Do You Love the Lord

All right, let's turn to the Word, and we're in Luke chapter 10, Luke chapter 10, and I'm going to read from 25 through 37, Luke chapter 10, 25 through 37. Now this section is a unit, and it deals with the Good Samaritan, but I'm not going to deal with the Good Samaritan this morning. I'm only going to deal with the first four verses. So verse 25 of Luke 10, And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested him, saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And he said to him, What is written in the law? What is your reading of it? And so he answered and said, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself. And he said to him, You have answered rightly. Do this, and you will live. But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, And who is my neighbor? Then Jesus answered and said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a certain priest came down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise a Levite, when he arrived at the place, came and looked and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. And so he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine, and he set him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said to him, Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you. So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves? And he said, He who showed mercy on him. Then Jesus said to him, Go and do likewise. And so the story begins with this lawyer. Remember that lawyers were, I guess, very similar to lawyers today. His business was the law. They didn't have a civil law and a religious law as we have today. They only had the Old Testament. And so their fascination was with the law. They would study the law, they would apply the law, they would debate the law, they would argue the law, and they were also very good at circumventing the law. That's what lawyers still do today. Part of their job is to find loopholes, and to find ways around the law, and to argue the law, to do what they wanted to do. And so this was a man who knew the Scriptures, and we'll see that in a moment. So he comes to Jesus, and he says, Teacher. So he recognizes Jesus as a teacher. The word here is not master, but didaskalos, meaning teacher. What shall I do to inherit eternal life? And of course that's a very good question, and Pastor Gary spoke on that last week, and we can preach a whole message on just this question. What do I do to inherit eternal life? Now remember that our understanding of what we do to inherit eternal life is very clear, and that is that we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, that we turn from our sin, and that we turn to Him in faith. Now Jesus is now going to take a slightly different tack. It does not contradict the idea of believing, because He's going to speak about loving, and loving flows from believing. You can't love what you don't believe in. I was exposed this last week to the idea of the Sasquatch. If you don't know what that is, you need to... Bigfoot. And it seems that some people have some fascination with Bigfoot. Now can you love Bigfoot if you don't believe that he exists? I don't believe he exists. I think it's just a myth, and in fact it's a tourist trap to get people to buy things and to go on tours and things. I don't believe he exists, so how can I love something that I don't believe in? But if I believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and particularly in the light of the hymn that we looked at this morning, if I believe that He died for me on the cross, then my only response has to be that I love Him. And so Jesus' answer is, what is written in your law? In the law. What is your reading of it? So Jesus is not just asking him what the law says, because otherwise he's going to have to recite the first five books. He's certainly going to have to recite probably most of Deuteronomy. So Jesus is not asking for a recitation of the law. He's asking for his understanding of the law. And remember that that's the problem, is that what it says and what we understand it to say are two different things. What the New Testament says and what we understand it to say are two different things. In fact, at the end of the service, if I had to do a survey and ask each one of you what did I say and what does it mean, I would probably find I don't know how many fifty different options, different answers. So it's not just what it says, but it's what I understand it to say. And obviously that's the function of the preacher. Remember that when they restored Jerusalem, the teachers, the elders, read the scriptures and they gave the meaning of it in the book of Ezra. They gave the meaning of it. And so it's important that we have the meaning and not just the words. And so how do you understand this, Jesus says. And his answer is very clever. And I'm not going to deal with the other scriptures where Jesus initiates the conversation. Obviously in the time of Jesus' ministry there are many conversations going on. The same subject comes up over and over again, as it does in any church and in any preacher's life. And so Jesus may have had a different time when he initiated the conversation concerning the greatest command. But here Jesus says to him, what is your reading of the scripture? And he shows not just his understanding of the Old Testament, but his insight into the Old Testament. And he gives the answer and he says the answer is that number one, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself. Now, neither of those two things is part of the Ten Commandments. I trust that we know more or less what the Ten Commandments say. And there is not one of the Ten Commandments that says you must love God. And there is not one of the Ten Commandments that says you must love your neighbor as yourself. Now that shows that he had thought a little bit, because your first reaction would be, what is the greatest of the law, to go to the Ten Commandments. Okay, now that we've got the Ten Commandments, what is the greatest of those Ten Commandments? He doesn't even go near the Ten Commandments. In fact, he goes to Deuteronomy chapter 6 and Leviticus chapter 19. And I'll show these to you in a moment. In Deuteronomy 6 is part of what the Jews call the Shema. Shema means hear. And you'll see that the verse begins with, Hear, O Israel. This is a very important part of the tradition amongst the Jews. They recite the Shema, these two verses. Let me give you both verses. Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. So he's quoting this verse. The Jews recite the Shema twice every day. Not only do they recite it twice every day, but it is written in parchment and attached to their foreheads. If you've seen traditional Jews, conservative Jews, they have a little black box which is tied with strings around there, or with leather songs around their head. They also have another box on this arm, closest to the heart, because God says that you need to keep these things in your mind and keep them in your heart. So what they do is they physically attach it to their heads and attach it to their arm closest to their heart. Inside of those two little boxes are a few verses, and these are some of those verses. So they are ever-present with them. And so he quotes this verse, and then he quotes Leviticus chapter 19. You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. Now you can understand why he quotes the first verse, because it is a verse that is very prominent in their thinking. They recite it every day. It is written on those bits of parchment. It is really at the heart of their faith. But this verse is a remote verse, and I think that most Christians don't even know about the existence of this verse, and yet include it in the verse. Remember you'll see it's the bit about loving your neighbor is not the main part of the verse. It's just part of the verse. So you will not take vengeance, you shouldn't bear a grudge, but you must love your neighbor as yourself. And so he takes this part and he attaches it to the other one, that you must love God, and he says, this is what the law says. Now was he right or was he wrong? In fact he's right. And so he answered, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus' response is, and he said, you have answered correctly. You have answered rightly. So his answer is right. So how can those two commands be greater than than the Ten Commandments? Because they are in fact the foundation of the whole of the Old Testament. They are the foundation of the law. They are the principles, and in fact Jesus says that on these hang all the law and the commandments. So on these two things everything else in the Old Testament suspends from that, is dependent on that. And you'll remember that the the Ten Commandments consists of two parts. I'm sure you remember that. The first part deals with commands that relate to my relationship with God, and they tell me what I will do if I love God. If I love Him I will not have other gods. If I love Him I will not bow down before images or idols of anything. If I love Him I will not take His name in vain. And then the second part, the last six of the commands, deals with my relationship with my neighbor. If I love my neighbor I will not kill him. If I love my neighbor I will not steal from him. If I love my neighbor I will not take his wife, and so on. And so these commands all depend on these two principles, these two foundational stones. Everything rests on that. And so his answer is 100% correct. Now I want us to then look at these commands, because they are absolutely essential. And so first he says you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, all your mind. And so he's expressly saying all four times. I'm going to look briefly at those four areas, but you remember those who've been with us for a while will remember that we have this very deep theological concept that we have to understand. And it's not everybody who can understand it, but there is that little three-letter word. Remember my fascination with these little words. All. All means everything. 100%. It does not mean some of. It doesn't mean in part. It doesn't mean 20%. It means 100%. And 100% excludes everything else. So if I'm going to love Him with all, then there is nothing left to love something else. Now you can understand why this is a difficult command. You see, here's the problem. We look at these things. We say, well that's easy. You know, maybe taking the Lord's name in vain. Well, maybe, you know, I've messed up on that. Or maybe I've coveted something. But I really love God. But if you love Him and you love something else, you've not loved Him with all. Even if you've reserved 10%, 1% of your devotion for something else, then you have not loved Him with all. It's really very simple, and yet it is very, very difficult. You remember there was another ruler, another lawyer, in fact, who came to Jesus and asked Him the same question. And you remember what Jesus said to him. He said, keep the commandments. Same answer He gives this guy. Keep the commandments. Oh, he says, I've kept the commandments. And of course, he was right on the surface, he had. And then Jesus says to him, go and sell your stuff and give it to the poor. And of course, he goes away and the scripture says he was sorrowful. Why? Because Jesus had tested him on the first command. You shall not have other gods beside me. Remember that command. It's not, you shall have other gods instead of me. You shall not have other gods beside me. In other words, you cannot have me and other gods. And this young man had loved God, but not with all his heart. He had another God called His stuff, and he loved His stuff and God. And when Jesus tested him on that, he knew in his heart that he had failed on the first command, even though he had physically never worshipped any other god. He had broken the principle. He had broken the spirit of that first command. And Jesus could have tested him on every one of the other nine, and he would have failed on all of them as well, as all of us do. And so it is with all. How do I determine how much I love Him? Because it's easy to sing the hymn that we just sang. It's easy to say, Lord, I love you with all my heart. But is there a test? Is there a, can you take a blood sample and send it to the lab and test whether you love Him with all? Well, obviously, there isn't that kind of test. But the tests are very simple, really. It's the things that you, the things that you think about. What occupies your mind most of the time, a lot of the time? The things that you spend time on. What do you spend a lot of time on? The things that you spend money on. What is it that you spend money on? And if you had to do your budget, where, where does God fit into your budget? If you had to do a time study of your, of your week, where does God fit into your week? If you had to do an analysis of your thoughts and the things you think about in the middle of the night or during the day or in the times that you're not busy, what is it that occupies your thinking? These are simple tests we can do to determine the degree to which we love God. And so he says then that you will love the Lord with all your heart. Now, different preachers will interpret these four aspects in different ways, but this is my understanding of them. The first is, the heart is really the seat of the emotions. It's, it's with a heart that we love. It's, it's with a heart that we, that we feel compassion. And so he's saying you need to love him with all your emotions, with all your feelings. Now, there are some people who, who want to reduce Christianity to a purely intellectual exercise, with no feeling, with no emotion, with no heart. Christianity is not just an intellectual exercise. It is that too. We'll see that in a moment. But it is more than that. It is also a, a falling in love with Jesus. And I use that word falling in love carefully because we usually also fall out of love. But being in love with him, more than just a intellectual understanding of him and what he has done and trying to convince myself I need to be happy in my salvation. I need to, to, to love him. I need to worship him. No, there needs to be a heart aspect to it. And, and if there's no heart in it, well, then it's, it's pretty empty. And, and notice that he uses the word all, and he uses four dimensions, four aspects, four facets of our being. And he says it needs to be in all of these areas. So if you love him with all your mind, but you don't love him with all your heart, you haven't made the grade here. Now remember, we, we're not talking about if you do these things, you'll be saved. We understand that. These are the evidences of being saved. And so, is there a emotional dimension to my relationship with the Lord Jesus? Or is it just a cold, dead religion? You can, you can go to the, uh, to the mosque and you can see people very devoted in their faith, but there's no love. They, they serve because of fear. And there are many Christians today that are privileged, those that are privileged to go to church today because of, of COVID, those that are in church, that, that, they are just going through the, they'll sing the hymns. They'll sing a hymn like we have sung, my, my Jesus, if ever I loved you. It's now. They'll sing the hymn. But there's no heart in it. There's no passion. There's no saying, yes, Jesus, I really love you. I love you with all of my heart. And sometimes our relationship with the Lord Jesus is, is somewhat like marriages. We, we, we, we get over that initial puppy love and we, we get to a place where, where it's just cold. There's just nothing. And I'm afraid, and we just stay in the marriage because, well, we made the vows and, uh, uh, we're stuck and that's what we do. We'll just do this. And I fear that there are many Christians who have that kind of relationship with God. They, they just stuck in that relationship. If I don't serve him, I'm going to go to hell. So I serve him. I'll go to church. I'll do the stuff, but there's no heart in it. There's no passion. There's no zeal. Won't you check your heart this morning? Are you still in love with Jesus? And then with all your soul, now the soul deals with different aspects of my being, and I'm not going to deal with an analysis of what the, the soul is, but it deals with the mind, but it also specifically deals with the will, with the will. And so you need to love him with your will. We, we, you see, love is not just an emotion. Love is a decision for those in dead marriages. Love is a decision, a decision that I will love this person. Jesus didn't fall madly in love with us when he died for us. I don't think we begin to understand. I don't think one of us begins to understand how despicable we were, how repulsive we were to God in our filth, and in our sin, and in our immorality, and in our wickedness, and in our hatred of everything that is God's. There was nothing beautiful in us. There was nothing attractive in us, but he says, I will love them, and I will love them to death. And maybe if you say this morning that your love for God is cold, maybe you need to begin here, and make a decision of your will, and say, I will love him, because he first loved me. You see, we don't have an option. He has loved us. He has demonstrated his love towards us, and if we can't respond to that with a reciprocal love, well, then there's something seriously wrong with us. And so, with all your soul, with all your will, with all your strength, you see, again, and there's so many parallels between marriage and our love of the Lord, and I don't want to reduce my relationship with God to a marriage, but we know that Jesus says that our marriage is a picture of our relationship with him. And it's easy to say, well, I love, but you know, we don't put anything into it. When it says, with all your strength, it means that you put your shoulder to it. You put all of what you have in it. If you're going to try and push a car that's stuck, that won't go, it's not going to go if you say, well, let me, no, you have to put everything into it. You need to get your back behind it. And our love for God cannot be a wishy wishy. Oh, well, you know, yeah, I feel pretty good this morning. Tomorrow morning, I have to go to work. No, I don't feel so good about it. No, you need to get your back into it. You need to get your everything behind your love for him. And I said earlier, if you're spending your time and your energy on other stuff more than on the things of God, and I'm not discounting our responsibility to do our jobs and to care for our families and to keep our homes and all of those things that are our duties, but really at the end of the day, what is the most important thing? And then with all your mind. You see, now here's the other extreme, and it's interesting, because he begins with a heart and he ends with a mind. And as I said to you, there are those Christians who have this mindless, touchy-feely love of God. You sing the same chorus over 20 times, and the lights are dark, and there's smoke and mirrors and all sorts of stuff going on, and you generate some kind of feeling of love. But it's a mindless love. No, our love for God is not a mindless love. It is an intelligent love. And so there are those who just love with their minds, like this young man. Well, I assume he was a young man, this lawyer. He loved God with his mind, but there was no heart in it. He studied the law, he studied the scriptures. It was an intellectual exercise, but it wasn't a heart thing. And then there's the others, that it's just all emotions, it's all fluffy, and it comes and goes. No, we need to have both of these. We need to love Him with all our heart. We need to love Him with all our mind. And folk, our loving Him is not a blind love, loving something we don't know. He's revealed Himself to us. He has revealed His love to us on the cross of Calvary. He's revealed His grace to us in saving us and keeping us. And we have every reason. And even if your heart's not in it, get your mind into it, and hopefully you can get your heart behind that. All right, so you will love Him with all your heart, your soul, and all your strength, and with all your mind. And I think we need to ask that question, obviously, of ourselves this morning. Do we love Him? This is really the heart of the gospel. And you say, well, it doesn't speak about the cross. Well, the cross is implied. It doesn't speak about believing. Well, believing is essential if I'm going to love. And I want to take you to two other examples before we move on to the neighbor bit. The first is in John chapter 21, and you know the passage, I've spoken on that a number of times. Peter had betrayed the Lord Jesus. I don't know the man. And Jesus meets him at the seashore and prepares breakfast for them. They'd been fishing all night. They'd catch nothing. They cast their nets out on the other side as He commanded them. They had this great haul of fish, and Jesus meets with them. This is the first time Jesus had met with Peter after He had personally heard Peter say, I don't know the man. And Jesus asks him one question. You know the question. Do you love me? He doesn't ask him, do you understand that I'm the Messiah? He doesn't ask him, have you repented? He doesn't ask him, do you believe? He asks him one thing. Do you love me? And based on Peter's confession, Peter is commissioned as one of the apostles. Obviously, he was commissioned earlier on, but he had failed. And Jesus now recommissions him, and he says, feed my sheep. It's interesting that Jesus didn't ask him one of a thousand questions we could ask someone like that. I guess the question that we would ask is, Peter, why did you do it? How could you? That's not the question. It's just one question, do you love me? And then we go right back to the end of the Bible in the book of Revelation, the first of the seven churches, Revelation chapter 2, the church of Ephesus. And they had everything right. They'd done 11 things that the Lord Jesus commends them for. Remember that these are the words of the Lord Jesus to those seven churches. He commends them for seven things. They were discerning. They'd recognized the difference between true and false preachers. They were zealous. They had everything in order in the church. He doesn't rebuke them for false doctrine. He doesn't rebuke them for unfaithfulness. He doesn't rebuke them for anything. They have everything right. But there's one problem. They had left their first love. Let me remind you that that first love is not the love that they first had when they first got saved. That's how most preachers preach it, but that's not the intent of the Greek. It's not first, second, and third in a sequence of events. It is first, second, and third in order of priority. In other words, you have left your number one love, and something else is now number one, and I have become number two, three, or four down the list. Remember the first of the ten commandments. You shall not have other gods besides me. Not only had they put someone else next to Jesus, but they had put something else above Jesus, and Jesus was no longer number one in their lives. And if you look at that church, what was it that had become number one? Well, it wasn't worldliness, because they're not rebuked for that. It wasn't materialism, because they're not rebuked for that. What had become number one? The church, the Bible, and we're back to this young ruler, this lawyer. He loved the law more than he loved God. And folk, it's very easy, it's very possible, and I've said this before and I'm going to say it again, for a church like ours that emphasizes good doctrine, to fall in love with the teaching, to fall in love with the Bible, to fall in love with the doctrine, to fall in love with being right, and Jesus becomes second, or third, or fourth down the line. If Jesus is not number one in your life, and if Jesus is not number one in our church, then we have failed. And Jesus says to that church, He says, I want you to look where you have fallen from. He declares them a fallen church. They did everything right. They had all the worship right. They had the doctrine right. They had the teaching right. They had their discernment right. They did everything right, but they've fallen, because Jesus is no longer number one. And folk, you can have everything in order, just like this lawyer, because I'm sure that if Jesus questioned him, he would have said, I've kept all 613 of the commands, never mind just the 10. But he's unsaved, because it's not about God. It's about the religion that he serves. And then he says to him, this is the lawyer speaking, and your neighbor as yourself, your neighbor as yourself. Now we're going to speak a lot about that when we speak about the Good Samaritan next week, Lord willing. Jesus says these two commands are equal. They're equally important. But I want us to be careful here, because there are many people who love people, who feed the poor, who minister to the homeless, who do all sorts of works of charity. They love people. But here's the problem. If my loving my neighbor does not flow from loving God, my love is invalid. You can love people as much as you like. You can even, to abuse 1 Corinthians 13, give your body to be burnt. But if it doesn't flow from loving God, first, it's just humanism. It's just man-centered. My love for my neighbor must flow from my love for God. Number one. But number two, if I love God, I will, not I must, I will love my neighbor. My loving of my neighbor is a evidence, is a sign of my loving God. Preachers joke about the fact that the ministry is a wonderful job if it wasn't for the people. Church would be a great place if it wasn't for the people. No, we need to love one another. We need to love our neighbor. We will speak about the neighbor next week. But everything must flow from loving God. It's no good that your, if your relationship with God is in tatters, if your relationship with God is broken, and you go away this morning, you feel convicted, and you say, well, you know, let me, let me go and make some food parcels for the, for the poor. It doesn't help. Because it's what we call dead works. Hebrews 6 calls dead works. They works, but they dead. They don't count. They have no value. Because I've done it for the wrong reason, and it flows from the wrong motive. My loving my neighbor must flow from loving God. And because I love him, I love my neighbor. And John deals with this in great detail in, in his epistles. And, and he says, if you say that you love God and you don't love your brother, well, you're lying. Because you cannot love your neighbor and not love, love God in a true love. And so I gave you some tests earlier as to whether you really love him. But here's the final test. So that you can go home and think about, to what degree does my love for my neighbor manifest my love for God? If you don't really care, do you love God? If your heart is not broken, for those around you who are going to hell without hope and without God, you don't love God. But this is reality. This is where it comes down to. It's one thing to feed the poor, but there's something far more important than feeding the poor. It's saving souls from eternal damnation. And how can we be unmoved by our friends, our family? And I lie awake many nights, deeply troubled for my, for my kids and my grandkids, because I don't know that they are saved. And if you've never given a thought about those around you who do not know Jesus, can you really say you love God? Because you clearly don't love your neighbor. But these are difficult things. And I think that you understand, hopefully again, that as we, as we look at these passages, it's easy to read them and say, oh, I love God. Yeah, I love God. Love your neighbor. Cool, I've got that. Let me move on. No, this is the heart of our relationship with God. This is the core of our faith. And remember what Paul says in Romans, in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, that if you don't have love, you have nothing. You can have all knowledge. You can have all spiritual gifts. You can make every sacrifice you wish. But if it's not driven by love, it's a waste of time. If you're here this morning because you feel guilty if you don't come, you feel that I'm going to give you a hard time if you don't come, you feel that you'll lose face with others because you don't come, you've wasted your time. I trust you haven't and that you've heard the Word this morning. But, folk, what needs to draw us this morning, every morning here, every Sunday morning here, what needs to draw us to His Word, what needs to draw us into prayer is that we love Him. What should drive us in evangelism is that we love our neighbor. These are the things that should drive us. And if these things are not present, folk, we have nothing. We have an empty false religion. You may as well become a Muslim or a Hindu or a whatever, because there is no reality. There is no substance. Now the last verse as we close, verse 28, And He said to him, You have answered rightly. Do this. Love needs to be done. Needs to be done. It's not just a feeling. It's not just a state of mind. It's a doing thing. Husbands tell their wives that they love them, but they don't nurture them. It's not love. Love does. Love is a doing word. It's not a feeling word. Yeah, I know in the secular world out there, it's a feeling word. And I said to you earlier, we feel all in love, we fall out of love. That's not love. The love of God is a doing word. God demonstrated His love towards us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He didn't send a prophet or an angel to say, I love you with a hallmark card and all hearts and stars and things. No, He did love as He hung upon that cross for us. Do this. And you will live. Father, we thank you for your word. Lord, these are challenging things. And yet, Lord, you're not asking us to do what Jesus had not done for us. And Father, that you have not done in giving your only begotten Son. Father, you demonstrated your love towards us in giving Jesus. And Jesus, you showed us love. By you, the Holy One, dying for gross, filthy sinners such as us. Help us, Lord, to tap into that love in a little way. To not just feel it, but Lord, to will it, to do it. We ask this in Jesus' name. Pray, Lord, that you would help us to meditate on these words, Lord, that they may not just be empty words. Lord, that they may not just be something that we heard for a few moments and forgot about. But Lord, that they would be things that would change our lives. And Lord, on a personal note, I thank you for that day, almost 20 years ago, when you touched my heart on that hill outside of Pietermaritzburg. And you challenged me, do you love me? And Lord, that after 20 years or so in the ministry, 30 years in the ministry, I had to confess that I didn't love you, but I loved your word and I love preaching. Lord, I pray that you would challenge each one of us, bring us to those crossroads this morning, that we may come to a place where we recognize the fickleness and the weakness of our love. Help us, Lord, we pray, in Jesus' name. I pray that you'd go with us, Lord, keep us, protect us, protect us from the virus. I pray for Byron, Lord, who travels a long way. We pray that you'd take him and also for the folk from Rancho Cucamonga, Lord, I pray for them, that you would keep them safe on the roads, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.