Ahavah II
Notes
Transcript
Last week we started our journey into what Love is. We looked at the Hebrew definitions for Love, Heart. We started getting a better understanding of what it means to love God. Today we are continuing on into what it means to love God, and to love our neighbors.
30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’
So, now on to “Soul” in Hebrew it is Nephesh which occurs over 700 times in the Old Testament. WE need to make sure we understand when we speak of the soul the biblical writers had a different view point then the secular world on the soul the secular world thought the soul was an immortal essence trapped in the body and released at death. Now lets look at the biblical viewpoint. The basic meaning of Nephesh is throat, but that is not the only meaning. Since our whole life depends on what comes in and out of out throat, Nephesh can be used to refer to our whole person.
Are you starting to see a pattern with the Shema. In Hebrew a murderer was called a Nephesh slayer. So, in the Bible people do not have Nephesh they are a Nephesh, a living, breathing physical being. Even though Nephesh is translated soul, in Hebrew the word really refers to the whole human as a living, physical organism, it is not just our soul. Okay now we have a better understanding of Nephesh lets put it back into our verse.
30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’
To love God with all of your Nephesh means to devote your whole entire physical existence to your Creator. Its about offering your entire being, with all of its capabilities in an effort to love God. It takes total devotion in our relationship with Christ, we love because He first loved. Nest slide
16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
Christ gave His all for us, and requires are all to Him.
30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’
We are going to skip the word mind and move onto strength since we are looking at it in the Hebrew which did not include mind. Our next word is “might or strength, the Hebrew used here is “Meod” which occurs some 300 times in the Old Testament, but it doesn’t actually mean strength in these verses from Deuteronomy is one of the only places Meod is used as strength. The actual translation of Meod is “very or much” it is an adverb, it is used alongside a word to augment its meaning.
In Genesis 1:31 when God said creation was “very good” the word used is “Meod good”. Meod occurs hundreds of times in the Old Testament and it intensifies the meaning of other words. But it can also be used in unique ways, like when the writer wanted to increase a words force to total capacity they would say Meod twice. Meod doesn’t mean physical strength, but rather very or much. We are to love God with all of our muchness. If Meod can intensify any words meaning to total capacity then this final thing that we use to love God isn’t a thing at all. It is everything. Loving God with all of our Meod means devoting every possibility, opportunity, and capacity that we have to honoring God. In our verse Jesus says with all of our mind and strength, these two human capacities can be used in an infinite number of ways to love God. We are commanded to love God with every aspect of our being all of our everything, we must be all in heart, soul, mind and strength. It is a total commitment. Remember love is not just an emotion it is an action, and remember this is not a suggestion, its not just good advice it is a commandment the most important commandment. This is where it all starts and everything else builds upon this. Without loving God you can’t do the rest of the requirements. And to truly love God takes total and absolute commitment, using all of our everything to honor and serve Him.
31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Jesus is the first to put these two together—loving God and loving others. These two commandments summarize the 10 commandments. The first four of the 10 commandments deal with our love for God and the last six deal with our love for mankind. The text from Leviticus dealt with the Nation of Israels love for their fellow Israelites, but then Jesus takes it to the next level, He broadens the meaning to encompass all of mankind— the good Samaritan— Why did Jesus use a Samaritan as an example. The Jews hatred of the Samaritans. He wants us to understand true ahavah. It is easy to love those who love us. We are to love everyone as we love ourselves. The only way we love God with all of our everything is to love our neighbor. We exhibit our love of God by sharing our love with others, and not just the people we like. We must be clear here Jesus is not promoting self-love. We are called to love everyone starting with God. without that you can’t love your neighbor. He wants us to love everyone, have I said everyone already. Now this does not mean that we condone the worlds actions, but we still must love them. God’s love for us is the motivating factor for our love. The two are undivided our love for God and loving our neighbor. Our love for others is how the world knows we are God’s children. It is how we point people back to God, showing the world His love. All the rest of the law depends on these two commandments. This is the foundation Loving God with all of our being and loving the world around us. If we can’t do these nothing else matters, this is where it all starts.
Ahavah II
Ahavah II
We must love everyone. It doesn’t matter if they are the left, the right, it doesn’t matter where they are from what color they are. We love ourselves even through we are broken, we are not always right, but we still love ourselves, and we must extend the same love to others.