He never put himself ahead of God, always putting God ahead of himself. He loved God with all his might so that his love didn’t even falter when he came to the cross. To die a cruel death. To receive the punishment and wrath of God that we deserved for breaking every single law. And in doing so, Jesus showed us his love for us. And now when God looks at that glass face that was shattered on the ground, all he sees is Jesus’ beautiful, blemish, free face, perfect in every way. And now that we are free from the shame and guilt that breaking the law brought us, we are free to love God by showing him his love language. We are free to love his word, to obey his word, to delight in his word, to attend church and spend time in personal devotion, to live a life aligned with his laws. But our knowledge and our aptitude for the love of God is not perfect, is it? But we can grow in it. We grow in it as we dwell on it and study it. We grow on it as we make it a part of our very selves, as we wear the word of God. Moses doesn’t just command the Israelites, “Obey the Lord your God with everything, never break a command and then walk away.” No, he tells them where to start. He tells them where to find the love language of God, in God’s word. And he tells him the role God’s word has for them in their daily lives. He says, “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children, talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.” The Israelites took this command very seriously. In fact, some of them took it literally. They took straps of leather that had a small box secured to it. And they took passages that they wanted to remind themselves of and they put them in that box. And then they would wrap these things around their wrists and around their foreheads so that the word of God would always be with them. Always be a reminder for how they should act and what they should do. Now, the Israelites, they followed the letter of the law. But we, we can follow the spirit of the law. It’s right there in the first statement. “These commands that I give you today are to be on your hearts.” Moses is telling us to let God’s word be on our hearts, to constantly dwell on it, to make it a very part of ourselves, a core part of who we are. And when we make it a part of ourselves, of course, we’re going to teach it to our children. Because we teach to our children what we consider important. When we make God’s word a part of our very selves when we wear it, of course, we’re going to talk about it with others, whether it’s at home or on the road. The word of God isn’t just a Sunday thing. It’s the foundation of our lives for every day that end with “why.” And it will shine out of us when we wear it more and more. The more we dwell on it, the more we want to love God. The more we dwell on it, the more we want to share His glorious truths and His love. Now, maybe we can learn something from the Israelites. We don’t need to wrap it around our wrists or our foreheads. We can hang it all around us, in church, on the walls of our homes. Maybe we can have something that reminds us of God at our desk, at work. Maybe we have a cross that we wear, or maybe we have a passage on our phone background or on the case. All of this a way to remind us of God’s word, to wear His word, and all of it on top of our continued study. Have a personal devotion. Do devotions with your family come to church delight in His word? Talk about it with everybody around you. And when we do these things, when we dwell on it, when we see it, when we talk about it, the people around us will see our love for them more and more. And then we can tell them about God’s love for us and our love for God. Love languages really are an interesting topic. Different people seeming to respond differently to different forms of love. And the only way that you can really know a person’s supposed love language is by asking them. God has a love language, too. But we don’t have to guess it as to what it is because He lays it out for us in His word. So let us learn the love language of God. Let us love His word and obey His word out of love for Him. Let us learn the love language of God and make the word of God a part of our very selves, constantly dwelling on it, wearing the word. Let us imitate our Savior’s love and love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our strength. Amen.