2025.03.23 CALLED: to Love
Notes
Transcript
34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees with his reply, they met together to question him again.
35 One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap him with this question:
36 “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”
37 Jesus replied, “ ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’
38 This is the first and greatest commandment.
39 A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
40 The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”
►►►CLICK [title]
CALLED: to Love
CALLED: to Love
1 Blessed is the person who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!
2 But his delight is in the Law of the Lord, And on His Law he meditates day and night.
What is the Law?
The Law is over 600 commandments in the Old Testament. When Jesus taught about the Law, he simplified it into 2!
All of the Law hangs on these: Love God & love neighbor!
What is love? How would you define love? [non-rhetorical]
Our culture teaches love as an emotion. Can you control your emotions?
If an emotion cannot be controlled, how can Jesus command us to love God and others with any level of compassion?
Married folks … aren’t there times when it’s difficult to have the warm-fuzzy emotions for your spouse? Yet, you still love them, right?
So love is NOT an emotion you feel. What, then, IS love?
[NOT ON SCREEN]
43 “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy.
44 But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!
45 In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.
46 If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much.
47 If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that.
48 But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.
In Luke’s version (chapter 10) of today’s reading, a lawyer asks “Who is my neighbor?” and Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan. At the end of the story, Jesus asks, who was the neighbor. The lawyer answered “The one who showed [him] mercy.” (vs. 37)
Proverbs 25: 21 If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; And if he
is thirsty, give him water to drink
John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that
He gave…
Romans 5:6-8 For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will hardly die for a righteous man ; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die.
8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us
Philippians 2:3-4 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but
with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves ; 4
do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the
interests of others.
1 John 3:16-18
We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay
down our lives for the brethren. 17 But whoever has the world's goods, and sees
his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God
abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but
in deed and truth.
Biblical love can be defined by one simple word: SERVICE!
In a workshop entitled, “How to Love Your Neighbor as Yourself”, American Philosopher Dallas Willard [deceased] [https://dwillard.s3.amazonaws.com/Love-Neighbor-Workshop.pdf] defined love this way:
We love something when we are devoted to its good or well-being.
This applies to God, our "neighbor," our flower garden, or our bank account.
Love is will-to-good. Not the same as desire.
And not always directed rightly or ordered rightly. Love involves compassion.
How does that look?
Do you remember the show My Name is Earl?
The entire show is built on the false principle of karma
Wins lottery, so decides to “make right” all the things he messed up for others
Makes a list of all the wrong he’s done, and works for the good of others until he can scratch them off his list.
Despite the false premise, this is a good example of true love…
Earl desires good for those he’s wronged. He doesn’t have warm feelings for all of
them … in fact he still has negative feelings toward many of them. But he overcomes those feelings in order to work for their benefit!
Going to the market and shopping for homeless people, or for disaster relief when you’re not sure you can afford all the things you want for yourself.
It means sacrificing my own desires for the good of others and for the advancement
of God’s Kindgom on earth.
Holding grudges and actively working for the harm of others is out of the question. But “not wanting them harmed” is not all that God calls us to: God calls us to ACTIVELY SERVE others … ALL others!
It’s easy to serve for the good of those we care about and those who care about us. It’s much harder to serve for the good of those we don’t know. And it even kinda hurts to serve for the good of those we don’t like!
But that’s what we’re called to do! We are NOT called to like everyone. We ARE called to love everyone, and that may be even more difficult. We are called to take our “self” out of the position of “most important, and to place God and our neighbor in that seat.
So what does it mean to love God with all of your heart, all of your soul and all of your mind?
Could be a three-point sermon on its own, but I’ll pare it down:
HEART
WORSHIP HIM!!
Worship is not about you!
Worship is not about me!
Worship is not about Bartlett Chapel!
Worship is not a performance by some for the enjoyment and judgment of others [American idol]
Worship is a performance by ALL for the enjoyment of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit!
The heart is the symbol of our motives
Ask the Holy Spirit to mold you into the image of God
To make your heart’s desire the same as God’s heart’s desire
To help you become more like Him!
SOUL
Soul is the symbol of Life itself
Are you willing to give up your own desire for His?
Barnes’ Commentary: “This means, to be willing to give up the life to him, and to devote it all to his service; to live to him, and to be willing to die at his command”
“Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven…”
Do you really mean that?
Thy will be done in me as it is in Heaven?
Garden of Gethsemane - “Not my will but Yours be done...”
MIND
DO NOT check your brain at the door
Bring your mind into contact with the Truth of God’s Word
Bible study
Sunday School
Spiritual discussions to spur one another on
Use your mind to better understand and love God by learning who He is (like you would a good friend)
So we are called to love God with everything in our charge … everything over which we have command, and we are called to love our neighbor as we love ourself.
Matthew Henry concluded:
“By these two commandments our hearts [are to] be formed as by a mould.”
Our motives will be purified when we decide to use everything we have at our disposal to glorify God and to serve our neighbors. We’ll look in more detail at what it means to serve next week. For today’s theme and Scripture, suffice it to say that we have to will-to-good for God and for our neighbor. We cannot allow the culture’s false teaching of love as an emotion to keep us from loving others because God’s definition of love is different than ours.
We must be changed and we must consciously decide to be changed.
We are CALLED: to Love!
Let us pray!
