Turn with me and your Bibles or look on the screen. We're going to continue to be in Matthew 22. We'll be looking at verses 34 through 40 this morning. But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And he said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. Now join me in prayer this morning. Dear Father, our Father in heaven, we thank you for so many things, in particular for your word and for its preservation and for its accessibility, for your words consistency. We are very thankful for your word and the savior it reveals. We are thankful for its life giving power. Thank you for your spirit who enlightens our hearts to your words message. I am grateful, oh God, that your words are words of life and that you've made them available to us, this group of believers in this specific time. We are so very thankful for it. You have promised that you are with us always. We rest in that promise. We depend on it even today. We see you, God, you have revealed yourself and we experience that you are a God of grace. You've given us a savior and I ask that you would please give us a faith to live only by him, to make him our daily desire and our hope. May his glory be our goal and our glory. Christ Jesus, you are our refuge and our foundation. Christ Jesus, you are the only way to the Father. You are our guide and our protector. I thank you for the continued work today of interceding for us. We know you are doing that, you have promised it. We desire to obey you and to not be ashamed of you. Give us strength and grace and remind us all of your love. Use me, Christ Jesus, to remind others of your great love for us. Use these people here to remind others of your great love and mercy. Protect our hearts, dear God. I am prone to sin and selfishness, and I need you, Holy Spirit. Be with me today, all this week, and all this month, that I might properly use your word to guard against sin. But Lord, give me grace and humility and trust in your word's power to never use your word as a weapon against your children, to judge not, but to listen and pray and serve and believe your word. Oh God, our world can be very confusing and fear enters our hearts as soon as we read the news. But we know that you are sovereign in all things, in viruses and elections and in the workings of our church and our school and our individual lives. We trust your care and ask that you grant us a strength that is found in your joy. May we be patient with those who disagree with us. May we be like Christ and look on people with compassion and love. That is what we have experienced from you, Lord Jesus. Thank you. Protect us in these days where we don't know how to respond or how to explain what we are seeing. or even how to be a friend or a parent or a husband or a wife. We are so needy, and you are so great. We will wait on you, O Lord. We know that we will see your goodness in the land of the living, in this day, in this time. You are working, and we do not need to fear. I can have courage and strength because of you, and I'm glad to wait for you. I know you are faithful and that you love me. You love us. Thank you for hearing our prayers in the name of Jesus. Amen. Well, thank you so much for the kind notes. It's a pleasure to shepherd here. It's a pleasure to be a part of what God is doing here at Calvary Bible Church. And I'm so glad to have you here today. We get to jump into the Word of God just like every week. And I hope you've come hungering and thirsting for righteousness. And my prayer is that you will go away filled because of God's Word being poured out to you this morning. It's a very important text. I wanna just talk to you just a little bit before we jump into the text, what's gonna be happening in the next couple of weeks. I've asked Hunter, our church planner, to come and speak next Sunday. So next Sunday, in both services in the morning, he's gonna come and present kind of an update on how things went tonight as they will launch their first service with the church plant. I know they're very excited. We are excited, too, as we get to kind of watch it happen from afar. I think it's a wonderful thing that we get to participate in helping this little church take off and grow. So will you pray tonight, begin at 430, and will you pray that God will bless it? this afternoon, or as soon as I'm done here, I will actually make a quick exit, and I'm gonna go downstairs to the fireplace room where the Hispanic church is, and I'm gonna be preaching there for their morning service as well. A different message, so I'll change gears, and I won't be doing it in Spanish, I can't speak in Spanish, but we have it translated out already, and so they'll have it translated, but I'm looking forward to that. Then next Sunday, while Hunter is preaching, I will actually be in Trinity Bible Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. And some of you know and remember when Joe Henson was here. Joe's the pastor there, and he has asked me to come and speak there next Sunday. And then that following week, I will spend three days at a pastor's retreat at a retreat center there in North Carolina. So I'm looking forward to that. I'm actually going to give them some of my classwork So they're doomed, all right? Some of the work that I've been working on as far as preaching is concerned, so I'm looking forward to that. And then the following week, Dr. Fred Zaspa will be here with us, and he will be speaking primarily on just focusing on who Jesus Christ is. and I'm looking forward to these next couple of weeks. But I covet your prayers. We won't be gone until the end of the week. We'll be here all week, and I've got certain folks that I'm meeting with, so I wanna keep doing that as well. But I'm so glad that you're here today. Let's look into the text this morning, Matthew chapter 22. You see the title of it. This is part three of a three-part message of the enemies of Jesus trying to silence Jesus this is his last week and before the this is headed into the cross he's headed into the crucifixion and he's been Basically attacked three different times all on one day many many will say this happened on Wednesday Some will say it happened on Tuesday, but it's it's it's right before They actually take him and arrest him. So Let's look at this text this morning. This is part three silencing God No one likes to be silenced. I Mean, don't you hate it when someone looks at you and goes? Shh We just don't like that. We feel a certain right to be able to speak. We're not fond of censorship here in America. And even the censoring that is taking place in our world right now, in the social media as well as the general media, it's not helpful. basically because there are certain parts of the story that's often missing and that's missing because they want to censor it. And muting certain messages or skewing the message or even totally censoring the message really goes to the heart of authority. Who has right to say, we can say this or we shouldn't say this or we can't say this? Silencing someone happens often in our world, and it even happens in our homes, unfortunately. We silence people at home, and it's a sign often of deep hurt. It also can be a sign of manipulation where someone is trying to hush someone because they're trying to manipulate the world and what is going around them. Or maybe they want to just have a strong-handed authority in their world. They want to control it. And silencing someone then assumes an authority or a right to squash someone else's opinion or someone else's version of an incident or simply someone else's thoughts or words. It's not healthy and it brings great pain and it tears at relationships. So you don't want to be silenced and you don't want to be a silencer. In our text this morning, we see the third attempt at the religious leaders in Jerusalem seeking to silence the Creator of the ends of the earth. Seeking to silence Jesus. They want to dismiss his authority, they want to dismiss his impact, not only on their lives personally, but in particular on the culture and the lives of the people of Jerusalem. And so we saw the Herodians and the Pharisees and that combo were unable to silence Jesus. And last week we learned about the Sadducees attempt and failure to silence Jesus. In fact, Jesus silenced them. Look with me in verse 34. But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And once again, we see it fall into the lap of the Pharisees to perhaps put, somehow, someway, put an end to what Jesus is saying. And I'm wondering if you read the text with us this morning, I wonder if you were struck again by the fact that Jesus is fully centered in God. He says, love the Lord your God, and he brings God into the picture there. If you remember back in Matthew chapter 4, there were three temptations in the desert by the evil one, Satan himself. And Jesus responded all three times with, this is who God is. This is what God's word says. And now we have three more questions that come across to Jesus. And each time, God is the center of his answer. In chapter 22, verse 15 through 22, God is sovereign over Caesar. Remember the coin that was brought up. Should we pay the poll tax? And Jesus' response was, God is sovereign over Caesar, don't worry about that. And then last week in verses 22 through 33, God is sovereign over death and resurrection. The question was, whose wife will this woman be after seven brothers? And we went through that whole thing. And I still kind of chuckle at that. I'm going like, my goodness, if I was like brother number four, I would be going, all right, something's not right here about this. But it was hypothetical. But the answer is God is sovereign over this. And today I want you to see that God is sovereign over all human responsibilities. God has put in place human responsibilities. And this is something for you and me to learn and to grasp hold of today. That the human responsibilities that God has given to us are ours. We'll talk more about that in a minute. But my point here is that Jesus is very God-centered. We too should be God-centered in every area of our life. With his heart firmly planted in the will of the Father, Jesus then is not swayed in his mission. He knows he's headed to the cross. But what rules Jesus' heart is his love for the Father. His love for the Father is perfect. It's a perfect love that he has for the Father. But it is this same love that must rule our lives as well. This is the whole point of this text. In fact, according to Jesus, loving God is the single most important matter that demands our total attention, our total time, and all of our energies of life. Learning how to love God. should consume us because the people of the kingdom of God live out all human responsibilities. We must do this with love. So this is so important. Jesus says it is the greatest. It's the greatest commandment. But what does it mean to love someone? What does it mean to biblically love someone? Well, biblical love is a benevolent, and often costly choice to help your neighbor grow towards God. It's a benevolent, it's a generous choice that often costs you, but it helps your neighbor grow more towards God. One writer says it in a little bit different way. He says, biblical love is doing what is best for another in light of eternity. But biblical love always has eternity in view. And because of that, what makes this definition so opposed to the normal world's definition of what love is, is because number one, the definition lifts the focus away from man and puts it on God. You understand, love is not a man-oriented thing. It comes from God. God created us. But God is love. And so love comes from God. But notice, secondly, it takes the focus off the physical needs and places it on the eternal. My goodness, your needs today are not merely physical. Now, we all have physical needs this morning, but the biggest need that we have is an eternal need. And biblical love goes there. But thirdly, it also takes the focus away from feeling and puts it on a choice. It's a benevolent choice. It's a generous choice. It is going out of my way to sacrificially, at great cost even to myself, to allow others to grow in their understanding of God. This is what biblical love is. This is not something, though, that erupts from your own heart. It's not. You cannot force something like this. You cannot manufacture this kind of biblical love. It's not a t-shirt that you put on. It's not some nice little saying that you can put on your Twitter account or an Instagram lovely picture with butterflies and birds. No, that's not what it is. It's where the rubber hits the road of life. And this is the point that Jesus is making. Jesus doesn't hesitate at all to speak to the human responsibility to obey this greatest command. Now here's what I want you to see. First of all, the command that he gives here is a personal command. Look down, if you would, in the verse here. The teacher says, or the lawyer, it's the lawyer that's asking this question, and he's designed to test him once again. But he says, teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? And Jesus says to him, you shall love the Lord your God. Notice the pronoun you. You, this is a personal command. This is to each one of you, each one of us today. But this is exactly where human responsibility begins, doesn't it? We in this world today must understand that God has given to us a human responsibility and it begins with you, each one of you. See how many times the pronoun you is spoken? Now every good Jew knows this by heart and quotes it at least twice a day as part of the Shema. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. You can't miss God's intentions here. Each person has similar responsibility to the creator and to the sovereign of the universe. You are held responsible for this great command. You're to love the Lord, your God. And what that means is in no sense are you unattached to anything in this world. In no sense are you unattached to anything in this world. You are not here without divine purpose. You have the image of God imprinted upon you. You exist by his pleasure and for his good and for his perfect purposes. No one enters or continues in this world apart from God's power to both create and God's power to sustain you. God has placed you here. He has placed eternity in your heart. It is God who has done this and you see the evidence of God's existence every time you open your eyes and every time you take a breath. That is God who has brought you into this world. You feel the very existence of God every time your conscience winces, or it grieves, or it warns you. And what God is saying at this particular time, you shall love the Lord your God. What's beautiful here is Mark's gospel itself gives an evidence of this kind of love that Jesus had for this lawyer. and this scribe. Matthew doesn't bring into the picture, and I just want to draw your attention to it, because I want you to see how Jesus himself lives this out in Mark chapter 12, verse 32. After he says the words that he says here, the lawyer says, you are right, teacher, to love God is greater than all burnt sacrifices. He understood it at least mentally. And Jesus' response to him is amazing. Because Jesus said back to him, you are not far from the kingdom of God. Be curious if that lawyer ever came to Christ. Repented from his sin and by faith trusted in Jesus, but Jesus love for this man is amazing But someone may hear say to me this morning. Hey, I don't consider him to be my God So I have no responsibility to him. I mean, he's not he's not my God Eric That's okay for you, but he's not my God and really from a worldly standpoint. It sounds logical and may even sound right and But you understand something, what God is saying here is this, He is the Lord God, whether you acknowledge Him or not. And because He has commanded your love, you cannot avoid loving Him without considerable circumstances. If you pretend to deny God, and that's all you're doing is pretending, you cannot deny God. I always think of the illustration that the person that jumps out of an airplane. He's pretending that he's having fun. But guess what? He's coming down. Why? Because God's law has gravity in it. It's God's law. It's the way God has designed things. And even if he has a parachute, he's still coming down. Why? Because he's not in charge. God is. And so we can pretend all we want to, but there are consequences to the choices that we make. But when the Bible speaks of this love, it speaks a love that impacts our will. And we make a choice in accordance with the spirit of God that's working in us. So we're not left to our own devices here to try to figure this massive thing called love out. But each of us is personally and individually given this command to love. So can I tell you this morning, you, you love God. Do it, love God. But notice secondly, the command has a specific object. And this is what makes it beautiful. Because the love that God works in you by his grace is the love that points back to the object God himself. And this is a beautiful thing. Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 6.5. And in context, Moses is standing there, speaking to the people of Israel, and he purposefully justifies and identifies just who this God is. So it's not a random God. And you understand, he says this, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one. Listen to what I'm saying. Because this God is different from all other gods of all other nations that you would see. Understand something. Every nation around Israel was riddled with a multitude of gods. Multitude of them. But Israel's God was the one God. There really is only one God. He was not a combination of Canaanite and Phoenician and Egypt deities. Kind of peppered in with a little bit of Palestinian slant to it. No, that's not the way our God is. He's the unique Lord God that revealed himself to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And Abraham's heritage, before coming to God, before God chose him, was a God of many gods. He was polytheistic, filled with different pagan gods of his ancestors. And out of the burning bush, Moses stands there. And God says to him, I am that I am. I am God. I am. That's all you need to know. You love this God. It's not you shall love God, one of many gods. He has but one God in mind. You're to love Him as the Lord God. In other words, we are to love God for who He is. Because He's the Creator. He's the Sovereign One. Then, all of my love and affection rightly belongs to this one God. We live our lives valuing Him for who He is, and in awe of Him, we serve Him selflessly. We admire Him devotedly, and we praise Him unceasingly. And we serve Him joyously because He's the one God. There is no other God. You see, God has wired us that way from the beginning. He's put us together with that idea in mind, that all of our heart and all of our lives was to reflect His perfections and reflect His glory. And what we treasure and serve and honor is what we love. It speaks to what we love. Now, honestly, we sometimes struggle to love someone who we think doesn't love us. Isn't that true? We struggle with that. If that person doesn't like me or gives hint that they don't like me, we struggle with loving them in return. We sometimes look at God that way, and we think that he is irritated at us, that he's somehow angry with us, or that he's put out with us. But for those who have by grace been transformed by his steadfast love, I will tell you, you are never more loved than what you are right now. And this love is not a matter of feeling. It's a matter of propositional truth. You are loved. We've been transformed by His love. You see, from Genesis to Revelation, the entire Bible is a magnificent love story. of humanity running rebelliously away from him and God's pursuing love. The very fact that you are here this morning indicates that God has set his love on you and you today get to hear the good news of the gospel one more time. He's pursuing you. So you run to that God and you love him. I love how Isaiah 43 verse one says this. This is so beautiful. Now he says the Lord. Now says the Lord. Now says this one God. He who created you, O Jacob. He who formed you, O Israel. Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name. You are mine. You are mine. This is a God who picks up his own and brings him to his chest and says, you are mine. On Friday, I had the privilege of stopping by my one son's house, Quentin. And literally my car pulled up in front of the house and I could see they had their door open. And little Augie, that's their two year old, right? I mean, he's two. came running to the door. I could hear him from way out where I was. I could hear him, pops, pops, pops. And so Quentin opens the door and he comes running out just like this. And he was like he'd gone bonkers. It was just me. And I picked him up and I looked at him and I didn't say this, but my heart glowed with this. You are mine. This is what our God does to those he loves. You are mine. I have redeemed you. It's a beautiful picture. This is his steadfast pursuing love, and it is this God that says to us, you love God. And here's what this means. We find then nothing in all of earth that is more treasured by us and more loved than God. Israel repeated this confession of love to the Lord daily as a reminder of their fickleness towards an idolatrous love and the intense need to set one's hearts and one's affirmation on this love. The intense need of us to cry out to God to love Him daily. And I'm amazed how little we really love God and treasure Him alone. You say, what are you talking about? Well, the choices we make in life makes it seem like everything in life is so much more important than Him. It's so much more important what others say than what God says. I see this in social media all the time. You rarely hear someone who will speak what God says. But we're constantly saying what other people say. Or we're constantly saying what we say. But our hearts should be set on hearing the one that we love, the one that we treasure. Love by its very nature has an object and it holds it dear. It esteems that object. It cherishes that object. It gives itself wholly to that object. So, my friend, today, you love your Lord. You love your God. But notice thirdly, the command is comprehensive. We can't get away from this. All your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. And it is here where Jesus begins to open up the hearts of his followers, and he bids them to enter a life of affection. A life of love. A life of warmth. A life filled with affection. We're designed by God to love. He has given us this heart to love. And the word here of heart literally is the center of one's being. It is where the mental, the critical, or the rational part of humanity lives. It's the computer system, as it were, that runs out of everything else. It is God's love for us. and we are to love him with all of our soul. You know, even the terms that are used here, heart, soul, and mind, all express overlapping ideas. How do we distinguish a heart or a soul and a mind from each other without somehow overlapping these definitions? The heart is the seat of our affections, the very core of our being. Yet when we explain the soul, we have to define it in terms of the center of our being as well, the true personality that lives forever, made to love and to worship and to praise and obey God. Yet none of this can be done without engaging our rational mind, engaging our thinking upon God, and fixing our mind on who He is and what He has done for us. So what is involved with loving God with all of our hearts and soul and mind? It is loving God must fill every part of our lives. The use of the word or the adverb all with heart, soul, and mind implies that we are to love to the fullest extent of each of our faculties. Every aspect of our lives should be filled with loving God. and standing in awe of Him. This is a beautiful thing that we should be given of ourselves too. We should love Him energetically. We should love Him throughout the whole timeframe of our existence. We should love to express that love through everything that He has given to us. To love God with all your heart, insist on engaging the depths of our human affections. They're so tainted by the fall. That we love ourselves, but instead we give of all that we are, even in habitual form, we give it to give of ourselves to Him. And yet no one, or excuse me, no love can be shown to God without loving Him with all of our mind. This is why we're here this morning. We engage our mind, we engage on what it is that we're thinking, and so it implies a stretching of ourselves to comprehend the fullest capacity to express this love for God. You must think upon Him and let your thoughts and your understanding of Him grow, and be careful not to put man-made limitations on the completeness of His Godhead. You must grapple with how this God has revealed himself to us in Christ. You must satisfy your soul's longings on the infinite godness of God. It is his love that kept him on the cross, bearing the wrath of the Father. thinking upon the nature of his grace that condescends to you as a sinner and brings you into his own bosom as a son. This is magnificent love. This loving God, then, is not stagnant. This loving God is not complacent. It is not inactive. And it is not on automatic pilot. There is a sense to which you don't come in and disengage your mind and just sit here and just kind of, all right, let's get through this. No, no, you are here because you want to love God lavishly. And I want to know more about him. This loving God then is intentional. You do so energetically. You do so with fullness. You do so consciously. And you do so openly. When we sing this morning in a few moments, we should sing at the top of our lungs. Why? Because God is love and he has loved us with an amazing love and we get to love him. Now, notice fourthly this morning, this command is prioritized. Now stay with me because this is where it gets really good, all right? Look at verse 38 and 39. This is the great and the first commandment. This is good. This is the great, he says, and the first commandment. And then he says something peculiar. And the second is like it. You love your neighbor as yourself. The greatest commandment is to love God. Love Him. You love Him. You love Him. But then Jesus says something that is quite interesting. The second is like the first. But it's second, but it's like the first. It's just as important like the first. The first is vertical in nature. We don't live necessarily in the vertical world, but we live out of the vertical and into the horizontal. This is why we come together. We come to focus our attention on all that God is for the purpose of walking out and living in the horizontal in light of the vertical. The first though, is the foundation of the second. Loving God is the foundation to loving people. But it's the second that actually reveals the integrity of the first. You understand that? In other words, if you love God, you will love people. And how you love people reflects exactly how you love God. It's amazing. Because what it does is it shows us, really, how difficult it is to do something that's not in our nature. It's not in our nature to love God, and it's not in our nature to love others. And if God doesn't do something in us supernaturally, we cannot do this. But if you love God, it shows up exactly in how you love people. Here's where the hypocrisy, though, of Christ's opponents is uncovered. Because by all outward appearances, they looked apart. They looked like they loved God. They loved God outwardly, but they had such a nasty disregard for people. And what I want you to see this morning is, and I want you to stay with me, in one striking sentence, Jesus gives the believer our place. in a world filled with sin and mistreatment and abuse of people, in a world filled with anger and bitterness over being abused and maligned, and he simplifies the Christian life, and he doesn't have to use politically charged words, but just simply says, you love God, and you love people. He keeps it simple. You say, well, how does this help? Well, this helps the believer today. And it covers the basis today of dealing with issues like race, like social justice, like other political movements that we see in our world today that only seek to divide humanity and drive people to sides. In our political world today, we are more divided than ever. And Jesus doesn't have to go into another world and start talking to our world. Instead, he comes at it from a very kingdom mindset. And he says, here's the keys to life here. You love God and you love people. But I want you to see that it begins with loving God. That's where it begins. And it begins with loving God with all that we are and with all that we have. But what happens is, is when we try to push God out of our society, and it's only a trying, it's only in our minds that we push God out of our society, it leaves a vacuum that will never stay a vacuum with nothing. You understand? Sin and our fallenness will make sure that it is filled with everything that is contrary to God. It will build a big hole. When you try to live a life as if God doesn't exist, then you will have to fill that with something. And what you do is you fill it with something that is contrary to God. And this is what we're seeing in our world today. Begins with loving God and all that we are. So understand something. From God's standpoint, there's only one race. The human race. You say, well, that's pretty simplistic, isn't it, Pastor? Yeah, it really is, but it puts it right where it is. Now, there are many different ethnic groups of people, and those differences may include a skin color, they may include facial features, they may include so many other things that make them unique, but it is this uniqueness that should cause us to stand in awe and marvel in a greater way of love towards God. Look what God has made. It shouldn't cause us to be divided. It shouldn't cause us to think more highly of ourselves. No, we look at our world and we are amazed at all of the differences that are there under one race. It's beautiful. But this love, then, For God is the foundation then that allows us to love people so that we can rightly say life given to us by God, life matters. And it does. Life matters. And we can honestly say theologically that the life of someone who has a different skin color than us matters to God and it matters to me. It does matter. It should matter. But it should not be so for the idea of the realities of the world that we live in. In other words, this, the movements that are anti-God, that try to remove God, will also be their very nature to live in such a way that they will be anti-certain people who are then different. Why? Because they are anti-God. And this is what's left. To have this world divided into different places that God never intends is never God's plan for humanity. You see, all of the Ten Commandments are given to us by God and inform our hearts just how life's relationships should be. Our lives should be given of ourselves to God, and then we give ourselves to others. We love God with everything that we are, and then these earthly relationships will suddenly be put in the right place, and they will take on the right significance because God has made them, and there will be joy, and our souls will be the result of it. But when God isn't the one true God that we're worshiping, then our whole world will be turned upside down, and we will decide who we will love and who we will not love. And this is our world today. It is totally upside down. Look with me for a moment. Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments. That's what he says. Well, notice the 10 commandments that he gives to us. Walk with me through this just a minute. Loving God means, first of all, that you don't worship other gods. Why? Because there are no other gods. Instead, you guard your heart to other things that would steal your worship away from the one true God. You live on guard, you live knowing that your heart is an idle manufacturer. You want something other than the one true God. So loving God means you worship the one true God. Notice secondly, you don't set up then false notions of what God is or who God is. You don't manufacture things and call that God. Why? Because there is no other God. You love the one true God. Instead, you learn how God has revealed himself and you believe him. Thirdly, you don't use his name thoughtlessly. You don't use his name in vain. Everyone probably here today would agree with me and go, yeah, yeah, yeah. But how many of us get caught up in using even the three letter symbol, OMG, oh my God. And we use that without even thinking. Or we will say, oh God. And not even think twice that that's just a violation of command number three. We're twisting it however we want to. And it's always weird to me that we abuse the name of Jesus Christ. I mean, like, why not Charlie Brown? Why don't we just say Charlie Brown? Because it's God that we're dealing with and it shows our animosity naturally towards God. You don't use his name thoughtlessly. Verse four, you remember the Sabbath day and you keep it holy. You remember the Lord's day. You protect the Lord's day. Meaning nothing gets in the way of being with God's people and worshiping him, nothing. Nothing is more important than what we do here on Sundays. We gather together because we are rehearsing for eternity. We're looking forward to meeting with people from all tongues, all tribes, all nations. And we're looking forward to that. So we get to practice. We get to do it with each other. And we come together and we can't wait to see each other. Why? Because someday we're going to see our savior and we're going to see him together. Oh my goodness. Isn't that going to be great? We're going to see our Lord that day. So you love God. And you love God that way. But loving God and loving others means then that you honor your parents. You honor your parents. Young people, listen to me. There's no greater picture of God's will for your life than your mom and dad. You didn't choose them. Right? You didn't go, man, I'll take that one. You didn't do that. God says, they'll take you. That's what he does. And ultimately, you belong to God. And the two people, mom and dad, that you've been given are God's gift to you. And so every time you dishonor them, you're dishonoring the God who put them in place. You go, well, you just don't know my mom and dad. No, I may not. But what you're seeing is they're probably imperfect, right? Yeah. So are you. But there is a perfect one, Jesus. And so if you love him, you honor mom and dad. It seems like a pretty big deal for God to make that one of the main core commands. But if you're loving people, you begin at home. You begin at home. Now, parents live in such a way that you make it easy for your kids to love you. Right? You love them and you love them in hard ways and you go through life with them through difficult scenarios. But if you love others, you begin the first relationship you will ever know honoring mom and dad. And then if you love others and you love God and you love others, you don't murder. You value and protect human life. You don't kill the unborn. And it should infuriate you that the unborn is being slaughtered I will tell you, our nation is in for the judgment of God, because we have done this. I say we, I'm in that, I'm in that. I have not been as upset about this as I really should be. And God is continuing to work that into my own heart and life. But I'm telling you, we should be for life, because God is for life. You shouldn't murder. Then number seven, if you love God and love people, you don't give yourself to sexual sin. You value purity, and you value the chastity of yourself and of others, because they're made in the image of God. You don't give yourself to pornography. You don't give yourself to doing your own thing. You give yourself to Him, and you love others. You don't steal, but you protect the property of others, and you work hard at a job so that you have something to give. You don't lie, you don't bear false witness, why? Because you value the truth. You recognize its power to build up and encourage others, and you recognize the destructive nature of falsehood. And you care about people around you, so you say the truth. And sometimes you say it to your own hurt. Then finally, you don't covet. You don't look at what others have and compare it with what you don't have. This is the source of much of our nation's problem with such anxiety today. We're all the time coveting what we don't have. Instead, we live with contentment. You live with gratitude and thanksgiving. Why? Because God will provide all you need. You also live generously. Why? Because God has given to you. It's not what you have, it's what God has given to you. And you give out of that accumulation of stuff. You give of that away, and you're generous. Now, how do we do this? What's the barometer that he gives to us? Well, he tells you. He says, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And most of you would say, no, wait a minute, pastor. I've got to love myself first. And I would say to you, no, I don't buy into that stuff because the truth is we automatically love ourselves first. And all you have to do is look at a one-year-old. They grow up loving oneself first. Remember the first time, Carissa, we told her no. Literally, she was on the changing table. Not a good place to be. to demand your own way, right? All she wanted was the baby powder. They don't even put baby powder on anymore, do they? But we did back then, right? We were bad parents, had baby powder. And she didn't know that she wasn't supposed to pour it on her face like that, you know? I mean, I was trying to help her understand that. So I took it away from her. Bah! I want my own way. I didn't teach her that. She was born with that. So how do you then, do you love others as you love yourself? Well, let me just ask you very, very calmly, what do you do when you get hungry? What do you do? Yeah, you find something to eat. Why? Because you love yourself. You want that hunger to go away. What do you do when you get cold? You turn the heat up. Get a blanket, why? Because you love yourself. That's a good thing, all right? That's not bad. You should probably take care of yourself that way. But think now, how do you love others? That same way, when you see someone else who's hungry, and you go, hey, have some banana nut bread. Hey, have some. I like banana nut bread, all right? Okay, I like it. It's this time of year, everyone does banana nut bread, all right? Have some pumpkin bread. Have something to eat. Why? Because you're hungry. And it's given of oneself to meet the needs of someone else in order that they may see God. What do you do when someone's lonely? Do you know what it's like to be lonely? I know what it's like to feel lonely. I'm not lonely, I'm not alone, but I feel it. What do you do? You love yourself. You put around yourself the things that will cheer you up. That's what you do when other people around you, you're sensing they're lonely. What do you do? You give of yourself. It's natural for us. That's how we give. Now here's what I want you to see, because he sums it all up. He says this is the entire law. The entire law, the whole law of God hinges on the great command of love. Every aspect, the entire law wants the adoration of God fully, and it teaches us how to do it. The entire law cherishes the love of humanity intentionally. God has given to us this entire witness of scriptures to show us exactly how to love God and how the love of God affects every part of our soul and in turn affects our earthly existence. This great command answers every social issue that we're facing. We don't need to create more laws. What we need to do is do the two that are just as important as each other, love God and love people. We wouldn't have these other social problems. But here's the deal, we've gotta do it perfectly. And that's what we cannot do. We can't do this perfectly. Imagine yourself waking up on Monday morning Waking up and the first thing you do is covet someone else's new car And you've blown it for the rest of the day Why because you violated one law and scripture says you violate one law you violated them all You've blown it. So the rest of the day you're you live out of grief. You live out of shame you go like man I can't do it. This is the point my friend that Jesus is making Love God and love people and you can't do it. This is why Jesus is headed to the cross, because he's gonna do it for you in all perfection. Teenager, you're struggling, look to Jesus. Some of you are struggling, taking care of older mom and dad, look to Jesus. Jesus did it perfectly on your behalf. Give your love to him. And you know what? It demonstrates the whole character of God. Because Christ, at the appointed time, came and gave of himself, lived perfectly on our behalf, but died the death that was ours to die. And he did so in a way that would cause us to have eternal life. And this is why we celebrate the Lord's Supper.