Morning Message Texts: Deuteronomy 6: 1-9 & Mark 12: 28-34
Love the LORD Your God
1 These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess,
2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life.
3 Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, promised you.
4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.
5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.
7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.
9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
The Greatest Commandment
28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
30 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: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
32 “Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him.
33 To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
34 When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.
Morning Message:
It seems that through the years I have preached about love in so many ways. Love is such a popular subject, not just in society, but also in the church. We hear phrases like, “Love makes the world go round and there are endless amounts of songs and poems about what we humans call love. Books, television shows, movies, all based on some form of love or another. I suppose that love sells; it is a very easy way to draw people’s attention to what you are trying to convey. I have been asked several times throughout the years to preach on love more often. Truthfully, some people would be perfectly happy to go to church and only hear how God loves them. God’s love is a very important message that everyone needs to hear, but it is not the only message you need. I have this memory of a friend who passed away several years ago. She was not much of a church goer and when I asked her why she said, “Every time I go to church the preacher is preaching about one sin or another. I don’t need to hear that over and over again.”
Our mistake in thinking about love is that we equate it as an emotion. We treat it as an emotion and so our response to love always must be an emotional one. It’s a good thing we Presbyterians don’t get all caught up in all that emotional stuff. Heaven forbid, we have an emotional response in church. There is plenty of room in our faith for a pure emotional response to God’s love and our love for him, but love is not just emotion, it is a choice. God chose to love mankind. God’s love for us is not based on emotion. We should all say, “Praise God for that.” If God’s love was an emotional love, we would never stand a chance. If God’s love was emotional then it could change based on how He feels from moment to moment; but God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. If God’s love for me was based on emotion I would have been dust a long time ago.
From our point of view, we think that love is something that must be felt. You either love something or you don’t. You are either in love, or you aren’t. Here is the mistake that is often made in marriage. Every couple I have ever counseled before marriage I have tried to drive this point home. You are not always going to feel like you do today. Marriage is a marathon, not a sprint.
There will surely come a time, probably several times, that you don’t feel love. These are the times where your faith is so important. These are the times when you must together trust in the God who brought you together and choose to love. Just because you don’t feel love doesn’t mean it’s not there. How often do we hear someone say, “I just wasn’t feeling it anymore; the love was gone.” It is only gone if you choose not to love.
“Love the Lord your God” is a command. One might wonder how love can be commanded. The reason is that love in Hebrew is not confined to feelings. The term heart centers on the intellect, sensibilities, and will. So, when God commands that his people love him, it means to decide to cleave to him—and him alone. Cleave, that is an interesting word that we rarely use these days. The King James Version of the Bible says, “A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife.” Newer Bible versions say “and be united to his wife.” Cleave means: to adhere closely, to cling, to remain faithful. Maybe for marriage cleave makes more sense. Love becomes a choice, not an emotion, and, as a choice, God can command us to adhere closely, to cling to him, to remain faithful.
The command includes soul, which here is a synonym for heart—the true essence of a person. Strength means to give it all you have. The command to love is not God dictating how you must feel, but God telling us to never give up, to persevere, to remain strong, to seek God and display his love to others. To love God is to cleave to him, remain faithful to him, because we know down deep in our hearts, in the very essence of who we are, that we were created in God’s image because of his love.
Parents were instructed to teach their children and grandchildren God’s commands. Notice that it doesn’t say wait for them to fall in love with Me and then teach them about Me. Write the commands on the doorposts. Make them known to the next generation. Maybe, they should be displayed in our schools.
We must teach our children to love God’s commands and then maybe they would not feel so free to break them. We wonder why it seems as if there is no love of God or country anymore. For too long we have just waited for the next generations to fall in love with God. We pray and ask God to intercede in their lives, to bring them to faith, but we don’t take the time to teach them God’s commands. God commands us to love Him. We can adhere to His commands, or we can reject them, but don’t you think we owe it to the next generation to make known to them that to love God is expected and commanded.
The gospel of Mark is the only place where the religious leader’s favorable response to Jesus’ answer, as well as Jesus’ encouraging reply is recorded.
When we understand and grasp the full meaning of what it means to love God and others, when we realize that God’s command to love is not optional or dependent upon how we feel, when we can see the error of our ways and take responsibility for our failure to love, Jesus says, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
In Christ’s Love and Peace,
Pastor Bob
Views: 0
