MATT 22:34-40 || MARK 12:29-31 || DEUT 6:4-5 || ESV

[MATT] || 34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 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. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

[MARK] || 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 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.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

[DEUT] || 4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

LET’S START AT THE BEGINNING…

—> GOD IS LOVE…
- God doesn’t just love…he is love || So, what does it mean that God is love? Love is an attribute of God. Love is a core aspect of God’s character, His Person. God’s love is never in conflict with His holiness, righteousness, justice, or even His wrath. All of God’s attributes are in perfect harmony. Everything God does is loving, just as everything He does is just and right. God is the perfect example of true love. Amazingly, God has given those who believe in His Son Jesus as their personal Savior the ability to love as He does, through the power of the Holy Spirit

- God created us in his image and has extended his love to us

- But…things broke…because of humankind’s disobedience, our sin…humankind rejected his love and now are born spiritually dead because of sin…as enemies of God [ROM 3:23, 6:23a]

- But…by God’s grace and mercy, his love reached out to bridge the gap, and if we will repent and believe, we can be forgiven, experiencing all of God’s love toward us [ROM 6:23b, 5:8, 10:9-10, 10:13]

- Love starts with God…God loving us…and our response to that offer has eternal consequences…if we repent/believe and receive his love, we will become a part of his family

—> WE LOVE BECAUSE HE LOVES…
[1 JOHN 4:19] “19 We love because he first loved us.”

- Once in his love we will have the ability to love others as he has loved us, in fact we are commanded to do that!

[JOHN 13:34-35] “34 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. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Quote: “It is the effectual love of God that first changes our hearts in order to make us capable of love, and it is his example of love that reminds us again and again of our need to love other people.”

- Love made the first move; our love for God is simply a response to his love for us. Because he loves us, as His child…we are now adopted into his family…our response is two fold…to love him and then love others so that they too might experience God’s love through us and respond to his love become a part of his Kingdom family!

LOVE…What is it?

- Our modern definition of love is messy || We love everything but even our most committed type of love is cheapened in our culture || the highest form of love and commitment we have is marriage || as Christians we hold that type of love/commitment in high esteem (covenant with each other and before God) || but not everyone sees it that way

- God’s definition of love is covenantal || OT = HESED ‘steadfast love’, ‘everlasting love’, covenant faithfulness || mercy, compassion, love, grace, and faithfulness || HESED, found some 250 times in the Old Testament, expresses an essential part of God’s character. When God appeared to Moses to give the Law a second time, He described Himself as “abounding in” or “filled with” HESED, which is translated “love and faithfulness,”“unfailing love,”“faithful love,”“steadfast love,” and “loyal love,” depending on the Bible version (Exodus 34:6–7). The core idea of this term communicates loyalty or faithfulness within a relationship. Thus, HESED is closely related to God’s covenant with His people, Israel. As it relates to the concept of love, HESED expresses God’s faithfulness to His people. || this is the type of Love God has toward us

- In Matthew 22, Jesus’ definition of LOVE had a specific meaning || Greek ~ agape || it is active…it is unconditional || 2 passages give us some insight into what Jesus meant…

1. His command for us to love God = tied to Obedience
[JOHN 14:15] “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

2. His command for us to love others = tied to Sacrificial love
[JOHN 15:12-13] “12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”

LOVE…THE LORD YOUR GOD…Who is this…[to you]

- Seems obvious who this is referring to. The Holy One, the Creator of all things, the Righteous one, God Almighty
- But the question for us would be…who is your God?
- Jesus clearly is calling us to love the right God…to call out the idols in our lives…to stop loving them…start loving the real, true, worthy God and give him all the glory he deserves

Q: so…who or what is your God? || maybe today is the day you turn to the real God and worship him alone || to turn away from your idols, the things, the people, yourself…who have been your gods.

WITH ALL…How much is “all” and “all of what”?

—> All…everything. Nothing left out. || impossible or possible? || Jesus said ‘all’ as a qualifier for every area of our life we are to love God with…all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, all our strength…ALL…

1. Love God with All Your Heart
Our contemporary culture understands the “heart” as the center of emotions, but the Jewish culture in Jesus’s times understood it as more than that. For them, the heart of man was the center of the will (Proverbs 4:23 “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” ). We can think of the heart as the place of our spiritual life, thoughts, feelings, motivations, reason, and understanding…our ability to feel love and connect.Our decisions, our morals, and our will come from it. So, loving God with all our heart is to have a strong desire and will to ??? Him.

2. Love God with All Your Soul
The Hebrew word for “soul” gives the idea of the breath of life. The Greek word gives a more global idea of the inner self, the individual. We can say it is the non-physical part of the human being. It is what defines our personhood, who we are. So, loving God with our soul is to love Him with everything we are. It is to find our inner self inclined to Him, seeking Him, having Him at the center of our affections.

3. Love God with All Your Mind
The biblical meaning of “mind” is the intellect. [The original Hebrew text of Deut 6:4-5 doesn’t include “mind,” because it was considered by the Jewish culture as part of the soul.] This part of the great commandment shows how important it is that our intelligence [our thoughts, our study, our ability to reason] is submitted to God and finds satisfaction in obeying Him. Romans 12:2 reminds us that we need to be transformed by the renewal of our minds to be able to test and approve God’s will – that is how we can love God with our whole minds. [“2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”]

4. Love God with All Your Strength
We find the word “strength” in the Bible a lot of times, and most of them refer to the power of God. Strength refers to the physical aspect of loving God…all you can physically do, work, play, build. It is how we show that we love Him and do everything we can to put our love for God into action. If our inner motivation and desire are to love God, our actions (the strength of our bodies) will show it.

HOW DO WE LOVE LIKE THAT? Impossible or Possible?

- As I studied and tried to wrap my mind around this command, it felt overwhelming, it felt impossible. And I just want to acknowledge that tension. So, I would like to try and simplify all of this to a couple of things…not to minimize the command, but help us try to apply what I believe the heart of the command is getting at…

1. Loving God with ALL your heart, soul, mind and strength simply means to love him with your whole being, your whole life, how you live, think, act, treat others, worship him…it is in the everyday stuff of life that we love God with ALL…combining all 4 of these areas and seeing them as representative of your whole life is the point here…you really can’t love God in one area and not another, they are all very much connected to one another…So love him with ALL

2. Only Jesus loved God with ALL of his heart because he obeyed the Father completely. That is what the commandment requires. Perfect conformity. We are incapable of this. Which is why this feels IMPOSSIBLE to actually do. But…God…out of his abundant mercy, love and grace, through Jesus, enables us (by his Holy Spirit) to love him TRULY but IMPERFECTLY…
---So our love of God in ALL things is tied to our OBEDIENCE.
[JOHN 14:15] “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
- Obey immediately. Obey completely.
- Because of sin…we are going to be imperfect.

3. I think this is the key: Obey in ALL but IMPERFECTLY
This is our reality this side of heaven. It is a command. It is the greatest commandment. And we should take it seriously, and shape our lives around it.

PRAYER AND COMMUNION…

Q: Who/What is your God…idols or is it the true God?
Q: Have you responded to God’s love towards you?
Q: Where are you not obeying God? [which proves your love] Would you say your obedience is Immediately & Completely?
—> repent, believe, receive forgiveness
—> love God TRULY but IMPERFECTLY through the Power of the Holy Spirit and in the Grace and Mercy of Jesus