Vision Sunday Shandon Students

*Brandon Opens*

“Open your bibles to Matthew 22:34-40”

TRANSITION

Before we get into the passage this morning, I have a question. How many of you have ever been in a conversation, or a debate, about the GOAT? Ever arguing about who the GOAT is? Let me clarify, Greatest of All Time. GOAT of football, basketball baseball… GOAT of music or TIKTOK or whatever!

Real quick: Who really is the GOAT of football?

GOAT of basketball?

GOAT Musician?

All debatable answers for sure but I just wanted to bring that up because long before we were arguing about these GOATS, there was a GOAT Debate going on among the ancient Jewish rabbis and leaders. This debate spanned over centuries of time and was a hot topic for these ancient Jewish communities. But the Goat question they were asking wasn’t about athletics, it was about Old Testament Laws.

The question was: what are the most important laws that Jewish people need to know and be sure to follow from the Torah(OT Law)? Now, that might not sound like the most interesting topic to debate to us to day, but it was for them! They asked this question because there are over 600 different laws, big and small, throughout the Hebrew Bible and they knew that no one could actually remember, let alone obey all of those laws. So, they were trying to categorize them into most important and least important so that they could hold people to the “bigger” or more important laws. Now, this alreadys hows the heart of the problem, legalism that makes us think if we just follow enough rules, or the right rules, God will think we are good! That’s not God’s intention for the law at all as we will see. But this is how they viewed it. So, they debated it regularly. One famous Jewish Rabbi named Hillel was once asked this question by a younger student, or apprentice. But this student challenged him about his knowledge of the law. He said Rabbi, stand on one leg and summarize all 600+ laws before you lose your balance. Other rabbis failed his test trying to give lengthy explanations, but Hillel simply stood on one leg and said, “What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbour: that is the whole Torah, while the rest is the commentary thereof.”

What Hillel understood was that the law of God always points us to the love of God!

Hopefully you have your Bible open to Matthew 22 already, we’ll be in verse 34 this morning.

The Pharisees, some of the Jewish religious leaders were approaching Jesus with this GOAT question to see how he would respond! Remember, they were not happy with Jesus, they were trying to trap him and get him to show that he wasn’t a good Jewish rabbi. So, they approach him with this question to test him. Let’s see what happens!

Read with me.

Matthew 22:34–40 CSB

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they came together. And one of them, an expert in the law, asked a question to test him: “Teacher, which command in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”

What is the greatest, most important commandment of all time? Loving the Lord your God.

Love God.

Jesus says loving God and loving people are the whole point of the Torah! All of the Law and Prophets depend on these commands. Like Hillel, Jesus points out that the law of God is meant to teach us how to become people of love-loving God and loving others. We’re going to unpack that some this morning. Because if we want to see God move in our ministry and in our schools and in our city, he is going to do that through you and me loving Him and loving people well!

Let’s dig into the first half of Jesus’ response.

Jesus is actually not coming up with this on the spot. He is quoting the Shema, a Jewish prayer that came from Deuteronomy chapter 6. Moses was giving the people of Israel his final words before his death and over and over was urging them to follow the Laws that God had given them so that they would experience the Life God Promised for them. And in Deut. 6 he calls them to Love the lord their God with all their heart soul and strength, obeying his commands and teaching them to their kids.

So, love God!

This phrase is one of those that hopefully you have grown up hearing a lot but sometimes when we hear something so much we almost grow numb to it’s significance.

What does it even mean to love God? When Jesus said this, what was he actually telling us to do?

Biblical Love is not just a feeling, it is always an action. To love anyone or anything really means to give ourselves self-sacrificially to them. It’s laying ourselves down, our preferences, our plans, our own good for someone else!

This is why Jesus says to love God with our heart, soul and mind.

The Heart is the core of a person’s being- their understanding and their emotions.

The soul is used in Hebrew to refer to the life breath, the essential self of a human.

The Mind is about thoughts and desires.

Jesus’ point is to give all of ourselves to God, to love Him with ALL WE’VE GOT!

There is no half in, half out with our relationship with God. It doesn’t work that way.

Because loving God doesn’t actually start with us. It starts with God! 1 John 4:19 “We love because he first loved us.”

We love God because we know God and his love for us.

Some of us in here are parents, all of us in here are children of parents. I believe parents and children give us the best picture of how love works. So, y’all know that my wife Jenna and I have our two kids: Eden is 2 and a half, Ezra is almost 1. These past couple of years, I have learned a lot about how a person learns to love as a small child. Now, our kids are very young but even now, Eden and Ezra are slowly but surely coming to understand and learn about mine and Jenna’s love for them. They are growing in their understanding of how much we love them, give them, provide for them. And they still have a long way to go! But Already, at 2 and a half, Eden experiences an explosion of love and excitement toward us in certain moments and she will smile, and clap, and hug and kiss us just because of the love she has in her for us. But she would NOT have that love for us if she didn’t first experience our love for her. All that she knows about loving us comes from her knowing Our love for her! The better we love her, the better she knows how to love us back!

Like children with their parents, we must experience and learn more about just how much our Heavenly Father loves us in order to grow in our love for Him! This isn’t just head knowledge, it is experiential knowledge. How many of you have ever done something that your parents explicitly told you not to, just to realize that in the end they were right and you should’ve listened to them? We tried it our way and realized our parents gave us that rule or advice or direction because they loved us and didn’t want us to get hurt. I mean I can tell Eden all day not to touch the stove top, but if she decides to anyway, and she gets burned she will understand that I was trying to protect her because I love her. That is experiential knowledge of love.

I believe this is the heart of Jesus’s statement here. If we love God, meaning we have first received God’s love and know How much he loves us. Then of course we obey him and do life how He tells us to because we trust it is all because He loves us. But it must be in that order. We don’t obey to earn gods love! We obey in response to gods love! That’s the difference between love and legalism.

So, bottom line- you want to love God? First, know and experience his love for you. That is how you grow in your love for God!

- Spend time with God- grab a Bible reading plan today and spend time with God every day this year. Learn about Him through His Word. - Spend time praying about what you read and seeking God’s will for your ever day life. And here’s where one of our main goals for this year ties in. As you know God and love Him, you will begin to care about the things he cares about! As Eden has grown in her love for us, guess what- she loves Ezra more because she has learned how much we love Ezra. She knows we don’t hit Ezra, we don’t scream at Ezra, we love Him and out of Eden’s love for us she has begun to love Him too!

Loving God drives us to care about what He cares about—lost people.

That’s why one of our Goals is for every single one of you to pray for 3 lost people you know every single day this year.

I would say, this is our most important goal for the year because prayer is the ultimate work that we are called to. Prayer is exactly how we join God in His mission on this earth. But think about this, here’s some quick math for you:

If you pray for 3 lost people every day the rest of the year, you will pray 1059 times for someone who is lost to be saved. Now, if every single one of you do that this whole year, that means our ministry will pray roughly 211,800 times for a lost person to be saved!

Listen, God hears prayers and is eager to answer us according to His will.

Praying together like this, out of our love for God and love for people, will absolutely change the way we do ministry in 2025!

Now, before we get into the second half of these verses, let’s really get practical.

Transition: Brandon, I touched on a few things here, but practically, what does it look like for us to Love God well this year? If love for God is giving oneself to Him completely, how do we do that?

Bible reading plan, Wednesday nights, life that revolves around god.

Practical Steps of Loving People:

Intentionally drawing close to people who are far from God to show them the love of their Father. This is what Jesus did and what He calls us to do.

Show radical generosity and hospitality. That means giving out of what God has given you in your life, and inviting other people into that life with you. This may look like offering them rides, buying a meal for them, texting them to check in regularly, having them in your home for a meal. It’s giving your life over to them in a way that allows them to experience your citizenship in God’s kingdom for themselves.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT PUSH! VALUES SERIES, SWEATSHIRTS Inviting to church is a huge way we do this. Not because you need me or Brandon to share the Gospel with them, no that’s your job first. But in this place we live as the family of God together. All are welcome and we love one another well. We worship and celebrate who God is in this place. They get to come in and see what love looks like through our love for one another and for God!

Sharing the Gospel is the most loving thing we can do. If we truly believe the Gospel- that Jesus really is better than everything they are living in, that Jesus is the only way to have life no and for all of eternity. And anyone who doesn’t know Jesus personally, is walking in death and will one day face eternal death for their sins- if we love them we tell them about Jesus every chance we get. We either don’t believe the Bible or don’t truly love people when we refuse to share the gospel with them.

Missional Charge:

Pray for 3.

Baptize 30.

Reach 300.

It’s not about the Numbers, it’s about our Love for God. Again, If we pursue those numbers, we will fail as a ministry in more ways than one.

If we pursue God, He will lead us to people who are far from Him. When we encounter people who are Far from God, we get to tell them about the LOVE God has for them and how they can know that love through Jesus and we will see people be saved and baptized over and over and over again this year!

Our heart is not numbers, it’s people because God LOVES People and we love God.

25 schools/ 24,623 students

Let 2025 be the year that is marked by our entire ministry giving ourselves entirely to God, pursuing people with all we’ve got and witnessing a powerful move of God’s Spirit in our city and our church together!

We love you students and we can’t wait to see what God does through you this year!

Let’s pray together.

reminders: Wednesday nights, t shirts, sweatshirts, wristbands, cards, Bible reading plans