Obeying the Greatest Commandments

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?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Pray

This morning we begin to tackle the seventh characteristic of a true local church of Jesus Christ… that a true local church…

Works to fulfill the greatest commandments to love God and their neighbors both inside and outside the church

Our passage this morning gives to us Jesus’ own words concerning what the greatest commandments are. Let’s read through passage again…

Matthew 22:34-40

Matthew 22:34–40 ESV

Jesus had just been answering the challenging questions of the Sadducees prior to this encounter. And Matthew tells us that when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had answered the Sadducees, they quickly sent a representative, a well-versed expert in the Law, to Jesus with a question … Which is the greatest commandment in the Law? This question was being debated among the religious leaders at the time and various commandments were being championed as the greatest.

Jesus’ quick reply summarized the entire Decalogue. He replied that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord … God with all one’s heart … soul, and … mind (from Deut. 6:5). He added that the second commandment is to love one’s neighbor as oneself (cf. Lev. 19:18).

Here is an interesting point about what Jesus is teaching here.

The first great commandment summarizes the first table of the Law, and the second summarizes the second table.

Do you remember that? That the first 4 of the 10 commandments were focused on man’s relationship with God… the vertical relationship. And laws 5-10 were horizontal laws, governing man’s relationship with man.

Jesus said, “All the Law and the Prophets” hang on these two commandments, in other words, the Old Testament develops and amplifies and prioritizes these two points: love for God and love for others (who are made in God’s image.)

In the gospel of Mark’s recount of this encounter he reports that the teacher of the Law said that Jesus had correctly answered the question, and that “and to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

Let’s consider what that really means? What does it mean that following the greatest commandments is “much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices”?

It means that God desires faithful hearts and lives more than He does performance of sacrificial rituals (or you could say “just going through the motions of Christianity without the will and the heart”.)

So, this is where we develop the seventh biblical characteristic of a true local church. These being the two greatest commandments in the Scripture. And as the church we are to work to fulfill the greatest commandments, both inside and outside the church.

In other words…

A true church of Jesus Christ is a loving community, committed to FELLOWSHIP with God and one another inside and outside the formal gathering of the church.

This characteristic starts with our love of God… it is a deeply permeating love. Jesus says it is a love that encompasses the whole person. There is not a portion of you that is left unaffected… all of your being is turned toward God loving Him for what He has done for you.

“The Gospel Primer” puts it this way (and BTW, if you don’t have a copy of the Gospel Primer, there are free pocket size copies and there are full size leather bound copies for purchase in the bookstore). This comes from the full size leather bound edition that has “31 reminders of why we need to preach the Gospel to ourselves daily” in it...

To love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength is the greatest commandment in the Law. If I could simply fulfill this one commandment, I would gladly fulfill all others as a natural mtter of course. So how can I come to love God with all of my being? The Bible teaches that genuine love in my heart for God is generated by an awareness of His love for me, and nowhere is the love of God more clearly revealed than in the gospel. Therefore, preaching the gospel to myself is a great way to keep God’s amazing love before my eyes, so that I might experience its power to produce in me a passionate love for Him in return. Romanced by His love in this way, my increasingly smitten heart will burn to do His will and will feast itself on doing so.

We come to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength by fully grasping the Gospel. When we fully grasp the Gospel and we remain in that understanding, reminding ourselves daily, moment by moment, of His great love for us our hearts are kindled with love in return.

The second aspect to this characteristic is that we scatter from this gathering and love our neighbor as ourselves.

Now this has a couple of different facets to it. One is loving our brothers and sisters in Christ and the other is loving those who are not our brothers and sisters in Christ. In both instances we are to love them as we love ourselves.

This is a critical aspect of making us a true church. It is so important that we are going to spend a few weeks looking at this aspect much closer.

Lets’ talk about us here at UpRiver Bible Church. Jesus tells us that we are to love each other like we love ourselves!!! Admittedly, we are not very good at this, at least not with everyone who is our brother or sister here at UBC.

Admittedly, we are far better at loving ourselves than we are at loving our brothers and sisters in Christ. One of that marks of a true church of Jesus Christ is that we are actively pursuing loving our fellow Christians when we’re on the outside of this gathering where everyone can see it.

This moves us past just loving on one another when we are here. This is important enough to God that He made it one of the two greatest commandments. And, in order for God to be glorified, and for us to be a well-functioning church we should be practicing this with one another outside these four walls as much or more than we do when we are gathered here together.

Let me start by saying that every Christian should be a part of a local gathering of believers. God calls believers to live as a loving Christian community within the community in which they live and that community within a community is the church, not the building, but the body of Christ.

Here is a critical point for us to understand…

No other organism, no other relationship supplies what God intends to supply through the body of Christ, His church. Not our spouses, not our physical families, not our pagan friendships.

We’re going to call this aspect…

The Church as a Loving Community

God never intended for Christians to live out the journey of their spiritual life alone. When you got connected to Christ, you also became spiritually connected to everyone else who is in Christ. Paul puts it this way,

Romans 12:5 ESV

so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.

We are permanently joined together and deeply need each other. Whether you are married or single—if Jesus is your Lord, the church is your spiritual family and we are to live our lives together.

Churches consist of people like us: sinners who have given their lives to Christ and are learning to walk in grace, love, and truth. That’s why the Bible says,

Hebrews 10:24–25 ESV

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

This is really important to God. Why would Christians neglect or halfheartedly do something that God proves in His Word is really important to Him?

This is borne out in Scripture repeatedly. Let’s read just a few…

John 13:34–35 ESV

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

John 15:12–13 ESV

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

John 15:17 ESV

These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

And the examples in Scripture go on and on and on. What is clear is that God is serious about us loving Him and about us loving each other.

But the church, this community of believers has fallen largely by the wayside. Next week we are going to explore why this has happened.

I want to close by asking you some simple questions.

1. How often do you gather with the church?

2. How important is it to you?

3. Who are your friends?

4. Are they Christians?

5. Do they encourage you to be a regular part of the body of believers or do they keep you from the gathering of the saints?

I was recently told that if I continued to make such a big deal out of people skipping church and not regularly attending the gathering of the saints, and also making a big deal of the members of UBC making the other members of UBC a most important part of their lives that I would drive people away from the church and they would stop coming to church.

I have considered this long and hard. If I know what God’s Word says, and I know the importance that God, in His Word, places on the saints, their worship, their gathering, and their life together outside the assembly, and I see Christians running the other direction, or taking no consideration of what the Scriptures say and instead following a humanistic and fleshly philosophy of church and pursuing convenient participation ( and what I mean by convenient participation is, “I’ll go to church as long as there is nothing more pressing or more enjoyable available”) what else can I do? Would I be a faithful elder if I saw this taking place and didn’t herald people back to what the Scriptures say?

But what if people leave the church? I say, “Well, its not what I want. I desire that people place obedience to the commands of Scripture above their own desires and preferences.” But as long as people place their reason above the Word of God, and obedience to their desires above the desires and commands of God, there is not much I can do put preach the Word of God and hope that men (and by “men” I mean “people”) will respond with repentance and change.

As I consider these things I was reminded of a quote from Martin Luther considering these sort of things. He said,

“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.” ― Martin Luther

This is neither a good, nor a safe place for a person to reside. I pray, as we do in our services every week, that those attenders at UBC will make following God their highest priority, and obedience to His Word the first in their lives.

If people leave the church because they cannot tolerate the clear preaching of God’s Word, as much as it breaks my heart, it is best for UBC if they go elsewhere.

I close with a famous quote… again from Martin Luther… but this quote reverberates loud within my heart…

“I cannot choose but adhere to the word of God, which has possession of my conscience; nor can I possibly, nor will I even make any recantation, since it is neither safe nor honest to act contrary to conscience! Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God! Amen.” ― Martin Luther