privilege to be able to speak this morning from God's word through the power of the Holy Spirit. I have to admit I wasn't sure at first what to speak on because I have four different sermons, but I kept coming back to this one. And whenever I speak, this has convicted me. So I want to share my heart with you because if I didn't believe what God was saying in my heart, that I'd be nothing more than a hypocrite.
And I would just be saying the words of men instead of what the Holy Spirit has laid upon my heart. So this morning if you're please turn in your Bibles to Matthew 22. Matthew 22 verses 35 to 40. One of them an expert in the law tested him with this question.
Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus replied, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it.
Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. This was a well-known Old Testament saying frequently emphasized by the rabbis. That comes from the book of Deuteronomy 6 verse 5.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. Jesus stands in the moral tradition of his people. But he demands love with an exclusiveness, which means that all the other commands lead up to it and all righteousness finds in it its norm. You know, there's two kinds of righteousness.
There is a positional righteousness and there's a practical righteousness. The positional righteousness is that the person in Christ has a whole new relationship with God the Father through his son, Jesus Christ. And the practical righteousness is what we do, that we love God and we love our neighbor. For Jesus love is a matter of will and action.
He demands decision and readiness for God and for God alone. Unconditionally, and this startled his hearers. You know, if you think about it, those two commandments mirror the ten commandments. The first four commandments deal with love of God and the final six deal with love of neighbor.
So if we don't give our love of God right, how can we expect to get our love of neighbor right? The two go hand in hand. If our love is out of balance, it's a malady that I call sloppy agape, which means leads to numerous other spiritual problems. The Greek word here for love is agape.
And of the three words of love used in the Hellenistic or Greek world, it was the least common. The two other words were arrows, which means sexual love and phylos, which means friendship. Now agape could be used in a New Testament to designate the unmerited love God shows to us. In sending his son as the suffering redeemer.
When it's used of human love, it means selfless and self giving love. There's too much sloppy agape going on in our world in how we talk, think, or act. Our love has become selfish and greedy instead of selfless and self giving. People's thinking is all messed up.
Please turn to Isaiah. Isaiah chapter five verses 18 through 23. Isaiah chapter five verses 18 through 23. Woe to those who draw sin along courts of deceit and wickedness as cart with cart ropes.
To those who say let God hurry, let him hasten his work so we may see it. The plan of the Holy One of God, let it approach, let it come into view so we may know it. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil and put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.
Woe to those who are heroes that drink wine and champions at mixing drinks who acquit the guilty for a bribe but to deny justice to the innocent. Isaiah says that not only the children of God are caught up in sin and lies, but they also drag the baggage with them wherever they go. It's like the old ball and chain from those old time movie jail scenes. Then they mark God.
Oh God, we await your punishment. Wink wink, nod nod. Nothing happened. They call evil good and good evil.
It's similar to Romans 1. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all godlessness and wickedness of people who suppress the truth by their wickedness since what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made so that the people are without excuse. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, not only they not only continue to do these things, but also approve of those who practice them.
Even today, we must love the Lord and love our neighbors. In some reading I was doing this week in preparation for the message, I came across the reading of J Heinrich Arnold, who is a member of the Bruderhof community based in New York State, the American version of the Bruderhof. And he says, Jesus stands toward this is all clear. He condemns the spirit of the age and exposes it as the spirit of state, the accuser of our brother and the murderer from the beginning.
And in doing so, he calls us to ask ourselves, where amid all the divisiveness and noise of our time is the still small. Paul tells us in Romans 13, 8 through 10, let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another. For whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. Your commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet Him whatever other command there may be are summed up in this one command.
Love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. But God will not allow wrong to continue as we see in Isaiah 51, 4 through 8.
If you turn their Isaiah 51 verses 4 through 8. Listen to me, my people. Hear me, my nation. Instruction will go out for me.
My justice will become a light to the nations. My righteousness draws near speedily. My salvation is on the way. And my arm will bring justice to the nations.
The islands will look to me and wait in hope for my arm. Lift up your eyes to the heavens. Look at the earth beneath. The heavens will vanish like smoke.
The earth will wear out like a garment. The inhabitants will die like flies. But my salvation will last forever. My righteousness will never fail.
Hear me, you who know what is right. You people who have taken my instruction to heart. Do not fear the reproach of mere mortals or be terrified by their insults. For the moth will eat up them, eat them up like a garment.
The worm will devour them like wool. But my righteousness will last forever. My salvation through all generations. Martin Lloyd Jones, who was an English pastor in the 20th century, wrote this in his book Authentic Christianity.
There is a real confusion today about Christianity and about the Christian Church. Her nature, her task and her message. This is a great tragedy. Think of the problems harassing people today, individually and collectively.
Think of the unhappiness, the heartbreak, the cynicism and bitterness in life. We are all aware of these human problems as they are called. But if only people were truly Christian, most of these problems would immediately be solved. And the same, it is the same with our international tensions and difficulties.
Amnity and war and strife are due to the fact that men and women are in a wrong relationship with God. And they will only find out how to enter a true relationship by knowing, believing, accepting and submitting to the message of the Christian Church, the message of the Gospel. How can we show how to enter into a true relationship by knowing, believing, accepting and submitting ourselves to the message of the Christian Church, the message of the Gospel when we aren't loving God or neighbor? Love God, love neighbor.
Learn with me to the first chapter of James and we'll be looking at verses 13 through 16 and verses 21 through 25. I'll be reading from the amplified version of the Bible for these passages. James 1 verses 13 through 16 and then dropping down to 21 through 25. Let no one say when he was tempted, I am tempted of God.
For God is incapable of being tempted by what is evil and he himself tempts no one. But every person is tempted when he was drawn away in text and baited by his own evil desire, he lost passions. Then the evil desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin and sin when it is fully matured brings forth death. Do not be misled, my beloved brethren.
So get rid of all uncleanness and the rampant outgrowth of wickedness and in a humble, gentle, modest spirit. Receive and welcome the word which implanted and rooted in your hearts contains the power to save your souls. But be doers of the word, obey the message and not merely listeners to it, betraying yourselves into deception by reasoning contrary to the truth. But if anyone only listens to the word without a bang and a being a doer of it, he is like a man who looks carefully at his own natural face in a mirror.
For he thoughtfully observes it and then goes off and promptly forgets what he was like. But he who looks carefully into the faultless law, the law of liberty and is faithful to it and perseveres in looking into it, being not a heedless reader who forgets. But in act of doer who obeys, he shall be blessed in doing his life of obedience. Christians counter the worldview of selfishness, hate, violence, neglect and abuse.
That belief that I am accountable to no one, the belief that if I live a good life, then I will make it to heaven or whatever place exists after death. The belief that it doesn't matter what I do because when I die that's it, it's over. Christians have a different view of the world. It's based on the fact that God wants a personal relationship with you and me.
God has stepped into human history and says, I love you. It's based on the fact that God sent his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to this earth, to live among us, live a sinless life and then to die for us and be raised from the dead because we messed up things so long ago to the point where doing wrong is in our very nature. It's a call to repentance. It's a call for a changed life and it's a call of eternal consequences.
We are called to love all people, including our enemies. We are called to show the fruits of our relationship with God through the Holy Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, against such things there is no law. We are called to take this message to the world through faith and action. We are called to be different.
So don't miss be misled in the not loving God or not loving your neighbor, even the ones you don't necessarily like. You have to do something with the love of God and love of neighbor. You just can't talk about it. In a Peanuts cartoon that I found this week in my preparation, Charlie Brown and Sherman all bundled up in their warm winter coats and hats.
They go up to a shivering snoopie and bid him good cheer. So they walk away contented, having said, be of good cheer, but they don't take care of snoopies real needs. He's cold. He's shivering.
He needs a coat. But nobody took care of him. Where was the love? The love for God stands for a radical either or.
In Matthew 624 we're told, no one can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. To love God is to listen faithfully and obediently to his orders.
The place oneself under his lordship, the value above all, the realization of his lordship. It also means, however, to base one's whole being on God. To cling to him with unreserved confidence, to leave him with him all care or final responsibility to live by his hand. In brotherly love, the circle of father, son, and the people of God constitutes a fellowship which is not of this world.
The love is the final reality for life of this fellowship, and abiding in love is the law of its life. Learn with me to 1 John, chapter 4, verses 7 through 13. 1 John, chapter 4, verses 7 through 13. Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.
Whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not know God because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us. He sent his one and only son into the world that we live through him.
This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God loves in us, and his love is made complete in us. This is how we know that we live in him and he in us, he has given of his spirit.
We still have the ability to make up for lost time, and lost love for our God and for our neighbor. Isaiah 55, 6 through 13, show us the way. If you'll turn their place, Isaiah 55, verses 6 through 13. Seek the Lord while he may be found.
Call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the Lord and he will have mercy on them. And to our God for he will freely pardon them.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts. Neither are your ways, my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth, and making it but in flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth.
It will not return to be empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I send it. You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace. The mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Instead of the thorn bush will grow the juniper, and instead of briars the murtral will grow.
This will be for the Lord's renown for an everlasting sign that will endure forever. We are to be God-centered and ministry-centered. We are to fix our eyes on loving God, loving one another, preaching the gospel, and being God's ambassadors to this fallen world. In Ephesians 1, 18 through 21 it says, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of his calling.
What are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power toward us who believe? These are in accordance with the working of the strength of his might, which he brought about in Christ when he raised him from the dead, and seated him at the right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this age, but also in the one to come. Now back to Matthew 22 verses 35 to 40, and I'll be reading again from the Amplified Bible. Matthew 22 verses 35 to 40, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind intellect.
This is the great, most important principle and first commandment. It's back in his light, you shall love your neighbor as you do yourself. These two commandments sum up and upon them depend all the law and the prophets. In the Gospel of Mark, a teacher of the law exclaimed to Jesus about these commandments in Mark 1233, To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself, is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.
Love today and every day while we still have breath to praise the Lord. Let us pray. May Father forgive me where I have failed you in loving you and loving neighbor. I just pray that we would be drawn closer to you, that we would love you more and more and love our neighbor as our Father.
Help us to go from this place to change people and encourage people to challenge people to loving people and will give honor and glory for all these things. For it's in Jesus name we pray. And all of God's people said, Amen. Have a great week.