And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, which commandment is the most important of all? Jesus answered, the most important is, 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. The second is this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. And the scribe said to him, you are right, teacher, you have truly said that he is one and there is no other beside him. And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding, with all the strength and to love one's neighbor as oneself is much more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, you are not far from the kingdom of God. And after that, no one dared to ask him any more questions. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. Lord, we know that We cannot keep your commandments perfectly, but Lord, by your Spirit's empowerment, we keep them not to try and earn anything, Lord, but we keep them out of grateful hearts because you first loved us. We want to love you, Lord. Help us. Help us to grow in our faith. Help us to grow in our commitment. Help us to grow through your word here to be more like Jesus each and every day, Father, for we ask it in his name. Amen. Well this morning we talked about the law of God and grace and we learned that the law shows us God's holiness and the law shows us our sin and the law leads us to Christ. Now I want to look tonight at the great commandment which Jesus says all the law and all the prophets hang on these two commandments. Love God, and love people. I remember a number of years ago a book came out, it's a classic now, it was called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by a guy named Robert Fulgham, and he argues that the most important lessons in life aren't learned in advanced degrees, PhDs, or in complex theories, but in the simple truths we were taught as children. He writes about these basic principles of kindness and fairness and so forth, And I'll just share a few of them with you. Share everything, the things we learn in kindergarten. Play fair. Don't hit people. Clean up your own mess. Put things back where you found them. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt someone. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Take a nap every afternoon. Be aware of wonder, and there's more, but you get the idea. I share this because it's sort of moralism, but I think there's a connection here to the Great Commandment in the sense that he argues that life's simple lessons are foundational to how we live and interact with others. The world may be complicated, but the truths that hold it together are profoundly simple. And I would say, similar to his idea that The lessons we learned in kindergarten are important. I would say the lessons we learned in Sunday school are important to the Christians. The simple truths that even a child can understand. And this is really what Jesus says when this scribe asks him this question, what's the most important commandment Maybe he expected some theological treatise on, you know, each of the Ten Commandments and weighing them all against one another. But instead, Jesus says, the most important commandment, he quotes the Shema from Deuteronomy 6.4. Hear, O Israel, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your might. And then he says, and there's a second command that's like it, love your neighbor yourself. Jesus basically boils down the Christian life and what really is important in terms of obedience to these two commands. Love God and love your neighbor yourself. And friends, the most important kingdom truths, and I would also say that the things that I learned in Sunday school were these things, but more importantly, John 3.16, for God so loved the world. But once we're Christians, this is it, right? The gospel lived out in our daily walk. So tonight let's sit at the feet of Jesus and I want to ask and revisit this foundational question. How's your love life? How's your love life? How are you doing at loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength? And how are we doing? How am I doing? How are you doing loving others as yourself? And so it's a very simple two-point sermon. Yeah, I've got an outline there that you don't have to probably write too much down. This is not a deep theological treatise. This is going back to the kindergarten, the Sunday school stuff. Love God with all your heart, mind, and soul. Love people. So one, love God completely. The heartbeat of true devotion is loving God. But that begs the question, what does it really mean to love God? Well, one of the best books I ever read on this topic was written by one of America's greatest theologians and scholars, an incredible mind, Jonathan Edwards. He was the president of Princeton in 1758. That's when Princeton wasn't liberal. That was before we needed Westminster and other conservative seminaries. Edwards, his preaching played an important part in the First Great Awakening. And he wrote extensively on what it means to love God. Now, he's mostly known in American culture for his sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. You know, where he's got you hanging over the pit of hell by a spider's web thread. Which, it's not a bad sermon, but I think people didn't quite understand where it was coming from. He got a little bit of a bad rap for that, but he's also And the Encyclopedia Britannica, as mentioned, is one of America's greatest minds that has produced by America. Well, he wrote a book, I read it years ago, I haven't read it recently, called The Religious Affections. Now, you know what an affection is. My wife has an affection for chocolate. Affection is a deep, heartfelt inclination of the soul towards something. More than an emotion or a fleeting feeling, it is a powerful movement of the heart that influences one's actions and one's characters. So Edwards wrote this famous book, The Religious Affections, and it's really about loving God. He taught that love for God, and it's very biblical. Edwards was a great exegete of scripture. He says this in The Religious Affections, in great part, consists of holy affections. He taught that love for God is not just about duty or ritual or outward obedience, but it's about delighting in God above all else. This kind of love is not forced or mechanical, it's a natural response to seeing the beauty of Christ. He compared it to a man who does not simply acknowledge that honey is sweet because he read somewhere that honey is sweet, but knows it because he's tasted it himself. So Edward explains that those who truly love God are captivated by his beauty, moved by his grace, consumed with a holy desire to glorify him. He saw the affections, the deep movements of the heart, as the true test of saving faith. If we love God, it'll show, not just in our words, but in our priorities, our passions, obedience. Well, I think Edwards is right. Here's some scriptures that have to do with loving God. The first one is the Shema, the foundational one that Jesus quotes here. Hear, O Israel, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. Loving God with our whole being, the heart, the seat of emotions and affections, not our physical beating heart, but our emotions and our affections. Do we desire God above all else? Loving Him with our soul, our identity, our will, our purpose. Do we align our will with His will? Loving Him with our mind, our thoughts and understanding and intellect. Do we know Him deeply through scripture? Romans 12, one and two says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed, how? By the renewing of your mind through scripture and the Spirit's illuminating work. Loving God is not just a feeling, it is a deliberate commitment. It's not about fitting God into our lives, but about giving him control. over every part of our lives. So another good verse is Matthew 6.33, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added to you. Putting God first, seeking his kingdom first. Loving God is a reflection of the first four commandments. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God. Remember the Sabbath day, keep it holy. Seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. When we truly love God, he becomes our first priority. Loving God means trusting him enough to seek him first, rather than chasing after all the worldly things that tempt us. Another good verse, John 14, 15. Love is shown through obedience. If you love me, keep my commandments. Very simple. Sunday school stuff. Love for God isn't just an emotion, it's an affection that influences our actions, our character. It's a lifestyle of obedience. Jesus connects love and action. If we truly love him, we'll naturally desire to follow him. One of the most famous prayers in Christian history is a prayer made famous by Saint Augustine of Hippo. Augustine, early in his life, although his mother was a Christian, Monica, his father was not, and Augustine chased after many worldly things. He tried to find satisfaction, and fulfillment, and philosophy, and a relationship that he had with a woman, and all these other things. And one day he was out in a garden, and he heard a child say, read, read it, read it. And he opened the Bible and he read, I think it was Romans, I forget the verse and I didn't write it down, but it called him to repentance in Christ and he repented. And he wrote many wonderful things, but he wrote one of the most famous prayers and it goes like this, Lord, you have made us for yourself, oh Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds rest in you. So it's the soul that longs for God is another important part of what it means to love God. And that's, I think, Psalm 42 verses 1 and 2. It's what St. Augustine was saying here, as the deer pants for water brooks, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, the living God. Friends, true love for God creates a hunger and a longing for Him. And this verse illustrates a love that wants to be near God, just as a thirsty deer longs for water. And that's what Saint Augustine was getting at in that prayer. Love, our love, comes from God. We love him, John says in 1st John 4 and 9, because he first loved us. Our love is not about performance or effort or, you know, just book knowledge, what the Pharisees might have had. It's a response to the immeasurable love he has shown us. We don't love him just because it's our duty, although it is our duty to love him. Can you imagine if my wife asked me, why do you love me? And I thought about it and I said, well, it's my Christian duty to love you. I'd be in trouble, right? I love her because I'm in love with her and she loves me and I love her It's more than about duty. It's covenant love. We're in a covenant. We're in a covenant with God. And we love him because he first loved us. So as you reflect on these verses, ask yourself, is my love for God reflected in my priorities, my obedience, my hunger for him? and my response to his love. In the religious affections, Edwards asked whether our faith is marked by a deep, real, and joyful love for God, or whether we're simply going through the motions. He believed that the measure of a person's spiritual life is their love for Christ. If we truly love him, it will change how we live, how we worship, and how we treat others. And oh, by the way, love for God is not an option, friends. It's a command. Remember the question to Jesus, which of the commands is the greatest? If we get all the others wrong, which one do we have to get right? Love God. And you know what? If you get that one right, the others will follow because they're all connected. Every other commandment. That's why Jesus said all the law and the prophets hang on these two commands, loving God and loving people. If we're doing those, we're going to do all the others too because they follow. Jesus affirms it's our number one priority. And elsewhere in Scripture, Paul ends Ephesians with this line, grace to all who love the Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love. And Paul ends Corinthians, if anyone does not love the Lord, let him be accursed. And James says God has promised the crown of life and the kingdom to all who love him. So, Our application and our challenge on this point is just to ask ourselves these questions. Do I love God for who he is and for what he's done for me in Christ Jesus? Do I hunger for more of God? Just as Edward said that tasting honey makes us desire more, a true love for God should lead us to seek him more earnestly in prayer, in scripture, in worship. Has my love for God grown cold and sterile? Edward warned against false affections, a temporary emotional high with no lasting transformation. True love for God grows deeper over time and shapes every part our lives. So that's one. Love for God is the first of these two critical commands. The second is to love others genuinely as evidence of a changed hearts. Now Jesus says the second command is like the first, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. It's interesting, we all know how to love ourselves, don't we? I'll never forget, this was before YouTube and all these other things that are online now. They used to have America's Funniest Home Videos. You don't see shows like that anymore because it's all online stuff, right? All these videos that they show all the time. I remember one, it was called Preening Teen. and they put a hidden camera in a bathroom and there was this teenage teenager, he had no shirt on, he's in the bathroom, he picks up a hairbrush and he starts to sing, pretending he's a rock star, he's jamming, the camera's got him and he's doing all kinds of crazy moves and you can tell this kid was just adoring himself, admiring himself. I used to joke in seminary, that's what the preachers to be would be doing. They'd be in the bathroom working on their motions and so forth. Jesus says, Love your neighbor as yourself. We know how to love ourselves, right? It's not too hard. Most of us are pretty good at loving ourselves. But how good are we at loving our neighbor as ourself? Well, let's talk about what it means. Well, first of all, selflessness. Putting others before ourselves. You know, one of my favorite passages in scripture Philippians 2, 5 through 9, which is a Christological passage. I love it because it's all about Christ. Paul writes, have this attitude in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very form of a servant and humbling himself even unto obedience to death on a cross. So it's Christological, but you know it's in that passage Paul uses Christ's work on the cross to make that Christological point, but he starts it with, have this attitude in you which was also in Christ Jesus. He points to Christ as the example of humbling himself for the sake of others, and that is what it means to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus is the perfect example of that. Jesus links loving God with loving others. We can't truly love God and hate people. It just doesn't work. Loving others means selflessness, putting others before ourselves. It means sacrifice. Loving even when it costs us. Jesus said in John 15, 13, greater love has no one than this, that he lays down his life for his friends. Loving others means consistency. In other words, loving beyond convenience. And Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan. We all know about that one, Luke chapter 15. the Good Samaritan. Friends, we love people not because they deserve it, but because God first loved us. Let me give you an illustration. Corrie ten Boone was a Dutch Christian. I'm sure you all are familiar with her. Her and her family hid Jews during the Holocaust. They were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Her sister Betsy died at Ravensbrück, but there are many wonderful stories and her writings from that time in the concentration camp. After the war, Corrie spoke about God's love and forgiveness and one day a man approached her after a speech. He was a former Nazi guard from Ravensbrück. He extended his hand to Corrie and asked her, will you forgive me? Corrie hesitated. How could she forgive someone responsible for so much suffering? Then she remembered God's command to love and forgive She prayed, Jesus, help me. And as she extended her hand, she felt God's love flowing through her, and she forgave him. Friends, this is true Christian love. Not just kindness to friends, that's easy to do, but forgiveness for enemies. So how can we love like that? How do we get there? Well, I think the Spirit, it's the fruit of the Spirit working in us. We learn to forgive freely as Christ forgave us. We learn to serve others even when it's inconvenient. We see people as God sees people, not through our biases. I've been doing some family history research because I had some family who fought in the Revolutionary War and were gunsmiths in the Revolutionary War and I actually have a couple of the guns that my fifth and sixth great-grandfathers made, but one of them, his name was Benoni Hills. Jacob and Rachel had Benjamin, remember she died in childbirth. as she was dying she named Benjamin Benoni which means son of my sorrows or son of my affliction. Well Jacob didn't want to go through life being reminded so he renamed him Benjamin. So my sixth great-grandfather's name was Benoni Hills because Puritans would often give biblical names and when someone died in childbirth they often gave the son that was born the name Benoni. But anyway, I was reading about him in the Torrington, Connecticut town records, doing some family history research. This was in the 1760s, 1770s, the time of the Revolutionary War. He and some other Christians hired a black man to be a pastor. in Connecticut. They gave him a salary. They built a church building where he could preach. They invited any of the denominations to use that church building. And his great-grandsons, who were my great-great-grandparents, moved to Illinois. That's part of the way my family got to the Midwest. They came out to Illinois to farm. But they also came to Illinois to set up farms for the Underground Railroad. They were abolitionists. And it all started with Benoni, who along with a few other people, and they took a lot of heat for it, hired this black pastor in the 1750s, 60s, 70s. Friends, we love people in spite of our biases. So now I want to just make one or two more quick points before we close this down, but we see people as God sees them. Who in your life needs love and grace. Who do you need to forgive? Who do you need to reach out to? And the two loves are inseparable. Jesus said, on these two, all the law and the prophets hang, on these two commandments, all the law and the prophets hang. Every moral law, every act of worship, every commandment, all boils down to these two things, loving God loving people. The more we love God, the more his love will overflow into our relationships. Let me close with this story. Somebody who was very good at loving God and loving people was George Mueller. He was one of the greatest examples of loving God sacrificially. A 19th century Christian, who dedicated his life to caring for thousands of orphans in England, all by faith. Mueller never asked for money, but he prayed for God to provide. He built orphanages, fed children, and ensured that they were not just cared for physically, but also spiritually. One morning, the orphanage had no food for the children's breakfast. The staff was worried, and Mueller calmly said, God will provide. He gathered the children, thanked God for the meal that they did not have yet, and waited. Moments later, a knock on the door. A baker had felt led in the night to bake extra bread for the orphanage and delivered it fresh that morning. A milkman's cart had broken down outside, and since the milk would spoil, he offered all of it for the children. That morning, everyone was fed without Mueller asking for a single person for help. His faithful love for the most vulnerable was not just talk, it was action. He lived out Jesus' command to love others as we love ourselves, proving that when we trust God fully, he provides everything we need to serve others. Well, what would it be like, friends, if we loved God as passionately as Jesus? love the Father. If we love God and others as passionately as Jonathan Edwards loved God and people, as George Mueller did, all I ever really needed to know I didn't learn in kindergarten. I learned at the feet of Jesus. Loving God with our whole heart, not just with words, but with our time, desires, our priorities, loving others selflessly, not just when it's convenient, but in real, tangible ways. When we live out the great commandment, we reflect the very heart of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. Let's pray. Father, thank you for