WWJD - Love Your Neighbor
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Love God - Yourself - Your Neighbor
Love God - Yourself - Your Neighbor
This is our third lesson in our series what would Jesus do.
We first dealt with the lawyer who needed a heart adjustment (Good Samaritan) - A Heart Of Compassion
Lesson two, Jesus teaches us how to break barriers - Gender - Race - Conversation
Not only Gender but Transgender / Conversation can lead to conversion
Today during a time of civil unrest, I believe Jesus teaches us a three-step process to apply to our lives.
But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
The Pharisees and the Sadducees were both religious sects within Judaism during the time of Christ.
Both groups honored Moses and the Law, and they both had a measure of political power.
The Sanhedrin, the 70-member supreme court of ancient Israel, had members from both the Sadducees and the Pharisees.
The differences between the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
Religiously, the Sadducees were more conservative in one doctrinal area: they insisted on a literal interpretation of the text of Scripture; the Pharisees, on the other hand, gave oral tradition equal authority to the written Word of God
If the Sadducees couldn’t find a command in the Tanakh, they dismissed it as manmade.
The Sadducees rejected a belief in the resurrection of the dead (Matthew 22:23; Mark 12:18–27; Acts 23:8), but the Pharisees did believe in the resurrection.
The Sadducees denied the afterlife, holding that the soul perished at death, but the Pharisees believed in an afterlife and in an appropriate reward and punishment for individuals.
The Sadducees rejected the idea of an unseen, spiritual world, but the Pharisees taught the existence of angels and demons in a spiritual realm.
Socially, the Sadducees were more elitist and aristocratic than the Pharisees. Sadducees tended to be wealthy and to hold more powerful positions. The chief priests and high priest were Sadducees, and they held the majority of seats in the Sanhedrin.
The Pharisees were more representative of the common working people and had the respect of the masses. The Sadducees’ locus of power was the temple in Jerusalem; the Pharisees controlled the synagogues.
Step #1 - Love God
Jesus’ point is that they must love God with their entire being and with all their faculties, with all that one is and has.
Love for God must govern our emotions, guide our thoughts, and be the dynamic of all we do.
In order for me to love him, I must know him.
God’s word reveals his character - God’s word expresses his love for HIs people.
In His word I see his plan of redemption / His Grace / Long-suffering / Gentleness / Correction / Faithfulness
His word calls me his workmanship
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.
His word then becomes a mirror for me!
For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.
Step #2 - Love Yourself
Step 1 is so important because it exposes who “we really are!”
When I began to look at myself in the mirror (God’s word) - I see the good, the bad and the ugly.
God’s word teaches ME how to be:
Selfless vs. selfish
Loving vs. hateful
Forgiving vs. Vindictive
Sweet & Gentile Vs. Bitter & resentful
It teaches me how to treat others..
“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
It teaches me how to have the correct opinion about someone!
“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
Judge: to evaluate v. — to form a critical opinion of something (either positive or negative) by examination or scrutiny.
When I learn to apply Step 1 and Step 2! Step three is natural…
This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
#3 Love your neighbor!
