Podcasts about matthew 22:34-40

Do you measure your life in God more by your striving to keep the law of Moses or by your Spirit-led, powerful witness and discipling for Christ? Or put another way, just where is your true obedience: to the keeping of Old Testament Law or to the proclamation of and discipling in service to the New Covenant offering of Christ and Him crucified? Join Kevin as he dives into the privilege of believers' obedience to God…with our podcast episode titled “Powerful New-Covenant Obedience.” // Download this episode's Application & Action questions and PDF transcript at whitestone.org.

Hey, y'all! Welcome to the Gary Church Podcast . . . from Gary Church, here in Wheaton, IL. We would love to have you worship with us! You may find more information about our next worship service at www.garychurch.org. This is the scripture and sermon from October 29, 2023!  Our scripture is read by Nancy Turner (00:05) and the sermon by Rev. Dr. Daniel Cochran is entitled “Halloween and Reformation Day” (02:40). At Gary Church our mission through Christ is to grow in joyful faith and serve all in love! Micah 6:1-8Matthew 22:34-40 Revised Common Lectionary

Jonathan and Tracy Kilheffer continue our series, Committed, with a look at our value of Community and living into emotionally healthy relationships.In this series, we  are looking at how we can more fully live into our mission and stay connected to our values as a faith community.Support the show (https://tithe.ly/give?c=397080)

Given at St. Anselm's Abbey by Fr. Christopher Wyvill on October 25, 2020.

Matthew 22:34-40

Matthew 22:34-40

In Matthew 22:34-40, Jesus answers the lawyer’s question by telling him that the 1st greatest commandment is to Love God, and the 2nd is to love your neighbor as yourself.

Gospel of Matthew The Greatest Commandment - Matthew 22:34-40

Love God, Your Neighbor, & Yourself Who is your neighbor?

Love God, Your Neighbor, & Yourself Who is your neighbor?

Introduction There are some journeys that we take in life, some roads that we can get on that just change our lives. They are memorable roads. I think about one in particular, the Karakoram highway, I saw with my own eyes in 1987, in the northwest frontier province of Pakistan and on into China. The most spectacular stretch of scenery I've ever seen in my life, the Karakoram mountains, the second highest mountain range in the world just like another world, it was. Mountains over 20,000 feet high and the Indus River flowing beside the highway, just cobalt blue and just kind of eerie as though we were on another planet. And just I thought about the beauty of this world and it made me yearn for the new heaven, the new earth, the home of righteousness, and how beautiful it was. And though I foolishly rode on the top of the van on the luggage rack, I wouldn't trade it for the world, I really wouldn't. I'll never forget that. They would not let you do it here, they'd pull you down, and arrest you or something, but over there they don't care if you die or not, they really don't. So you can ride up there, and the scenery was incredible. But I remember a year before that, another mission trip, I was on a different highway, a different road, a different trip I took it was in the streets of Mombasa, and we were there at the end of the last week of a 10-week mission trip, and we were there, it was in a resort area and we were having a final time together, a time of prayer and Bible study. It was a beautiful area, but some of us took a ride into the poorer area of Mombasa and just to see what the city was like and to pray for the people. And I remember distinctly that ride as well, very, very unforgettable ride. We were in this air conditioned, expensive minivan and surrounded by poverty that I had never seen. This was my first trip out of the country, summer of '86. And I just felt like it was somehow a symbol of the way that I could live my life in this world, a sinful way. A way in which I'm enclosed by luxury and comfort and security and air conditioning and all that, and out there is all this poverty and suffering. And I just resolved before the Lord, I didn't wanna live that kind of life. I didn't wanna stay in that air conditioned, safe, secure bubble when there's all these suffering people outside. I had another ride a number of years later, through Port-au-Prince, along the Cité Soleil and it's a different highway there. And my guess is, now probably they're clearing it with rubble; they have to have that highway, so maybe it's been cleared by now, I don't know. But I will never forget just the view of, without question, the greatest poverty I've ever seen in my life, a tent city there in which half-clothed children come out and stoop down and scoop up muddy water out of puddles and put them in bottles and screw the top on and then run back into the city there, and I wonder what they're gonna do with that water. And just a vision there of poverty. And again, something calling out to me at least to pray if not to minister more securely. When I heard the news of the earthquake in Haiti, I immediately thought of the Cité Soleil and all of the misery and suffering there is there. So this morning, we're going to look down, I think a very dangerous road. And we're gonna call it the Jericho Road; we're gonna look down the Jericho Road. It's a road of self-sacrifice, a road of being searched by the law of God, so that we can find out what's in our hearts. Tim Keller said of the Jericho Road, “The road to Jericho is steep and dangerous, so dangerous in fact that people have called it the ‘Bloody Way.’ Jerusalem rests at 3,000 feet above sea level, but Jericho, only 17 miles away, is actually 1,000 feet below the level of the Mediterranean Sea. So the road between the towns descends sharply through mountainous territory full of crags and caves allowing thieves to hide and strike and escape with great ease. Traveling the Jericho Road in those days was much like walking through a dark alley in the worst part of a modern city except that it was many miles to the nearest street light.” So you get the picture of a very dangerous road. But that Jericho Road is not dangerous merely because there are brigands on it who could jump out at you and assault you and take your precious possessions. Jesus meant a different kind of danger. Or I might say a different kind of challenge. It's dangerous for us to consider because here on the Jericho Road, the Lord Jesus confronts us with our own selfishness. Here on the Jericho Road, the Lord Jesus confronts us and asks, “Will you really love your neighbor as yourself? Will we love our neighbors as ourselves or will we just love ourselves? Will we spend ourselves on behalf of others, or will we pass by in safety wasting the opportunities for good works that God has given us?” Now, this Jericho Road, I contend, can happen any time, any place. It can happen in your own homes, when your spouse demands more of you at that moment than you feel you wanna give. That's the Jericho Road. The Jericho Road can happen in your neighborhood when you find out that your neighbor has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer, what will you do? Are you gonna minister or not? Jericho Road can happen as you stand in line at Walmart and there's a father and a son having a conversation, the son wants to buy something, the father who's now unemployed can't afford. And they have that conversation. I don't know what to do about that situation. I'm just saying I'm feeling confronted at that moment by the needs around us. It can happen at a stop light, when someone stands there with a hand-painted sign and tries to catch your eye and tries to get money from you. It can happen at church when you see a newcomer standing alone at the end of worship service and you don't know them, and you feel within yourself a desire not to go talk to somebody you don't know, but instead you just stay with what's safe and easy. That's the Jericho Road. It searches us all the time. It has to do with interactions with other human beings, any human being, any time, any place, who has a need that you might be able to meet. And therefore it's dangerous for us; it challenges us because if we learn to walk the walk of the priest or the Levite in the parable, it becomes a very easy habit pattern to follow, and you probably know what I'm talking about. You look. You see. You look away. You pass by on the other side of the road. It's a very easy habit to get into, and all of us have that habit pattern within us, and so Jesus told this story to challenge us. Everyday we're surrounded by people with needs and sometimes those needs are overwhelming. And the relentless call of Jesus in the law, this is law for us, the relentless call of Jesus Christ every moment of the day is that we should pour out ourselves, our time, our effort, our resources in benefiting others, caring for others. So last week, we began to look at this study, this topic. What does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself? And today, we seek even more clarity. The Two Great Commandments Context: Final Week of Jesus’ Life So we're continuing really our series of Matthew, but we're going sideways over to Luke to try to understand this second greatest commandment. Our context in Matthew is the final week of Jesus's life. He's in a bunch of conflicts with his enemies. They're testing him; they're searching him. And this lawyer comes up and asks which is the greatest commandment in the law. As you remember, Jesus gives this very orthodox somewhat predictable answer. “Now Jesus replied, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” If I can just stop and say these things are not for me, as a Christian, just commands. They are in fact promises. I always think of that, someday it's gonna be true of me in Christ. Amen. Isn't that glorious to just think about that? I don't think we can ever think about it too much, but I don't think we can ever be convicted by it too much either while we're in this life. So it has to have both that and that aspect of work in us. So we will be both convicted and we will be hopeful as we know that the Lord is by his spirit going to fulfill these things in us. Last Week: The Commandments are Intertwined So last week, I made the case that these two commandments are absolutely intertwined. You can't pick and choose between them; they are not equal commands. There is a first and greatest command and the second that's like it, but they are absolutely intertwined. I said that you cannot love your neighbor, if you don't first love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. If you would love your neighbor more than you love God, you would be making your neighbor an idol and you can't do that. God must take top priority in your lives And so it is really not possible to have non-Christian fulfillment of this second great command. It can't be done. You have to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength in order to love your neighbor in such a way that God is pleased. However, it's not enough to just love God, is it? It's clear that Jesus inserted the second commandment because it is vital for us to understand it, they're intertwined. And so, in 1 John 4:20 it says, “If anyone says ‘I love God’ and yet hates his brother, he is a liar; for anyone who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.” And there are many other such verses. You cannot pick and choose. We must both love God and our neighbor. What Does it Mean to Love Your Neighbor As Yourself? Definition Given Last week, I gave this definition of what it means to love your neighbor: Love is cheerful sacrifice for the benefit of another person and for the glory of God. And so we said last time that love has both an internal heart aspect and an external physical or bodily or active aspect. There is that heart affection, which is essential to the love; we must genuinely from the heart, love. And then there is that sacrificial service that results in beneficial action. And so it must be cheerful, it must come from the heart, out of a connection, a love that we have a movement in the heart. But it must not end there, it must go out into sacrificial service. And the more sacrifice there is we can say the greater the love is. John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this that he laid down his life for his friends.” So we measure love by sacrifice. The more it pinches at you, the more it costs you something, the more inconvenient it is, the more expensive it is, if you give it cheerfully as an act of worship to God, now that's what God is talking about; that is love for the neighbor. So there are those two aspects; there is the heart attraction, and then there's moving out in beneficial sacrificial service. Christ’s Example So Christ was our example. I zeroed in on one verse in particular. Mark 1:41, which I cited last week. This is just review. But there “A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, ‘If you are willing, you can make me clean.’ Filled with compassion. Jesus reached out his hand touched the man, ‘I am willing,’ he said, ‘Be clean.’” So there is a very good picture of the two parts of love I'm talking about. Filled with a movement of compassion, my heart is knit toward you. I am in your situation; your pain has become my pain. Filled with that compassion, Jesus reaches out his hand and heals him. And so this is the sacrificial service of Christ. “As Yourself” Now, I want to bring up and ask this one question then. In the words of the command, what does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself? To love your neighbor as yourself. Does this teach the prior need for some kind of comfortable feeling of self-esteem before we can actually do anything for anybody else? Does it give us a command that we ought to be loving ourselves. And then having loved ourselves, we are then to love our neighbor out of the overflow of our self-love? You can kinda tell where I'm heading with this, but I'm going ahead and couching the terms. Is that what it teaches? Or does it in effect, teach you, you already do love yourself, now love your neighbor like you're loving yourself. And so, I tell you that you hear a lot of this these days, you can't love anyone else until you love yourself, this kind of self-esteem. So first, you need to love yourself, then you'll be fit and ready to love your neighbor as yourself. In my opinion, I think people suffer and struggle with self-esteem because they're being disobedient to the commands of God. It's true of all of us. If you're struggling with your self-image it's generally because in your conscience, you have a sense that something's not right. And so therefore it doesn't make much sense to say, “I can't obey these commands of God, until I feel better about myself.” Friends, that is a quick downward spiral. I don't think that's what it's teaching here; grammatically in the Greek, it asserts that we really do already love ourselves. This is the measure of love. There's no command here; you cannot find a command to love yourself here. Rather it's assumed that you already do love yourself. And so, in effect, Jesus is saying that you should seek the highest, the greatest good for your neighbor, the way you seek the greatest good for yourself. In effect, Jesus is basically saying “You shall seek the good of your neighbor, just as you naturally seek your own good. Nourish and cherish your needy neighbor, just as you by nature nourish and cherish yourself.” Now, a key verse on understanding it this way is Ephesians Chapter 5 which talks about the husband's responsibility to love his wife. And you know in Ephesians 5:28-29, it says, “In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself; after all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it.” So what Paul is saying is, you do love yourself. You do look after your own needs, husbands. You do care for your physical needs; do the same for your wife. That's what it's saying there. I think that we can take that concept and extend it generally to the second greatest commandment. So every act of kindness and care you show to your own body, and you've shown many this week; you don't even recognize how many different ways you minister to your body. I mean, if you're uncomfortable, you shift around in your seat. I see some of you doing that from time to time. If you have an itch, you'll do what it takes to scratch it. As I've talked about before, I get those right between my shoulder blades. You know what I'm talking about? Right in the center, right between, it is almost at my age, physically impossible to reach it. At least not without a trauma of pain on my shoulder, alright. And I found that my shoulder amazingly is willing to sacrifice for that part of skin in the center between my shoulder blades; it's amazing the things that my shoulder's willing to do for that little piece of skin that's having some strange tingling. And so, you reach back there. Well, anyway, I'm not gonna demonstrate but you know what I'm talking about. You do love yourself dear friends. If you're cold, you get a sweater, you get a blanket, you put it on, you change the thermostat. If you're hungry, you go make yourself something to eat. If you're craving some attention, you go get some attention. If you want some encouragement you fish for it. And I'm not saying all these are appropriate ways that we love ourselves. I'm just telling you, you love yourself. I would say you relentlessly love yourself. We actually discussed even the cases of suicide. And John Piper in his book from one of the things he writes about that he says even somebody who's committing suicide is seeking something for him or herself. A release from the pain, that kind of thing. And actually I find it to be an exceptionally selfish mindset without hardly any thought at all about the ramifications of those that are left behind, So I'm saying it's just a natural law. You're going to do good to yourself, you're gonna love yourself, you're gonna care for yourself. Do the same for your neighbor. I think that's what Jesus is saying. Think about your neighbor's needs just as you think about your own. And so in Philippians 2:4, it says “Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” The non-Christian, the natural state, is to be fanatical about looking after your own interests. The Christian adds to this, the interests of others. It says in Philippians 2:21, “Everyone looks out for his own interests,” this is that kind of Darwinian, dog-eats-dog, “look out for number one” mentality that I think has made this world such a miserable place to live in. Jesus has shown us a better way; he's shown us a way of self-sacrifice for the benefit of others, denying yourself and your own needs, so that somebody else's needs can be met. And so a loving Christian then learns to see others' needs as if they were his own. He looks at urban poverty and says, “What would it be like if I lived there? What would I need?” He's looking at unemployed people and saying, “What can I do?” Matthew talked to me this morning about Jobs for Life. Listen, it's a tremendous ministry and we have as many as 11 or more students that are getting ready for this, we need some. We need some ladies that will be willing to help. But they just... You look at that and you say, “What would it be like if I lived in that situation?” There's an expansion of vision that happens when you genuinely love. Stepping out of your own comfort zone and your self-satisfaction and taking on the misery of others. As a Christian you look at the lostness of co-workers and you say, “What would it be like for me if I were without hope and without God in this world?” And how joyful would it be if somebody would be a messenger of the Gospel to come to me? A Christian, a loving Christian looks at total strangers in public places, in terms of what needs do you have that I can meet? Can I hold the door for you? Can I let you go first in the check out line? Can I give you the last empty seat on an airplane and wait for the next flight even? Can I stop in the rain and help you change a flat tire? These are just mentalities of Christians. This is what it means, horizontally, to love your neighbor as yourself. Heart Affection Described: 1 Corinthians 13 Basic Concept: Without Love, Sacrifice is Worthless Now, last time I said there are two great texts to look at these two aspects of love, alright? There's that heart affection aspect that without that heart affection it isn't genuinely loving in the sight of God. It's hypocrisy, really. It's just an outward show, so there has to be something from the heart and I said, 1 Corinthians 13 describes it better than any other passage in the Bible. Just by way of review, the basic concept is, you can have tremendous sacrifice, but you can do it without love, and it will be nothing. 1 Corinthians 13:3. “If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames but have not love, I gain nothing.” But I tell you, you look at a verse, like that. And you realize just how relentless Jesus is for us. I don't know hardly anybody that would really even do it, but it could be that somebody could do it and Jesus would still say, “I have this against you,” isn't that amazing when you think about it? He's standing over all of us and saying “You must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Hence my statement earlier how sweet it is for us as Christians to look at it, not just as commands, but promises. Oh God, do this in me, it's impossible for me to reach so high in my life. Was Jesus delighted to give himself, to surrender his body? You know he really was. For the joy that was set before him he did it. Not the thing itself, not the process, that was miserable. But for what he got out of it, he was delighted to die for you and me. That's a beautiful thing. Love is a Heart State Described in Detail Here And so you've got to have that internal heart state of delight, that joy, that connection that happens between you and the person, described in this way: “Love is patient, love is kind, doesn't envy, it doesn't boast, it's not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs, it's not rude, it's not self-seeking, it does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” So this is the heart condition that we discussed last time. But we also said it's not enough to just feel those feelings for somebody. It's gotta move out. It's gotta move out. How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. We've got these hands that are given to serve, so we move out and we've got to act. Sacrificial Action Described: Luke 10 And I think the best passage for describing that lifestyle, sacrificial love for neighbor, is this parable. It seemed to be in Jesus' mind. He wants to describe how you love your neighbor as yourself. That's why he told this story. And so, look at Luke 10, if you're not already there, just take a minute and look at Luke 10:25-37. Context: Earlier in Jesus’ Life, Same Question Now the context here of Luke 10 is earlier in Jesus' life. It's the same issue, however. It's the same question. He's just dealing with it again, but just earlier. And this time the lawyer that he's talking to, it says is seeking to justify himself. The Lord comes and asks him the question, which is the greatest commandments and all that? And he says, “Well, what do you think?” And puts it back on Jesus. And he gives a perfect answer. This is a guy who's gonna do well in a theology exam, both beginning and end he gets the right answers all the time. The Effort at Self Justification But Jesus, I think, at that point then says, “You have answered correctly, do this and live.” And then turns and talks to somebody else, kinda leaves him in the lurch at that moment, looking perhaps a little embarrassed. I think we already knew that, didn't we? So, he seeks, it says, “to justify himself.” You ought to just freeze your eyes right on that. Look on that text as if it were a mirror. I don't think there's one of us sinners here that doesn't seek in some way to justify ourselves when it comes to the second command. Or I could use another word, to excuse ourselves from service. “I don't need to take care of that person for the following reasons, I already worked this out. I've got the theology all worked out. I know why I don't need to do that because this person is this kind of person and they did this…” And you don't have to do it. And so this lawyer sought to justify himself by asking, “Who is my neighbor?” Basically what he's saying is, “Please tell me that what I have done already is already enough. I'm already in. I'm already there based on what I've done. Tell me that. Tell me, I'm already fine. Please don't even tell me that I'm doing well, keep doing... I don't even wanna hear that. I wanna hear that I've already achieved. I'm already there.” So he sought to justify himself. What a warning it is. We think we don't need to love our neighbor if he is what we call undeserving poor. What do we mean by undeserving poor? Well, somebody whose poverty is because of their own sin. Friends, who's left after a while? I mean, who's left? We're gonna look at somebody and say we're only gonna give to the deserving poor. The ones that really, really deserve our attention. Do you not realize how arrogant that sounds to God? Did we deserve to be saved by Jesus? He didn't use that with us, but we excuse. Here's an able-bodied man who should be out working for himself, and I'm not gonna give him a penny. I'm not saying we ought to give him money, but I'm saying we ought not to turn away from him. I'm saying there ought to be some ministry. We think we don't need to love our neighbor as ourselves if he's a stranger or possibly dangerous or will involve us deeper than we want to be involved. Well, that may be the case, but that's more of a searching of our own hearts. We tend to draw the boundary lines around who we should love so tightly that it excuses most of our unloving relationships. I'll say more on this at the end. Two Key Questions the Parable Answers There are two key questions that this parable answers. What are these two key questions? Number one, is what is the question the lawyer asks, who is my neighbor? So simply put, who should we love? The parable's told to give us the answer to that question, “Who is my neighbor?” And he tells the parable as an answer to that question. But secondly, I think it also answers, “How should we love him?” It gives us a display of how we should love our neighbor. The Parable Related So you understand the story, there's this deadly, dangerous Jericho Road, and there are five different people in the tale. First is the victim, and I think it's key to note that we know absolutely nothing about him. I mean nothing. What do we know about this guy? We know he's on the Jericho Road and he got attacked; that's all we know about him. We don't know if he's Jewish. We don't know if he's Samaritan, might be Roman. We don't know anything about him. We don't know if he's rich, if he's poor, if he's old, if he's young. We don't know anything about this individual. And I think it's very striking because again, this is the question that Jesus is seeking to answer. Who is my neighbor? Answer: This guy. Who is it? Well, what do we know about him? You don't need to know anything about him except that he has a need. It's an individual, a human being, in need. So basically, Jesus is saying, “Your neighbor is anyone in need.” Then you've got the robbers. We don't know many things about them either, except that they're exceptionally selfish individuals who are willing to break the laws of God and man to take from this individual what they think is best. Basically, their motto would be something like this, “What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine if I can take it from you.” And there are some people that live like that. But then you've got the priest, and then you've got the Levite; they're the same guy, so I'm gonna have them be the same guy. Is that okay? The priest and the Levite are the same guy, just times two. So who are they? Well, their motto would be something like this, “What's mine is mine and what's yours is yours. Have a good day. Live and let live. I don't wanna get involved.” And what's so striking about both the priest and the Levite is they see the individual lying there by the side of the road. “He saw him and passed by on the other side.” “He saw him and passed by on the other side,” it's very significant. The good Samaritan, he sees him and ministers. So, this sight is so important. Take them into you with your eyes. Look at him. Look at him. These are individuals that are choosing to be willfully ignorant. I don't wanna know much more than I already know. I already know more than I wanna know. And so they pass by. Why did they pass by on the other side, why not like walk right by him? Well, it's a little uncomfortable. I wanna put as much distance between us and the misery and the suffering as we can. Hence that air conditioned bubble that was in me in Mombasa. There's this, “I want a gap, a safe space.” And, you know, it's amazing how we can actually carve out a lifestyle in which you hardly ever see any suffering people. It's actually easy to do. And by the way, I think some of the worst, most terrifying sins that there are in life are those sins of omission, the things that you ought to do and don't do. That's how these folks did, the priest and Levite, they're on some holy mission, I guess. I don't know. They're going to Jerusalem; they're gonna do something for God, but they don't do clearly what God wants them to do. And so those sins of omission are just scary, aren't they really. Because it says in Matthew 25, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, he will gather all the nations before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” And he's going to put the sheep on his right, and the goats on his left. And then after commending the sheep, he says to the goats, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me. I was sick and in prison, and you did not look after me.” They didn't do anything. They just didn't do what they should have done. “‘Now when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger needing clothes or sick or in prison and not help you?’ ‘Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did not do for me.’” What would it be like to see a replay of our lives and see all of the possible ministries we could have had if only we'd been more attentive? And therefore, you ought to be pleading for open eyes as a result of this sermon. Just say, “God give me grace, give me eyesight to see opportunities I've been missing. I've gotten in the habit of passing by. I don't wanna keep doing that. Give me a new eyesight here.” I'm praying it for myself too. And then you have the innkeeper. His motto is, “What's mine is yours if you'll pay me for it.” So there's an individual who is willing to help if he gets something beneficial in this life out of it. He's a mercenary. And then there's the good Samaritan basically, “What's mine is yours if you need it. If you need it, I'll give it to you.” So Jesus, I think specifically chose a Samaritan because he was trying to offend. I don't know what it is, is that what he's doing? I don't know, maybe the parables are that way, but Jesus is trying to get you to listen. And by choosing the Samaritan, who they would have despised, as the good guy in the story, it just shows Jesus' nature. Look what he does. Look what he does. He stops his own life. He invests himself fully. He gives of his time, he even spends the whole night caring for the man. The man's well-being has become his whole focus. He set aside his own agenda. We don't know where he was going, or what he was doing, but that's done now at least for the night. He gives of his money, pays silver coins to the innkeeper for whatever costs there may be, and he promises to come back later to finish his care and see that he's fully recovered. That's how he sacrifices, that's what he does, that's what it means to love your neighbor as yourself. The Summary Command And so at the end of that then Jesus sums it all up. “‘Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ The expert in the law replied, ‘The one who had mercy on him.’” Like I said, he's good at the right answers; he's a good right answer giver. And so he was like, “Oh, the one who had mercy.” Right you are. “Go and do likewise,” said Jesus. You know these things. You'll be blessed if you do them. That's in effect what he's saying. Go and do likewise. This, I think, is a categorical command from our Savior to us to love our neighbor like this. Go and do likewise. The Questions Answered Well, it leaves all kinds of questions still in our hearts, but He does answer the two questions. Remember I said there are two questions. Alright, who is my neighbor? Anyone in need, providentially, anybody who crosses your path, anybody you know about, anybody in need. He's a human being, he's in need of something, providentially in my life, I see him. By the way, do you not see how that self-esteem interpretation just doesn't fit? Imagine as he's going along the side of the road there's the good Samaritan and he sees the man there and he kinda sits down next to him as the man is bleeding there. Says, “I want you to know I really would like to help, but I've just really been feeling gloomy about myself recently. I've been struggling with my self-esteem. I haven't really liked myself very much. I don't feel good in public settings, and I'm just not well put together right now, wish I could help.” He gets up and walks off. I have a hard time fitting it into the parable. It's like there's this need and guess what happens? Out go questions of self-esteem. They're just out. Here's a guy with a need. Let's go for it. Guess what? When you live your life like that, all of a sudden, you realize it's been years since you've worried about how you were about yourself. You're just happy, productive, fruitful and energetically serving Christ and healthy, really, really healthy and happy. I already said that didn't I? But anyway, happy and healthy and well put together. You're not asking, “Can I really do this?” And so I think that kind of answers it, who is my neighbor? Any needy person at all. And what does it mean to love him as myself? Sacrificial acts of service. Provocative Questions Remaining But there are still some questions remaining, aren't there? Is mercy ministry necessary or essential to the Christian life? Like, can I not do this and still go to heaven? Let's realize the original question is, “What must I do to get eternal life?” in Luke 10; that was the original context. Jesus in effect is saying, “Do this.” Is this teaching works salvation? Well, we know it's not, but it appears that Jesus sees care for the poor and the needy as of the essence of being a Christian; it's of the essence of the Christian life. Well, another question may pop in your mind, what is the scope and dimension of my life of loving my neighbor? Like the lawyer, aren't we ready to ask in different ways who is my neighbor? Tim Keller, in his book, Mercy Ministry: The Call of the Jericho Road lists ways that modern Christians seek to escape costly ministry to the poor and needy by making excuses and asking these kinds of questions. “Just how far do we have to go?” “You don't mean that we should pour ourselves out for anyone and everyone do you?” “Doesn't charity begin at home?” “You don't mean that every Christian must get deeply involved with hurting and needy people. I'm not really very good at that kind of work. It's really not my gift.” “I have a busy schedule, and I'm actually extremely active in my church.” You start to see that the priest and the Levite kind of answer is going on here. “I've got things I gotta do for the church.” “Isn't this sort of thing the government's job anyway?” Well, we can get into that discussion another time. “I barely have enough money for myself and frankly aren't many of the poor really just personally irresponsible? Isn't it the case that if they would just get their act together, that things will be better in their lives?” And realistically, “how far should we go?” You can see anything you wanna see all over the world. You can see the Haiti earthquake, within hours after it's happened. Or maybe even while it's happening, I mean, are we really supposed to care for everybody that's hurting and broken all over the world? These are real questions that come into our hearts. My question is this, how can we really be transformed as individuals, so that we actually obey these commands as God intends? That's my question, how can FBC become, without question, a loving church in this community that does the good works God has ordained for us to do? That's my question. So that we are not excusing ourselves from good works and missing, friends, so many blessings that God has for us to do. Are we not living in the Jericho road right now, every day? Priorities in Love Gospel Coalition Talk on Mercy Ministry Now some time ago, I gave a talk at The Gospel Coalition in Chicago on this topic and I want to lay out quickly, some, I think biblical priorities in helping us to sort this out. Five Priorities The first priority I laid out is this: Justification before ministry. And by this, I'm talking to you as an individual. Please be sure that you yourselves are justified by faith in Christ, apart from works of the law before you even try to do these things. They came in John 6 and said, “What must we do to work the works of God?” And Jesus said, “This is the work of him who sent me, that you believe in the one that he is sent.” Let's start there. I said it early in the sermon. I'll say it again. Do not try to do mercy ministry if you're not certain that your sins are forgiven through faith in Jesus Christ. We are not saved by doing mercy ministry, friends. We are saved by someone else's mercy ministry to us, Jesus. And then we're saved to do mercy ministries for others, but we're not justified by our works. So let's be sure that we have that. Have you trusted in Christ? Are your sins forgiven through faith in His blood? Have you let Jesus wash not just your feet, but your hands and your head and your whole soul in his cleansing grace and mercy? Have you let him do that for you? Then set aside everything else I'm saying and just come to Christ, if you haven't yet. That's priority number one: Justification before ministry. Priority number two is: Ministry to the soul above ministry to the body. It is more important to minister to the soul than it is to minister to the body. Jesus settled this forever when he said, “What would it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” He said it in John 6, after the feeding of the 5,000. “Do not labor for the food that spoils,” he said to the poor. “Do not labor for the food that spoils but for the food that endures to eternal life.” And so that's our message in mercy ministry here, in any kind of loving of the poor and needy must be gospel proclamation above all else. Now, it doesn't mean temporally it has to come first. Sometimes you feed them some soup or do some things, but in that there's a seeking and a yearning to have that gospel conversation and to share the gospel. So ministry to the soul above ministry to the body; it does not mean we don't minister to the body, friends. Just setting out priorities. So we want to minister to the soul because it's eternal. Thirdly, ministry to the family of believers and to our own families above ministry to outsiders. This is a clear biblical priority. First and foremost, God has arranged most of the people in the world in families to care for their overwhelming ongoing needs of food, clothing, and shelter. It is clearly too much for the church to care for the food, clothing, and shelter needs of everybody in the district. That is something families are supposed to take care of. And so it says in 1 Timothy 5:8, “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he's denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” He's talking there about in context ministry to the widows and be sure that they're truly widows in need. Be sure that they don't have a son that can take care of them, and he ought to take care of them. And then a little side step from that is we need a minister to Christians, first and foremost, above ministry to non-Christians. And you get this again from Galatians 6:10. “Therefore as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family believers.” There's a priority structure there. So we're gonna minister to Christians as they have need, especially within our own church and then outward from there. But this doesn't mean we don't minister to non-Christians. It's just a priority structure. Fourth, ministry to the poor above ministry to the rich. Jesus provokes us with this teaching. Luke 14, “Jesus said to his host, ‘When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and you'll be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’” So there's a clear priority structure there. Find out those that are genuinely needy and minister to them, but this doesn't mean that we have no ministry to the rich. The rich can be hurting in other ways, significantly hurting, and so we need a minister to them as well. Applications and Challenges Alright, so what applications and challenges, do we take from this? Well, I'm already challenged. I know about you. I look at these kinds of things, and I say, “Lord, how can I live a life pleasing to you?” I think basically what I get from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6 is each day has enough trouble of its own. Let's put it positively, each day has enough ministry opportunities of its own. Let's do the good works that God has ordained for us to do today. Let's do them today and let's find out what they are. Loving Your Spouse as Yourself Let's love our neighbor as ourself within our own family. Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. Love her, cherish her, take care of her. Wives love your husbands, pray for your husbands, build them up, encourage them. 1 Corinthians 13, “Love is patient, love is kind,” let's really do that. Loving Your Children as Yourself Parents love your children, cherish them, pour yourselves out for them and into them, pray for them, set them a good example, be tender-hearted and compassionate with them. Paul says to the Thessalonians, he says, “We were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children; you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting, and urging you to live lives worthy of the Lord.” That's how fathers and mothers should be. So do that; love your children. Loving Your Neighborhood Partner (Neighbor) as Yourself And let's love our geographical neighbors right in our own neighborhoods. It's like I'm not sure we have neighborhoods anymore. It's amazing, the modern technology has made neighborhood's almost like a thing of the past. There's so much seclusion these days, do you see it? It's really hard. If you don't think I'm right, then just go knock on someone's door, ring their doorbell if it even works. And they'll be surprised to see you. I'm not saying you should do that as a ministry strategy, I'm just telling you some things have broken down. Maybe we ought to start rebuilding our commitment to our physical neighbors, to see who's around us, and how we can minister to them. Ask God for opportunities to do it; ask God for help. You're not on your own in all of this. Loving Your Fellow Church Member as Yourself And what about fellow church members, how can we love our fellow church members as we love ourselves? Well, I would begin with prayer. I would start with prayer lists and find out how people are hurting. They frequently will tell that on the prayer list, so go find it and say, “Okay this isn't just a line on a piece of paper, this is so and so who's saying that such and such is going on in his or her life.” Think about it. Take it to God in prayer as though it were happening to you, and think if this were happening to you, what kind of ministry would mean something to you? How could somebody minister to me.” Loving Your Urban Neighbor or International Neighbor as Yourself Love your urban neighbor and your international neighbor as yourself. Different ministries, I already mentioned Jobs For Life. We have a growing ministry in an urban setting that's getting stronger and stronger. It could be that God may be calling you to minister right here in the community and you don't know how. There's this incredible ministry called Durham Cares. I talked with these folks last week, and they basically will listen to you, they interview you, they find out what you are into. There's this discussion back and forth and then they line you up with some ministries you might be interested in. Said it sounds like e-Harmony.com for ministry. And they said, “Yeah, that's what it is.” But they try to line you up with some options for ministry. There are opportunities. We've seen a tremendous growth to our own international student ministry. English as a Second Language, other things, just being hosts and having people in your home. It's been beautiful to see some people really get excited about that kind of ministry. Friends, we are called to love our neighbors as ourself, even to the ends of the earth. John Piper summarizes it this way, “Our Lord is aiming to call into being loving, compassionate, merciful men and women whose hearts summon them irresistibly into action when there is suffering within their reach. To that end he demands that they again and again ask themselves this question: Am I desiring and seeking the temporal and eternal good of my neighbor with the same zeal, ingenuity, and perseverance with which I seek my own? Is my own native and insatiable longing for happiness seeking its fulfillment by drinking deeply at the fountain of God's mercy and then letting it spill over in love into the life of my neighbor?” Close with me in prayer.

Andy Davis preaches a verse by verse expository sermon on Matthew 22:34-40. The main subject of the sermon is the necessity of self-sacrificially loving other people.

Introduction “And now these three remain, faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love.” So says the final verse of 1 Corinthians 13. And as I meditate on that, I think about what does it mean these three remain? Could it be at the end of your life, when there's nothing else left? You're conscious that you're dying, you're at the end of your life, you're not sure what else is left, these three will still be there: Faith, hope, and love, at the end of your life. But you know what's gonna happen if you believe in Christ? Soon faith and hope itself will drop off. Faith will become sight, and you'll no longer need to hope for what you do not have, you'll have it. And you know what we'd be left with then? Love. And as Jonathan Edwards put it in an incredible sermon I read, “Heaven is a World of Love.” You will step across that divide that river of death, and you'll step into a world of love that can scarcely be described. A world rich with love, with the consummation of love, with love incarnate there on his throne, Jesus Christ, and your own heart will be transformed in an instant and all the things you labored for all your life to love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, to love your neighbor as yourself, will be instantly given you as a gift. And you'll be transformed into a person of love, fit for a world of love. And you'll be welcomed in at that point. That's the consummation. Isn't it? That's what we're looking for. Heaven is a world of love. But this world is not a world of love. It's not characterized by love. It ought to be, but it isn't. And so, we are surrounded by 6 billion people, and very few of them really know what love is, have experienced the love of Christ. Few there are that find it, Jesus said. And sometimes in the simplest acts of kindness and generosity, there can be an oasis of love in the middle of all that, that gives us a foretaste of that future world of love. And how sweet is that? Sometimes, it can even happen while watching a movie. It doesn't always happen, but sometimes it can happen. And here I'm talking about a really sweet and pure love scene. Not that sordid type that we know about. But I was watching this movie called Driving Miss Daisy, sometime ago. Maybe you've seen it, about an elderly African American gentleman, Morgan Freeman, who is hired to drive around an even more elderly Southern lady. And the movie just traces the development of their relationship. As it goes first from kind of suspicion and not really sure where they are with each other, of an employer-employee relationship and that's all. She didn't really want him to drive. She doesn't use him. He drives along and she's walking and will not get in the car. And it's quite a scene. So there's some mistrust but as the relationship develops, a really beautiful thing to see, just friendship is what it is. Friendship. And the consummation of that is, at the end, the final scene, and by this time she's quite elderly and she is suffering from dementia, and she's in a nursing home. And she's sitting at a table, and it's Thanksgiving and Morgan Freeman goes to visit her. And she's got a piece of pie there. And it's on the table and there's a fork there, but she doesn't seem to be aware of it. And so he sits down and he's trying to talk to her. And he just decides to feed her the pie. And that's just one of the most spectacular scenes in all moviedom for me. Like, that's boring. No, it's not boring, it's awesome because as he feeds her the pie, he seems to be eating it through her. As though her joy is his joy. As though the taste of the pie in her mouth as though he is enjoying it. He doesn't have a bite of the pie. Your pleasure is my pleasure, your joy is my joy. Your pie is my pie, and I'm not taking it from you. You go ahead and eat it all, but I can enjoy it through you. Friends, that is that horizontal love that God is commanding of us here in this passage today. That we would love our neighbor like that, that we would love our neighbor as ourselves. And you know, we can't do it. Our heart is so hardened and we're so corrupt in sin that we can't do that naturally. We need a supernatural work of God to fulfill this command. And that supernatural work of God is available to us through the grace that's given us in Christ Jesus. He came, it says in Ephesians 2, talking about the hostility between Jews and Gentiles, that's the context, but I'm gonna extend it just to all human relationships. He came to destroy, to put to death all hostility between the two. And to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace. He's come to do that, friends, not just with Jew and Gentile, but with people. Person A and Person B, in Christ, becoming one together. And in this way, I think, Christ died to fulfill this second commandment. He died loving his neighbor as himself. He died in order that we might love our neighbors as ourselves. So, let's set this in context. You know, it's the final week of Jesus' life. Jesus is having strife and conflict with his enemies, who are seeking to kill him. They hate him, and they try to lay one trap after another for him. In Matthew 22, the Pharisees and Herodians bring him this question on taxation. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” He deals with that. Then the Sadducees come with that ridiculous question on resurrection and whose wife will she be of the seven. He deals with that. And then this expert in the law tests him with this question, “‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?’ And Jesus replied: ‘“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.’” A Dark History When the Vertical Goes, the Horizontal Goes With It Now, for the last two sermons, we've looked at the first and greatest commandment, it had its proper place. It comes first. It should be first. Talk more about that in a moment, but that is that vertical relationship toward God, that we should love God with all of our hearts above everything else. But we cannot love God and hate our neighbors. And again, I'm gonna talk more about that. And so, it must move out. Jesus gives beyond what the lawyer asked, a second commandment which he said is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. And so, we come to this issue of our horizontal relationship with one another, our love relationship with the other 6 billion people on the face of the earth. You are not alone. There are other people. That's a central pillar of our parenting. We're teaching our children, they're not alone, there are other people. Those other people are precious. They're created in the image of God, this kind of thing. And so we're not alone. And so we've got this horizontal, and dear friends, we come therefore into a dark history. In the Bible, there's a dark history of that horizontal relationship. Adam and Eve: Marriage Damaged I believe because our fellowship with God was broken, our fellowship with one another was broken. Because Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they were soon in hostility toward one another. And we see evidence of it right from the start, Genesis 3:7 “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked; and so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” This is just evidence of a distance that's come between the man and his wife, between Adam and Eve because of sin. And then when God confronted Adam, Adam sought to blame his wife and God, too. You remember that, Genesis 3:12, “The man said, ‘This woman you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.’” And so therefore, I think that broken vertical relationship with God inevitably results in broken horizontal relationships. First and foremost, here in marriage, Adam and Eve covering themselves, and blaming each other for sin. That's just the beginning of marital difficulties. All manner of problems would then pollute the marriage relationship after that. Conflicts, arguments, dissensions, jealousy, adultery and divorce, even murder would sully marriage in the generations to come. Then in the very next chapter, Cain and Abel, as the sin spreads more horizontally, we see the brotherly affections dissolved, destroyed as Cain is jealous of his brother, Abel, and murders him. By the end of the chapter, we have this man Lamech who murders a man just for insulting him. And you could just see the degeneration of that horizontal relationship. By the time of Noah, the world was filled with violence, it says. That's why I believe that the death penalty was established for murder after the flood was over. If any man sheds a man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for the image of God has God made man. He re-establishes the dignity of humanity concerning murder. You can't murder a person, because they're created in the image of God. Terrible wickedness in Noah's day. And so it continued beyond that. Abraham was called and then Ishmael was born, and then Isaac afterwards and Ishmael mocks Isaac. And they're in hostility with one another. That brotherly affection destroyed, if it ever existed, in that relationship. Then Jacob and Esau come, the twins who are struggling in the womb, and come out struggling and struggled all the way through. And how Jacob swindled his father and stole Esau's blessing and then Esau wanted to murder him. He comforted himself, he consoled himself with the thought of murdering his brother. And so Jacobs has to flee. And so he runs and meets Laban. Oh, what a man Laban was. And so now we get the employer-employee relationship destroyed as Laban swindles him again and again. And then you have Rachel and Leah, and the hostility there is sister to sister, as they're in a clearly dysfunctional family. And the relationships are just very, very tough. Joseph and his four, I guess, wives give birth to the patriarchs and they hate Joseph. And they wanna murder him for his coat of many colors, they're jealous of him, instead, they sell him for money as a slave. And so the Book of Genesis, you just see the degeneration of that horizontal relationship and you know the story doesn't end there. And it's continued right to this present time. All you have to do is click into a CNN site or whatever, and you're just gonna find the evidence of hostility, person-to-person, wars and rumors of wars, of crimes and murders, of divorce and hostility and broken relationships, of even church factions and divisions. And so it's a dark history we face today. But dear friends, there is hope, isn't there? Isn't there hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ? Isn't there hope for that world of love? We have to trace out this dark history, we have to look at the darkness of our own hearts. But know this, the future is infinitely bright, and someday this hostility will be put to death, and it will be gone forever and ever, amen. The Two Commandments Intertwined So we have these two commandments. We have that vertical commandment, love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. We have that horizontal commandment, Love your neighbor as yourself. And as I already touched on but I'll say now more fully, those two commandments are completely intertwined. You can't pick and choose. That's why Jesus went beyond what the lawyer asked him, gave the second commandment. The lawyer didn't say which are the top two commandments, but Jesus knew that he could not give a summation of all the Law and the Prophets without the second command. True Love for Neighbor Depends on First Loving God And so I say this: true love for your neighbor depends on your love for God. If you don't love God, you cannot love your neighbor properly. I speak now to unbelievers who do charitable works. You're not really loving your neighbor, not as God intended. And why is that? Why do I say that? Well, because you cannot, you must not, love your neighbor more than you love God. Frankly, you must not love anything more than you love God. If you love anything more than you love God, you're an idolater. So you cannot make an idol of your neighbor. But quite frankly, most people who are not Christians who do good works, works of benevolence and charity, they're really just loving themselves in a sinful and idolatrous way. There is a pride involved in some of those good works. So I say to you, you cannot really love your neighbor if you don't first love God through Jesus Christ. True Love for God ALWAYS Results in Love for Neighbor But secondly, we know this is true as well, true love for God always results in a horizontal commitment to love others. You cannot really be loving God if you don't love your neighbor. The two of them go together. So 1 John 4:20 says, “If anyone says ‘I love God’ and yet hates his brother, he's a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen." So the two are intertwined, we must have them both. Humanity Judged Based on these Two Laws The Standard of Judgment is the Law of God Now, I've already said before, and I say again, it's very, very plain. This is the law of God, these two commandments, this is the law. This is Sinai, this is what God requires of you. This is what he's standing on you and with threatenings and with earthquake and with flashing lightning, and thunder with a loud voice. He says you must obey these two commands. You must love me with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength, and you must love your neighbor as yourself. This is the standard of judgment, this is the law of God, the Ten Commandments can be arranged in these two tables. The first table, the vertical table, the first four commandments. You shall have no other gods besides me. You shall not make any idols or bow down to any idols or worship any idols. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. And remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. These are the vertical commands in the Ten Commandments. It's that love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And then the last six are all horizontal. Honor your father and mother. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor and you shall not covet your neighbor's belongings, anything that belongs to your neighbor. Those six commandments are summed up in this one commandment, “love your neighbor as yourself.” Romans 13, Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of that second table of the law. God Really Intends that the Human Race Obey And as I've said before, God really does intend for the human race to obey this. You must be righteous in these two senses. You must have loved God, and you must have loved your neighbor as yourself. These are not idle words. These words are our life, Deuteronomy. And if we have not obeyed, we stand guilty and condemned before the law of God. By this Law We are Condemned Romans 3:10-20, says by this law, we are condemned, not saved. As it says, “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; There is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood. Ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Do you not see the two commandments right there in that list that Paul gives? Their feet are swift to shed blood, that's horizontal. There's no fear of God before their eyes, that's vertical. They're not obeying the law. Paul continues. “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore, no one will be justified, no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by obeying the law; rather, through the law, we become conscious of sin.” It should not surprise you, then, if you listen to a sermon on the first and greatest commandment and you become conscious of sin. And it should not surprise you, again if you hear a sermon on the second greatest commandment, that you become conscious of sin in your life, expect it friends. Expect that you'll be convicted by the Spirit, that you'll find that you have not been loving as you should. You've not loved your neighbor as yourself. Law and Gospel: Christ Fulfills the Law And so we must have a savior. We must have a gospel, if it's only law, we are condemned, we're lost. But it's always law plus gospel. That's my pleasure. My delight is to proclaim both law and gospel to you. And so, I proclaim, not just to you, but to my own soul. There is hope in Jesus. Christ Came to Fulfill the Law But Jesus said in Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I've not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.” And he came to fulfill them in many different ways. He came to fulfill them just by obeying them. He just obeyed them. He just loved God with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength. He loved his neighbors as himself. He perfectly obeyed the laws of God. This is the Only Hope And he won a perfect righteousness, which he then offers to us as a free gift. And this “righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus,” Romans 3:21-24. There is our hope. Having Been Justified We Are Called to Law Obedience Jesus was obedient, and so in Him, you can be seen to be obedient too, simply by faith. But is that the end? Is that the end of our encounter with the two great commandments? Friends, you know, it's not. As I've said before, God isn't giving you a free pass. “Now that you're justified, forget about loving me, and don't worry about loving your neighbor,” he's not saying that. He's saying, “Okay now, now that you're justified, I have given you the gift of my indwelling Holy Spirit. You're an adopted son or daughter of the living God.” Now he turns you and he faces you to the law and says, “Now do this. Do it. Walk in these ways.” Romans 8:4, “In order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” He wants you to love God, and friends, horizontally, he wants you to love your neighbor as yourself. And he wants you to do it by the power of God. What Is Love for Neighbor? So, what does it mean then to love your neighbor as yourself? Now, I'm gonna talk more next week about “as yourself,” we're gonna talk more about that phrase, I'll save that till next week. Definition But let me give you a definition similar to the one I gave you concerning that vertical love for God. Remember how I said it was cheerful sacrificial obedience to God's commands? I'm gonna do something similar horizontally, just shift the words a bit. Horizontally then, love, love for neighbor is cheerful sacrifice, resulting in beneficial action for the glory of God. That's what true love is. We'll start with the end, it's got to be done for the glory of God. If it isn't, then there's something wrong with it, it's defective. So we've got to do it for the glory of God. But with that arranged, we've already talked about that in the previous two sermons, then what is it? Okay, well it's cheerful sacrifice resulting in beneficial actions in the world, helping them in some way. I'm gonna take that and break it into two senses. This clarity I think came to me very much in prayer this morning. I see that there are two aspects in the New Testament, and we've got to understand them both. And I'm devoting this sermon to one and then next week's sermon to the second aspect. Okay. There is a heart affection aspect, and there's a physical action in the world aspect. And without both of those, you're not loving. You got to have them both. So there's a heart affection for the neighbor, a delight from the heart, going out from the inside, resulting in sacrificial acts of service to them that are gonna help them in some way. And I believe there are two great scriptures that describe those two. The heart aspect of love is 1 Corinthians 13, you can turn your Bibles there, I'm gonna trace along with that, this morning. 1 Corinthians 13 describes the heart affection aspect, that internal sense that must be there, or it isn't love. The external actions part, I could choose a lot of passages, but Luke 10 the parable of the Good Samaritan describes that. Sacrificial acts of service to benefit the person. We'll discuss that next week. Okay. The two have to be there, so love is an affection, it's a heart movement toward a person, it must come from the heart, that's included in the word cheerful, you're cheerful and you're glad to do it. And it's got to be a sacrifice that is a willingness to give something valuable: Time, energy, money, yourself, your attention, your gifts, your personality, your listening ear, something of value, something you sacrifice, without the sacrifice there's no love and it results in beneficial action in the world. Something has to actually happen in space and time. They need to know you did something for 'em. So there's actually some kind of act of service. It could just be a word spoken of encouragement, but if something happens, so that there's an internal feeling aspect and in that external sacrificial service aspect. Love is a Feeling, and Not Less than a Feeling And so love is a feeling, friends. It's not less than a feeling. It just is more than a feeling, but it's not less than a feeling. Okay? And common expressions of love fill the world. “Oh, I love this song! It's my favorite!” says a teenage girl and leans forward and turns up the radio. It's happened before. “I love this time of year,” says a woman at the spring when the warm winds begin to blow and the flowers are poking up from the soil, and the birds have returned and the days are getting warmer and longer. Do you sense I can't wait for it to come. Come spring. I've gotten soft since I moved down here. I couldn't ever live in Massachusetts again. I just don't think I could do it. I don't know how our brothers and sisters made it through. I don't want to. My relatives they’d probably call me soft. I can't handle any more blizzards, you know they're pretty until they get all salty and dirty and sandy and all that and then it's not so fun. But at any rate. “I just love the mountains with all the spectacular scenery,” says a hiker to his partner as they just look at one of those scenic overlooks. Or, “Daddy loves you so much,” says the Father who has been away for a week on a business trip to his little daughter as she runs with her arms stretched out. “I love chocolate,” says the wife as she opens up the package later this afternoon or maybe already this morning. It's already happened. “I love March Madness,” says the guy as he settles back into the easy chair and watches the first of 16 consecutive basketball games. No more comments on that, you know who you are. Now the question is how are all of these loves related? Are they related? Are they connected? A song on the radio, a season in the year, a mountain scenery, a four-year-old daughter running with her arm outstretched, chocolate, college basketball, and God. How do they all relate? They do relate. It's wrong for you to think they don't relate. There's a reason that we use the same word for all of them. They are clearly different, but they all just relate. And as I said last week, Jonathan Edwards helped me organize this and see that they all do relate: The heart has the ability to assess and analyze things, and then be attracted or repulsed from them, it's what the heart does. It's what your heart was designed by God to do. And the essence of true religion according to Edwards is affection of the heart, primarily expressed vertically toward God. But it also moves horizontally toward the neighbor. The heart is moved in attraction toward the neighbor. That's what I'm gonna try to describe to you today, there's a heart movement toward the neighbor. And without that heart movement toward the neighbor, it isn't really love, whatever you do it for. 1 Corinthians 13 I think makes this plain. Look at verse 3, “If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.” Okay, what Paul's saying there is he's talking about sacrifice in the highest sense of the word, the highest level of sacrifice. You give all of your possessions, and then you give your body to death. You have nothing left to give, that's Christ, that's what Jesus did. His possessions were gambled over to fulfill prophecy, and then his body was just given out fully for us. Even if you did that though, and you had not loved you would gain nothing. It would not be commendable before God. Isn't that terrifying? Think about it. It's like, I don't even do anything close to that. It's like, but even if you did, if you did that and you didn't have love, so therefore I assert to you love must be more than just sacrificial actions. There's got to be something else, something in the heart, there's gotta be a heart affection for the individual. John Piper in his classic Desiring God makes it plain that what he calls disinterested benevolence is not truly loving, saying, I don't get anything out of the things I give, I don't get anything. I hope you husbands did your duty and bought your wives something, “Oh don't mention it, hun, it was just my duty.” That's not gonna get you anything dear friends, oh actually that it gets you a lot, it won't get you what you want. She doesn't want to think it was your duty. One Christian writer was talking about this. Suppose a husband says to his wife, “Must I kiss you goodnight every night?” She says, “Yes you must, but not that kind of must.” In other words, if it doesn't come from your heart I don't want it. So there's got to be something inside you that says “I want to do this for you.” We should delight in doing good to others. We should enjoy benefiting them. And if you don't, it isn't love. So 2 Corinthians 9:7, “Each man should give what he has decided to give in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” Dear friends, how much of your service to Christ and others did that just weed out right there? “Reluctantly or under compulsion,” that is so convicting, isn't it? If you're doing it reluctantly you're doing it like 'cause you have to, it isn't really love. God wants you to do it cheerfully. And why should we be cheerful givers? Well, we should just think of the joy and delight that we bring God by obeying his commands. We are loving God by doing this, that should make us happy. And then horizontally we should just be pondering the blessing and the benefit we're bringing to another person. We're alleviating their suffering, we're making them happy, in some way that should make you cheerful. And you should think thirdly about the rewards you get, your stored up treasure in heaven. And someday you're going to experience God's pleasure in what you did, when he says, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” you've got three good reasons for being cheerful and giving. So it should make you very very happy to give. So therefore genuine love is a feeling that fills the heart. It's an internal motivator and attraction towards the person. “I want to bless you. It is my pleasure to help you to bring you joy. I want to ease your pain and suffering.” And without that feeling it isn't love, it's hypocrisy. Jonathan Edwards put it this way, “In some sense, the most benevolent, generous person in the world seeks his own happiness in doing good to others because he places his happiness in their good. His mind is so enlarged to take them, as it were, into himself. Thus when they are happy he feels it. He partakes with them, and is happy in their happiness. This is so far from being inconsistent with the freeness of generosity, but on the contrary free generosity and kindness, consist in it.” In other words, if your mind can't expand to then include this other person, so that you're happy because they're happy, you haven't really loved, that's what Edwards is saying. Powerful statements. Ponder it the rest of the day because it's so life transforming. Love Results in Sacrificial Action to Benefit Someone Now of course, as we've said and we'll talk more next week, the feeling isn't enough I must balance it. Say I had so many good intentions. I really really felt lots of good feelings toward the members of this church. But did you do anything for them? I mean did anything ever happen because of it? Well, that's James' job. James comes in and does that, also I John, both of them teach about the same thing. But James 2:15-17 says, “Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes or daily food. If one of you says to him ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way,” he makes the point, “faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” I don't think it's a stretch to say love is the same way, love without actions isn't love, it's dead. So there's got to be something physical done for the individual. So, 1 Corinthians 13:3 says you can't just have the actions, you've got to have the feeling. Got it? James 2 says you can't just have the feeling, you've got to have the actions, you've got to put them together in order to get biblical love. Does that make sense? All the rest is just exegesis of 1 Corinthians 13, should we skip it? No we're not gonna skip it, let's go ahead. Jesus’ Example Jesus gives us a display of this again and again in his ministry, do you not see it? How many times does his heart go out to somebody, and then he does something for them? Beautiful example, you should look at it in Luke chapter 7, don't turn there but just later on, read it. Jesus comes into Nain. And there's a widow there and it's a funeral procession, she is burying her only son. I mean, you just have to understand how tough that is, she's a widow, no husband, and now she's burying her only son. She is bereft of provision and protection in the world in that society. And it says in Luke 7:13, “When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, ‘Don't cry.’” Do you see that? His heart went out and he said something, “Don't cry.” And then he raised the son from the dead. Don't you wish you could do that? Wouldn't that be beautiful? But he acts and does something for her. Again, with the leper in Mark chapter 1, “A leper came to him imploring him and kneeling to him and said, ‘If you will, you can make me clean,’” Now listen to verse, 41, Mark 1:41 this captures it, “Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand." That's it, friends. That's the combination. Do you see it? “Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and healed him, ‘I am willing be clean.’” There it is. Jesus has shown the way for us. He's done this again and again. I could multiply examples. But his heart is moved, and then he acts. It started in heaven. His heart was moved toward us and he entered the world. And that's what he's done. And so he's still in heaven, he's up there in heaven and he's still doing it. Hebrews 4:15 says, “We do not have a high priest who cannot be touched with our infirmities, the feeling of our infirmities,” KJV, it's beautiful. He is moved by what we're going through and prays for us, based on that. Two Great Clarifying Texts: 1 Corinthians 13, Luke 10 What Kind of Heart Attitude is Truly Loving?: 1 Corinthians 13 Alright, so 1 Corinthians 13, what kind of heart attitude is truly loving? Well look at verses 4-6, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast. It is not proud. It is not rude. It is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.” Let's just look at those verses there, there's enough there. Love is patient, that's long-suffering, you put up with things for a long time, that's a heart state, a state of patience. Conversely, love is not impatient. We are an impatient people. So a loving neighbor cannot be impatient with his neighbor. Don't impatiently wait for your neighbor to finish their sentence so you can finally say what you want to say. That's not loving. Give them all the time they need. Even if you don't get to say what you want to say. Don't be impatient as all the checkout lines at the supermarket are full and this person seems to not know how to do you scan. Don't let the emotions of impatience rise up in your heart, give them the time they need to figure it out. Love is kind, there's a mildness in the heart that is loving, there's a gentleness toward an affection, a tenderness, love is kind. Conversely, anti-love is unkind, we are more and more characterized by unkindness, we are becoming an unkind harsh people. People who cut down people with a clever remark, or show somebody up at a meeting or grab a parking spot right out from under somebody just as they're sizing it up. Love does not envy, envy is a feeling of jealousy. Do you know how good it's gonna feel to be free of that in heaven? I mean it's gonna be beautiful, to just enjoy the exaltation of the martyrs and the great men and women of the faith higher than you and me, and not feel even the slightest motion of jealousy or envy toward them but just delight in what God did in and through them. That's gonna be awesome to be that out of yourself and free of yourself to feel no envy or jealousy at all. Love doesn't boast, there's no boasting in it. You're not saying, “I'm the greatest of all times,” Muhammad Ali said that, remember, “I'm the greatest of all times.” In doing that he's putting down all the other boxers; that's just not loving. It may be what our athletes do these days but it's not Christian. Love isn't proud it says, pride is the root sin, it's celebrating yourself too much. We could go on and on about that one. Love is not rude, dear friends, do you not see the growth of rudeness in our culture? I was reading one journalist who was talking about rudeness in America, I came across this story. See if you can relate: “The other day I went into a juice place, ordered a smoothie and watched the girl behind the counter fill to overflowing, cram the top on and slide it across the counter at me with such vehemence I wondered if she was training for some Olympic shuffleboard event. Luckily my reflexes are quick and I caught it just in time. But then came the challenge of inserting the straw, which of course resulted in the top popping off and the smoothie squishing out all over the counter. She watched me the whole time and did nothing to assist me as I went through the futile motions of trying to mop up the mess with the tiny squares of napkins they provide. Finally I asked her for another top. ‘You mean a lid? You want a lid?’ She snarled before shoving another one across the counter.” Have you had any kind of encounter like that before? Even worse, have you ever been like that before? That's the hard part. Love isn't rude, like that. There is more and more rudeness. It bothers me when I put my directional on to change lanes, I'm one of the few people that uses their directional... That was a prideful statement, wasn't it? I actually have started to notice how many turns are made without them. I saw a bumper sticker once and it's “visualize using your directional,” I love that. All right, just picture it in your mind. But you put the directional on saying I would like to change lanes and the person speeds up to prevent you from getting over. I don't, I don't understand that. And so what I do is I say those same tendencies are in my own heart, be sure I don't do it too. Be sure I don't do it too, because whenever you judge someone else you're judging yourself it's out there. Love isn't selfish, you're not looking for your own things, it's not easily angered, flaming into anger at any moment. And it keeps no record of wrongs. Could it be that sometimes your marriage relationship or church relationships are poison because you're keeping a record of wrongs? You haven't really forgiven? Love doesn't do that. Love does not delight in evil. I've mentioned before in sermons this “shadenfreude” this delight in somebody else's demise, or delight in their trouble. Watching YouTube videos of the world's worst drivers, with a secret delight knowing you're not one of them. Boy it's fun to watch that lady, take six minutes to size up a parking spot in Walmart until the guy finally does it for her, boy isn't that fun? And it's like yeah you laugh at it and all that but then you're like you're delighting in somebody's struggle trouble, they're having a hard time. Even worse, is delighting in somebody else's sin. And you see that too with, you know, with a Rick Pitino or a Tiger Woods or something like that and there just seems to be a fascination with it. And I think it's ultimately self-serving and prideful. Love doesn't delight in evil, but what does it do, where do we end up here? We end up with delight, cheerfulness, it rejoices in the truth, it rejoices in the truth, and here at last, friends, the two of them come together, what is the truth? Jesus is the truth. And so horizontally I'm gonna delight in giving you Jesus. Christian or non-Christian, I want you to have Jesus, or thy word is true, sanctify them by the truth. Your word is truth. I want to give you the word. And so the vertical then flows out into the horizontal, I wanna give you Jesus, I wanna give you the word, I wanna delight in the truth in your life. So we're gonna watch over one another in brotherly love, and we're gonna sanctify each other, and pray for each other and delight in the truth. I'll zero in on that word delight, love delights in truth coming up in that person's heart. Friends, assess your heart, assess your heart. Can you listen to this and not be convicted? Can you listen to this and make it through unscathed? So say 1 Corinthians 13 is my favorite chapter in the Bible. It's the wedding chapter. It's so beautiful. It is the toughest chapter in the Bible friends. It's a chapter with teeth. And it digs in and says, “Are you doing this?” These aren't just pretty words. This is the heart state of affection, you should have for other human beings, for every other human being. This is what God wants from you. Now next week we're gonna talk about okay so what, maybe we have those feelings, maybe God's worked them, what kind of life of action should we seek? How can we serve the poor and needy? How can we see that kind of love come alive in a marriage, and in a church? What kinds of acts of service and sacrifice does God expect from us? Close with me if you would in prayer.

Andy Davis preaches a verse by verse expository sermon on Matthew 22:34-40. The main subject of the sermon is the second greatest commandment and how it dictates how we act toward other.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches on Matthew 22:34-40, and how we are to examine our hearts in light of Jesus' Crucifixion and obey the Law of God. - SERMON TRANSCRIPT - Introduction Truly, it is said that God's ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are not our thoughts. If it had been up to me, John's gospel would have ended at Chapter 20. What an incredible end there is there, and I know we're preaching on Matthew, I haven't forgotten. Your pastor hasn't lost his mind. But this is how I'm beginning the sermon today. You remember what happened in John 20, how Jesus, resurrected from the dead, appeared suddenly through locked doors and stood in the midst of his disciples and said, “Peace be with you,” and showed them the evidence of his resurrection, his hands and his side, and said again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, I'm sending you.” Thomas wasn't there. Doubting Thomas. Over that next week, he asserted that unless he saw the physical evidence of Jesus' resurrection, he would never believe. A week later, Jesus comes again, though the doors are locked, and stands in their midst, and says, “Peace be with you,” and then he shows the evidence of his resurrection to Thomas. Hands and his side. Stop doubting and believe. And Thomas makes that confession, which everyone on the face of the earth must make if they want to be saved. That saving confession, which must come from the heart, saying, to Jesus, “My Lord, and my God.” That's the pinnacle. Maybe the pinnacle of the Bible right there. The evidence of Jesus' deity, his crucifixion, his resurrection, and then a sinner standing and saying, “My Lord and my God,” to Jesus. “Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. And then Jesus did many other miraculous signs which are in the presence of his disciples which are not recorded in this book, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and believing you may have life in his name.” That sounds like a good place to end to me. What do you think? But there is a whole chapter 21, after it. What is the purpose of that chapter 21? You remember what happened, how the disciples seemingly having nothing to do, decided to go back to fishing. I mean like physical fishing, not fishing for men, I mean, fishing. And so they're there fishing, in the Sea of Galilee, and suddenly a stranger stands by the shore and says, “Have you caught any fish and they'd fished all night and hadn’t caught anything. And he said, “Why don't you try the right side of the boat.” Suddenly the nets are so filled that they are ripping and breaking and it suddenly dawns on them who the stranger is by the shore. It's the Lord. Peter dives in, swims in there, they barely are able to haul that filled net to shore. Jesus makes them a breakfast of fish and bread and serves them. And then he turns to Simon Peter, and starts to work on him. You remember what happened, don't you? Simon Peter had denied Jesus three times. Three times he said that he didn't even know him. He was trying to save his own life. The very thing that Jesus told us we should never try to do, whoever tries to save his life, will lose it. And so, he denied him. And that very night, you remember in the providence of God, and the sovereignty of Christ, Jesus, being moved from one side of his trial to the next, just as the cock crows and Peter has denied him for the third time, Jesus turned and looked right at him, without saying a word. What did he need to say? “You are guilty. You're guilty of not loving me, you're guilty of denying me.” Just the crushing blow of that look, and you know what it did to Peter. Oh, he went outside and wept bitterly, he wept. To look in the face of Jesus and to see that disappointment. Is there a future for me? Is there a place for me? I mean, yes, Jesus, you're risen. But is there a place for me? I'm the one who denied you. I don't love you like I should, I know it now. I know who you are. I agree with Thomas. You're My Lord and my God, but what am I? And is there a future for me? And so, Jesus says to Simon, he says, “Simon son of John. Do you truly love me more than these?” I don't know what “more than these” means. More than these fish? More than these friends? More than these people love me? Do you love me more than you love anything else? I don't really know. I don't have to know 'cause I'm not preaching on John 21 this morning, but at any rate, “Do you love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord", he said, “You know I love you.” And Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” Sometime later, he turned to him and said again, “Simon, son of John. Do you love me, do you truly love me?” “Yes, Lord,” he said. “You know that I love you.” “Take care of my sheep,” he said. The third time he said to him, “Simon Son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt because Jesus had asked him this question three times. Now let me ask you, do you think that Jesus knew this would hurt Peter? I think he knew it. Did he intend to hurt Peter? I think he did. But not the kind of hurt that Satan would intend or an enemy would intend. It's the heart of a friend. It's the wounds of a friend. And the issue is, “Do you love me?” Jesus is saying. And I just feel that this is vital. We don't just need to know who Jesus is, we don't just need to know that his death was for us, and all that, we need to have this problem dealt with in our hearts that we don't really love Jesus. And we need Jesus to stand in front of us, and probe our hearts to reveal to us that we really don't love him like we should. And it hurts, friends. And so, I don't have any desire to hurt you today but Jesus may. And I just want to step out of the way and let him do his work on you, because we're coming, as I said two weeks ago, to the foot of Sinai here. This is the law, friends, with all of it's delightful language and loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength we know the truth, don't we? We don't love him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Some time ago, I came across these lyrics, “Give me one pure and holy passion. Give me one magnificent obsession, give me one glorious ambition for my life to know and follow, hard after you.” I couldn't sing it. I couldn't sing it. I actually kind of almost hated it. I was like turn the page. I don't wanna sing this one, 'cause it just isn't true of me. I don't have one pure and holy passion. I'm a man of many passions. And I yearn to be a man of one passion, I really want that. And so John 21 actually ministers to me. Maybe it ministers to you to have Jesus stand in front of you and probe you on this very issue. Do you love him? Do you love Jesus? Do you love him with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength? Do you? And that's what this sermon is about today. It's really diagnosing your heart condition. None of us enjoys a trip to the doctor. You know that annual check-up. Some just go ahead and skip it. That's not a good idea, but that's what we do. And so this is just diagnosis. This is just God probing us, by the Scripture. He's probing our hearts. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” What God Wants More Than Anything Else Jesus Texted by a Lawyer Now, let's set the context. You remember Jesus was in the final week of his life, and his enemies are there trying to make trouble for him and Jesus deals with many, many different difficult questions. And then along comes this lawyer from the Pharisees, and he says “Which is the greatest commandment in the law?” Jesus’ Very Orthodox Answer Jesus gives a very orthodox-ed answer as you remember. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Love the Lord Your God with Everything You Have We saw two weeks ago as we looked at this, “with all your heart” means that central part of you. Your heart is that part of you that thinks, it feels, it decides, it plans, it desires everything inside you, that heart of you, the core of you, love God. And love God “with all of your soul,” the “nephesh”, the life principle, with every fiber of your living being as you live and breathe, love God. And “with all your mind,” the part of you that thinks, and reasons and meditates, the part of you that imagines your thought life. All your mental powers, your science and philosophy, and logic, and all of that thinking, love God in all of it. And then with all your strength. With your body, present your body. All of its powers and its faculties to God, ready for service. God, I want you to use my body. I want you to use all of my strength, I wanna be poured out like a drink offering, I wanna drop exhausted on the pillow at the end of the day, having given everything for God. With ALL Your Heart, and ALL Your Soul, and ALL Your Mind and ALL Your Strength And it says with all of your heart, and all of your soul and all of your mind and all of your strength, and the full teaching of the Word of God is all the time. So you do all of that all the time and never fail. Now you see why I've said this is a trip to the foot of Mount Sinai. Who wants to stand up here and testify. I have kept this law. I have kept this law. This week has been the best week of my life. I have kept this law 100 percent. Who would dare to testify like that, I wouldn't. In Pilgrim's Progress, Christian, the character that's moving from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, before he comes to the cross, he comes to Mount Sinai and it's like a mountain leaning over ready to crush him. And I think we think, “Oh wow, boy. The first and greatest commandment, love God.” It's the very thing, friends that we don't do. A Second Commandment Like It And so we talked about that last time. And Jesus gives a second commandment which I'm going to speak fully on, more fully next week, but he said “The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” The two of them are interconnected. I'll make that point next week. Everything Depends on these Two Commands But everything, all the law and the prophets, everything God wants from you everything he commands from you hangs on these two things, summarized by these two things: Love God and love your neighbor. "Everything, all the law and the prophets, everything God wants from you, everything he commands from you ... [is] summarized by these two things: Love God and love your neighbor." Judgment Day: God Actually Requires This And I said last week, God actually in fact requires this of us. It's not theoretical. It's not theoretical, it's not like he's gonna dismiss it and say, “Oh, well we all know nobody kept it. And so you're fine. I'm gonna grade on the curve.” God doesn't grade on the curve. Did you or did you not love me in this moment or at that moment, etcetera? And then you just start to see the times where you didn't piled up. And I said at this point, you must understand the purpose of the law, is it not to crush self-confidence? Is it not just to crush it into a powder where you realize, I cannot do this? I can't be perfect, I can't. I must have a savior. The law brings wrath dear friends, not salvation, Romans 4, read about it. It doesn't bring salvation. The law brings wrath. By the works of the law, Romans 3:20, no one, no flesh will be justified in his sight. You can't do this, that's the testimony of the Word of God. But thanks be to God, there's a gospel, amen? Thanks be to God, that's not the final word. Could have been, that could have been the final word on us. You didn't love me. And therefore go to hell. God could have said that, that could have been the final word. We are condemned by that law, 'cause God really did mean it. But it says in Romans 8, “What the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son.” Praise be to God. For sending Jesus who went and actually did this for 30 plus years, he actually did it in space and time with his body, he loved God perfectly every moment of his life. And he won for us a perfect righteousness that he now just offers you as a free gift. Oh dear lost friend, that's your only hope, that's the righteousness God actually does require, he's just gonna give it to you as a gift. Just as a free gift. He'd just say “Here, put this on. Give me all of your wickedness, and all of your sin.” And he puts it on Jesus, Jesus dies under the wrath of God. Remember I said the law brings wrath. There's the wrath at the cross. And he just gives you a gift. Perfect righteousness. Well, that was all last week. What Does it Mean to Love God? Now I wanna ask a deeper question, “What does this mean?” Thanks be to God that if you have trusted in God, this righteousness is credited to your account, it's imputed to you or reckoned to you. You're thought of as righteous as Jesus, is that the end of our salvation? You're free from the law, oh happy condition. You don't need to love God with any part of you. Is that so? Is that what the Bible teaches? That cannot be. You know, what he says, “Okay now that you're forgiven now that I see you as perfectly righteous from this point forward, for the rest of your existence on into eternity, I see you as perfectly righteous, now I want you to get up and obey this law.” Romans 8:4, “For what the law was powerless to do, in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of the flesh, to be a sin offering. And so we condemn the flesh in the flesh in order that,” listen, “the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” So he actually does want you to obey this, friends. He wants you to love him now and for the rest of your life, and more and more and more, as you live by the Spirit. It's what he wants you to do. He wants you to walk in this law with all of your heart. So I've tried to understand what it means to love God. I've studied my own heart, I’ve studied the scriptures, I study other people as they study me. I look and I try to understand love. Love is a pretty common topic in our society. What are the odds that you'll turn on the radio and hear the word “love” within the first minute in some song or something. It's just all over the place. Jonathan Edwards: Treatise on Religious Affections So it's a very familiar topic. What does it mean here? Well, I thank God for the brothers and sisters in Christ that have gone before us, and one of my favorite men from church history is Jonathan Edwards. And Edwards kind of sorted it all out for me, in a book that he wrote called Treatise on Religious Affections. Let me give you the context historically, of what Edwards wrote. It was the first great awakening, perhaps one of the greatest revivals in all of church history. It was in 1742, and the Holy Spirit was poured out. There were sweeping changes, there was religious excitement, there were major upheavals, all kinds of things were happening. Huge crowds were leaving their fields and their shops and going out to hear gospel preaching, especially George Whitfield. People were coming from miles around to hear Whitfield and others preaching the gospel. And many people swooned, sometimes even physically, under the influence of the gospel. And there were some changes, some changes happened. However, you know in the parable of the seed and the soils, Jesus warned about what they call the stony ground hearers, the ones that hear the Word with joy and immediately respond, but when trouble comes they quickly fall away. And so now it's been a number of years later, five or six years later. And Jonathan Edwards is looking back on the experience of the Great Awakening and what's happened since then. And he's probably the most careful thinker and accurate spiritual assessor, maybe, in all of church history. And he put his skills to work in assessing the nature of true revival or more deeply the nature of true religion, a true right relationship with God, what is true Christianity, that's what he was looking at, what's the truth? And he likened the initial enthusiasm of many of those hearers of the gospel to the cherry blossoms of spring, that come each of them promising some sweet cherry fruits later on, but many of them flutter to the ground without ever bearing any fruit at all. But some of them ripen into maturity and produce delicious sweet cherries. So he wanted to assess spiritual experience and try to get at what is the nature of true Christian experience, true Christian religion. Now, there are opposite views of the Great Awakening two equal and opposite errors concerning all of the excitement and outward emotion. Error number one, is that religion is only a matter of the emotions, the feelings and especially extreme outward displays of emotion: raising of hands, melting, falling on the ground, screaming for joy, dancing in the aisles, whatever. Big displays of emotion. And if you don't get to that level, you're really not truly saved. But then there is an opposite error, that religion is never in any of those displays. And if you see any of them you know there religion isn't. Religion is more in the reason and judgment, and in dutiful behavior. Dear friends, both of those are ditches. Edward sought to steer in the middle to try to find what it really was. Satan's scheme here, friends, was to push unstable souls into excesses, and that created a backlash effect. Early in the awakening, Satan pushed people to extremes, to burning clothes and books and doing all kinds of things and just outward huge displays of emotion. And the tendency was, if you don't have all that you're not really saved. And a few people only a few people seemed interested in trying to probe what was really going on in the hearts of people. Edwards was one of them. What were the root causes? Eventually people just threw out the baby with the bathwater, went the opposite direction, you ended up with a cold formalism, in which no emotional displays were permitted at all. So he's like, what is the truth, what is the nature of true religion? And as he thought through, prayed through, the Lord led him to this text, 1 Peter 1:8. Just listen, don't turn there, but just listen, “Though, you have not seen him,” Christ, “you believe in him; and even though you do not see him now, you love him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.” You love him, the invisible one, you believe in him. I think it's beautiful, isn't it? That it was Peter that wrote that, the one who was probed by Jesus. Do you love me, do you love me? He says, you've never seen him, but just like me, you love him, don't you? And so, Edward said, there it is. True religion then in great part consists in holy affections, emotions, holy emotions, holy affections. Now this is what he does, he breaks open the human heart, he breaks open the human heart so we can understand what it does. And he said the human heart has two capabilities. There are two things it can do. Okay? First of all it can understand, and second, it can have affections toward what it understands. These are the two things the heart does, you do it all the time. You may not know you're doing it, but you are. And so, first the analytical side, the heart has the ability to perceive things, everything it encounters, and to assess those things, to analyze them, to understand them for what they are, to judge them. That's what the heart does. Secondly then, the heart has the ability to be inclined toward or repelled away from everything you're analyzing and assessing. And you do it without any matter of the will, it's not something you're choosing to do, it's just the way your heart is. In short, then you'll either love or hate to a greater or lesser degree everything you analyze in the universe. Everything. So then, I just started to think, I get it now, I get it. It's got to do with attraction and repulsion, my engineering mind started to kick in. Alright, bear with me, guys. That's what you have as a pastor. This is who I am. I'm a mechanical engineer. Years ago, I worked at a company that made ion implanters and there were these awesome magnets, these rare earth magnets samarium-cobalt magnets, strongest magnets I've ever seen in my life. Boy, were they fun? We had lots of fun with those things. You could do lots of pranks, like putting important messages for your roommate. And most of the message is covered by a magnet that could not be moved with 10 men. Oh, that was fun, I enjoyed that. “Whatever you do be sure you…” That kind of thing, and covered with the magnet. And I remember seeing my roommate leaning on it, pushing, trying to pull it in something and that was fun. That's sick, though, that you could even do that to someone that you love and a friend but I did that. The Lord has his ways though, that magnet erased all my credit cards too. So, you know, the Lord, he got me back for that one, it was right there in my pocket. And then I went to use the card and that was that. But I remember these magnets and I would hold it and you could just throw a paper clip and any, just within feet, and you just see the thing go like that and just move to this magnet. And we did all sorts of stuff. We put it like on the other side of walls and we'd stick things there and wonder how it's sticking on the wall, and it was just a lot of fun. We did all kinds of things. So alright, now you have this image of this powerful magnet in your heart. The object lesson is on the basic nature of the human heart. God has designed your heart with the capacity to be attracted to or repelled from everything that there is, to a greater or lesser degree, all the way down to no attraction or repulsion because you know nothing about it at all. That's where you start and the more you get to know things then you more love or hate. That's what happens. And again, the amazing thing is you actually have no control over your heart as it does this. This is something just the heart does. It has to do with the nature of the heart. And so now in comes mathematical engineering analysis part two. Picture a number line, okay. And you've got the plus side and zero and the minus side. What your heart does is it puts everything on that number line, in an array. Positive and negative. I love it, I don't love it. I desire it, I don't desire it. I want it or I wanna stay away from it, to a greater or lesser degree. Everything in the universe, it's all there, your heart is just doing it. And what is God saying? God has to be number one affection farthest as far right on your positive number line as possible, and nothing can be equal to it, or surpass it, or frankly even be close to it. You must love God more than anything else in the created universe. That's what it's saying. And Edwards is saying true religion is in the nature of the attraction to God. And that you love Him with holy affection. That's what it is. And at the moment of conversion everything gets rearranged - Not everything, but many, many things, all things of spiritual import get rearranged. You heard a testimony earlier, 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.” Everything gets rearranged, and then, sanctification starts to move things, you start to love God more and more and more. And love the people of God more and more and the Word of God, more and more. And the kingdom of God more and more. And all of the things of God, that's sanctification. Conversely, you start to hate sin more and you start to hate what it does to you and hate pride, and lust, and you want it out more and more. That's it. That's the nature of true religion, that's what's going on in your heart. And as I said, we don't have any control over our hearts directly, we just can't. All we can do is just know our hearts, and say, “God, God, there isn't an infinite gap between you and created things in my life. There are some times that it actually seems that I love some other things more than I love you. God, would you change me?” And that yearning to change is evidence of the Holy Spirit's work in your life. Oh, I wanna convict you, but I wanna encourage you too this morning, I want you to know when the Spirit's at work in your life. And if you're discontent with how little you love God, then that's the Spirit's work in you. And if you yearn to love him more, then that's the Spirit's work in you. Ezekiel 36:27, “I will put my Spirit in you and I will move you to keep my laws and my decrees.” And so this is the first and greatest one. He's gonna put the Spirit in you and move you to love him. He's gonna move you to do that. Loving Nothing More Than or Equal to God And so compared to our love for God, any other affection should look even like hatred. So God should be on your number line, so far that when you stand at the God position and look down, there's such a gap between you and the next thing that it almost looks like hatred. And so, Jesus says in Luke 14:26, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife, and his children, his brothers and sisters - yes, even his own life - he cannot be my disciple.” That's what it means now. You understand what that means. It doesn't mean you actually hate those, but by comparison, standing there at the position of your love for God, everything else it's almost all the same at that point. That's how much you love God. Cheerful Sacrifice of Obedience Alright, so what then should love look like in my life? That's what it is. How should it play out in my life? So I've thought about that too. You know the Bible verse, it says, “We love because he first loved us.” Well, I think that that has more to teach us, I think we also love like he first loved us, He teaches us how to love. Right. So we should love like he has loved us. How has he loved us? This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. He's demonstrating love. God demonstrates his own love for us in this while we were still sinners, Christ died for you. And he demonstrates the heart of it, when he says, “Do not fear, little flock; it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” He just enjoys doing this, it's for the joy set before him that he did it. So I put all that together and this is what I think love for God is: Love for God, then, is measured by cheerful sacrifice in the obedience to his commands. You've gotta have all three, friends, if you don't have all three, you're not loving God. Cheerful sacrifice in obeying his commands. Sacrificial Obedience Let's start with the last one, obedience. You cannot love God without obeying him. John 14:15, Jesus said, “If you love me, you will obey what I command.” “This is love for God,” 1 John 5:3, “This is love for God: to obey his commands.” God is telling you, if you love me, you'll obey me, you must obey my commands. Okay. So it has to be obedience, but is that enough? No, there has to be sacrificial obedience. It has to cost you something. I mean, you just know the way it is. Valentine's Day is coming up, friends. Husbands, let me say something, don't forget it. Love your wives but let me tell you something. They wanna be sure that there's some sacrifice involved. Don't dig something out of your glove compartment and give it to her. There's gotta be some sacrifice. It's gotta hurt you, it's gotta cost you something. If it doesn't cost you something, it isn't love. Did God's love for us cost him anything? Oh yes, it did. He sent his Son for us. It's got to be sacrificial obedience to the law. It's gotta cost you something to obey, and he's gonna make you prove it too. He's gonna make things hard for you sometimes to obey to see how much do you love him. But that's not enough, either. Isn't that amazing how much God wants from us? It's not enough to just obey, it's not enough even just sacrificially obey, you have to cheerfully sacrificially obey. You have to do it with joy and delight in your heart. You have to want to do it. We've covered that before. Valentine's Day, don't tell your wife, “Hey, I didn't take this out of the glove department, I did just what the pastor said. I want you to know how much this cost me. Alright. I have obeyed and I have sacrificed.” That will not get you any further than giving the cheap gift dug out of your glove compartment. She needs to know how much you love giving it to her. Right? And so you have to have a delight in the giving. This is gonna work horizontally next week when the same definition is gonna work for people too. Cheerful sacrificial obedience, that's what it's gonna be for people, too. But here's the thing, it says in 1 Corinthians 13:3, “If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,” that’s sacrifice, huge sacrifice, “but if I have not love, it profits me nothing.” What is it saying? There's a heart disposition that apparently is missing. Well, this guy is dying for people. And that's powerful, isn't it? God doesn't just want the sacrifice, he wants you to delight in doing it for God. “The Kingdom of Heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, when a man found it, he hid it again and then in his joy, he went and sold everything he had and bought that field.” I think it's a privilege for us in the Christian life to buy that field, in some sense, again and again. Day after day, you get to sell everything for Jesus. Day after day for the joy set before you, you get to make sacrifices for Jesus. I'm not in any way denying the permanence of justification or anything, you've got to feel it's yours, I'm just saying we get to make that sacrifice again and again, and that's the nature, the essence of our love relationship with God. “For God loves a cheerful giver,” dear friends. Diagnosing Your Own Heart How Love for God is Assessed: Cheerful Sacrifice of Obedience So there it is. So diagnose your own heart. What's going on? Is there a principle of sacrifice in your relationship with God? Does it cost you anything to be a Christian? Does your quiet time in the morning cost you something? Does your giving, your financial giving, cost you something? Does your service in your ministry to the church here, or in any other way, does your evangelism cost you anything? And when it does, are you doing it cheerfully or under compulsion? Do you feel like you have to do it? You gotta do something to prove yourself to God? Well, you're back under the old work system then. Are you doing it cheerfully or under compulsion? And is the pattern of your giving to God set by his word, by his commands? He's told you what he wants. Are you following his laws, and his commands? Is that what's going on in your life? Diagnose your heart, Friends. Evidence that the Love of God is Not in You And you know what's gonna happen when you do? You're gonna come to the conclusion that I did earlier this morning, and I just said, “How can I preach this sermon? How can I preach? I feel like my heart is distant from you, I don't love you like I should. I don't. So who am I to stand up in front of a bunch of people and tell them they need to love God?” And I just kinda was like that for as much as 90 minutes this morning and I kept thinking, and then suddenly I felt the grace of God come into my heart. And I felt then like the Lord testified to me. Now you're ready to preach, because you're not preaching as a self-righteous man. I'm not standing in front of you telling you that I do this 100 percent. I'm just telling you, I wish I did. I yearn, I hunger and thirst to do this. "What is love for God? It is cheerful sacrificial obedience to his commands." Therapy for Distant Hearts: James 4 And so what do I do then if my heart's distant? I want to commend briefly, another passage of scripture. It's printed right in your outline. James 4:4-10. I just wanna read through it briefly, it's not another sermon within a sermon, but I just want to bring it to you to heal you. Start with Christ: Imputed Righteousness is His Perfect Obedience to these Commandments First and foremost I wanna bring you back again to the cross. If you feel like your heart's distant, remember this, Christ is your righteousness. Keep that in mind, never forget. It's not how much you love God, it's how much he loved you in Jesus. Never forget that. Go to that again and again. But is that enough? No, we need to have our wandering hearts brought back. James: Steps to Recovering our love for God James 4:4-10. “You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think the scripture says without reason that the Spirit 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.” There's the remedy. Just let me say some brief things. First of all, be honest and call the wandering of your heart what God calls it: spiritual adultery. Don't call it by any other name. The thing, the created thing you love more than God is an idol. Someone who loves idols is an idolater. Call it what it really is, spiritual adultery is idolatry. So identify the idols. What is it? Is it worldly pleasure? Is it sexual sin? Is it materialism? Is it Power or workaholism? What is it? Is it worldly entertainment? Is it food? What is the idol that you love more than Jesus? Identify it, and call it spiritual adultery to love it more than you love Jesus. This is the essence of worldliness. Understand the jealousy of the indwelling Holy Spirit, the Spirit he caused to live in you, envies over you. Imagine a husband and wife and they go to some party, and the wife is starting to be a little too familiar with another guy there. What is that husband going to feel toward that? What's he gonna feel? That's what the Holy Spirit feels when you wander into idolatry. He's jealous over your affections. And he goes and gets you. And he will not let you wonder, and so just understand that that spirit he caused to live in you is envious over your heart. And then rejoice in the promise that God will give you more grace. Anybody here need more grace? I need more grace, I need fresh infusions of grace. Not just grace for justification, but I need grace to stay loving Jesus. I need grace right now. So give me more grace, God, I need more grace. Just humble yourself and say, “I need more grace.” And James points to the scriptures to the way to get it. You get more grace here, this is where it comes from. The Scripture says that he gives us more grace. Read the scripture, get the grace from the Bible. “Grace to you,” Paul promises it. So go get it, go get yourself some more grace to deal with that idolatry in your heart. “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Then humble yourself. Identify pride in your heart. It's always pride that causes us to stray from loving God. First of all, we make too much of our own pleasure and happiness. I must be happy, I must be happy right now, I need to do this. That's just pride, friends. And it's pride for you to say, “I know best how to make myself happy.” God actually knows better than you do how to make you happy. So let God oppose the proud, but let him give grace to the humble. Then submit yourself humbly to God. Resist the devil. It is the devil who is the pimp, who is dressing the world up, the prostitute world, painting her eyes and making her look attractive, that's his doing, that's what he does. Resist him in this, and he'll flee from you. O blessed thought! The Holy Spirit will make him run. The omnipotent spirit will turn him and put him to flight, if you'll just dig in and resist. Come near to God then. Say, “Lord, I love you. I'm sorry, I strayed. I'm sorry I allowed my heart's precious affections, the ointment of my heart to be poured out at the foot of an idol. Please forgive me. Please forgive me and take me back.” Come near to God, and what is the promise? He will come near to you. Then “wash your hands, you sinners.” That means turn away from the things you were doing. Stop doing them. Don't just keep doing this again and again, wash your hands, change your life. “Purify your heart, you double-minded.” Start thinking differently about those idols. And be willing to be broken and hurt: “Grieve, mourn and wail.” Peter wept when Jesus looked at him. Maybe you need to weep and cry. This is one of those scriptures that the good-time people and good-time churches will never preach. Grieve, mourn, you all need to grieve, mourn, and wail. Hey, let's all have a time together of grieving, mourning and wailing. That's sometimes what needs to happen, dear friends. Cry. And then humble yourself before the Lord and let him lift you up. Spiritual physician telling you how to heal your straying heart. We come now to the time of the Lord's supper. I can't think of a better time for you to look after your heart. It says in Corinthians that in order for you to come to the Lord's supper, you have to assess your spiritual condition. You have to look inwardly. Have you been convicted today? Then bring that to God, and say, “Lord, heal me. Draw me in and use the Lord's supper, use the Lord's Supper to draw a sinner like me back into a healthy relationship with you.” The Lord's supper is for people who have testified plainly to faith in Christ. We had baptism. They've testified by water baptism. If you have come to faith in Christ, and have testified to that by water baptism, you're welcome at this table. If not, I urge you to refrain lest you eat and drink judgment on yourself, but instead, I urge you to come to Christ and trust in him. Close with me, if you would, in prayer. Father, I thank you for the message of the word and as we give our attention now to the Lord's supper, we pray for the sending forth of your Holy Spirit, so that we can enjoy you. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on Matthew 22:34-40. The main subject of the sermon is how we are to examine our hearts in light of the Law of God.

Introduction It was the last week of Jesus' life. We've been studying this last week of Jesus' life in another gospel account. In John's gospel, we have the account of Jesus' visit, his final visit to his friends, Martha and Mary, and Lazarus. You remember that it was Lazarus that Jesus had raised from the dead, and Martha and Mary, he loved them dearly. And they had dinner together, and after dinner this rather stunning episode took place. It's recorded in John 12:3-5, “Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus' feet, and she wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected. ‘Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year's wages.’ And Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She's done a beautiful thing for me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want, but you will not always have me. What she did, she did to prepare me for my burial. And I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is preached, throughout the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.’” That's an incredible encounter, isn't it? This lavish gift worth a year's wages, 300 denarii, just poured out on Jesus, just poured out on him. And the house just filled with this odor of pure nard. Nard came from Northern India. It was imported at great expense in these tiny little alabaster boxes, very expensive, and John's account gives us a sense. This was pure nard, this was the best stuff. Poured it all out on Jesus. And Jesus actually defends this action. This lavish action of luxury poured out on him, he defended it. I believe that this encounter literally happened, a physical thing that did happen, but I think it also speaks to me of something that God wants from me. The most precious thing that I have to offer. It's not in an alabaster box, it's in my heart. It's the affection, the love of my heart toward him, he wants that. He wants my uppermost affection given to him, poured out on him. That's what he wants. And every one of you came here today with that same gift. You have it, you have it to give, it's yours and you can give it to anyone you want. But God wants it for himself. He wants you to pour out your alabaster box of affection on Jesus, on God, through Christ. That's what he wants. That's what I think this commandment is standing over us for every moment of our lives, commanding us to do. And as we venture forth into a new decade, as we enter a new year, I think, the greatest single issue in our lives this morning is simply this, do you love God at all? And if you do, do you love God more now than you did a year ago? Is your affection for God growing and healthy and strong? Do you yearn for God and the things of God? Are you able to say, “My heart yearns for him as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I yearn for God, and I want him and he satisfies me”? Is this love that you have for God growing stronger and stronger or is it growing weaker? Or as I say with all seriousness in my heart, is it even there at all? Do you even love God? Are you even born again? Are you even alive at all, spiritually? This is what's standing over us today as Jesus opens up the law of Moses. And I think what struck me this morning, I really hadn't thought about it until now, but we are taking a trip this morning as a congregation to the foot of Mount Sinai. And here behind these statements, we should hear the terrors of the law. “This is the law,” said Jesus. This is the summation of the Law of Moses. And so we're taking a trip this morning to the base of Mount Sinai, to try to understand these commandments. What is the Greatest Commandment? Context: A Week of Biter Testing This is part of the final week of Jesus' life, a week of bitter testing when Jesus would be rejected by his own people. He was despised and rejected, Isaiah 53. He was not esteemed, he was not loved. He was rejected by his people. And this chapter, Matthew 22, is a chapter of one contest after another, one conflict after another with some of Jesus' enemies who are trying to snare him and trap him. You remember the Pharisees and the Herodians with the question of taxation; and then the Sadducees with their question on the resurrection. An Expert in the Law Now here is this expert in the law, verse 34, “Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together.” They are assembling together. Acts 4, quoting Psalm 2, “‘Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One.’ Indeed,” Acts 4, “Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus. They did what your power and will had determined beforehand should happen.” So here it is, this is the conspiracy against Jesus. And now they're sending forth this expert in the law to trap Jesus. But this man, I think it was a little different than most of Jesus' enemies. He was literally a lawyer, that meant he focused, spent his full-time on the Law of Moses. That's what lawyer meant here. But he was more than just one who studied the law, I think he loved the law. And I think he wanted to love the Lord who gave it. It's interesting in Mark 12, a fuller account of this whole thing, in Mark 12:28, this expert of the law noticed that Jesus had given a good answer and then began to speak based on that. “‘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 the burnt offerings and sacrifices.’” That's what he said after Jesus had given his answer. And then Jesus said this, “When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, ‘You are not far from the Kingdom of God.’” The Testing Question So that's who this man was. Now, what was the testing question? Look at verse 36, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?” Now again, the law was the law of Moses, the law given by God to Israel, the nation of Israel, mediated through Moses. Moses was therefore, I think, the most revered man in Judaism. And Jesus, it seemed, at certain points of his ministry was challenging Moses' supremacy, like in the Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not murder,’ but I say to you that anyone who is angry with his brother is in danger of the fire of hell. And you have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ but I say to you that anyone who even looks at a woman lustfully has committed adultery with her in his heart.” Jesus seems to be supplanting Moses, then, in his own mind and that's blasphemous to the Jews. Now, centuries of scribal tradition had encrusted the Jewish reading of the law. They struggled to hear the Word of God clearly and purely. Over the centuries, rabbis had determined that since there were 613 Hebrew letters in the Ten Commandments, there are also 613 separate commandments in the Law of Moses, generally. And they divided those 613 laws, the rabbis did, into two categories, 248 affirmative laws, things you must do. And they said this was one for each part of the human body, as they supposed. And then there were 365 prohibitions, one for each day of the year. They also divided the laws of Moses into two categories, light and heavy. Heavy meant something that was absolutely universally binding, all the time. Light meant not so significant, but they could never agree as to which were the light and which were the heavy commandments. So it gave them something to argue about, which they did pretty much full-time, talking about the Rabbis. They are arguing all the time about the law. And so this question was actually a typical rabbinic question. But I think it also, in the context of Jesus' life and the hatred of the Pharisees, had a hidden barb. It was an effort once again, to entrap Jesus in his own words and have him arrested as a blasphemer. Love God With Everything You Are Jesus’ Very Orthodox Answer And so they asked him which of all the laws of Moses was the greatest commandment. And Jesus gave, in verse 37, a very orthodox answer. There really is no surprise here. Jesus replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” That's what it says in Matthew. Mark gives a fuller account of Jesus' answer. “‘The most important one,’ answered Jesus, ‘is this: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.”’” So Jesus goes to the “shema”, that's just the transliteration of the word here, “Shema Israel,” “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” So significant was this one statement from Deuteronomy 6, that the Jews wrote it down on little pieces of parchment and they put it in little boxes that they put on their forearms or on their foreheads, called phylacteries. And they would put them also on the doorposts of their homes, because that's literally what it said to do in Deuteronomy 6. He then, Jesus, gave the commandment that was the centerpiece of all that God commanded Israel to do, also from that same chapter. Deuteronomy 6, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.” This was recited by pious Jews every day. It was recited by the Jews together in the synagogue every week, every Sabbath. Jesus was no innovator here. This is not a shocking answer. He's not coming out of left field, sometimes he can do that with surprising scriptures they had never thought about, but not here. In effect, Jesus is saying, “This law has been in front of your eyes every day of your lives. There's nothing new here.” But there is an infinite difference between knowing the commandment and obeying it. What the Words Mean Now, what do these words mean? Well, it begins with this topic of love. The Hebrew word for love, “ahev”, is a deep and multi-faceted word. It's interesting to me that the first time that the word “love” appears in the Bible is in the context of a father-son relationship. I find that fascinating. I don't think there are any accidents in the Bible, generally, but especially not in the book of Genesis. As things get going, God is communicating to the human race. And so the first time we see the word “love” is in Genesis 22. “Then God said, ‘Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I'll show you about.’” Why is that significant to me as a Christian theologian? Because I think the most, the most significant love relationship in the universe is the love relationship between the Father and the Son. And every other love relationship is a reflection, an image of that love. And we as sinners are saved only on the basis of the strength of that love. I'll talk more about that in a moment but that's the foundational love there is in the universe, the love that the Father has for the Son. The second time that the word love appears in the Bible is in the context of a marriage relationship. It has to do with Isaac again. And Isaac met Rebekah, you remember how she, let's give her, alighted from her camel. I'm thinking that's what happened. Others think she fell from the camel but that's fine. In any case, that was the first time that Isaac saw Rebekah. And it says that “Isaac took Rebekah into the tent of his mother, Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife and he loved her.” So, again, it's that use of the word love, the love of a husband for a wife. Interestingly, the third example is also from Isaac's life. And that's at the end of his life. Genesis 27:4 “When he said 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 a blessing before I die.’” Same word. And we use the same word in English. I love God. I love my wife. I love a good steak. And I'm actually gonna argue that there's an intrinsic similarity and sameness to all those kinds of love. It has to do with the heart direction, a heart affection. And what I said at the beginning of the sermon is the uppermost affection that you have should be given to God. And any created thing you put above God is an idol. We'll talk more about that in two weeks. Love the Lord your God with Everything You Are So what does he command here? Well, you are to love the Lord your God with everything you are. He says, “With all your heart.” Now, what is the heart? The heart is the central part of you, it's the core of your being. And in the scripture, the heart does many different things. For example, the heart thinks. It says in Psalm 139, “Search me, O God, and know my heart. Test me, and know my anxious thoughts.” Secondly, the heart feels emotions, feelings. In Romans 9:2, the Apostle Paul speaking of the nation of Israel and their apostasy from God and their rejection of Christ, he said, “I speak the truth in Christ, I'm not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.” So the heart is the root of emotions. The heart is also the root of joy, as well. Zephaniah 3:14, “Sing, O daughter of Zion; shout aloud, O Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem!” So, it's a feeling. Thirdly, the heart decides. 2 Corinthians 9:7, on giving money, it says “Each of you must give as he has decided in his heart.” So the heart is the root of the will, it's the root of the decision process by which you make decisions. The heart also plans. Proverbs 16:1, “To man belong the plans of the heart.” So your heart plans. The heart also yearns and desires. How many of you have cherished Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you,” what? “the desires of your heart.” It's the heart that yearns. It's the heart that desires. The heart does all of those things. It seems, to some degree, that there's no internal thing that the heart doesn't do. And yet the Lord gives us two more internal words: Soul and mind. You are to love the Lord your God with all of your soul. Since the heart does so much, what's left for the soul to do, you may ask. Actually, in many verses, the heart and the soul are linked together and seem to be almost interchangeable. The phrase “with all your heart and all your soul,” appears nine times in Deuteronomy alone. You remember when Jonathan wanted to take on the Philistine army all by himself, remember? And there was an outpost of the Philistines and he's got his shield bearer with him, remember? And he says, I wanna go up there and fight them, and the shield bearer says “Do everything you have in mind. Go ahead because I'm with you heart and soul.” Basically, it's everything inside me just wants to be with you, Jonathan, let's go do it. So the soul could be said to be that immaterial part of you that relates to God. But let's not be too precise about that because we're already told that we're supposed to love God with all of our hearts. So long story short, I'm really not sure what the difference is between heart and soul. The word for soul is “nephesh”, and it relates to just living creatures, even animals. In Genesis 1:21, it says that “God created the great,” KJV, “the great whales and every living creature that moveth,” and the Hebrew word there is “nephesh”, all the living creatures, all the living nepheshes, and whatever, nepheshim, I guess. But those are all the living things. So basically, think of it in terms of the principle of life inside you, that principle that makes you alive. 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 being,” a nephesh. So as God just breathes life into you, that's your soul. So, I think he's saying, you're to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul, with every fiber of your being, everything you are inside you. But then he adds this third word, mind. The same thing with the mind, the mind is the part of you that thinks and reasons, all of that. Christ is commanding that all of your thought life be pleasing to God. That your intellect be fully given over to loving God, that you should love him in the depths of your mind. Your imagination should be in full service to your love for God. You should be imagining in reference to God. Your mental powers, your science, your technology, your mathematics, your philosophy, your logic, your deductive skills, your reasoning skills, your powers of observation and argumentation. All of this should be given over fully to God, to loving God. And you should invent new ways of expressing love for God. Sinners invent ways of doing evil, Romans 1:30. That is, they contrive new ways of rebelling against God. Therefore, the opposite would be to invent new ways of expressing love for God. Charles Wesley put it this way: “O for a thousand tongues to sing my great redeemer's praise. The glories of my God and king, The triumphs of his grace.” Now, I don't think that Wesley wanted himself a thousand tongues, that would be grotesque, but I think what he wanted was a thousand-person choir. I checked with Eric and he thinks that that's probably right, okay? I don't know what Charles Wesley would have looked like with a thousand tongues but I don't think I'd wanna see it. But a thousand-member choir to sing forth the praise and the glories. Oh, that I had that. He's using his imagination to think of ways to love God. And then, finally, he says we are to love God with all of our strength. The focus here is on our body. That our bodies would be given over full strength to loving God. That you would present your body to God at every moment as a living sacrifice. That your arms and your legs and every part of your body, your mouth, all the parts of you would be given over fully in service to God. That you would pour out your strength fully to God at every moment. That you would be spent, used up, poured out, given over completely in service to God. At the end of your life that you can say, like the Apostle Paul did, I'm already being poured out like a drink offering and the time has come for my departure. When God is through with me, all that will be left is my lifeless body. I have nothing left to give to God. And those are the component parts but you are to love God with all of your heart, and all of your soul, and all of your mind, and all of your strength. The implication is, all the time. There's not a moment of the day that you should not be loving God like this. You should hold nothing back to love God completely, with everything you have, that's whole-hearted devotion. Psalm 9:1, “I will praise you, O Lord, with all my heart, I will tell of all your wonders.” Psalm 119:2, “Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart.” Oh, dear friends, we have the tendency to spare ourselves, do we not? To hold back some in reserve. Athletes, I think, come the closest to doing something with all of their heart in our culture, maybe soldiers too. But there's an athlete, I remember some years ago, watching the end of the Ironman triathlon in Hawaii. This is for true sadists. I can't imagine why anyone would wanna do this to themselves. It all begins with a 2.4-mile swim in the ocean. That would finish most of us. I mean, literally finish us. That would be it. After that, a 112-mile bike ride. And then and only then can you begin the marathon, the 26.2-mile marathon. That's the full-blooded Ironman triathlon. And I was watching this on TV. And there was this individual, and he was within half a mile of the finish line. He was leading at the time, but he had nothing left to give. And so he was crawling on his belly, on his hands and knees, his hands were bloody, his knees were bloody, his body was bloody and he was dragging himself to the finish line. He ended up finishing 14th or something like that, as others passed him by. He had nothing left to give. The standard of love that God demands from us in the law here is 100 percent every day of your life. A Second Commandment is Like It Everything Depends on these Two Commands He also adds, and we'll talk more in a separate sermon, a second commandment is like it, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” And he says that everything depends on these two commandments. He organizes however many, 613, commands in the laws of Moses, organizes all of them, prohibitions and positive commands, everything comes down to these two. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. And so therefore, if you truly love God as God commands, if you truly love your neighbor in the same way, you will be perfectly obeying the commands of God. The Ten Commandments is a brief summary of the 600-plus laws. These two commands, even briefer summary of the Ten Commandments. It's a summation of everything that God wants from us. Everything then comes down to this one word: love. “The goal of our instruction,” 1 Timothy 1:5, “is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” Everything that we do at FBC should promote love for God, and love for neighbor. And if it doesn't, I tell you, it is worthless, it is chaff, it will be blown away on Judgment Day. Every one of my sermons should engender love in your heart for God, and for your neighbor. And all of our ministries should be organized and set up for that purpose, that love would be developed in our hearts and be expressed. And if we don't love, 1 Corinthians 13, says we are nothing. God Actually Requires This...But You Can’t Do It Now, here's the stunning thing dear friends, God actually requires this of us. And this is where I bring you to the base of Mount Sinai, with all the terrors of the law. If you don't love God, every moment of your life that you are under the just wrath of God, and the punishment the wages of sin is eternal death for not loving God. God actually requires this. On Judgment Day, you will stand before God and the court will be seated and the books will be opened. And there'll be another book, The Book of Life, which is our only hope, but the dead will be judged by what they had done as recorded in the books. And I am just trembling. This morning, I just trembled in my heart for lost people. If there are any lost people that are here today, who do not love God, God commands you to love him. And you have already disobeyed that command, you're already under the wrath of God for disobeying this law. Do you not realize how perilous these words are for you? God will look at the full record of your words and deeds, the motives of your heart. And he may say something like this, “I created you. I knit you together in your mother's womb. I sustained you every day of your life with food, clothing and shelter. I gave you rich experiences filled with joy and pleasure. I feasted your eyes with the delights of nature, of mountain grandeur, of gentle spring scenery, of rugged cliffs and tiny wild flowers, of grizzly bears and timid chipmunks, of roaring hurricanes and gentle zephyrs. “I surrounded you with the love of family and friends. I gave you a loving wife and three children. And through them came thousands of gifts of love. I fed your mind with education, I gave you opportunities to grow and learn, I provided labor for you to do and a sense of satisfaction at a job well done. I paid you wages, money, with which you were fully supplied and sustained. I healed you when you were wounded and when you were sick. I renewed your strength when you were weary. I fed your stomach with nourishing foods while delighting your tongues with flavors rich, delicious, pleasurable exotic, varied. I entertained you with sports and movies, and books, and music, every good and pleasant moment you ever enjoyed in this world was a direct gift from me. “Beyond that, I surrounded you with scriptural influences. You drove by countless churches, almost every day of your life. I put Christians in your life who loved you and who lived out their imperfect faith before your eyes as witnesses. Though you do not know the total number, I sent evangelists 173 times over the 69 years of your life, specifically to proclaim to you personally, the good news of Christ's birth, life, death on the cross and resurrection from the dead. And to appeal to you to repent of your sins and to find faith and forgiveness in Christ. Those evangelists used many different approaches to win you. Some of them were sweet and tender. Others were fiery and powerful. Some reasoned with your mind, others appealed to your heart and your emotions. You read in your lifetime 21 different tracks on Christ in the gospel, 1,377 times you heard some Christian radio or TV programming. “Each of those were efforts that I was making to reach out to you directly and personally with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And after every time that you rejected the gospel command to repent and believe, I graciously covered your sins and sustained your life more, healing your diseases and feeding your stomach while holding out my hands to you that you would repent and believe in Christ. That's how I loved you, all the 69 years of your life. But I commanded you to love me. Did you? Did you love me with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind, and with all of your strength? Did you pour yourself out, day after day, in worship and adoration in your prayer closet? Did you thank me and praise me for each of those blessings with which I blessed you? Did you make sacrifices for me? Did you give money sacrificially to the poor and needy? Did you sacrifice time and bodily effort to serve me and to obey my commandments? Did you cherish me in your heart? “Did you love Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Did your heart leap for joy again and again at the greatness of what I did for the world in Christ? Did you delight to hear of sinners converted, of marriages restored, of orphans cared for, of drug addicts rescued? Did your heart melt in singing songs to me or speaking words of praise to me? Did you love me with every fiber of your being, every moment that you lived?” Dear friends, I dare not put words in the mouth of God. But I believe that these words are consistent with the commands of God. And with what I understand the Judgment Day to look like as we are judged by what we did as recorded in the books of the law. Did we obey it? Did we obey the law? Saving Yourself Is Impossible And now I tell you that saving yourself is impossible. Romans 3:20 “By works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” Are you feeling it? I felt it this morning, I feel it still, through the law comes the knowledge of sin. This is the perfect law that Paul had in mind when he wrote that. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind. Love your neighbor as yourself. This is what he had in mind. You cannot save yourself by means of this law, it cannot be done. Charles Spurgeon put it this way. “Is there someone here so profoundly brainless as to reply, ‘I intend to keep it, I believe I actually perfectly can obey this. I think I can get to heaven by obedience to it, from here on out.’ Man, you're either a fool or else willfully ignorant. For sure, if you truly understand this commandment, you will at once hang down your hands as if to say, obedience to that is quite impossible. Thorough, and perfect obedience to that no man can hope to reach to. Some of you will think you will go to heaven by your good works. Do you really think that? This is the first stone you're to step on your stairway to heaven. I am sure it is too high for you to reach. You might as well try to climb up to heaven by the mountains of the earth, and take the Himalayas as your first step. For to obey this must ever be an impossibility. But remember, you cannot be saved by your works, if you cannot obey this perfectly entirely constantly and forever. “‘Well,’ someone replies, ‘I dare say, if I try and obey it as well as I can, that will do.’ No sir, it will not. God demands that you perfectly obey this and if you do not perfectly obey it, he will condemn you. ‘Oh!’ someone cries out, ‘Who then can be saved?’ Oh, that is the point to which I wish to bring you this morning. Who then can be saved by this law? Why, no one in the world salvation by the works of the law has proved to be a clean impossibility. None of you therefore will say you will try to obey it and so hope to be saved. I hear the best Christian in the world groan out his thoughts, ‘Oh God,’ he says, ‘I am guilty. And should you cast me into hell? I dare not say otherwise. I have broken this command from my youth up, ever since my conversion, even. I have violated it every day. I know that if you should lay justice to the line and righteousness to the plumb line, I must be swept away forever. Lord, I renounce my trust in the law for by it I know I can never see your face and be accepted.’” Do you not see it? We must have a savior. We must have a savior. We can't save ourselves by the law. And isn't it incredible that there is actually one man who has perfectly obeyed this law. Isn't that astonishing, be amazed. Oh may your heart melt in worship for him. His name is Jesus Christ. Jesus has cleanly and perfectly obeyed this command, every moment of his life. How to Develop a Love Relationship with God Start with Christ: Imputed Righteousness is His Perfect Obedience to these Commandments And his perfect obedience to this law is our only hope. That and the fact that God has graciously agreed that if you just believe in him, he'll count his, Christ's, love as though it were your own. As though you had loved God as well as Jesus had. Isn't that incredible, the gift of imputed righteousness? That's the gift of the wedding clothes that you must wear on that wedding banquet day. We already covered that in that parable a few weeks ago. It's the love of Jesus for his Father that's gonna cleanse you and clothe you, and Christ did in fact do this every moment of his life. And the ultimate measure of it, dear friends, is the cross, is it not? The cross of Jesus Christ. As he was talking to His disciples, the night before he was crucified, He said in John 14, “The prince of this world is coming for me, and he has nothing on me.” What does that mean? I am sinless. I've never done anything that Satan can accuse me of. Listen to this though, John 14:31 “But the world must learn that I love the Father, and that I do exactly what the Father has commanded me to do.” Oh, what a verse! How deep and how rich is that. The world must learn that I love my Father. How does the world learn that? Watch and see as I go to die. As I go pour out my blood for the Father. It was for love of the Father above all things, that he did it. And yes, it was to love his neighbor as himself. Yes, that as well, but above all things, he did it to love and obey his Father. And that is the gift of righteousness that God wants to give you. How about this one, John 8:29, who of you can say this, Jesus can, “I always do what pleases him.” That is the righteousness he's offering you here today, as a free gift. Oh, how sweet, how wonderful! Our salvation in Christ is based on this love. It was for love of the Father that Christ died for us. Christ Jesus has become for us righteousness. And this righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace. Now, you need to say to yourself, “I can never perfectly love God with all my heart, but Jesus did. And by simple faith in Christ, God sees me as righteous.” You might have walked in here lost, right now, you can say that, by faith. Say “Jesus, save me. Jesus, just save me. Give me your perfect obedience to law, give me your love for the Father and I will be cleansed, I will be holy. Give it to me now by faith.” You don't need to go anywhere. You don't need to walk the aisle, you don't need to come forward, you don't need to sign anything, you just need to believe. And Christians, you need to realize this will forever be your righteousness. But don't stop there, dear Christians. And we're not going to. I'm gonna go back to this text again in two weeks. Because this is just the beginning of your salvation, this justification. Then you know what happens? The righteous requirements of the law need to be fully met in you who do not live according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. You know what the spirit's gonna do the rest of your life? Tell you this, “Love God, love your neighbor, Love God, love your neighbor, give everything you have for God, give everything you have for your neighbor. Pour yourself out the rest of your lives.” And so what we're gonna do in two weeks is we're gonna do some diagnostic work. It's gonna become like a hospital here. We're gonna do the cardio test, we'll put you on the treadmill, and you're just going to be searched by the Word of God, and if you find that you have some defects in your love for God, we're going to show you the scriptural way whereby your love and your affection for God can be rekindled. So, that's in two weeks. In the meantime, I urge you, just look at James 4 because that's our text. The reason that our hearts as Christians grow cold to God is one simple word: idolatry. That's why. We become idolaters, we start to worship created things more than the Creator. And James 4, among other passages, is the cure for idolatry. Close with me in prayer.

Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on Matthew 22:34-40. The main subject of the sermon is how Jesus sums up the Law of God in two commandments.