The Greatest Commandment
Matthew 22:34-40
34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
I have given this message the title: Relative Truth. In today’s world, the message is that all truth is relative. This means that there is no such thing as absolute truth. One problem with that thinking is that it is illogical and self-defeating to try to assert that it is absolutely true that there is no such thing as absolute truth. What I want to say to you today is that from a Biblical standpoint the truth is that all truth is about relatives. The Bible teaches us how to relate to God, each other and the unbelieving world around us.
The ground floor of this truth is found in the two Greatest Commandments as quoted by Jesus. And what we find there is that the active verb of those two commandments is “love.” Love is a relational word, a relationship word. People don’t seem to have a problem with that because they kind of automatically redefine it to mean “be nice to everybody.” But if they were really going to take this word seriously, they would have a problem with it because in today’s world love is not something you choose to do, it is something that happens to you. People fall in love.
That powerful attractive force that we call “falling in love” is even used to justify sinful things like having an adulterous affair. They say, “I know we were both married to other people, but we couldn’t help it that we fell in love.” That kind if thing is easier to justify among those who believe that all truth is relative, than it is for those who believe that the absolute truth of the Bible has some very specific things to say about faithful commitments in loving relationships. And if people believe that true love is something that just hits you like a ton of bricks, and you fall in love, as in, they couldn’t help it, then they are also going to believe that love cannot be commanded. How can God reasonably command anyone to have this strong, emotionally bonding attachment to him or to anyone?
Many theologians turn here to the fact that the Greeks have several different words for the different kinds of love we seem to be able to differentiate in our lives. Agape is unconditional love, Phileo is brotherly love etc. But that is similar to the fact that Eskimos have something like 17 different words for snow. It’s still just all frozen water! And similarly, no matter how you slice it, or define it, love is still all about how we relate to each other.
So let me say this, when God gave his commandments he did not just come up with some rules and regulations that would be hard for us to follow so that he could see, and we could see, how determined we are to faithfully obey. What God’s commandments actually do is to describe life as it should be, life at its best and most blessed. God wants a perfect world where all is at peace. The Jewish word for that is shalom. God had that for a while, in the beginning, before Adam and Eve decided to believe satan and try out that forbidden fruit.
The reason that God’s commandments are hard to obey is that we human beings remain infected with the same evil desire to love ourselves more than we love God, that is to be selfish. But when we believe the gospel of Jesus Christ and receive the Holy Spirit, God creates a new heart in us that now moves us toward obedience. But it is usually not perfected in us this side of heaven. We still struggle against sin. But actually it is part of the Good News that as Christians we begin to really struggle against sin and not just go with the flow or do whatever feels right. That change in our hearts, so that we want to obey, rather than chafing under the idea that we have to obey is pretty good evidence that the Spirit is at work in us and we really are saved!
True believers are disciples of Jesus Christ who are growing in grace and moving away from being selfish. At this point I want to introduce to you my own made up word that I say is the true opposite of selfish. The word is “otherish.” God’s kind of love is otherish love, love that considers others more highly. I like this word because if you just say that you are learning how to be more selfless, well that word selfless still has some “self” in it, just a little “less.” I like otherish, for its greater emphasis on others.
There is a story of an elderly gentleman who visited his wife every day in the nursing home. She was suffering from Alzheimer’s and it had gotten to the point where he could not take care of her at home. But he did faithfully visit her and sit with her every day. One day, one of the nurses just had to ask a question. She had been watching him love his wife so faithfully and she had arrived at this question that she decided she could ask. “Dear sir, I have noticed that you come every day and sit with your wife, even though she no longer recognizes you or knows who you are. How do you do that and not give up?” His answer was, “Well, ma’am, it’s like this. She may not know who I am. But I do know who she is.”
Here is something I want us all to realize about God, maybe a little more deeply than before. Every person in this world is deeply loved by God. He watches over them, all of them. And even if they don’t know God. He knows who they are, and who they are supposed to be when they come alive in Christ. People who discover God that God loves them that much fall in love with him. Do you know it is possible to fall in love with God? Yes, it does happen. And I will tell you how it happened to me. This is my personal testimony about how I discovered that God is crazy in love with me.
My mom brought me and my brothers to church until I was about twelve years old. It was a Baptist church and I was baptized at about twelve years old. It was kind of fun because I got to go into the pool at the front of church. But I think that’s about all it was at the time. Shortly after that the church closed for reasons that a twelve-year old couldn’t understand and anyway it didn’t seem to bother me that I wasn’t going to church anymore. I love reading and I loved science so I turned to the sciences to answer life’s big questions.
When I was about 15, my mom left the family. She could no longer tolerate the antics of her boys turning into teens and being harder and harder to manage without the help of our way too lenient and uninvolved dad. Anyway, that really left us boys to do whatever we wanted. Some of that had to do with marijuana that was brought home by my older brother and his friends.
I remember when I first tried pot telling them and myself that I would only play with this stuff as long as it didn’t hurt me. I had believed the cops and other authorities who said it was dangerous, but my older brother was having fun! So as time went on I kept smoking and finished high school, barely, but was smart enough to go on to college, Syracuse University School of Forestry Science and Engineering. After two years of partying and not going to classes or studying I flunked out. It’s kind of a wonder it took that long!
About the same time, my drug use was starting to bother me, I was having fainting spells, blacking out and having other bad experiences. So, true to my initial reservations, I cut back and had to keep cutting back because even the smallest doses would have the same bad effects. Now I say that God put me in his own special rehab program. I was never caught or arrested by any authorities. But I definitely had to get sober. Then for the first time in five years I started looking around at the mess I had created. No job, no higher education and therefore no prospects for a bright future. I became very depressed and nearly suicidal.
But a friend from back in high school reminded me of the gospel in Christianity and encouraged me to look into it. At about the same time a special guest came to my door. He was a new pastor in the area seeking to gather a flock and he was going door to door looking for people to talk to. I guess I was ready to listen. I let him in and he started out by asking me if I knew whether or not I was going to go to heaven if I were to die that day. I gave him the honest answer that I did not know, so he proceeded to tell me how to know. He gave me the whole gospel. At the end he asked if I wanted to pray the “sinner’s prayer” and invite Jesus into my heart. I figured it was worth a try and so on the outside I repeated out loud, word for word everything he said I should pray about. But on the inside me real prayer was more like this, “God, I don’t even know if you are real. I need some kind of solid evidence that you really know me and are not just a thing these people talk about like the tooth fairy or Santa Claus.”
But I did start reading my Bible and that was a very exciting thing. I know now that the Holy Spirit was helping me understand and believe it. It really came a live and was very meaningful. The Good I was seeing in the Bible is truly a great and wonderful person to know! And about six weeks later he answered my prayer for evidence! I got a letter in the mail from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. But since I was born and raised in New Rochelle, NY, I had never heard of Calvin College nor did I have any idea why they might want a failure like me to think of attending their school.
As I read the letter I learned that Calvin is a Christian college. I had never thought there might be such a thing! And although I figured thousands of other people were getting the same letter, everything I read in that letter seemed to be addressed directly to me, answering my questions and the things I had been thinking about since I started talking to God. And so to me, that was a letter from God and the evidence I needed. I can’t adequately describe the powerful and wonderful emotions that overwhelmed my heart with gratitude that God is real and relief that I didn’t have to be afraid of ruining my life anymore. My heart fully belongs to the Lord since that day.
Since then I have devoted my life to studying the Scriptures and serving my Lord whom I love. I have wrestled with doubts, struggled against sin, and every step of the way, Jesus, risen from the dead, has been my guide and my friend. I haven’t always been aware of his presence and sometimes it seems like he’s far away. But I have learned that it’s just his way of making sure I keep reaching out to him and trusting him no matter what.
The greatest act of love you can offer to anyone is to share this gospel with them. If you’re going to love your neighbor as yourself, you actually have to care enough about them to find a way to share the gospel. And if the Spirit of God is in you, you will love them that much! Someone has said, “Preach the gospel always, use words when necessary.”
Some call it friendship evangelism. That method of evangelism translates out to having a loving attitude towards people, being kind and generous and helpful, etc. And that is important! There is another saying, “Live a questionable life.” If your actions and attitudes reflect the radical love of God, going beyond ordinary kindness and hospitality, people might be more likely to ask you to explain yourself. The old man in the nursing home is a good example of that.
But, words are really going to be necessary too, always. Here’s why. If you just act like a loving person, everyone will think you are a loving person and that’s great, but when does Jesus get any credit for creating that loving heart in you? Only if they ask you? They might never ask! They will like having you for a friend, but they might never ask what makes you so nice.
Lord willing, I want to spend the next several weeks with you talking about evangelism so that we learn ways to put our faith into action and find the opportunities to use our words to invite others to believe it too. This does take some courage and effort, but you will find it rewarding too as you offer yourself to the Lord as a worker in the harvest and he begins to use you to lead others to Christ.
But for today, I just invite and encourage you all to identify the people in your world who you know need to hear the gospel or probably do. They may not know who God is. But he knows them. And Jesus would be very pleased if you wanted to be his servant to lead them to him. I have handed you all a card that you can use to make a list of those people. It can be used as a bookmark in your Bible so you remember to pray for them every day. Here are the instructions. Make a list of names of people especially people who live close enough that you can invite them to worship with us.
Then pray for them every day. Pray for the lost! It is an act of love when you pray for the people you know or think need to hear the gospel. Pray for opportunities to share. Pray that God will lead them to believe! Pray that they will accept your invitation to attend worship. Especially pray for opportunities to love them the way Jesus loves you. Love them with the love that comes from God. It is an important way to keep both of the great commandments. If you’re sharing the gospel it is because you love the God who saved you and because you love the people enough to want see them saved too. And God loves that!
God’s truth isn’t relativistic. It is absolutely true! God’s truth is relational. And as we reach out to people who become believers as God works through our efforts, we are creating new relatives! And that’s the relative truth! Amen.
Matthew 22:34-40
34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
I have given this message the title: Relative Truth. In today’s world, the message is that all truth is relative. This means that there is no such thing as absolute truth. One problem with that thinking is that it is illogical and self-defeating to try to assert that it is absolutely true that there is no such thing as absolute truth. What I want to say to you today is that from a Biblical standpoint the truth is that all truth is about relatives. The Bible teaches us how to relate to God, each other and the unbelieving world around us.
The ground floor of this truth is found in the two Greatest Commandments as quoted by Jesus. And what we find there is that the active verb of those two commandments is “love.” Love is a relational word, a relationship word. People don’t seem to have a problem with that because they kind of automatically redefine it to mean “be nice to everybody.” But if they were really going to take this word seriously, they would have a problem with it because in today’s world love is not something you choose to do, it is something that happens to you. People fall in love.
That powerful attractive force that we call “falling in love” is even used to justify sinful things like having an adulterous affair. They say, “I know we were both married to other people, but we couldn’t help it that we fell in love.” That kind if thing is easier to justify among those who believe that all truth is relative, than it is for those who believe that the absolute truth of the Bible has some very specific things to say about faithful commitments in loving relationships. And if people believe that true love is something that just hits you like a ton of bricks, and you fall in love, as in, they couldn’t help it, then they are also going to believe that love cannot be commanded. How can God reasonably command anyone to have this strong, emotionally bonding attachment to him or to anyone?
Many theologians turn here to the fact that the Greeks have several different words for the different kinds of love we seem to be able to differentiate in our lives. Agape is unconditional love, Phileo is brotherly love etc. But that is similar to the fact that Eskimos have something like 17 different words for snow. It’s still just all frozen water! And similarly, no matter how you slice it, or define it, love is still all about how we relate to each other.
So let me say this, when God gave his commandments he did not just come up with some rules and regulations that would be hard for us to follow so that he could see, and we could see, how determined we are to faithfully obey. What God’s commandments actually do is to describe life as it should be, life at its best and most blessed. God wants a perfect world where all is at peace. The Jewish word for that is shalom. God had that for a while, in the beginning, before Adam and Eve decided to believe satan and try out that forbidden fruit.
The reason that God’s commandments are hard to obey is that we human beings remain infected with the same evil desire to love ourselves more than we love God, that is to be selfish. But when we believe the gospel of Jesus Christ and receive the Holy Spirit, God creates a new heart in us that now moves us toward obedience. But it is usually not perfected in us this side of heaven. We still struggle against sin. But actually it is part of the Good News that as Christians we begin to really struggle against sin and not just go with the flow or do whatever feels right. That change in our hearts, so that we want to obey, rather than chafing under the idea that we have to obey is pretty good evidence that the Spirit is at work in us and we really are saved!
True believers are disciples of Jesus Christ who are growing in grace and moving away from being selfish. At this point I want to introduce to you my own made up word that I say is the true opposite of selfish. The word is “otherish.” God’s kind of love is otherish love, love that considers others more highly. I like this word because if you just say that you are learning how to be more selfless, well that word selfless still has some “self” in it, just a little “less.” I like otherish, for its greater emphasis on others.
There is a story of an elderly gentleman who visited his wife every day in the nursing home. She was suffering from Alzheimer’s and it had gotten to the point where he could not take care of her at home. But he did faithfully visit her and sit with her every day. One day, one of the nurses just had to ask a question. She had been watching him love his wife so faithfully and she had arrived at this question that she decided she could ask. “Dear sir, I have noticed that you come every day and sit with your wife, even though she no longer recognizes you or knows who you are. How do you do that and not give up?” His answer was, “Well, ma’am, it’s like this. She may not know who I am. But I do know who she is.”
Here is something I want us all to realize about God, maybe a little more deeply than before. Every person in this world is deeply loved by God. He watches over them, all of them. And even if they don’t know God. He knows who they are, and who they are supposed to be when they come alive in Christ. People who discover God that God loves them that much fall in love with him. Do you know it is possible to fall in love with God? Yes, it does happen. And I will tell you how it happened to me. This is my personal testimony about how I discovered that God is crazy in love with me.
My mom brought me and my brothers to church until I was about twelve years old. It was a Baptist church and I was baptized at about twelve years old. It was kind of fun because I got to go into the pool at the front of church. But I think that’s about all it was at the time. Shortly after that the church closed for reasons that a twelve-year old couldn’t understand and anyway it didn’t seem to bother me that I wasn’t going to church anymore. I love reading and I loved science so I turned to the sciences to answer life’s big questions.
When I was about 15, my mom left the family. She could no longer tolerate the antics of her boys turning into teens and being harder and harder to manage without the help of our way too lenient and uninvolved dad. Anyway, that really left us boys to do whatever we wanted. Some of that had to do with marijuana that was brought home by my older brother and his friends.
I remember when I first tried pot telling them and myself that I would only play with this stuff as long as it didn’t hurt me. I had believed the cops and other authorities who said it was dangerous, but my older brother was having fun! So as time went on I kept smoking and finished high school, barely, but was smart enough to go on to college, Syracuse University School of Forestry Science and Engineering. After two years of partying and not going to classes or studying I flunked out. It’s kind of a wonder it took that long!
About the same time, my drug use was starting to bother me, I was having fainting spells, blacking out and having other bad experiences. So, true to my initial reservations, I cut back and had to keep cutting back because even the smallest doses would have the same bad effects. Now I say that God put me in his own special rehab program. I was never caught or arrested by any authorities. But I definitely had to get sober. Then for the first time in five years I started looking around at the mess I had created. No job, no higher education and therefore no prospects for a bright future. I became very depressed and nearly suicidal.
But a friend from back in high school reminded me of the gospel in Christianity and encouraged me to look into it. At about the same time a special guest came to my door. He was a new pastor in the area seeking to gather a flock and he was going door to door looking for people to talk to. I guess I was ready to listen. I let him in and he started out by asking me if I knew whether or not I was going to go to heaven if I were to die that day. I gave him the honest answer that I did not know, so he proceeded to tell me how to know. He gave me the whole gospel. At the end he asked if I wanted to pray the “sinner’s prayer” and invite Jesus into my heart. I figured it was worth a try and so on the outside I repeated out loud, word for word everything he said I should pray about. But on the inside me real prayer was more like this, “God, I don’t even know if you are real. I need some kind of solid evidence that you really know me and are not just a thing these people talk about like the tooth fairy or Santa Claus.”
But I did start reading my Bible and that was a very exciting thing. I know now that the Holy Spirit was helping me understand and believe it. It really came a live and was very meaningful. The Good I was seeing in the Bible is truly a great and wonderful person to know! And about six weeks later he answered my prayer for evidence! I got a letter in the mail from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. But since I was born and raised in New Rochelle, NY, I had never heard of Calvin College nor did I have any idea why they might want a failure like me to think of attending their school.
As I read the letter I learned that Calvin is a Christian college. I had never thought there might be such a thing! And although I figured thousands of other people were getting the same letter, everything I read in that letter seemed to be addressed directly to me, answering my questions and the things I had been thinking about since I started talking to God. And so to me, that was a letter from God and the evidence I needed. I can’t adequately describe the powerful and wonderful emotions that overwhelmed my heart with gratitude that God is real and relief that I didn’t have to be afraid of ruining my life anymore. My heart fully belongs to the Lord since that day.
Since then I have devoted my life to studying the Scriptures and serving my Lord whom I love. I have wrestled with doubts, struggled against sin, and every step of the way, Jesus, risen from the dead, has been my guide and my friend. I haven’t always been aware of his presence and sometimes it seems like he’s far away. But I have learned that it’s just his way of making sure I keep reaching out to him and trusting him no matter what.
The greatest act of love you can offer to anyone is to share this gospel with them. If you’re going to love your neighbor as yourself, you actually have to care enough about them to find a way to share the gospel. And if the Spirit of God is in you, you will love them that much! Someone has said, “Preach the gospel always, use words when necessary.”
Some call it friendship evangelism. That method of evangelism translates out to having a loving attitude towards people, being kind and generous and helpful, etc. And that is important! There is another saying, “Live a questionable life.” If your actions and attitudes reflect the radical love of God, going beyond ordinary kindness and hospitality, people might be more likely to ask you to explain yourself. The old man in the nursing home is a good example of that.
But, words are really going to be necessary too, always. Here’s why. If you just act like a loving person, everyone will think you are a loving person and that’s great, but when does Jesus get any credit for creating that loving heart in you? Only if they ask you? They might never ask! They will like having you for a friend, but they might never ask what makes you so nice.
Lord willing, I want to spend the next several weeks with you talking about evangelism so that we learn ways to put our faith into action and find the opportunities to use our words to invite others to believe it too. This does take some courage and effort, but you will find it rewarding too as you offer yourself to the Lord as a worker in the harvest and he begins to use you to lead others to Christ.
But for today, I just invite and encourage you all to identify the people in your world who you know need to hear the gospel or probably do. They may not know who God is. But he knows them. And Jesus would be very pleased if you wanted to be his servant to lead them to him. I have handed you all a card that you can use to make a list of those people. It can be used as a bookmark in your Bible so you remember to pray for them every day. Here are the instructions. Make a list of names of people especially people who live close enough that you can invite them to worship with us.
Then pray for them every day. Pray for the lost! It is an act of love when you pray for the people you know or think need to hear the gospel. Pray for opportunities to share. Pray that God will lead them to believe! Pray that they will accept your invitation to attend worship. Especially pray for opportunities to love them the way Jesus loves you. Love them with the love that comes from God. It is an important way to keep both of the great commandments. If you’re sharing the gospel it is because you love the God who saved you and because you love the people enough to want see them saved too. And God loves that!
God’s truth isn’t relativistic. It is absolutely true! God’s truth is relational. And as we reach out to people who become believers as God works through our efforts, we are creating new relatives! And that’s the relative truth! Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment