The Greatest Love
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Introduction
Introduction
One year in elementary school, our class learned and performed a hit song sung by Whitney Houston. It had been at the top of the charts the year before. The premise of that song was that learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.
I beg to differ this morning and submit to you that there is a love even greater than that.
Before we get to the greatest love, I will say that I do believe that we should love ourselves in the way God intended for us to. We will look at that in a couple of weeks, but today we want to look at what scripture describes as the greatest love.
Last week, we looked at Agape love and looked at its characteristics. Lets quickly review them before we look at our scripture.
4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;
5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;
6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;
7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away.
The word that Jesus will use for love in our passage this morning is the same as what was used in 1 Corinthians 13. We are continuing to look at “Agape” love this morning. So, we examine our scripture this morning within the context of a love that is patient, kind, does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, does not keep a record of wrongs, finds no joy in unrighteousness, rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things, and never fails.
Please open your copy of God’s word to Matthew 22:34-40 and stand with me when you have found it.
34 But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.
35 Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying,
36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”
37 Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’
38 This is the first and great commandment.
Pray
The Pharisees and Sadducees were two different Jewish sects at the time of Christ. Representatives from each of these sects were part of the religious ruling body known as the Sanhedrin. There was some differences in each groups beliefs with the Pharisees belief in the resurrection and the Sadducees denial being the major difference. So after Jesus silenced the Sadducees, a Pharisee lawyer asked “Which is the great commandment” We can understand question is asking “Which is the greatest or most important command?”
The Greatest Commandment
The Greatest Commandment
Before we look at what Jesus says is the greatest commandment, I want you to look at what Jesus says about His answer. Let’s look at verse 38.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
When we think of something being first, we may understand it as being the first in order, but not necessarily in value.
This is my third iPad to own, but it is the most advanced of any I have owned.
Now, when we look at Jesus saying that this is the first and great commandment, we must understand first as meaning “ranking above all others”
The word “great” used in verse 36 and 38 could lead us to believe that it refers to something “high up” on the list, but maybe not the highest. However, as we understand Jesus’s response of “first and great” in context, we must come to the conclusion that “great” means “most important”
So, if Jesus tells us that this commandment is the most important and ranks above all others, we should pay attention to it.
Love the Lord your God
Love the Lord your God
Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:5 to answer this lawyer. If you would look at it later today, I would encourage you to do so. As we look at the command here, we can see that the word for love is the same as in our passage from last week, 1 Corinthians 13.
We are commanded to love God. You may say that it being a command doesn’t make it something that you want to do. However, when we understand the command in light of 1 John 4:19, we can see that it actually can be easy.
19 We love Him because He first loved us.
We fulfill the greatest command be reciprocating the love that we have received. The healthiest relationships are where love and friendship are reciprocated between two people.
When we come to faith in Jesus Christ, we experience the greatest love that has ever been known:
8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Out of love, Jesus died for us. We experience that love in and through salvation. If you have not been saved, then you have not experienced the fulness of God’s love and cannot fulfill the greatest command that we are looking at today. I encourage you to get saved today so that you can know the love of God!
So, God loves us and we respond to that love by giving it back to the Lord.
How do we love God?
How do we love God?
After giving the command to love God, Jesus provided us with three areas in which to express our love. Let’s take a look at each of them:
All your heart!
All your heart!
When I tell Christy that I love her and I say to her, “I love her with all of my...” Would I tell her that I love her with all of my big toe? No, and I wouldn’t tell her that I love her with all of my right kidney because it is shriveled up and probably the size of a raisin by now. I tell her that I love her with all of my heart!
Why?
Why would I tell her that I love her with all of the organ that pumps my blood? I’m not referring to the heart in that way am I?
I am referring to the seat of my emotions. There is an emotional attachment and bond that is there. We find this with our spouses, our parents, our children, and even good friends. We should find it among fellow church members and especially with the Lord. There should be an emotional attachment to the Lord.
Now, we do not need to seek an experience because experiences can be deceptive. However, we should find that “warm fuzzy” feeling when in the Lord’s presence. there should be a desire to spend time with the Lord. In fact there, should be more of a desire to be with the Lord than with anyone else.
To love him with all the heart is to fix the affections supremely on him, more strongly than on anything and anyone else, and to be willing to give up all that we hold dear at his command.
All your soul!
All your soul!
The soul is that part of us that makes us alive! Without it we are dead. This body will one day die when the soul is separated from it and the soul will live forever. When we think of loving God with all of our souls, it should prompt us to love Him with all of our lives. This requires a complete and total devotion to HIM!
26 “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.
Luke 14:26 is not a command to hate, but it is a literary comparison to make us realize that our love for God should be so much greater than our love for father, mother, spouse, children, siblings, and even our own lives.
When Jesus saved you, He did not save part of you and let you keep part for yourself. He bought and redeemed all of you. Yet so many of us have a difficult time giving God what is due Him. He deserves our whole life, our whole soul. He deserves everything that we are.
All your mind!
All your mind!
The mind is the seat of our thoughts and reasoning.
I can remember when Christy and I were e-mailing and messaging back and forth while she was in the Middle East and I was at New Orleans Seminary. When we were not messaging or e-mailing, I was thinking. She was constantly on my mind. If I wasn’t thinking about her, then I was either talking to her or talking about her.
This is how we should be about God. We should constantly be thinking about God. Not only pondering about Him, but using our intelligence to know more about HIm.
Our love for Him should lead to a love for His Word. A love that leads us to be in His Word daily and a love that introduces Him to others.
Additionally, if we love Him with all of our minds, we are going to be very careful what we put in our minds and careful what we think about.
When we allow our thoughts to linger on temptation, it leads to sin.
14 But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed.
15 Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.
To love God with our minds is to love His Word, the teaching and preaching of the Word, and to be mindful of our thoughts, driving away every thought that leads to sin.
Decision
Decision