All You Need is Love . . . And More

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack takes us through his series on the book of Matthew called

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Not Your Average Savior. Let's listen in. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Recast Church.

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I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here. And welcome to all of you who are gathered here, and welcome to those who are tuning in on our live stream.

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I'm glad that you're able to be a part of what's going on here this morning, too. I'm really glad that we can gather together and hear from God's Word, and the emphasis is on the word together.

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It is our goal here that everyone continues to grow in faith, grow in community, and grow in service.

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And it's our conviction that we need all three of those to be expanding circles in our lives of faith, community, and service.

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And the primary reason we get together on Sunday morning is for that purpose of growing in our faith.

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And that's why we focus so much of our attention on the Word of God during our gatherings. We read it together.

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We discuss it together. The biggest chunk of our gathering is usually hearing from God's Word. We believe that our faith is necessarily kind of one -to -one, tied together, directly to God's self -disclosure of himself through the written

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Word. And so, we take that seriously here. We believe that that's how our faith expands and how it grows.

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And so, this morning we're going to be looking at the final question that was posed to Jesus in this section of Scripture in Matthew chapter 22.

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And then, some of you might be going, where's Christmas, Don? We're going to be actually focusing the next three messages on Christmas, a short series called

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Christmas Words. Covering and kind of discussing three words that we hear a lot. You see them on Christmas cards.

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You see it a lot during this season. The three words that we're focusing in on are joy, peace, and then the first message in the new year, hope.

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And these are three words that all of us need. Our culture, how many of you know our culture needs those three words, joy, peace, and hope?

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How many of you would acknowledge that in your own heart you need those three things? Like, we need to be reminded of them regularly.

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And so, these words represent three things that are ushered in by the arrival of Jesus Christ our

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Lord. And so, his arrival reminds us that now joy has come. In his arrival, peace has come.

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In his arrival, hope has come to us. And so, we're going to be looking at that in the coming three weeks' messages.

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And also, just thinking about hope is a great idea. Wrapping up a tough year and heading into a new year, a new year of hope.

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This morning, our text is going to cover, though, the last of three questions that were asked by the religious elites, by those religious leaders, the

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Pharisees and the Sadducees. They were trying to trip up Jesus. This is his last week of life as we get down to Matthew chapter 22 all the way through the end.

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We're talking about the end and all of it takes place in that last week of his life. And they're trying to trip him up. They want

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Jesus to fail. They want him to become embroiled in controversy in front of the crowds there in the temple area.

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They wanted him to say something that would divide his following. And this question is no different than they asked today.

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Now, one thing that before we read it, I want you to understand that when Jesus actually is answering the question, which command is the greatest?

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He has 613 Old Testament commands to deal with in answering that question.

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The Jewish scholars isolated 613 discrete commands or imperatives found in that Old Testament law.

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Now, can you imagine living a life where you have to have 613 rules in mind at all times? You step into the first, you know, you kids, you step into your teacher's classroom.

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And don't worry kids, here's a list of my classroom rules and there's 613 of them. How many of you are going to be like, what?

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Like, do you know what I'm talking about? 613 laws is a lot to try to keep in balance. And so, it makes sense that the religious scholars were frequently debating and arguing and categorizing these laws.

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And they liked to call them heavier laws and lighter laws. And they categorized them that way.

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Which are the heaviest? Which are the lightest? And furthermore, they were constantly in pursuit of the greatest of all laws.

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They would debate this among themselves. And different religious groups and different denominations would have, would defend their law.

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This is the greatest of law. And what you need to understand is when we come to this text, the full on expectation was that Jesus' answer should be one of the

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Ten Commandments. That's the way that most of the religious leaders saw it during this time and this era.

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They would debate and argue about which of the Ten Commandments would be the centerpiece of God's law.

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And so I want you to turn to your Bibles, turn to your Bibles to Matthew chapter 22 verses 34 through 40.

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Matthew 22, you can, you know, get a device if you've got one that has the Bible on it. Turn over there.

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But what we're going to see is Jesus skillfully answer the questions. Answer the question, which is the greatest law?

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And he's going to frame that with the, frame the entire law with this skillful answer.

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Including the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments will be under the law that he mentioned. And so, again, recast, this is

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God's holy precious word that we're reading. This is a word that desires to change us. Where we might find ourselves disagreeing any time with God's word, it is simply because we need to come in line and conform to it.

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So, again, it's a privilege that we have to hear from God's word. Matthew 22 verses 34 through 40.

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But then the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees. When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the

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Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.

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Teacher, which is the greatest commandment of the law? And he said to him, you shall love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all of your mind. This is the great and first commandment.

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And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your word that speaks into our daily lives.

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And even a law that is so precise as to get down to the things that we need, moment by moment, day by day, hour by hour, week by week.

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We need to love you better, and we need to love others better. And I just thank you for the clarity with which

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Jesus answers this question. A clarity that astonished the crowds. A clarity that amazed them.

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And Father, a clarity that defines marching orders for all of us who belong to you.

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And Father, I thank you for the opportunity we have to gather together. I thank you. I know I need it. I need the gathering together of God's people.

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I need to be in fellowship with others. And I pray that you would continue to alleviate and continue to move us past this

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COVID thing. But for now, in this time, I thank you that we have the opportunity to fellowship even with those who are on the live stream right now.

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And those who are longing for the gathering of people and are longing to get back to us.

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And so, Father, I pray that you would be with everyone wherever they're at in the different stages of this thing. And continue to be moving us all as a culture back towards that face -to -face gathering of your people.

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And Father, I thank you that we have an opportunity to praise you in this gathering. We have an opportunity to lift up our voices. We have an opportunity to hear from your word.

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And I pray that you would meet us here in this place. Each one as individuals. We need you. And we need you to show up here in our hearts and convict us and draw us deeper into you.

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We ask this in Jesus' name. I'm Jason.

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And I'm Hope. We're excited to worship with you this morning and we've got a couple announcements for you. You should have found one of these worship folders at your chair.

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Inside it has different info of what's going on here at Recast. Also, if you want to get plugged in, if you're newer and newer and want to get plugged in, fill out this connection card and drop it off at the welcome table by the front.

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If you're joining us virtually and you'd like to fill out a connection card, we have an online option at our website, recastchurch .com.

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You can click the connect tab in our menu. Lastly, inside our worship folder is an offering envelope.

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We don't pass an offering plate here at Recast, but if you feel left to give, go ahead and drop this envelope into the giving slot at the welcome table in the lobby.

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We'd love to encourage you to read through the Bible this coming year in 2021. We have a couple resources available at the welcome table to help you do that.

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We have some Bible reading plans that you can grab, or we have some new Bibles available at cost at the welcome table.

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Also, Pastor Don highly recommends two of these books, Seeking God's Face, as well as the

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Daily Bible in Chronological Order. This January, we will have another session of Recast Bible Institute classes, and Spencer will be teaching those again.

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We've got Mike here to give a little bit of an idea of what these Recast Bible Institute classes are all about.

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I'm Mike Perrine, and I took the hermeneutics class. My favorite thing about this class was the fact that we had

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Spencer teaching it, because he seems very insightful and very knowledgeable about this topic. We were able to learn how the

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Bible is laid out, basically. Kind of a big -picture perspective, where we got to understand how to do word studies and what literary context means, look at how the

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Bible was written in that time, and then how we should use it as we read it today. Another good thing about the course was the fact that we used an actual chapter as the application when we came to class each week.

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Spencer focused in on using Romans chapter 7, and we were able to try to apply some of what we learned to that particular chapter, and how it fits into the context of the preceding and next chapters.

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I would say the most challenging thing for me was the reading portion of it, because I'm not much of a reader.

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We tried to keep on top of it by doing two chapters a week, but being kind of a large book, that was a lot, as much as I have going on right now.

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But the nice thing about it was that it's optional, and we didn't really need to get all the reading done every time.

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I think it would be great to take an RBI class again, even. It's awesome because the distance is so close to home, you don't have to travel long ways, and you're able to see somebody face -to -face and ask your questions in kind of a small setting of less than 10 people, ours was.

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The other things are really for your own personal growth, and spiritual growth, which is the reason

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I took it. The class size is small enough to where, like I said, you can get answers to questions just by asking whatever you want during the course.

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That's not all we've got going on here at Recast. If you'd like more information, check out recastchurch .com for more info.

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Also make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, click the bell for notifications, and thanks for watching. Thanks to Hope for putting that together.

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I do encourage you to look into the Recast Bible Institute classes. They just wrapped up an

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Old Testament survey and then the hermeneutics, and then those are going to be offered again in January. We're going to be looking at doing a systematic theology and a

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New Testament survey, and Spencer's going to be teaching both of those. Be looking for the sign -ups for those. Just so that you understand,

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I didn't explain exactly, those are kind of designed and centered around the idea of a one -credit college class.

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There's actually some homework, there's some reading, and again, you get out of it what you put into it, but it's a chance to dive a little bit deeper into the

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Word and into just kind of understanding almost kind of like what the first year of a Bible college experience would be, but the classes are paired down.

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It's not like a three -credit class or something like that. Then I encourage you right now to make sure that your Bible or your device is open to Matthew 22, verses 34 through 40, the passage that we just read, and the goal is going to be to keep our focus and attention on that before we come to worship.

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Just so that I recognize some of you are new here, we are doing our worship set at the end. We'd normally right now sing some songs together, but what we are doing right now just during this time of COVID is we've been singing at the end just to give people the freedom to leave if they want to and not spend a lot of time in here after we've sung.

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But if any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts, those are available back there. You're not going to distract me if you need to get up and stretch out or anything like that.

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The Pharisees here in the text, they put their disciples up to asking the first question that we saw a few weeks ago.

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So we're on the third of three questions that were posed to Jesus here in the last week of his life with the intention of the religious leaders tripping him up.

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They wanted to catch him in a mistake. And the first question they asked is a powder keg of a question.

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In their time, maybe even so in ours, is it lawful to give taxes to Caesar was the question that they asked.

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And when he answered, the text said that they marveled. They were astonished.

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They were in wonder and awe at the way that he sliced through all of the debate and all of the argument and all the cultural nuance of that question and just got right to the heart of it.

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And then last week we saw the Pharisees kind of tagged out and the Sadducees jumped in, and they challenged

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Jesus on the topic of resurrection. And when he answered, it says the crowds were astonished at his teaching in Matthew.

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So we just see the pattern where they are amazed at the teaching of Jesus. They're in awe of the way that he can take a very complicated issue and just simplify it down to its bedrock.

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And they're like, wow, this guy is amazing. He's a great teacher. And he is winning and winning and winning.

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And so now the Pharisees are back at it. They heard the Sadducees failed to trip Jesus up, it says, at the beginning of our text.

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And so like a cheesy tag team wrestling match, the Sadducees tagged out just in time for the

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Pharisees to come under the ropes with a couple of metal folding chairs, and the fight is back on. And they're trying to take down Jesus.

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And so that's my rough translation of verse 34. You don't really see the metal chairs mentioned, but I think that they would have used them if they could.

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That was their game plan here. And one of their lawyers, the word lawyer is not a courtroom lawyer like you might think, but a word that means that this guy was an elite scribe who would have been an expert in those 613

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Old Testament laws. He prided himself in the ability to explain those and even explain how you are to keep them and how to hedge yourself so that you're careful about them, and then also to litigate those who were in disobedience to those 613 commands.

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And so he comes forward with a question for Jesus. They put him forward and say, hey, you ask a question. You're a bright guy. So verse 35 tells us directly that his intention was to trip up Jesus.

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He wanted to catch Jesus in a mistake here, and that's his goal. So these three questions have all been towards that end of trying to test

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Jesus and trying to get him to fail. And you would need to ignore a lot in this context to see a good motive on the part of this lawyer in his questioning to Jesus.

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It's not like he's like, oh, there's Jesus. I really want to know what he thinks about the law. No, he wants to see

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Jesus fail. That's his intention. So the question that he poses in verse 36 is a deeply theological and culturally charged question in their day and age.

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All of the religious scholars were arguing about this question regularly, which is the great commandment of the law.

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That's how the ESV translates it. What might be another way to translate it would be what is the greatest law or even what is the unifying law of all laws.

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What brings it all together? Or, you know, they start by calling him here in the text teacher as a feigned sign of respect before the crowds.

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They want the crowds to see them demonstrating some level of respect to this guy who the crowds respect.

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So those who knew Jesus and his upbringing would have had a reasonable question surrounding all of these religious theological debates.

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They've asked him, this is the third time they've tried to pin him. Third time they've tried to confuse him.

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Third time that they've tried to divide his followers. Then the question ought to rest in our minds a little bit this morning, too.

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How can the builder's son be expected to compete with these seminary trained

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PhD theologians and professors? The guy asking the question here, we don't get his name, we just know he's of the group of the

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Pharisees and that he's a lawyer, he's a scribe. But he has much more theological training than Jesus in an earthly sense.

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And Jesus keeps putting him down time and time again. This is like Jesus going up against a title boxer, the heavyweight champion, and he just keeps winning.

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And they're like, this guy hasn't even boxed before. Like, who is this guy? You have an elite religious scholar questioning a man who was trained for what?

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What did he train for in his upbringing? Carpentry is probably what most of us think.

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It's actually home building, building houses is likely. The word tecton that's used for carpentry is a home builder.

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He built houses. That's what he's trained to do. And he's constantly taking it to the religious leaders, and the crowds are like, burn,

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Jesus! Like, he's just getting them left and right, and they're giving him points, you know. Like, he just keeps winning. Jesus is not fazed by this question in the least.

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He immediately answers. He knows what command best summarizes and unites the whole law, and he says it directly.

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You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all of your soul, and with all of your mind.

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Not only would the content of the answer be significant to these crowds, but the readiness of Jesus to interact with those 613

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Old Testament laws in such a deep and profound way would have been impressive to the crowds. He hasn't had any formal training in any of this.

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But here's what you need to understand. You can rest assured that this is not the first time Jesus has thought about the answer to this question.

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The real question is, how are we designed to operate? How is humanity designed to best function?

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What is the best function of humanity? And he says, oh, I know that, love God. Love God, and he gets right down to the point.

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Well, of course, he's the one who wrote the law, and he is equally the one who has made mankind.

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He knows how we function, and he knows how we work best. The first and greatest commandment is that we are to what?

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Love God. That is the first commandment. And we are to love him in a certain way. We are to love

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God with our will, with our emotions, with our internal dialogue that goes on in our mind, with our external actions that we do with our bodies, and even the way that we think is to honor and love

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God. And we can pick apart, by the way, the nuances of the words heart, soul, and mind. As a matter of fact, I think

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I could make a three -part, I mean, that could be the whole structure of the sermon. Okay, love God with all your heart, so let's talk about that.

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Love God with your soul, let's talk about that. Let's love God with your mind, third point, and then we could be done.

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But be careful you don't miss the big picture. I'm not gonna go that direction, because these three are mentioned, not to parse them out and explain in depth and detail what each one means, they are meant to be comprehensive.

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It is not an exaggeration or hyperbole to say that this quote, by the way, the quote is from Deuteronomy 6 -5, but this quote is saying that our first priority in life is to love

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God with all that we've got, is what Jesus is getting at by this phrase. Heart, soul, mind, some add strength, another one of the

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Gospels adds strength in there. But to love God with all that you are, all that you've got, heart, soul, and mind.

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And as far as summarizing all of the law, this is about as bedrock as you can get. Why have no other gods before him?

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Because you love him. Why not take his name in vain? Because you love him.

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Why set aside a day of rest out of each week? Because you love him with all of yourself.

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The fundamental reason to keep any of the commandments of God comes back to love.

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Why obey him? Because you love him. And so then the fundamental question is, do you?

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But we're going to get there in the application. Do you love him? And not everybody loves him. But at the end of verse 38,

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Jesus has done what was asked of him. We could end the message there if he did.

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He answered the question that they asked, what's the greatest law? Love God. He could be done there. But Jesus doesn't end there.

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And that demonstrates something very important to us. He has more to say on the subject. By the way, if he was worried about the questioning of these guys, he had an easy out.

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He's used up his words. He said everything that he needed to say to answer their question, he could duck and run. But instead, he's still on it.

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He declared a second law that he tells us is like the first one. And most of us have heard, raise your hand if you've ever heard that you're supposed to love your neighbor as yourself.

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Have you heard that before? It's a pretty common instruction. It's maybe one of the parts of Scripture that even our culture gets to some degree or understands.

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But the interesting thing is, to the scholars asking the question, this is a relatively obscure law found in Leviticus 19 .18.

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Of those 613, we don't have record of any of the scholars of this day identifying that as the primary law.

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Love your neighbor as yourself. Well, you can imagine why humanity would not put that one very high on the list.

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How many of you know it's a hard one to keep? Love your neighbor as yourself? That is tough. Anybody here on social media?

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Is there a lot of loving your neighbor as yourself going on on there? Not a ton. But I want to camp just for a moment on the fact that Jesus says the second law is like the greatest law.

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It's like that first one. And here's what I find significant. Jesus expects that our love for God. Hear me carefully, church.

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Our love for God will be expressed in love for others. 1

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John warns us this way in 1 John 2 .9. You don't need to turn over there. You can jot that down and read it later. But this is what it says.

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Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.

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You can say all day long, I'm walking with God and I love him. But if you hate your neighbor, you're not with him.

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You're deceiving yourself. You're tricking yourself. That's what 1 John 2 .9 is saying. To love

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God, in other words, that's why Jesus is tacking this on. He's not just saying, oh, by the way, runner up is this law.

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Just wanted to clarify. No, he's wedding the two, welding the two together, so to speak.

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To say you love God is, or to love

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God rather, is to love others. To say you love

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God is cheap. Hard to see. Hard to verify. But if you want to convince me that you truly love

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God, then show me by obeying what he says regarding your interaction with people. A wholehearted love for God will result in a genuine love for others.

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Are you getting what that's saying? Let me explain it a different way. I believe this is all why

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Jesus cannot end with the first law. Why he welds these two concepts of love God, love others together.

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Because loving God isn't a complete picture. To tell people to abstractly love

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God is like asking someone to paint a masterpiece in their mind. In their mind.

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I love God in the abstract. Go ahead and paint right now. Just paint a masterpiece in your mind. You can call yourself an excellent painter because you've got this unique ability to paint really cool paintings in your brain.

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But I might be tempted to give you some brushes and some paint and a canvas to prove it.

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You tell me I'm a great painter because I've got all of these masterpieces stored in my mind. I'm like, show me.

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Put it on paper. And what is the canvas of the love of God? Our relationship with others.

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The way we live our lives in community. That is the place that we're showing our love for God.

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You getting it? That's what the second law is doing in the text. Jesus says, love the

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Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and prove it by loving your neighbor as yourself.

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And now we need to be careful as we pick our way through this second command that I think has often been misinterpreted in terms of the modern day self -love movement.

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How many of you are hearing out in the world today in various circles that you need to love yourself first?

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Anybody hearing that? Love yourself. That's a common message in our

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American culture and unfortunately it's definitely crept into the church even with some misinterpretations of this very passage itself.

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First, let's take just a second to make sure that we're on the same page about what love is. What are we talking about when we say love?

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Love is a proactive work. It is not a responsive passivity. Love is not found in the reciprocation for good things that others do for us.

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It is an active pursuit to the benefit of another. Not returning favors, but starting favors.

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And I would suggest to you as a little bit of a caveat here that many marriages struggle at this very point. By the time that somebody shows up in my office for marriage counseling, more often than not they have already spent months if not years waiting.

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What are they waiting for? Waiting for their spouse to get their act together. Waiting for the other to love them.

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It's a waiting game. It's a terrible waiting game. Waiting for the other to do their part is not love at all.

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But love is the actual stepping out in kindness to the other. Do you hear that?

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It's proactive. It starts and initiates things. That's what love does. I have heard, by the way, some grotesque abuses of this passage in recent years, even this past week in my reading and studying for this.

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And I don't use the word grotesque or gross lightly. I think it's just terrifying how the human mind and how our independent streak and how our self -centered nature twists scripture to our own devices.

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And these misinterpretations come about because of our self -centeredness, our individualistic culture. Where we want to make so much of the self -love that we think we find here at the end of verse 39.

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A passage that says, love your neighbor as yourself has quickly slidden in our culture and in our cultural ears into love yourself so you can love your neighbor.

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Anybody ever heard it mentioned that way? Make sure, I've heard sermons on this.

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Make sure you love yourself. Is that what Jesus is saying? That is not his point in the least.

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That is to take it and flip it completely on its head. As if the first thing is love God, second love yourself.

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Or even worse, love yourself first so then you can love God and love others. That is patently false.

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That is a lie from the pit of hell. Gross, grotesque, I think are not too extreme words to say what the twisting of scripture looks like in this context and in this case.

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It's not love yourself so you can love your neighbor. Jesus does not make anything of self -love here.

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He takes for granted that you do, in fact, do things for yourself and take care of yourself.

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Walking away from this passage with any type of message that we need to start, like as if the starting place is by loving ourselves, only betrays that grotesque tendency to put who first?

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Ourselves first. First, says Jesus. First and foremost, love

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God. Second, love others. The greatest thing you can do for yourself is first accept the love of God through Jesus Christ and then love

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God with all you've got and show it by actively pursuing the good of others.

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By the way, I think that covers every single one of us in this room. The call is the same to all of us. Love God, love others.

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Love God, love others. Some of you might think that this passage is missing you. Don, this doesn't relate to me.

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I think Jesus has missed me on this one. Here's the fact of the matter. I think of these things sometimes and it's kind of funny in my mind, the way that my mind works.

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The fact of the matter is, if we were to line up everybody from this side to the room to this side and we were not to take our, you know, based on our birthdays or based on our name by alphabetical order, but based on self -esteem.

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That's a little creepy. There you go. Over here, there is somebody, by the way, this is what's weird to think about.

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There is somebody in here who is the most self -confident individual. One of you is, or one of us is.

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Somebody is over there. Clear over here, the most self -confident individual who is just kind of like, never really thought bad thoughts about myself, because myself is pretty awesome and I love myself.

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Myself is swole and myself does a lot of cool stuff. And then there's somebody, any questions about who that might be?

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And then clear over there, because I'm not swole, so you know it's not me, guys.

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Somebody is clear over there going, I've never had anybody say anything that I've done right. I've never been affirmed by my parents.

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I've never been affirmed by my boss. I've never been affirmed by my spouse. I just, all I think of when

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I think of myself is darkness. There's reality to that and there are people on a spectrum in that.

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But regardless, hear me carefully, church. There would be no health, by the way, in lining up like that.

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Because here's the fact of the matter. Regardless of where you fall on that spectrum, we would do well to start with loving

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God and loving others. A corrective to the most arrogant and self -confident and a corrective to the one who has the lowest self -esteem.

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What are you made to do? I can tell you wherever you're at on that spectrum, Jesus is telling you what your next step is, wherever you are at on that spectrum.

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Lowest self -esteem, highest self -esteem, love God first and serve others. Love others.

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You get it? He's not missed you. In case you think that I or Jesus am being naively oversimplifying on this, you might think that your lack of self -esteem is uniquely ignored by this passage.

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Let me suggest to you that you try out exactly what Jesus is posing here as a solution before judging it as lacking.

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Why not go into this next year, as you go into this next year, why not set your goal to love him wholeheartedly?

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With all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your mind. And commit to demonstrate that this next year by loving others in the power that his spirit supplies to you.

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And I would love to see, go ahead and test him and see if that does damage to your self -esteem.

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I don't believe for a second it does. I believe it actually helps you in the end.

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I truly believe that Jesus gets this one right. A human loved by God that understands the love poured out for them at the cross of Christ.

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Who's been forgiven and set free and is now standing on the bedrock of Christ. And is able to launch out in love for him and love for others.

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Is a person who is moving towards serious spiritual health. Did the angel just get his wings or something?

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Was I the only one thinking that? Moving towards serious spiritual health.

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If you are in a position where you are able to love God and love others.

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We are never commanded to focus on loving ourselves by the way. You can search scripture on your own if you want to spend the time reading it this year looking for it.

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It's not there because self -love is a movement away from the things that God provides. For the greatest human flourishing.

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The greatest human spiritual health is found in loving God and putting him first. And demonstrating that by loving others.

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And in verse 40 we now get the final summary on these two commandments. Jesus says on these two commandments.

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Love God, love others. Hangs or depends. I like the word hangs better.

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It's a potential translation of the Greek word that's there. It's a little more picturesque than depending on it.

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On these two laws hang all the laws and the prophets.

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The word depends translates as hang something like a peg on which you hang your coat.

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It's like that kind of word. In other words Jesus is saying that all the Old Testament commands are dependent upon.

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Hang upon a love for God and a love for others. Why not commit murder?

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Because you love God and you love others. Why not steal? Because you love God and you love others. Why not look at pornography?

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Because you love God and you love others. An important corrective by the way needs to be brought in again to this passage.

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Not just a corrective about our tendency towards self -love. But towards misunderstanding love all together. Our culture is redefining it all the time.

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How many of you know people who would just say. I don't need religion. I don't need rules. I don't need laws.

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All you need is love. Anybody just sing a song in your mind?

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All you need is love is what our world is telling us. But Jesus doesn't say love is the law and the prophets.

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He says the law and the prophets hang on love. But the law and the prophets are still there.

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Love is not the content of the law. The law is the law. Love is the motivation beneath and supporting it.

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On that which the laws themselves hang. What I mean by this is that when you hear people say. If you love others you will fill in the blank.

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Anybody heard anything like that in the last few months? If you love others you will.

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And you don't need to answer that out loud. But there's all kinds of things that people are telling you. You need to do if you love others.

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And there's more coming down the pipeline the next week or two. I can foresee what the next statement is.

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If you love God you will. And you guys know what it is. If you love others you will fill in the blank.

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And what comes next when anybody ever says that. Should be substantiated as biblical content.

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If you love God you will the law. If you love God you will obey.

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You will live in right relationship with others. In other words the shape of true love is the shape of the law.

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It is the shape of the way that God has designed us to function in relationship to him and to others.

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You want to know how to function in relationship to him? You want to know how to function in relationship to others?

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You don't have to guess. The world right now is emptying the word love out of all content.

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And refilling it with whatever they think in the moment. Day by day that shifts. Day by day that changes.

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You see it? It's why there's no sensibility on social media. It's why there's no sensibility in the media.

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There's no sensibility out there in the world today. It's because we don't have a definition of love. Oh yes we do.

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Oh yes we do. We are those who have a definition of what it looks like to be loving toward others.

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If we're not careful we can get all kinds of really unbiblical ideas sliding into the category of love.

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I have a couple of questions to think that through to kind of bring that point home. Is it unloving to say what the

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Bible says regarding homosexuality? Our world says yes. Is it unloving to share the gospel with someone who doesn't want to hear it?

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The world says yes. You're forcing your opinions and your thoughts on others. Is it unloving to continue to meet as a church during a pandemic?

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Our world is saying yes. The content of love that Jesus is concerned with is a love that takes the shape of the law.

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It is a love that fuels us to obey and do things God's way. Love for God that boldly obeys.

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A love for others that obeys God in the way he tells us to live in relationship with others.

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Meeting together as a church, I don't know if you guys realize this, I need to say it up front. Meeting as a church together is a command found in Hebrews 10 .25.

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You can mark that down and look it up later. It's an extremely clear command. A command that includes a context and that context is telling.

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A context of hostility and disease and war and danger. You see when the author of Hebrews in Hebrews 10 .25

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tells the church, Do not forsake gathering together as some are, but more so as the day approaches.

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What is the day? The day of final cataclysm. The day of the final return of our king.

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The day of final judgment. What will that look like? As the day approaches, what do we know will increase?

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Famine, pestilence, disease, war.

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Why does the author of Hebrews tell us more so as the day approaches?

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In other words, you need it more as the day approaches. Because in the middle of that cataclysm, you are going to be tempted to stop meeting together.

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There's going to be voices telling you to stop meeting together. You're going to need it more so as the day approaches.

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Do you see that in the text? Do you understand how the law and what God is telling us applies?

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What does love look like? It can become extremely confusing to us. The text of Scripture, the law tells us, and what

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God's instruction tells us, is to keep meeting. More so as the day approaches.

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By the way, nothing in this is meant to disparage those who are unable to meet together for health reasons. I recognize that there's a lot of people taking this in.

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It could easily offend. Are we disobedient or whatever? No, I know that we all long to gather together as a church.

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And I've spoken with those who have to for a season take this in by video. But we need to define love within the confines of what obedience to God looks like.

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Jesus doesn't throw out the law and say, all you need is love. He says, you need to obey.

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You need to obey out of love. And notice that Jesus isn't holding out.

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What does the law hang on? It hangs on love for God and love for others.

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Love, not fear. There's all kinds of things that we could hang the law on.

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On salvation or on, you know, like I've got to do a bunch of things in order to be saved. Or fear. Hang the law on fear.

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Because we need to do it out of terror or something like that. But Jesus isn't holding out fear as the primary motivation to obedience.

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But instead, the law hangs on love. So as we wrap up, let me give you three applications that will require you to do some thinking on your own this week.

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The first and fundamental thing is accept the gospel of Jesus Christ. Accept that good news.

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And if you've already accepted the forgiveness that has given you the love that kick -starts your love for God and your love for others, if you already have that, then just listen in and be reminded of the great grace that has been given to you.

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But without the love of God offered to all through the sacrifice of Jesus, our efforts and attempts to love will be futile.

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Scripture is clear that we are only able to truly love Him because He first loved us and laid down His life for us.

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And without this forgiveness to cover our sins, our relationship to God and our relationship to others is thoroughly broken.

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And it's broken in a very specific way. How does a person who has not come to faith in Jesus Christ relate to God?

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Primarily fear. In a religious sense, it's fear. And outside, it's just kind of like, well, whatever.

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But our relationship to God, if we're a religious individual who understands who God is, is fear.

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And then what does our relationship with others look like? Competition. Competition with others.

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I've got to compete and I've got to make myself look better than you so that I've got God's attention so that He likes me better than you.

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Without the cross of Christ, that is what is left is fear of God and competition with others, not love for God and love for your neighbor.

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So if you've not accepted the forgiveness of God, then I'd encourage you as we are going to come to communion here at the end of the message to skip communion this morning and then come and talk to me after the service about how you can have forgiveness of your sins and a fresh start of love received from God so that you can in turn love

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Him back and love others well. The second thing then is love God. Love God. Those of you who are already in with Christ, take this as your next step.

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Heart. Consider your heart. Are there areas of your life you refuse to give to Him? Your soul. Are you giving your soul to Him by spending time in His Word and prayer and talking to Him throughout the day?

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Your mind. Are you taking your thoughts captive? Are you running? Maybe some of us have just had a tendency to run a pretty dark 2020 kind of narrative in your mind and you found your thoughts becoming more darkened and more negative.

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What are you filling your minds with? That's a question, especially as we've got more time at home and Netflix isn't going to watch itself.

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You've got all these things. What are we putting into our mind? Just think about that.

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Again, we are not a church at all that has a prohibition list here. We've never done that.

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We don't say this is censored music or don't watch the show or don't do that or whatever. Don't watch this movie. We've always been pretty loose with that, but I've always been quick to encourage you.

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Think about what you're putting in your mind. It's having an impact on you. Pray and give all of those areas, heart, soul, and mind to Him.

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And then lastly, love your neighbor. Love your neighbor. Serve others.

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A good place to start is in your own family. How many of you spent a little bit more time with your own family in the last year?

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Anybody? And how many of you have been pressed to the edge of love in that time? I think all of us.

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Yeah. So it's a good place to start is to reinitiate that idea of love being that proactive, like intentional, starting something.

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Not reciprocating something, but starting something. And then consider your church. I mean, are you using your gifts and talents to serve one another here?

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Consider your neighborhood, your coworkers, your extended family. And think this week, what is one thing

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I can do to show others a proactive love this week? And then go do that.

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Ask God to reveal to you what's just one area, one thing, whether it's family, neighbor, church, one thing that you could do different in terms of loving others well, and then do that.

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For all of us who are here and we're forgiven by faith in Jesus, it's a time for us to take communion during this next song.

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And let's remember to go out from this place loving God and loving others. Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for this call that you have placed on our lives.

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A call that only really stems from your great love given to us. Without that love that's given to us at the cross of Jesus Christ that we remember through communion, without that, we're just left with some kind of pull yourself up by the bootstraps and grab a hold of love for God and grab a hold of love for others and try to lift yourself up to heaven.

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And that's just not possible. We can't attain this without the spirit coming in and without the forgiveness and our crud being washed away.

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And so, Father, I pray that if there's anybody here who needs that today, that today would be a day of salvation. Today would be a day of asking you to forgive them, to give them a promise of eternal life and hope, and then the ability to live all the days that you give us in this instruction to love you with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

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Father, I pray that that would be an increasing reality in our lives here at the end of this year and launching out into another year that we would love you well.

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And I thank you that as we have an opportunity to remember the great cost that we were bought with, that Jesus Christ, his body broken for us, his blood shed for us.

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We take the cracker to remember his body. We take the cup of juice to remember his blood that was shed for us. I pray that this would be a time of thankfulness, a time of deep, deep appreciation for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ by which we've received love and are able to now launch out into a life of health, loving you and loving others.