January 1, 2023 The One Thing You Need - SB

Intro:

Good morning GracePointe. What a week it has been! A full week! Last week we celebrated Christmas eve and a beautiful night where we were reminded by Pastor Paul that Christ is Emmanuel, God with us.

It was so wonderful seeing folks gather and sharing with one another. It was a beautiful snapshot of the family of God thriving.

After I finally kicked people out, we gathered again on Sunday, Christmas morning. We heard from Pastor Michael how Christ shows up in our lives. Many of us felt the emotion that, no matter what circumstances we may go through, God is alive and the presence of Christ is real.

After that, we ate more stuff and had some cinnamon roll concoctions together to celebrate Christmas morning. My mom and dad were visiting and noted how they feel a warmth and part of the family as they come to visit. That is such a healthy thing for folks to feel in our church.

This week has been a full week. We had an amazing amount of water fall from the sky and thus folks here at our church had their basement flood and needed help with their flooded basements and ripping out carpet. So we jump in and help.

Our own church had a sizable amount of the lower level get flooded. So we jumped in and started helping. It was a beautiful picture of our church. Not quite as enjoyable as the cinnamon rolls but beautiful none the less.

NEW YEAR - CHANGE

This time of year is one of my favorite times because it is the time where anything is possible. A lot can change in a year. Advertising knows this natural part of the year so they kick everything into high gear.

Things are said like “This is the year. You will complete the goal, lose the weight, get the promotion, write the book, chase the dream. You will go on that vacation. This is your year. You just have to want it. Desire it. Will it to happen. It is all about our lives going from lifeless to one that is thriving.

The interesting thing is that as followers of Christ, we have already been given the key to a life that thrives. John 10:10 reminds us that Christ, the great shepherd comes to give life, life to the full.

Big IDEA

Today, I want to center on this. When we love God with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength and love our neighbors as ourselves, we are living the full life Christ has promised. By shaping us, we in turn rest in the grace of God as we look to love Him with all that we are and show that love to our neighbor. The one thing we need is to love God and love people.

Scripture

Let’s look at Matthew 22:35-36

Matthew 22:35–36 NIV

35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Earlier in the chapter, the Sadducees and Herodians try trapping Jesus. Testing him. They fail. Jesus actually silences them with his words…He is that good. Matthew is painting a chaotic picture of people gathering to trick, embarrass the Lord.

Other thoughts on the premise for this questions is that there was debate over the greatest commandment. Some thought it was the Sabbath or idols, or perhaps circumcision. The Lawyer could be asking Jesus to wade into a contentious debate and pick a side.

Either way, here we have a lawyer testing or trying the son of God.

Many of us like to snicker at this moment thinking....who would be so proud, so haughty as to test Christ?

I want to point out...I have said it before but all of us have that lawyer in us. The lawyer is wants to make a case for our own worth rather than let God set the definition of who we are. The lawyer stands up, pounds the table and says “But my client is a good person. He has done good things. Sure he makes mistakes but who hasn’t.”

That lawyer minimizes sin....presents evidence that that says “The wrong they have done didn’t really hurt anyone?” That lawyer that wants to test Christ, perhaps expose a loophole that will allow us to have God and still do what we want to do....is in us.

Greatest Commandment

Here the lawyer asks a question. Which is the greatest commandment in the law? This question seems simple.

But it is actually quite a dangerous question. There are thousands of commands in the Old Testament. Obviously all of them are good and important. If Jesus chose any one of these commands as being the most important he ran the risk of alienating many groups who valued other commands more. Commentators points out that there were upwards of 613 “commandments” given. They were split into greater and lesser. The lesser ones could be neglected or violated. Whatever Jesus didn’t choose, meant fair game to be discarded to a degree.

We see Jesus responds with clarity and expertise. Matthew 22:37-38

Matthew 22:37–38 NIV

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.

His answer is telling them - this one commandment summarized all the other commands. If you love God, you will keep the other commandments such as the Sabbath, out of love you will not make idols and instead bring sacrifices to God. Out of Love you will worship Him.

Jesus then gives another commandment that walks hand in hand with it. Matthew 22:39

Matthew 22:39 NIV

39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

If you love your neighbor, you won’t covet their stuff, you won’t steal, you won’t lie to them.

Right away we see how love is central to a thriving life with God. To keep the greatest commandments, Jesus says, these are the greatest commandments.....to keep them....we need love. And that has the potential to bother us.

Bother

It can bother us because we don’t like to think of the biblical idea of love. We like the sentiment of love. We like the feelings. We like the romance, the desire.

But when it comes to changing our lives, being obedient to God and what He has said in word to do. We don’t think love is the best tool to accomplish it. We actually think of our own willpower.

Love is greater than your will power

Let me be as clear as I can be with my small human brain. You and I do not have enough will power to be righteous. To change. Love is always greater than will power.

But we have to redefine love and thankfully, the bible does it for us.

Commandment One - Love God

LOVE

Love is an action. Biblical love is not passive and it is not strictly emotional. Love referred to here by Jesus is the love of Deuteronomy 6:5, the love of Yahweh.

In fact, Jesus is quoting the Shema, the most popular and most central command to the Jewish people.

This love it is the active response of the faithful person to the love of God.

Another word for this type of love is loving-kindness. or Active mercy. A choice to love that reflects the One who created love. We see the description and definition of love in 1st Corinthians 13:4-8

It is marked by patience, kindness.....it does not keep score. It doesn’t boast and is not proud. It does not delight in any evil but rejoices with the truth. It always serves and protects, hopes and perseveres. It never fails

That is the love that Christ is referring to. Use that love in your relationship with God. Love God with that.

YOUR GOD

We choose to love God. But notice here there is a personal connection. He is your God. Psalm 95:7 points this out....for He is our God and we are the flock under his care.

God is personal. And He wants to have a relationship with you. He is God of everything whether or not people accept or admit Him.

WITH ALL

This is a critical point of the passage that we often gloss over to get to heart, soul, mind, and strength. But notice here it says WITH ALL.

Friends, we often treat God, Jesus and the Spirit like an add on.

You go to Jamba Juice to get a delicious smoothie. Some of you may get the healthy juice only ones…not me. Give me a dessert in a cup please. At the the end of the ordering experience, they ask you. Would you like any add on’s…such as wheat grass, energy boosts, and protein. Have the time, I don’t know what any of it is ....so I say uh yeah....then I proceed to pick little bits of wheatgrass out of my drink for a bit.

Isn’t it that way with our relationship with God. We have our lives and we say....you know I just need a little spiritual add on. A little bit of that love, joy, peace, patience, kindness or self-control. Sure…throw a little Jesus in there.

No, I don’t want the drink to be different. I don’t want my life to be different. I just want a little add on of Jesus.

But here it says WITH ALL. The gospel is that God died for you and wants a relationship with you. If you accept that gift, if you say awesome that is good news that I want!.....

You will need to die to yourself. You will need to give your all to him...you must sacrifice those desires and pleasures and sins on the alter of worship and say out of Psalm 118 “God, you are my God and I will ever praise you with all of my life.”

HEART SOUL MIND AND STRENGTH

Here we see that we love God with all of us. God’s word breaks it up this way. We are to love God with all of our....

HEART.

According to the Vines Expository Dictionary, the word “heart” came to stand for a person’s entire mental and moral activity, both the rational and emotional elements. So to love God means to love Him by allowing my affections, my desires, my treasures to be shaped by Him.

We are saved by Christ....He is our Savior. But He is also our Lord and in His lordship, he shaped our affections, our desires, our treasures. Matthew 6:21 “21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” That is how we love God with all of our heart. But allowing him to shape our treasures, our desires, our affections.

We are to also love God with all of our.....

SOUL

Heart and soul are different words, but both represent the inner, immaterial part of man as separate from his physical body. The soul is literally the breath of life, which God breathed into man to make him a living being. In other words, the unique one of kind aspects of who you are. We love God with all of our soul by allowing God to shape those deep belief systems, the ways in which we uniquely relate to God and people…we allow God to shape that. There is no one quite like you in all the world, which means no one else can love God in the exact same way as you can.

We are to also love God with all of our.....

STRENGTH

The Hebrew word used in Deuteronomy indicates “great might to a great degree” We are to have a picture of energy and intensity. It is to bring energy and refreshment. We are to love God with all of our might....all the things that infuse us with strength, or energy. We are to love God with all the force we bring. We are love God in the areas where we exert with great effort.

It can also connect with capacity to do something. Perhaps you have something you excel at that fills you with joy, energy. I know people who do woodworking, writing, music, speaking.... You excel at it and you have great capacity in it. You know the feeling of it filling up your energy as you do it.

That is the picture we have here of loving God with all of our capacity, all of our might…and loving in this way to a great degree.

MIND

I have treated my mind with such flippancy in the past if I am honest. But Ideas are incredibly important and they can also be be deadly.

I remember once I was in a chemistry class in high school and got paired up with a girl that I had a crush on. Like a crush since 7th grade kind of crush. This was my moment. I would say something funny and suddenly I would look like brad pitt to her and woala....we ride off into the sunset. Like I said ideas can be dangerous. I am thinking all of this while the teacher is giving instructions.

We begin the experiment and this girl I am interested in asks me if I know what to do next in the assignment. I say “no problem” trying to make my voice lower. I go over and grab the big canister of hydrochloric acid cause it says hydrochloric acid right on the front......

I bring it over and poor some of it into our concoction. I then hear a yell from across the room as the teacher comes running over. In that moment, I had not seen that teacher frantically run before. What I had failed to miss in my amazing ideas was all of us students were to use a diluted bottle of acid. The bottle I was using was the full strength stuff. Our experiment begins boiling and frothing and suddenly our teacher is asking all the students to go outside our classroom. The girl of my dreams is saying “ I don’t know what happened, Scott said he knew how the experiment was supposed to work.”

Embarrassed and fully believing I might fail Chemistry, I realized just how messed up our ideas can be and the damage they can cause.

Our mind is the faculty of understanding, what enables us to imagine and think and reason. We all know people who are incredibly intelligent and yet they seem empty because they do not have love. We want to have God in our logic, in our goals, in our philosophies and our rationality.

So loving God with our mind involves allowing God to shape our thought patterns and the emotions that come along with those thought patterns.

All Together

We are to love God with all of our heart soul mind and strength. Like the fruit of the spirit, it can be easy to think that we can separate them. Well I am more of a heart guy and my wife is more of the thinker.

The point of the command is not to separate them, though, but to join them together with every aspect of a person fully committed to loving God.

This is critical for us here at GracePointe because this is the first part of our mission here. We want to help create disciples who love God in this way. Holistically. Each and every person here or online…who calls GracePointe a spiritual home....who says this is my spiritual family.

We want our first goal to be loving God in this way…with everything we have. Jesus says this is the first and greatest commandment. It should be at the forefront of our minds. Am I loving God in this way?

Commandment 2 - Love Others

Jesus then gives us a bonus commandment that helps illustrate the relational reality of following Christ. It is not meant to be done alone. We are meant to be in community.

Jesus says it in verse 39.

Matthew 22:39 NIV

39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

When we hear this, there is a struggle somewhere with in us. Why? Because no one is righteous. Not even one. Not you, not me. Not your neighbor. Choosing to love your neighbor as you love yourself means loving them beyond their shortcomings.

Love here is the same word as used before. We are to choose to love our neighbor sacrificially, patiently, mercifully, always enduring, always hoping. One of my favorite and challenging verses is Phil 2:3-5

Philippians 2:3–5 NIV

3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. 5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

We love our neighbors as ourselves when we choose to look to their interests....we don’t have selfish ambition or vain conceit because that is not love.

Remember we are choosing the patient, kind, keeping no record of wrong kind of love when it comes to God and our neighbor.

Elsewhere in scripture, Christ outlines how followers of Christ in the kingdom our identified by this type of love. John 13:34-35

John 13:34–35 NIV

34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

By this love, everyone will know. Not by your intellect, or power, but by the patient kind persevering love you have for one another.

Here Christ is saying if you love God, you will also love your neighbor. They are inherently joined. You cannot love God and hate your neighbor. I will say it again…you cannot love God and hate your neighbor. It is impossible and Jesus tells us earlier in the sermon on the mount, we are to love our enemies. You cannot love God and hate anyone. Despise sin absolutely…but we cannot love God and hate anyone.

Whoever claims to truly love God, should also love their neighbor.

All Hangs on These 2

This again is critical because in verse 40, Jesus tells us why it should be a critical thing for every church to evaluate.

Jesus declares before all of the religious leaders of His time, and by the power of the Holy Spirit before us today, that everything else in all the commandments depends, it hangs, on these two commandments.

That is a strong statement.

If Jesus says that these two commandments sum up all of the Law and the Prophets, I dare say that they are a good goal for the church today in 2023.

We are to love God and love people.

Application: Roadblocks

A couple of notes here as conclude our time together today. There are some roadblocks to loving God and loving Others.

Roadblock 1: Not Performance Based

First, this is NOT Performance based Christianity. You might hear all that I have said today and think ok. I am ready to hustle and work and work for my approval. But that is a deception that leads to brokenness. You are approved when you put your hope in Christ.

No, the key to loving God more is found simply in receiving his love, on a continuing and if possible on a deeper level. We love Him, because He first loved us. And if you want to grow in your understanding of God’s love for you to go to the cross, the greatest proof of God’s love for us has already been given.

Some lyrics to a worship song I have been listening to say “I will never be more loved by God than I am right now.” This speaks to our ability to be a follower of God from a place of approval…not working for approval. God loves us and our response is choosing to Love Him.

Our mindset should not be on performance but on love.

Roadblock 2: Currency - Faith Hope and Love

Another Roadblock is using the wrong currency in our lives. What do I mean by that? As followers of Christ, we stop dealing in the currency of power, pleasure, and performance. That is the currency of our culture. Do you have power? What is your bank account like? Do you have a 401k? Do you have pleasure? Are your needs and desires met every moment of everyday? Can you accomplish all the goals that culture, or your family, or HGTV demand of you?

That is the currency of the world.

As followers of Christ, our currency is faith, hope and love and the greatest of those is love as Paul tells us in 1 Cor 13:13. When we don’t have power, we put our hope in Christ. When we don’t have pleasure, we have faith that Christ will provide all that we need.

When we don’t perform, we love Christ who for the joy set before Him endured the cross. He endured that so that we could have a relationship with Him. He came to save. We deal in the currency of faith, hope and love.

Roadblock 3: Comfort

I also want to warn you of a roadblock to loving God and loving others. Some may say it is our culture but through out history, God’s people have been learning to Love Him and love others in war torn Ukraine, in the streets of Mexico City, in the hills of Uganda and many other places where culture is savage and brutal. And yet, the gospel is proclaimed and accepted.

We see people of all walks of life, rich and poor, across the world and even here in the riches of Milwaukie. We are blessed and we have experienced and continue to Love God and love others. So it isn’t about the culture or the world out to get us…although it can feel like it.

Friends, Christ defeated death. No one else can claim that. The word says that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. They may try but they will not win.

What is the roadblock that speak of? What is the thing that is under attack? The answer is our comfort. It is becoming harder and harder to be a follower of Christ and be comfortable at all times.

When we love God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength, that means being uncomfortable as God reshapes our treasures, our thoughts, our unique attributes and our might. I can promise you....it will be uncomfortable.

When we love our neighbors as ourselves, we will be taken advantage of. We will be uncomfortable. We will give more than we get from them. It will be uncomfortable.

But God does not say that our comfort is a priority. Not at all. He says love is a priority. 1 John 4:7-8

1 John 4:7–8 NIV

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Conclusion

This week, when you find yourself struggling in an area of choosing to love God and love others. Ask yourself why? What is the road block standing in the way? For me, it always comes back to my comfort being challenged.

When I put my comfort aside, and choose love, God does things. Miracles! Minds changed and hearts given over to God. I see capacity and might developed and shaped by God. When I lay down and sacrifice my comfort.

GracePointe, can we do the same this year. We have around 200 people or so attending our church. That is 200 lives that have the ability to love others just as God has loved them. How many hearts, souls, minds, and strength can be given over to the Lord? How many workplaces can we show that love in? How many schools can see that love? How many marriages and friendships need the love of God and the love of one another? How many parents and children need to experience this love of God and love of others.

This week and the weeks and months ahead, may we as a community…a spiritual family....may we choose to Love God and love others. Let us rest in the Grace of God as we love. And let us pray expectantly for all that He will do with our willingness to love.

Let us pray

Dear God, you are the Lord of new beginnings, We thank you that you first loved us before we ever loved you. Thank you for the command to love You and love others Give us eyes to see areas in our individual lives and our community where we can love you with truly everything. Give us hearts to embrace that which might be uncomfortable but necessary in the life of one following You. Give us hands to serve you every day of our lives. We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Thank you for joining us today GracePointe. We look forward to seeing you next week for two services at 9:30am with Kids ministry as well as 11:00am! Adult Classes