We all
live... If we're gonna live lives that are
somewhat organized,
you have lists.
Right?
List. Do you go to the grocery store
without a list? Who goes to the grocery
store without a list?
Jane does not let me go to the
grocery store without a list because I... That
looks good. I could use that. Yep. Need
that. That might be good and I come
home with a bunch of things that never
get eaten or used, so she does the
grocery shopping. She goes with a list. How
about playlist? For your favorite music platform. I
love
making playlists.
How about your Christmas wish list?
Your birthday wish list.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but how
about you with little ones, your school supply
lists?
Oh, I know.
We're already coming around the corner to get
back to school. I remember when our kids
were little. It was,
Back to school night, blink
field day. Back to school night, blink, field
day, school supplies.
How about your bucket list?
Right? Your bucket list, the things you wanna
do or see before you kick the bucket.
Right?
So
speaking of lists.
I read a a list of a hundred
things to do before you die.
And I was quite surprised that y'all for
help wasn't 1 of them.
Thank you, Meghan.
She's my plant and the audience to giggle.
Any dog people,
innovation. Dog people.
Okay?
I like other people's dogs. I just don't
like having a dog, but here's the list
of the 10 worst dog breeds. Let's see
if your dog is on this list.
I know.
Number 1,
there. Number 2, are.
Number 3, no,
Number 4, bad.
Number 5,
dog, number 6, breeds.
Number 7, only. Number 8, bad. Number 9,
owners.
There are no bad dog breeds, only bad
owners.
And coming in at number 10 is Chihuahua.
Y Taco bell. Right?
Jane asked me to put ketchup on the
grocery list. And now I can't read it.
Keep going, Scott, you got this.
I finally crossed running a marathon off my
bucket list. There was no chance I was
ever gonna do it. I'm glad it's gone.
Lastly,
I hired a handyman, and I gave him
a list of things to do at our
house. And when I got home,
He had only done number 1, number 3
and number 5
because it turns out he only does odd
jobs.
I'll be here all week. Tip your waitress.
We're in a series called ask the rabbi.
And we've been going through the gospel in
looking at
questions that were asked of Jesus, who asked
those questions?
Why did they ask? What was their motive?
And what was Jesus response? And I've really
enjoyed this and we've had really good feedback
that most of you have really enjoyed this.
So appreciate that.
Today, we're gonna look at a passage
a question that was asked of Jesus,
probably at least 3 times.
Let me read this to you.
1 of the scribes came and heard them
arguing and recognizing that he had answered them
well.
Asked him what command is foremost of all.
What's the greatest command? Jesus answered.
The foremost is hero israel.
The Lord our God is 1 lord, and
you shall love the Lord your God with
all your heart, with all your soul, with
all your mind
and with all your strength.
And the second is this, you shall love
your neighbor
as yourself.
There is no other command
greater than these.
What is the greatest command? Jesus?
In the old testament,
the in the Hebrew Bible, there are 613
commands. There's a list
of 613
commands.
And the... Those commands were divided into into
2 categories. You had the heavy more binding
commands,
and then you had the light
section, which is the the less binding.
The context of this question that's asked of
Jesus
is the ph we're trying to
test Jesus.
Did he love God's law? Did he... What
was his
interpretation and understanding to the law?
What's the greatest command? Jesus
quotes
what the the Jewish people call the sc,
which is
the word in Hebrew to hear to hear.
Sc.
Sc Israel. I not el.
You didn't know I spoke Hebrew, but I
do a little bit.
Hero Israel, the Lord, our God. The Lord
is 1. And that was that whole passage
in D64
through
about 10 is the creed of judaism.
Most orthodox Jews would and still do today,
recite that passage
have it memorized and recite it out loud
at least twice a day.
And then Jesus adds to that,
Levi vi 19 verse 18.
And he tells them
all of this list of commands every single
1 of them that you've read, hang on
these 2 peg of
love god with all you have.
And love your neighbor as yourself. All of
the commands flow
out of out of those that command to
love God and love your neighbor.
I don't know if you like me.
If you have a a short attention span
sometime,
long act
explanations where you out,
anybody relate to that just a little bit
or how about
tedious
rules,
rules for just rules sake?
I'm probably breaking those rules. If they don't
have love behind it, and it's just a
rule to have a rule,
it's
It's
those those wear me out as well You
ever read the book of.
Fall asleep, man, it's a tough book to
read because there's all these different tedious
commands and things told to do.
So what I love about what Jesus has
done for us here is he gave us
the cliff notes
on all 613
commands.
The cliff notes are... Everything flows from your
love for God and your love
for your neighbor.
If you look at the 10 commandments. Right?
The first
4 of the 10 commandments are about loving
God. The second 6 are about loving your
neighbor.
Don't lie. Don't steal, don't murder, etcetera.
And so for us to get the most
out of this, we have to see... What
what is Jesus
telling us today? How does this apply to
you and I in the year 20 24
in the season of life that you find
yourself in
because the gauge of disciples ship
and our
transformation is our ability
to love God be loved by God and
love our neighbor as ourselves. That... That's the
gauge. That's what we're looking for. The... The
measure of maturity is love.
And the root of sin
is a failure to love.
Sometimes sin is defined as breaking god's law.
Yeah. I get that. Sometimes it's missing the
mark.
Defined as, but ultimately, when when we send,
it's a failure to trust God,
obey God,
and I'm doing something against my neighbor. Somehow
some way. That's ultimately
the root of sin.
And I think it begs the question
on this greatest command, why would god command
us
to love him.
It's a fair question.
What? He doesn't need our love?
Why would he command us to love. This
is so important.
Anything God commands
of us to do or not to do
it's out of love. He wants what's best
for you and I.
Because God loves us too much to let
us
share our hearts
and our worship with a lesser joy than
him.
Because the ultimate joy is found in loving
god and being loved by God
and love God.
Let's talk about this. What does it mean
to love God. What does it mean? Let's
it? Try to answer that question.
To love God, first of all, means I
daily choose
to give him the whole of my life.
I daily choose to give him the whole
of my life.
That means you value god
above all else.
Value is the essence of worship.
The word worship that we say in in
modern English today comes from the old
English way of of speaking of the word
worth ship,
the worth of something.
So we worship what we value.
I think this is so important. When you
and I
see
all of our life
as acts of worship to God,
then we will be we will be giving
him the whole of our life. We will
be loving God when he we see everything
that we do from little things to big
things as acts of worship. The apostle Paul
put it this way in Philippians 01:21. He
said to live as Christ,
and to die his gain.
To live as Christ. To live as Christ
is to give god the whole of my
life every day.
Give him the whole of my life, and
I think this is important.
That you and I as followers of Jesus
followers of Jesus that we don't compartment minimize
our lives. We don't compartment minimize him
in our life. What I mean by that
is
I work.
I have a family. I have friends,
I have hobbies.
And I follow Jesus and go to church.
That's compartment minimizing.
What we need to do to live as
Christ is he is the
foundation
And from from him, flow, my work, from
him, flow, my family, my friendships, and my
hobbies. He's the he's the totality of our
life.
So spend your life on what matters most
to Jesus.
What matters most to him, spend your life
on that.
See Jesus in the ordinary.
Right? From, like first Corinthians 10:31 says whether
you eat or drink due to the glory
of God.
Eating and drinking are pretty ordinary
thanks, and we do that with thankful and
grateful.
Changing a diaper to the glory of God.
Your job turning a wrench. Whatever you do,
see it as an act of worship
to God.
Secondly,
what does it mean to love God? It
means I choose daily
to seek to do his will.
With my life.
Seek to do his will wake up in
the morning and say God,
I give you my will.
Because the do God's will, you're gonna have
to let him be in charge of your
will. You're gonna have to turn your will
over
to him.
And I got good news. If you want
to do the will of god, you will.
Because if you want to do God's will,
it means your heart is in position.
For him
to move your life in the right direction
that's best for you and that you're gonna
have an impactful life
on others.
And as Brian said earlier,
his will is love that we love him
and that we love 1 another and that
we obey his commands.
Jesus said his commands are not burdensome.
He said, follow me, and you'll find rest
for your soul. Jesus said this in John
15,
This is my command,
love 1 another. The way I have loved
you.
This is the very best way to love.
Put your life on the line for your
friends.
You are my friends when you do the
things I command you.
In Matthew's gospel, Matthew 5, 6 and 7
is a very
long descriptive version of the sermon on the
mount.
In Luke's Gospel,
in Luke chapter 6,
it's a condensed version of the sermon on
the mount.
And you know the sermon on the mount
has some some tough things in there.
Like love your enemies.
Pray for those who per you.
If they ask you to go 1 mile,
go 2 miles.
Anybody see, better not spoil it for you
Anybody wants the chosen
Alright. You know what I'm talking about there
I'm going the this extra mile. I'm not
gonna spoil it for you, but thank you.
You should watch it. It's free, download the
app. Very cool.
Life giving for sure.
But at the end of the sermon on
the mount in Luke 6,
Jesus
says this. He says, now, why do you
call me Lord Lord
and do not do what I say.
He's puzzled by that.
You're gonna call me Lord, but then you're
gonna not do what I say.
Any good father or mother has experienced that
before with your kids. Like,
I'm your dad. I'm your mom. I love
you. I have your best interest at heart.
But how much more the perfect god
in heaven says, why do you call me
Lord and not do what I say. Why
do you not put into practice?
Why do you not forgive those who wrong
you? And so forth.
And I think we summarize
if if to love God is to give
him the whole of my life and my
will,
then what we're gonna have to do is
is
answer this question.
In any given circumstance,
ask yourself what does love require of me?
What does love require of me in these
relationships or I wrong somebody or they wrong
me
or I'm frustrated or what... What's love
require
of us,
then we'll love God.
How do I love God?
How do we love God? Like, what... How
is that tangible to love
a being that we don't see?
You know, who doesn't need me? He doesn't
need any of us. How do we love
him?
And I'm gonna kinda go a reverse way
on this?
Is the the first thing to love God
is I need to know that I'm loved
by the father.
You need to know if you're gonna love
God,
give him your life, give him your will.
You need to know that you are infinitely
loved.
First John
puts it this way. John, the apostle says
we love him because he first loved us.
It's gonna be hard to love God if
you don't know or believe that the father
truly loves you. If you don't know and
believe that it's gonna be hard for you
to love him. People who have had difficult
earthly fathers.
Who maybe were abusive or absent or whatever.
It's not easy to love someone who doesn't
love you back.
But in our situation with our heavenly father,
he loves us
eternally.
How do I know he's loved you? Eternally.
Go to Ephesians 1.
From eternity pass, before he ever created the
universe,
created Adam and eve his love was put
upon you and set upon you. You were
on his mind in eternity past.
Let that sink in.
His love is perfect.
Perfect love, casts out all fear.
His love is
unconditional.
He doesn't put conditions on his love. He
loves you because he created you.
And his love is personal.
We all say God is love, God loves
people, but we don't often personalize it for
ourself. I think it was a augustine
He said that god loves each of us
as if there was only 1 of us.
He loves you with that kind of love.
I'm on a Facebook group
theological group, people talk about scripture and their
walks with Jesus. There's thousands of people on
this Facebook group.
The other day I just kinda scrolling through
some of the comments and this guy
had said, I think I'm done with this
whole faith thing. He said my dad
is filled with cancer. My dad was a
pastor and serve god all his life and
now he doesn't even recognize me sometimes.
And he'd had had some other people die
and, like freak motorcycle accidents recently.
And he was like,
God can't be good if he's gonna allow
this kind of stuff to happen.
And we've all been there.
Something bad happens in your life and you
start thinking, God trying to teach me a
lesson.
No.
The father doesn't
abuse people to try to teach them a
lesson.
Life happens.
Bad things happen because we're in a fallen
and broken world, and I love the honesty
of Jesus.
In John 16 33,
he said,
In this life, you will have trials and
sorrows of many kind.
But take courage. I've overcome the world.
This we we want this life on this
earth to be heaven, and it's not, and
it never will be. As good as life
can be,
This is not heaven. The best is yet
to come. In the new heavens and in
the new Earth where there will be no
more sin, no more Sorrow, all wrongs will
be rite by Jesus. We're not there yet.
So make margin in your life for trials
and Sorrows, but no.
That that doesn't change the love of God
for you because we look at our circumstances.
The other thing, we we look at our
circumstances and try to base God's love on
that or our feelings.
And feelings are roller coaster right. Sometimes you
have doubts. Sometimes you want God feels a
million miles away.
What determines his love for you is the
incarnation of Jesus Christ. That God the son
came into this fallen broken
endemic world
became 1 of us
entered into a body like ours,
and
lived a perfect life,
died to brutal death, sac death, but rose
again.
That's
cross right there is what determines God's love
for you and I. What he was willing
to do for us.
The second thing on how do I love
God kinda goes
with the first 1 and it's this. I
need to abide in Jesus and walk in
the spirit.
And I believe abiding in Jesus
and walking in the spirit are the same
thing. It's just saying it a little bit
differently.
Jesus
tells us this, he says, abide me and
I and you
as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself,
fruit of itself
unless it abide in the vine.
So neither,
can you unless you abide in me?
I am the vine. You are the branches.
He who abide in me, and I and
him he bears much fruit.
For a apart from me, you can do
nothing.
God
is
people say, well, what is God? God is
an eternal
relationship between the father's son and spirit.
1 God, 3 persons. They've existed
eternally. From eternity paths to eternity future. God
is a relationship
Now,
Jesus, God the son, when he came into
this world,
he took on an additional nature. A human
nature that he will have
you know, for the rest of eternity as
well.
But in in this fall world in a
body like,
in a mind like you and I have,
he perfectly abide in his father.
His life demonstrated what it means to be
connected to the father at all times and
to do his will to love his father
with all he has
and love people.
So as we abide and Jesus, we're abiding
in the father.
And then the holy spirit produces the fruits
of the spirit, which is love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness,
self control, faithfulness.
Those things are produced by the spirit as
we abide
in Jesus and walk in the spirit.
Alright. Let me make this practical. How do
I love God?
This is important. This is where we totally
participate
with the Lord in this. I need to
practice
integrated disciples shit.
Integrated disciples ship. I'm not trying to throw
out big words there.
It's something I I came up with years
ago,
that
we need the... To to love god, heart
soul mind and strength. I need to love
him with my head, my mind, I need
to love him with my heart and love
him with my hands.
Head, heart and hands. You've heard that if
you've been around here for any time that
that the our model of integrated disciples ship
is head, heart and hands.
Now when you think of,
you know, some people are more wired
in the mind area, you know, intellectually as
as you read scripture as you
see a new truth as the dots are
connected,
You're like, whoa, God you're amazing. That's totally
me. Like, I love studying and scripture and
and loving god with my mind.
But that doesn't mean I don't get to
love him with my heart and my hands
either. And you're gonna find as I describe
this to you,
that you're probably wired
in 1 of those to to lean more
heavy on either of the head, the heart
or the hands. It's just the way god
wired you.
Years ago, we studied a book together called
the sacred pathways by Gary Thomas. And if
you've never read that book. A I highly
recommended. I'll say the in sacred pathways,
Gary Thomas. It's a life changing book, to
your disciples ship to Jesus.
Because in there, he came up with 9
different
spiritual temperament
And a spiritual temperament is, when and where
do you feel closest to god?
When and where do you feel closest? To
god. Some of the temperament where I just
mentioned the intellectual part. When my mind is
moved, I feel close to God.
But for somebody else,
when you're out in nature.
You're on a hike and you're praying or
you're by river and you have your bible.
You just feel closer to God when you're
outdoors. Nurture that.
You
somebody else you feel closest to god as
you're just serving somebody.
You're literally just serving somebody that's gonna talk
about the hands part to that. Somebody else,
it's enthusiastic worship. Now, I feel close to
God when when we're experiencing him and and
enthusiastic worship. Somebody else, it's
it's when you're by yourself,
contemplating
Jesus
in
prayer. Somebody else, it's tradition.
It's the traditions of of the sac
It's the tradition of the Creed.
It's the tradition of Him in reading Him.
Traditions is my second,
temperament.
And we're in a,
you know, non denomination church where we don't
really
have a whole lot of opportunities for that.
So I have to do it on my
own.
I read from a little h.
I recite the Creed. I feel close to
God
in that as well. And if that's you,
that's good, because that's how God wired you.
Learn how to practice these things. So let's
go through this real quick. Number 1, the
head,
head is loving god with your mind.
It's thinking about God.
Thinking about God. I read a book 1
time where a guy said that Another form
of prayer is thinking about God. I was
like, sometimes I feel like I got spiritual
Ad when I'm praying,
I'm like drift off and oh, squirrel, you
know, and you you start mine starts going
somewhere else.
But I think about god all the time.
So Was like, okay. And I I can
I can receive that? Learning to control your
thought life.
Thoughts,
Are the lead to worship, thoughts lead to
sin because thoughts
lead to feelings and feelings lead to behavior.
Everything starts
in the mind,
even moving the heart. The apostle Paul put
it this way. He said, don't copy the
behavior in the customs of this world,
but let God transform you into a new
person
by changing the way you think.
Then you will learn to know god's will
for you, which is good and pleasing and
perfect.
So to love god with our mind, and
we all need to do this,
is have a have a daily intake of
scripture,
scripture intake.
We... It made it so easy in our
world to to to listen to the bible.
On the the U version app. If you
don't like to read, you can listen to
scripture. But daily, flood your mind
with scripture study.
Scripture.
Learn scripture.
Discuss scripture with other people. That's a way
of loving God with your mind.
And then learning to understand better and to
interpret
scripture better. Second thing is the heart.
Head, heart and hands. To love God, with
my heart is taking what Jesus said was
the greatest command, and it's learning to love
God with that in most first part of
me. That seat of affection is what,
when the bible talks about heart, it's not
talking about the thing beating, right? Now. It's
talking about that in most part of who
you are, the seat of affection.
As Proverbs says, from the heart flow, all
the... Wells springs of life.
Ephesians 05:18
through 20
be filled with the holy spirit,
singing
songs and h and spiritual songs
among yourselves,
and making music to the Lord in your
hearts,
and give thanks for everything to God the
father in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ.
That's a that's how
what we do is we sing from our
heart. When we come to worship together corporate.
It's not watching the worship team or listening
to Christy singh.
It's us entering in in and contemplating the
words and singing psalms and Him
from our heart.
Now you don't need to be a church
to worship. You know that. Right? You can
worship in the shower, worship the car.
I say belt it out. I'm a terrible
singer, but man, I like to saying when
I'm listening to worship songs, and and I
don't sing very good, but God doesn't care
right? Like, he's he's looking at my heart.
Prayer thing pray from the heart, learning to
pray in a relational
way
to God.
He's our father,
and we we talk to him, and we
listen for the holy spirit to speak back
to us.
Loving God with your heart is ado.
Jesus I adore you.
It's humbling ourselves, giving him our best of
factions.
Head, heart and then hands.
Head heart and hands. And to love God
with our hands
is to be the hands and feet of
Jesus, Right? It's loving god with all your
strength
by loving your neighbor,
by loving your spouse,
by loving your family.
By loving your friends by loving your community.
It's loving your neighbor as yourself. Next week,
we're gonna look at what does it mean
to love our neighbor in in that question
that was asked of Jesus, who's my neighbor.
We're gonna delve into that next week. So
I'm not gonna
I'm not gonna talk a ton about this
right now, but
I love this verse in Romans 12:11.
Never be lacking in Z.
But keep your spiritual fe, serving the lord.
Keep that fire lit in your heart.
By loving god with your mind
and loving god, with your heart and soul,
and by loving people.
That keeps that spiritual fe
in our hearts going that flame at the
every day. Because you know what? If we
don't fan it into flame and stoke the
fire,
There's so many things vying for our attention
and our affection. Am I right? Every day.
So we need to be mindful of this
relationship that we have.
The other day,
I was on a walk,
and
Sea who sings with us on the worship
team often when she's not working,
I saw her car in our neighborhood.
And she has this little yellow kia with
a ovation sticker. I was like secrets in
our neighborhood.
And as I was walking up this hill,
I could hear her talking.
And I walked and I I saw and
I said, hey, Sig. And she said, hey,
Scott. And she's with a,
this little girl
who couldn't be more than 5 or 6
years old that
definitely was handicapped and had some sort of,
you know, down syndrome or something. And secret
as a caregiver.
And they were she had a coworker
with her and she introduced me. Hey, as
my pastor. Yeah, so forth.
And they were just taking care of this
little girl.
Who... This is what Sig does with people
in giving care. People who can't even give
back
to her.
And she was just loving on this little
girl, and they were gonna take her for
a walk. I've seen this little girl be
walked on our neighborhood a ton. I said,
yeah. I've seen her before. High acuity potato
and she like, hey, and
I saw the hands of Jesus
in sea.
I saw sea
loving God with all her strength.
She have to say anything or do anything.
She was just being the hands
of Jesus to this little girl.
She was loving her neighbor.
Martin Luther,
he said, God doesn't need our good works.
He said, but our neighbors do.
He doesn't need our good works, but people
do.
Let's be a people who
daily, it's
intentionally,
and we wanna love God.
With all that we have.
None of us are gonna do this perfect.
Only Jesus loved God perfectly
in his neighbor as himself perfectly.
But we certainly can strive
to
become like him and let him transform us.
That's what he wants
for each of us. You stand with me.
After we, we're gonna sing a rep prize
of you've always loved me.
After we sing that, I'm gonna
close us in prayer, but I wanna invite
you if you'd like to take comm,
we have comm in the back corner over
there.
And, Vicky and Joe Mona. Be back there
to help lead you if you would like
that. We take comm corporate,
the first Sunday of the month, but we
also offer it for people individually
on a, all the rest of the Sundays.
But as we sing this chorus,
go back to how do I love God,
I need to know I'm love by the
father.
And you are loved infinitely and perfectly.
And from there, everything else flows in learning
to love God.
Let's sing this together.
You have always
May the lord bless you and keep you,
make his face shine upon you,
lift up your count, be gracious to you
and give you his peace this day.
And forever more.
May you know
how loved you are?
May you know
the grace of god through the Lord Jesus
Christ?
May you know the fellowship of the holy
spirit?
And may you know
love for 1 another
in this community and the friendships
that are here
Lord thank you that you created us for
relationship.
You've now redeemed us through the Lord Jesus
for an eternal
relationship with you, and we say yes to
that.
Say yes
to Jesus, agree with him today that he
is the Lord of all
and he's the savior of all.
Where we agree with you?
Cast your burdens upon the Lord.
Cast your heartache and cast your your your
struggles.
On the lord.
Let him sustain and you trust him.
Lord, we trust you.
We give you our burdens today.
Thank you for your love in Jesus name.
Amen.