The Greatest Human Endeavor Matthew 22:34-40

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If you were to ask people, what is the most important word in the human language?
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One word triumphs over all others, and that word is love. There was a famous college basketball coach by the name of John Wooden.
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He coached UCLA from 1948 to 1975. In that time he was arguably the most successful coach in the history of sports.
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He won over 80 % of his games. In his time at UCLA, he won 10 national championships.
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He was a Christian who once said, If I were prosecuted for my religion, I hope there would be enough evidence to convict me.
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Wooden was married to one woman for 53 years. His wife died in 1985, and he lived 25 years as a widow without her.
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What he said when she died is that there would never be another. He was still deeply in love with her even after she was gone.
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After she died, he wrote love letters to her every month, and no one was allowed to read these letters.
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He was asked, How do you make love last in a marriage? And he said, There's only one way.
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Truly, truly, truly love. It's the most powerful thing there is. With Wooden's understanding of love coming from his
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Christian faith, what he means by this love is the true definition of love. Not love as the world understands it, but love according to how
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God created it to be. True love is selfless. It is outward focused instead of inward.
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True love sticks with someone through the good times and the bad. It is loyal.
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True love sees the best in someone else. Always rooting for that person's success.
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The world's focus is not on what I just mentioned, but on feelings.
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It is true that there is affection with love, but to truly understand it, true love is far more than a feeling.
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It is giving yourself for the sake of others. There's only one way to truly accomplish love in this world, and it starts vertically.
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It must start with a deep love for God. The only true love there is comes from God.
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And this love is described by Jesus in our text this morning as we continue our sermon series through Matthew.
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He discusses the central place that love holds in life.
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And this conversation comes as he is once again asked a question by his earthly enemies.
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And we will see what that question is. So this time I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to Matthew chapter 22. We will be looking at verses 34 through 40.
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And if you're using one of those red Bibles, it's on page 984. This sermon is titled,
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The Greatest Human Endeavor. And I'm going to begin by reading the text,
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Matthew 22, verses 34 through 40. But when the
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Pharisees heard that he had silenced the 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 great commandment in 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 your mind.
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This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
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On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.
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Here's our big idea. What this text is calling you to do. Make sure not to miss out on the true meaning of God's commands.
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Make sure not to miss out on the true meaning of God's commands. And we're going to see three instructions how in this text.
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But before we jump in, let me give you a little recap of where we were one Sunday ago. We looked at verses 23 through 33.
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And in that passage, the Sadducees, who were Jews but secular, approached
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Jesus and they asked him a question in order to test him. The question they asked him was concerning whom a man would be married to in the age to come.
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In the Old Testament, when a woman's husband died, it was the responsibility of her brother -in -law to marry her in order to take care of her and provide.
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The Sadducees, who didn't believe there was an afterlife, thought this law was a problem for those who did believe in the afterlife.
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Before Jesus answered them, he attacked the Sadducees by saying that they didn't know the Bible nor the power of God.
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They didn't know the Old Testament because they ignored all the passages that talked about the future bodily resurrection at the end of the age.
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And not only that, they did not believe in the power of God. They thought very little of the power of God because it takes
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God hardly any effort at all to take these bodies that have been in the ground for all these years, centuries, thousands of years in the sea.
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He can raise these up, give them a new body that will never decay. So Jesus goes after them.
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He says, So Jesus put them in their place once again.
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And what we learned last Sunday from this text is that there's only one man who truly knows what is to come.
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And that is the God -man. And any other man who knows anything about the afterlife, it comes from him.
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And it comes from his word. So that was last Sunday. Now this leads us to our text this morning that we've already read.
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But now we're going to take a close look at it. And let's begin by looking at verse 34 where we read that the
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Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees and they gathered together.
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Now what is interesting is that in the previous passage we saw the secular Jews, the Sadducees, go hard after Jesus.
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But before that, the disciples of the Pharisees, sent by the
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Pharisaical leadership, sent their disciples to test
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Jesus concerning paying Roman taxes. What we read in our text in verse 34 is that the
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Pharisees come once again to test Jesus. And what verse 34 says is that once they heard
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Jesus silence the Sadducees, they gathered together. They come together to ask, what are we going to do?
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He keeps answering all these questions and he keeps answering them the right way. He keeps silencing all of his opponents.
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And so they gather together asking, what are we going to do next? How are we going to get an edge on this guy?
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They didn't want to let Jesus be victorious in these conversations. So they try to go after him once again.
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It's important to understand the time period that this is taking place. This is taking place the week that Jesus would be crucified.
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These people who are testing Jesus want him dead. This is barbaric.
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Savage. For most of American history, we have lived in a civilized society where people putting their enemies to death is not commonplace.
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Now, has it happened? Yes. But is it normal activity in society? No. For most of world history, however, this has been common.
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Most of world history is ruthless. Down through history, powerful people had no problem putting their enemies to death and they could get away with it.
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They were above the law. The leadership of the Jews made up of the
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Sadducees and Pharisees are turning up the heat. And we know how this is going to end.
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Let's see what the Pharisees asked Jesus in verses 35 and 36. In one of them, a lawyer asked him a question to test him.
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Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? Now, I have explained to you on several occasions who the
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Pharisees were. In brief, they were a party of Jews who held tightly to the
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Old Testament law. Too tightly. To the point where they actually made their own man -made traditions.
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This ultra -conservative Jewish movement had scribes among them. The scribes were the teachers of the law.
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These were supposed to be the experts in understanding the Old Testament and communicating what the
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Old Testament said to the people. The scribes were also lawyers. A lawyer is someone who knows the law well and is able to either prosecute someone or to defend someone who has been accused of committing a crime.
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As they ask Jesus this question, they are asking as those who should know the law through and through.
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In verse 36, this is the question the lawyer, who belongs to the Pharisees, asks him.
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He says, Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? You will notice that this lawyer addresses
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Jesus as a teacher. He acknowledges that Jesus is a teacher.
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But what we have seen is that Jesus is not a teacher approved by them. In order to be a teacher endorsed by the establishment of the first century, the trainee had to go through a process put forth by the
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Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin being the highest leadership in Judaism in the first century.
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But of course, Jesus didn't go through this process. And Jesus doesn't believe this guy and any of the scribes are legitimate.
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And they don't believe that he is legitimate. When Jesus started his ministry, he didn't ask the
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Jewish leadership, Is it okay if I start teaching? Do I need to be ordained before I start teaching?
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Because he knew they were corrupt. He just skipped that step. I'm going to start preaching.
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So he goes from town to town. He preaches. People start listening to him. Thousands and thousands of people listen to him.
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Jesus knew they didn't have any authority. He knew their authority was man -made. So he didn't go through their little process.
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Jesus was a teacher and he was a different kind of teacher. Different than the scribes. After Jesus preached the
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Sermon on the Mount, Matthew records this. In Matthew 7, verses 28 and 29.
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And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching. For he was teaching them as one who had authority and not as their scribes.
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This was different. The people noticed that Jesus' teaching had power.
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The scribes' teaching was lifeless because it was built off of man -made traditions. Rule -keeping.
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Do this. Do this. Do this. As one author said,
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Jesus' direct, personal, and forceful teaching was so foreign to their experience that those who heard him were astonished.
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They found out what real preaching was and they heard from the best preacher there ever was. Jesus Christ.
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I was thinking about that this week. There's a certain kind of preaching that never changes.
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The Old Testament prophets had it. John the Baptist had it. Jesus had it.
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The great men from church history had it. And you look at our present day and you see all this flashiness.
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They're not following the line of the Bible. They're not following.
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If they have to be trendy to win people, that's not the way they did it.
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And I'm struck by that. But anyway, this lawyer of the Pharisees, this scribe, asked
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Jesus a question. And he once again asked him a question in order to test him. By asking him a question about which command is the greatest, this would put
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Jesus in a difficult spot. The scribes tallied the commands of the first five books of the
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Bible. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And what they tallied is that the
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Law of Moses contained 613 commandments. The scribes determined that 248 of these commandments were affirmative commands.
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While 365 were prohibitions. A prohibition is do not. Like the
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Ten Commandments. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not commit adultery. So on and so forth.
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An affirmative command is the command we're going to see today. Love the
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Lord your God. It's positive. These laws, all 613 commandments, were put into two different categories.
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There were heavy laws and light laws. The people were to be more diligent keeping the heavy laws than the light ones.
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The leadership of the Jews were unable to decide which commands belong to which category. They had disagreements over this.
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But even though they could not decide on this, they mostly agreed on how the law should be divided. Some laws were more important than the others.
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It is important for us to understand, and this was the problem with the Jewish establishment, the way they looked at the commands was merely external.
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Keeping these laws like a checklist, as I mentioned. I remember when I was a student in high school,
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I forgot something and one of the students had an extra and gave me what
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I had forgotten. To this day, I remember what he said. I just did my good deed for the day.
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This is how the Jewish leadership treated the Old Testament. As the Lord said through the prophet
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Isaiah in Isaiah 29, 13, The Jewish leadership was so focused on doing their own thing with the commands of God, and they missed the whole point.
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We will see the whole point by how Jesus responds in our second point. Make sure, though, not to miss out on the true meaning of God's commands.
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In the first instruction, how, is through refusing to think wrongly about God's commands.
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The second instruction, how, you are to make sure not to miss out on the true meaning of God's commands, is through treasuring
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God above all else. Treasuring God above all else.
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We'll see this in verses 37 and 38. This question from the lawyer is once again not an innocent question.
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They once again want Jesus to respond in a way that would turn the masses of Jews away from Him and back to their authority.
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Jesus is their biggest threat, and so they want to eliminate Him. They thought
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He would say something that disagreed with them and would put Him outside of what were the accepted beliefs of the time.
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So let's see how Jesus responds in 37 and 38. And He said to him, which is the greatest commandment?
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He says, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
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This is the great and first commandment. So Jesus' answer to the
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Pharisees and this lawyer is brilliant. It's once again the exact right response.
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They are trying to trap Him. They want Him to say something that doesn't fit with what is accepted from the
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Jewish establishment. The Jewish establishment were the ones who decided which laws are more important than the others.
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And they thought Jesus would answer in a way that would show their superiority over Him.
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They are the experts, and they think this guy is going to make a mistake and say a command that should be higher is lower, and one that should be lower is higher.
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But once again, Jesus is going to put them in their place, as we see here.
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In the previous passage, when Jesus addressed the Sadducees, verse 34 of our text said that He silenced the
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Sadducees. Sometimes you see that in life where someone responds to someone else and they have no response.
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There is no response. Some of you maybe remember the debate between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale where they were making a big deal about Ronald Reagan's age, and he says,
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I'm not going to make this campaign about my opponent's youth. And everybody laughed, and even
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Mondale laughed. There was no response to that. He got them, right? He put them in their place, or he put all his critics in their place.
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And Jesus, even better than that, just silenced them. What are you going to say to His response?
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And He does the same here to this lawyer who is supposed to be an expert in the law, but this lawyer is caught flat -footed by Jesus.
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Whenever Jesus responded to attacks, they were never able to respond back because Jesus always gave the exact right response.
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If you want to see wisdom on display, and by the way, we're going to be going through Proverbs on Wednesday nights, where we're going to see how to be wise.
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Look no further than Jesus. Jesus is all wise. He always knows what to say. He always knows what to do.
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And that's what He does here. He puts them in their place, and they were left speechless.
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And as we look at the world we live in, there isn't much wisdom out there, is there? No one thinks they're a fool, and yet fools are everywhere you turn.
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Most of the world are fools. And it can get frustrating, right?
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These people don't know they're fools, but they're fools. The Bible tells us to pursue wisdom.
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King Solomon wrote in Proverbs 4, verse 5, Get wisdom. Get insight.
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Do not forget. And do not turn away from the words of my mouth. Pursue this.
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Pursue wisdom. And we want to be wise people. By the time you're older, you should be wise.
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Gray hair is supposed to be a symbol of wisdom. When you get old, it's
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God's intention that you should be wise. I think the greatest tragedy is when you see an old person who's a fool. They missed out on what
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God wanted for them. Wisdom should be pursued by every
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Christian. And we're the only ones who can have wisdom because wisdom comes from the Word.
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It comes from following Jesus. And no one represents wisdom better than Jesus.
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Colossians 2 .3 says, In Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
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You want to know the meaning of life? Jesus. Whenever Jesus answered the
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Pharisees or Sadducees or anyone else, His response hit right on the money, and none of His critics could respond, and the crowd looking on always marveled.
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Now in our text, it doesn't say the crowd marveled, but in every conversation with the Jewish leadership, it is implied that a crowd was present because the
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Jewish leaders were trying to make Jesus look bad in front of other people so that they could spread it to other people, so that the nation would see
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Him as a fraud. This was their goal. But they failed. It always backfired.
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They would have been better off saying nothing. But because they tried to take Him down, it actually made them look worse.
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And here is the wisdom of Jesus' response. He doesn't go to one of the 613 commands and prohibitions laid out in the first five books of the
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Bible. He goes to one command, and another command that are present in every command.
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The command that Jesus goes to is love. The Apostle Paul writes about love in 1
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Corinthians 13. He defines what love is, and then at the end of that chapter,
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Paul writes, faith, hope, and love abide. These three, but the greatest of these is love.
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The greatest virtue in the world is love because every virtue has love in it.
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Think about this. If you're patient, it means you're not rushing the person you are with.
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If you're courageous, you're putting yourself on the line for the betterment of others.
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If you're humble, you're putting yourself in the right place.
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Not too high. You're not thinking of yourself too highly because the one who thinks of himself too highly or herself too highly is not helping others.
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It's also true that every command given by God has love at the center of it.
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What Jesus quotes to this lawyer is what is known by theologians as the Shema. And the
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Shema in Hebrew means to hear. Because in Deuteronomy 6, it says,
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Hear, O Israel. Here's this command. The Shema comes from Deuteronomy 6.
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I read that this morning. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
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You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.
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And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.
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What Jesus quotes is verse 5 of Deuteronomy 6. And what you will notice is that he changes one word.
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The Deuteronomy verse says that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might. In Matthew 22, it says heart, soul, and mind.
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So let's break these three words down. The first one is loving the
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Lord with all your heart. In the Hebrew and Greek, it says heart, which is the central organ of the body that pumps life to the entire body.
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The heart figuratively symbolizes the deep heart of who you are.
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When the Bible mentions the heart, it can be broad, describing your whole inner self. But it is also specific at times describing your desires.
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If you want to look at what runs a person's life, it's your desires. Just like a rudder runs a ship, your desires run your life.
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My old pastor used to say, the heart of the matter is the heart of the matter. And you do what you do because you want what you want.
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God calls you and I to desire Him above all else. When you do this, your heart is in the right place.
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The second way we are to love God is with our soul. Now as I mentioned, the
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Old Testament was written in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek. In the Hebrew and Greek, the word soul usually means the inner self.
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The inner self is who you are. When a person dies, his or her soul leaves the body.
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Imagine it this way. Your car does not have movement on its own.
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It will sit still all day unless a human gets in the car and drives it.
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A human is needed to move a car. In the same way, your body is a vehicle that is driven by the soul.
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James 2 .26 says, the body without the spirit is dead.
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The soul is who you are. Sometimes you see a body in a casket. It just doesn't look like the person.
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The soul is missing from the body. This is why we can say our loved ones who died in Christ are in heaven right now because they are.
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Their vehicle, the body, is buried in the ground, but they are in heaven. In Deuteronomy 6, the
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Lord says for the third word, might. What Jesus says is all your mind.
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The Lord is not saying these are three different parts of a human, heart, soul, and mind, or heart, soul, and might in Deuteronomy.
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There is overlap in the three of these words. What the
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Lord is saying there is that you must love Him with everything you have. And this is what Jesus quotes in our text as the greatest commandment.
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The greatest commandment is this. With every fiber of your being,
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God calls you to love Him. With every fiber of your being,
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God calls you to love Him. He will not take second place.
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To most people in the world, God means nothing to them.
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They love their money, their cars, their looks, their career, their next vacation, their status, the powerful position that they hold.
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These are the idols that get them out of bed in the morning. The things that they live for.
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But God tells everyone, you must worship Him and Him alone. You live for Him.
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Jesus is saying the same thing. If you want to understand what life is all about, then love
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God. You must treasure Him above all else. Only God fully satisfies you forever.
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You were created to know and love Him. The question is, how are you doing? None of us love
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God the way we should. In our sinful hearts, we do not treasure Him the way He deserves to be treasured.
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That's why I love that line from Come Thou Fount. He's saying,
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Lord, deliver me from this body of sin. Just like Paul said, deliver me from this body of sin that hinders me from loving
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You the way that I desire to love You. I think that's the best part about leaving this world.
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You will have unhindered fellowship with God. None of us love
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Him the way we should now, but we can love Him more by His grace. We should think about God all the time.
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And as we do it, this should bring great joy to our hearts. And out of your voice should come praise and thankfulness.
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Lord, I don't deserve to have a relationship with You, but You sent Jesus to die for my sins so I can have this sweet relationship with You now and forever.
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This should be on our hearts daily. And if it's not, then something is wrong. We need to examine ourselves and say,
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Lord, help me to love You more. If you recognize something is wrong, that's a good thing.
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That means you're saved. That conviction that comes from the Holy Spirit, repentance must come.
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And once repentance comes, then you can again enjoy this sweet fellowship with God. Make sure not to miss out on the true meaning of God's commands.
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The second instruction how is through treasuring God above all else. The third and final instruction how we are to make sure to understand the commands correctly is this, through showing your love for God by loving people.
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Showing your love for God by loving people. We just saw
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Jesus explain the great and first commandment to love God with everything you have.
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Then He tells this lawyer and everyone listening what the second greatest commandment is. Verses 39 and 40.
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The 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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If you treasure God above all else, it's going to change the way you live.
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As you desire Him, you will live for Him. This is what Jesus is saying with the second commandment.
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He says in verse 39 that the second commandment is the great and first commandment.
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It's like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. When we went through the
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Sermon on the Mount, we already saw the golden rule from Matthew 7 .12. Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.
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For this is the law and the prophets. We know how we are loved, and so we should think, you know what, if someone does this to me,
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I would be so happy. We know how we want to be loved.
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This would make me so glad if someone did this. I'd be so grateful. And so as we think about that, do it to someone else.
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That's the golden rule. Love is selfless.
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Love thinks of others. This is the way of Christ. When Jesus quotes the second commandment,
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He's quoting from Leviticus 19 .18. What Jesus is telling this lawyer and everyone is that these are the greatest commandments.
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What He says in verse 40 is on these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.
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What Jesus is saying is this, if you want to understand the Old Testament, then love God and love others.
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If you want to understand life, love God and love others. It's important for us to understand that the only way you can do the second commandment is if you first do the greatest commandment, which is to love
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God with all your heart, soul, and might. What happens is that when you love
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Him, you will love others. The two go together. When you love
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Him, you do what He wants you to do. You start to see the world through His eyes.
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You start to have compassion where you wouldn't have had compassion before. You start to desire to encourage someone when you wouldn't have thought of that before you knew
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Christ. He really does give you eyes to see the world differently. You start to care about things you didn't care about before.
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You start to be disgusted with things that you weren't disgusted about before.
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Psalm 37 says this, delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.
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What that's not saying is, okay, I'm going to delight in Him so I can get what I want sinfully.
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No. When you start loving Him with all your heart, soul, and might, you know what happens? You start to desire what
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He desires. You live differently.
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The world doesn't live this way. 2 Corinthians 5 .17 says that you're a new creation in Christ.
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Before salvation, everyone is selfish. And even when you're saved, by the way, you still fight selfishness.
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But you're not bound by it like an unbeliever is. That's sad, isn't it?
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People live for themselves. But once you love God with all your heart, soul, and might, the outflow of that is that you will love others.
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I think about retirement. People work so hard to get to retirement. And I think retirement is a great thing.
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It's not a bad thing. But instead of going to your job for 40 years, you have time to do other things, right?
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You have time to serve God. That's how retirement should be viewed. Not, okay, I'm just going to go to an island in the
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Caribbean and just isolate myself and just have a good time the rest of my life. That's not retirement.
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Retirement should be, hey, Lord, how can You use me now that I'm not bound 40 hours a week or so to this job?
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You will live for others as you follow Him, as you love Him. Jesus said in John 14, 15, if you love
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Me, you will keep My commandments. Your love for the
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Father, Son, and Spirit is what drives your love for others. As you aim to live a life of love, what you come to realize as a
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Christian is that love is hard. It's hard. I mentioned the quote from well -known coach
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John Wooden. Truly, truly, love is the most powerful thing there is. He's not talking about cheap, fuzzy love, but one that endures.
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One that endures hard times. One that shows faithfulness to others over the long haul.
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One that sacrifices oneself for the sake of others. To pour yourself out in love for others is to enter difficulties in life that one might be tempted to avoid.
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But this is God's call for every Christian. Christian author C .S.
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Lewis wrote this about the difficulty of truly loving in this life.
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He wrote, there's no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable.
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Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrong and possibly be broken.
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If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one.
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Not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries.
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Avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket of your selfishness.
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But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change.
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It will not be broken. It will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
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The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.
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The only place outside of heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and uneasiness of love is hell.
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That's an interesting quote, huh? Nobody loves in hell. You're isolated. Outer darkness.
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That's one of the worst things about hell. Isolation. But isn't that what people do?
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They isolate themselves in this life when there's opportunity to love everywhere. What Lewis is saying is that you can escape love.
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You can hide from others. Be a loner. You can be selfish and have a life that is focused completely on yourself.
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This is attractive to many because if you do this, you don't experience the pain that comes from loving in this fallen world.
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What he's saying is the only place in existence where there is no love is hell. Hell is a place of isolation, as I mentioned.
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But God calls you in this world to be close to others. To give yourself to others.
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And inevitably, when there is close proximity, it can hurt. What family hasn't gone through growing pains over the years?
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What family hasn't gone through tension? When you're in close proximity, it's inevitable. Every married couple in this room knows what
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I'm talking about. To love, to truly, truly love, means experiencing some pain along the way.
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One of the reasons many couples get divorced is because they had a fantasy about what marriage is supposed to be.
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And the reality of their marriage doesn't fit the fantasy. When you live with someone, difficulty comes.
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Since two sinners living in the same place all the time together, friction comes.
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A relationship that truly loves works through the difficulties. It's not just marriage.
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It's every relationship in life. Every close family relationship or friendship means you are giving part of yourself to another.
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True family relationships and friendships only work when you give of yourselves for the other.
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Otherwise, it's a superficial relationship and not love. Think about the local church.
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We are a church family. Have you ever thought about why megachurches are so popular? Now, not every megachurch is a serious problem, but many are.
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I believe that one of the reasons megachurches are attractive to so many is that you can remain anonymous.
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In smaller churches, you can't. In a church that is a couple hundred people or less, you are known.
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In that environment, you can truly be in each other's lives. You can truly love one another in tangible ways.
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To be closely connected to another person's life means difficult things will come up where God desires for His church not to run from those difficulties, but to love one another through them.
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It's a blessing to be in each other's lives through the ups and downs, but some want to avoid this so they leave church altogether or find a church where no one will know their name.
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I remember talking to a guy who said, if I got hit by a bus tomorrow at my church, the pastors wouldn't even know about it.
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They'd find out, oh wait, he went to our church? We didn't even know him. There's a problem there, isn't there?
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I remember reading a book one time where they were saying that megachurches think that they are getting unbelievers to come to their church, but they're really getting cast -offs from smaller churches who just get disgruntled and don't want to deal with the hard things of the love.
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Loving hurts. And they go, okay, I'm going to go to this place.
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Nobody's going to know my name. I'm going to sit in the back. Again, not everybody there is that way, but I think a lot of people are at those places because they don't want to get hurt.
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They don't want to go through the difficulty of that close proximity where love happens. That's not how
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God designed church to be. He designed that we go through life together and we are there for each other no matter what.
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God wants us to live out what love is in whatever relationship we are in. The Word of God tells us what love is.
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1 Corinthians 13, verses 4 -7. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast.
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It's not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It's not irritable or resentful.
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It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
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True love is not fuzzy feelings. True love is giving of yourselves to others.
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And doing this is not easy. But this is Jesus' call to everyone in this room.
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Jesus tells you to love God and one of the ways your love for God is shown is truly loving others.
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To truly love is hard, but it's the path of blessing. The most miserable people on planet
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Earth are those who live for themselves. There are people who own mansions and live there alone.
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These people can fly a plane anywhere, take their fancy car anywhere, take their boat out to any location on the water, but they're miserable because they're missing out.
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I don't know where the true joy is. Didn't Jesus say it is more blessed to give than to receive?
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That is the most joyful life. That is the most blessed life. Giving of yourself. Loving your neighbor as yourself.
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As you love God with all your heart. Too many people miss out on the sweetest thing there is in life.
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Love. The richness of loving God and loving others.
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So as we conclude, make sure not to miss out on the true meaning of God's commands.
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We've seen three instructions how. Through refusing to think wrongly about God's commands.
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It's not a checklist. Treasuring God above all else. That's the great commandment.
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And showing your love for God by loving people. When people think of commands, they think of external rule keeping.
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But when this happens, the whole point of obedience is missed. At the heart of all obedience is a deep love for God.
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None of us love God as much as we should. But one prayer that should continually come from our heart and our mouth is to love
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Him more. As you do this, you will obey the greatest commandment to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind.
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And by God's grace, may this mark Eureka Baptist Church.
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People who live out the greatest commandment and then live out the second commandment.
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And that others would experience that blessing. And that we would experience that blessing as we live that way. And that He would be glorified.
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Now next Sunday, the tables are going to be turned.
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Jesus has been receiving the questions. Now He's going to ask a question. And as you might expect, it's not going to go well for the recipients.
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But we will look at that next Sunday. But at this time, let's bow our heads in prayer. Father in Heaven, what a wonderful God You are.
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You are worthy of all the praise, all the honor, all the glory. And Lord, I think we all feel it in our hearts.
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Every believer in this room feels it. Lord, we want to love You more. And we're sad that we don't love
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You more. I know I am. And we look forward to the day when we will be freed from sin.
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But in the meantime, Lord, help us to truly love You. Truly, truly love. And that we would experience that blessing.
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And that others would experience that blessing. What a rich life that is. We can only do it by Your grace.