Last Lord's Day morning, Christmas Day, we were
meditating on that central passage and statement of
the Gospel in John 3.16, where we
read the delightful words, For God so loved
the world, that he gave his only begotten
Son, that whoever believes in him should not
perish, but have eternal life.
Where do we go from there as we
pass over to the beginning of a new
year?
In the light of God's infinite care and
love and mercy toward us, what should be
our response to him?
I have felt constrained to turn this morning
to Matthew chapter 22, a passage that begins
with verse 34 and proceeds to verse 40,
but we shall read verses 37 and 39
only at this point.
Love the Lord your God with all your
heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your mind.
And the second commandment is like it.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Now, though we are quoting these words from
Matthew, I shall be taking the background which
is to be found particularly in the Gospel
of Mark, but also in the Gospel of
Luke, where you remember our Lord proceeds to
speak of the parable of the Good Samaritan
in this very context, illustrating the kind of
love that God requires of his people as
being a love that not only moves upwards
toward the throne, toward the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit, but outwards towards
his creatures and especially towards his people.
In this particular context, our Lord has been
asked many questions.
If you read the Gospels carefully, you will
see that all kinds of people have been
asking him one kind of question or another,
a Herodian, a Sadducean.
And then, according to Mark, at this point,
a scribe whom Matthew qualifies and says that
he was a Pharisee, he has come along
to ask a question of our Lord, really
to put him to the test.
They have doubts as to whether or not
he is orthodox, whether or not he deserves
their confidence and deserves their faith.
And so, this man comes and you remember,
he posed the question.
Master, he said, there are so many commandments.
What do you think?
Which is the greatest commandment of all?
Now, I suppose we should remember that it
was alleged by the Jews that there were
613 commandments mediated through Moses.
613, not only 10, 613.
And if this good man was mindful of
that fact, well, it's no wonder that he
was looking for someone to whom he could
pose the question.
Is there one among these many commandments which
is more significant than another?
And our Lord, the Son of God, using
not only His ingenuity, His understanding, but His
compassion, comes right to the heart of the
issue and the heart of the problem of
this dear man who apparently wanted to please
God and wanted to know God's will.
And He said to him, well, this is
the thing to do.
This is the response I give you.
The most important one is this.
And I'm now quoting from Mark chapter 12.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the
Lord is one.
Love the Lord your God with all your
heart and with all your soul and with
all your mind and with all your strength.
The second is this.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no commandment greater than these.
Now notice how our Lord graciously answered the
question posed to him, albeit in a manner
that was clearly unexpected.
He brought together and he welded into one
cohesive whole the separate commands to listen to
the one true God and to love the
God to whom we listen and who speaks
to those who listen.
And he welds the whole thing into one
major commandment, may we say, an omnibus commandment,
a manifold commandment.
And he says, this is the one thing
that you need to know and this is
the one thing you need to obey.
And I want to look at them briefly.
First of all, the command to listen.
The most important one, answered Jesus, is this.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the
Lord is one.
This corresponds, I take it, to the often
repeated words of our Lord in the Gospels,
He that has years to hear, let him
hear.
For many years I used to think there
was no real significance to that statement of
his, which is repeated here and there and
everywhere.
But having read this again, I think I
understand what our Lord was saying.
He that has years to hear, let him
hear.
The first and the greatest commandment is this.
This is the first part of it.
Hear, O Israel, listen.
The Lord your God is one and there
is no one else to listen to.
Listen to him.
And then, as you're listening, this is what
he tells you, you must do.
Love him with all your heart and with
all your mind and with all your soul
and with all your strength.
And when you come to the end of
that, there is another which is like it,
as Matthew says.
Almost a part of it or a continuation
or even an expression of it.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
And if you've got any problem as to
who your neighbor is, Luke will give you
the answer.
The Bible is very complete.
The command to listen.
Are you a listener to God?
My friends, this is not meant to be
a rhetorical question.
It's really meant to be a question that
we face up to at the beginning of
a new year.
Are we listeners?
What do we know about the art of
listening to the one whom we believe and
confess to be the one, true, and only
God?
How incongruous, incongruous, how out of alignment to
believe that there is only one, true God
and yet not to listen to Him.
How necessary, to put it the other way,
how necessary if there is but one and
only true God that we should be found
really on tiptoe listening to see if God
is a word to say.
Now evidently there is a reference here to
what the Hebrews called the Shema.
We usually refer to it as the Shema.
Well, it's the Shema, I suppose.
Some of you will correct me again, but
it's more like the second than the first.
You know, the Hebrew had these words, the
Jews had these words written on the lintels
and on the doorposts of their houses, called
it the Shema.
It's the Hebrew for the word, the verb
to hear, Shema, listen.
And it's quoted from the Old Testament and
it quoted these words, The Lord our God
is one Lord, thou shalt love the Lord
thy God, listen.
So that whenever the Jew went into the
house or went out of the house, he
saw this on the side of the doorpost.
He reminded himself and he reminded his children,
he was constantly reminded of the fact there
is only one true God over against all
the polytheism and the pantheism and the paganism
of the world outside.
There is but one true God, listen to
him.
I'm quite sure if the ancient Jew needed
to be thus summoned to listen to God,
you and I in 1984 need to hear
the same command.
Hear, oh Israel, listen, oh Israel.
And of course the answer is given as
we've already indicated in the statement that is
added.
The Lord your God is one Lord.
The very language here would put it something
like this.
The God of Israel is the great Jehovah.
He is Lord.
The God of Israel is Jehovah.
The one who appeared to Moses in the
burning bush and introduced himself as I am
that I am or I will be what
I will be.
But he didn't leave it to mere words
to convey what he meant.
He provided a visual aid so that the
message would not be lost.
Do you remember he appeared to Moses in
a bush that was burned and burning and
continuing to burn but it was not being
consumed.
Now this doesn't happen every day.
You may go into a wilderness or you
may go somewhere and you may see a
bush burning but as it burns it is
being consumed.
That's the normal.
If you have coal fires which we don't
often have here well you know that when
the fire burns the coal is being consumed
or if it's wood or whatever, whatever it
is.
As it burns it consumes itself.
But here is something singular.
The fire was burning but the bush was
not consumed.
All of which indicated that this God of
ancient Israel the God of Abram and of
Isaac and of Jacob is a God who
is not consumed or devoured with the years.
Comparing yourself with what you were a year
ago.
How do you feel?
January 1984.
Now some of you young people feel even
stronger and better I'm sure.
But what about the most of us?
Well I won't ask you to be vocal.
But the fact of the matter is this
whether we know it or not, whether we
realize it or not we are dying and
we are decaying and we are in process
of dying.
Every one of us.
And this is a day's march toward the
journey's end.
And each day takes something away from us.
And were it not for the mercy of
God and the amazing providence whereby we can
be resuscitated and renewed from day to day
where would we be?
But as for our God Himself He is
the Lord of the ages.
He is the ancient of days.
He was before the beginning.
He will be after the ending.
And He does not diminish.
And He is one.
He is one.
There is no one else like Him.
A trinity of persons in one deity He
may be.
But there is no one beyond the triune
Godhead like to this Jehovah God of Israel.
He is alone.
Therefore, listen to Him.
And that's the first thing.
I am not going to take time to
stress this more and more this morning.
I think we're getting the message.
To whom else can we go?
When the disciples were leaving our Lord the
larger crowds were going and He turned to
the very twelve, the little nucleus that were
following Him and were allegedly very loyal to
Him.
He said, well now look.
They're all going.
Do you want to go also?
And Peter, bless him, turned to Jesus and
said, Lord, to whom else can we go?
Thou hast the words of eternal life.
Bless Him.
There was one thing, you see, that Peter
knew and that was this.
There is no other than the incarnate Jehovah
God.
He is one and there is none else
who has the word of life and the
capacity to maintain eternal life in a transient
passing society in the midst of death to
possess eternal life.
Now let's move from that to the command.
It's the command to listen that comes in
the first place but then following the command
to listen comes this command to love.
Thou shalt love the Lord your God with
all your heart and with all your soul
and with all your mind and with all
your strength.
I give that fuller version which is found
in Mark 12 30.
Now this is most generally considered to comprise
the first great commandment.
Though we have taken the liberty to speak
of the previous command to hear, to stand
more or less on its own or at
least in relation to it.
The commandment to love God.
Love the Lord your God.
If it is a challenging question to ask
ourselves at a point like this in time
am I a listener?
Is it not equally challenging to ask am
I a lover of God?
Do I put up with God
or do I love Him?
You don't put up with the person you
love.
You delight in the person you love and
that's the difference.
Thou shalt love the Lord your God and
whatever else may be involved beyond this matter
of delighting in God and there is much
else that is involved as we shall see
in a moment.
There is this.
God should become our heart's delight.
True love, genuine love necessarily means this.
You find the Old Testament way of putting
it is often very graphic.
For example when David and you know David
was a red-blooded sort of a man
and you might expect David to be thinking
of all things when he woke up at
night.
How often does he say that when he's
awake upon his bed his mind and his
heart is with God.
That's what it is to delight in God.
When red blood is dancing in your veins
and passions are strong and opportunities are many
nevertheless the man's heart goes out after God
and settles upon God.
Now that's love.
Do you know anything of that?
The first and greatest commandment announces the existence
of the one true God and then gives
primacy of place to the duty of expressing
our love toward him.
The first law is to love God who
has bound himself to us and bound us
to himself in covenant ties and done it
all out of sheer grace.
Such love is an all-inclusive affection and
if we really love God you see everything
else follows.
That's the point.
Don't let anybody get mixed up and say
well if I love God there's no need
to do anything for him.
No, no.
The point is if you love God you
will do everything for him.
Love drives all the wheels of activity.
Let me explain this.
Some wheels revolve alone and separately.
Some wheels drive other wheels.
Love drives other wheels.
Let me put it like this.
I've got a bicycle in the garage.
It's not my own.
Somebody wistfully thought I might use it occasionally
and left it there for me to use.
Well I haven't used it very much.
But you know the front wheel of the
bicycle has a puncture in it at the
moment but it does, it turns.
But it doesn't turn anything else.
It just turns.
Of course you have to have a front
wheel to go on a bike.
And it turns but it only turns itself.
But not so the rear wheel.
When the rear wheel turns it turns the
whole mechanism and it makes it move.
And not only that there's a lamp.
There's a tail lamp and there's a front
lamp and there's a dynamo that's attached to
the back wheel and the back wheel when
it turns drives the dynamo.
And you see when the back wheel is
turning everything else is turning.
So there are all sorts of things happening
when the rear wheel is turning.
Now love is like that.
Love never moves alone, itself, alone.
Where love is a hundred thousand other things
will spring up just because love drives them.
Love motivates them.
Love kindles them.
Love inspires them.
Love is the driving force.
The apostle Paul puts this in a myriad
ways that because he does so perhaps in
the way he does we miss the point
all too often.
But he does so negatively and he does
so positively.
Let me give you an illustration only.
In 1 Corinthians 13, 1 to 3 he
says this.
If I haven't got love I haven't got
anything.
If I speak in the name of men
and of angels but have not love I'm
only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
If I have the gift of prophecy and
can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge and
if I have a faith that can move
mountains but have not love I am nothing.
If I give all I possess to feed
the poor and surrender my body to the
flames but have not love I gain nothing.
It's like a front wheel you see.
There's nothing to drive.
And when it moves it moves alone.
So unless you've got love there are so
many things in your life that are not
ticking over.
Only love makes them tick.
Put positively Paul puts it like this.
Let no debt remain outstanding.
Be careful about paying your debt.
Accept this.
Accept the continuing debt to love one another.
You can never come to the end of
this he says.
This is an ongoing debt and however much
you pay it you still owe people more.
For he who loves his fellow man has
now listen here's a mouthful for you has
fulfilled the law.
Man alive I thought that there was no
conceivable way whereby we humans could fulfill the
law of God.
Paul says there is one way that leads
towards that end and this is it.
Love God.
And your love for God will generate within
you the quality of life that desires to
do anything and everything that God commands.
Whether the number of the commandments is 631
or 10 or 12 or 13 or what
have you it matters not.
Love is the fulfilling of the law.
Love you see drives the whole mechanism of
human life.
Thou shalt love the Lord your God.
Of course you notice that possessive pronoun there.
It's not easy to love a stranger and
I think that our Lord is implying here
that it is only possible to know God
when when we are in covenant relationship with
him and acknowledge him as such.
It is within that relationship alone that love
can come to its own.
The fire is only kindled within the bonds
of a saving union with him.
But that will be expressed in due course
in a remarkable manner.
To quote Mark who is the most extensive
here With all your heart, with all your
soul, with all your mind, with all your
strength someone will say well what's left for
me?
Nothing my friend.
That's the whole point.
God demands all and there's nothing left for
me.
With all your heart and with all your
mind and with all your soul and with
all your strength he demands the whole of
you, the whole of me.
Now there is no one infallible way of
describing these and of separating them and distinguishing
them.
I don't really think.
In so far as they can be distinguished
I suggest to you and this is only
a suggestion that perhaps it should go along
the following lines.
When it says with all your hearts we
must remember that sometimes the word heart stands
for the inner being of a person the
entire inner being the inner man as Paul
speaks of it.
Whilst at other times it has reference to
the emotions as such.
The heart is the seat of the emotions
sometimes in scripture.
Now here the term cannot refer to either
specifically because such areas are individually referred to
a little later on as the mind and
the soul.
The word heart therefore probably means here that
we should love God with full, with total
sincerity.
That you should love him from the inside.
That your love for him should not be
a matter of words only or of your
presence in the right place at the right
time or of your going through some outward
motions that are supposed to express love.
But your love for God should be a
matter of something emerging from the depths of
your being and moving upwards to him and
there is a motion in the emotion with
all your soul.
I think that this refers to what I've
already indicated.
If it can be distinguished here as it
has to be with these four references coming
together it probably means delight in him.
Love him not just with your mind or
even with your emotion but it's a love
of delight, the whole being.
The notion is that of putting our whole
being our feeling and all the warmth of
which we are capable into our love so
that it is no unfelt affair.
But with all your mind as well.
Your mind matters, your mind is important.
If you really love someone your mind goes
to that person and if you really love
God you'll think a lot about him and
you'll be considering him and you'll be checking
up with him and you'll be making sure
that he is pleased whoever else is not
pleased.
Your mind has recourse to him and with
all your strengths.
This term demands intensity at each level of
our being.
Strength as well as sincerity must be the
hallmark of love as it is expressed on
the level of our feelings as well as
of our thought.
Now, notice.
All the heart, all the mind, all the
soul, all the strength.
This love will determine your priority.
This love will devour your energy.
This love will take you out of this
world even whilst you're in it.
Not making you incapable of serving it but
in taking you out from it to commune
with the heaven that is over it it
will send you back with an energy and
a grace and a capacity to bring the
grace of God down to the neediest and
the feeblest.
And then, says our Lord, don't forget it
doesn't end there.
There is the command to love our neighbor.
The second is this and the second is
like it, says Matthew.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no commandment greater than these.
Jesus treats them as two but they are
somehow specially related and make, in one sense,
an omnibus commandment.
Jesus here links the words of Leviticus 19
with those of Deuteronomy 6, 4, and 5
in order to weld them into one whole.
Now, the commandment here is similar to the
previous one in that it also is a
commandment to love.
It is as if the love that we
expressed Godward is then directed by God himself
to pass beyond himself.
This is a strange thought here.
See, God is never a selfish God.
We are.
What we are given, we cling to.
We hold on to.
The amazing thing about God, we see this
at Christmas time.
Our Lord Jesus Christ did not consider equality
with God a thing to be grasped.
But he put it aside and he made
himself of no reputation and he took to
himself the form of a servant and the
form of a man.
He died the death of the cross.
He gave up his rights.
He didn't cling to his prerogatives.
He could have.
We owe all our love to God and
it could stop in God and not pass
beyond God.
But the remarkable thing is this.
You pour the chalice of your love upon
God and God says, All right, it's for
me and I only deserve it.
It is meant for me alone.
But wait a moment.
I command you to pass it on to
your neighbors, to my creatures, to my children,
to everybody else.
And by divine command, the love that is
exclusively the father's is to be shared with
the father's creatures and the father's children.
I don't know of anything to compare with
this.
See, he doesn't tell you, Look, everybody else
throughout the world deserves that you should love
them.
That's not where the New Testament stops.
It says God deserves everything.
But our God doesn't keep everything to himself
that is his due.
When you give him everything, then he says,
Now, I know it's mine.
Now, nevertheless, let it pass to this and
to that and to that and to that,
to this country, to that country, to that
continent and that continent, to this individual and
that individual, this type and that type, to
all kinds and conditions of men.
Have you got the point, my friend?
So that Jesus could say, Inasmuch as you
have done it unto the one of the
very least of these my brothers, you've done
it not only for me, but to me.
Get the point?
And the man who asked the question was
thrilled.
I wish I could have seen his face.
He went to trip, it would seem, though
there's an air of genuineness about him.
But, oh, we won't argue about that.
At the end of it, he was really
pleased and he says, Well said, teacher.
The man replied, You are right in saying
that God is one and there is no
other but Him.
To love Him with all your heart and
with all your understanding and with all your
strength and to love your neighbor as yourself
is more important than all the burnt offerings
and the sacrifices.
This is something coming from a man like
him.
Is more important than all burnt offerings and
sacrifices.
It's the moral, not the ceremonial that's the
important thing.
You say, my, this man is a disciple.
Well now, you notice the balance of Jesus.
Dare I say, this may have been a
moment of temptation for Jesus.
Here is a very astute and learned man
and he's saying almost exactly what Jesus himself
is saying.
But he, like Nicodemus, still had to know
the new birth.
You know what Jesus said to him?
My dear young man, he says, Look, or
let me quote rather than just give my
own words.
When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely,
he said to him, You are not far
from the kingdom of God.
What?
Not far from the kingdom of God?
Isn't He inside?
No, He's not.
Now don't ask me to explain why.
I don't think the passage tells us why.
I could give you my ideas but that's
not the point this morning.
You see, you can go a very long
way and still be outside the kingdom of
God.
It can be intellectual.
It can be a mere intellectual agreement with
the truth.
Without the heart's faith and the heart's love.
And says Jesus to this man who was
delighted with the answer that Jesus had given,
You are not far from the kingdom of
God.
You're moving in the right direction.
But let me tell you, let me tell
you, you're not there yet.
Keep on seeking.
Keep moving towards the kingdom in the spirit
and in the attitude you've shown before me
now and you'll soon get there.
But you're not there yet.
Could there be someone here this morning in
that category?
You're in an obedient frame of mind.
You're searching the scriptures and you give intellectual
assent to the things that you deem to
be written by God through His human servants.
But your heart hasn't yet come out in
faith in Him and love for Him.
Let your heart come out.
Confess your faith in Him.
You can be very near the kingdom and
yet outside of it.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon used to say sometimes to
the great crowds that went to hear him
preach, I have a feeling, he says, as
I listen to you singing that many of
you must be living on the doorstep of
the kingdom because, he says, you can sing
with those inside but your hearts are not
inside.
Do you know it is possible to sing
the songs of Zion whilst living on the
doorstep?
Outside.
So near and yet so far but there's
a door through which we must enter and
Jesus is that door.
If there is anyone here in that condition
this morning I beseech you come to Him
this morning where you are.
Put your faith in Him.
Now in the silence of your soul acknowledge
Him and say, My Lord and My God,
I trust You.
And when I go out from this congregation
from this service this morning I will confess
You before men as My Lord, as My
Master, as My God.
And so we conclude.
These two questions.
Listening.
Loving.
And these two aspects of the love that
God commands and requires very seriously.
Love the Lord your God with all and
it seems as if there's nothing else left
nothing left for me or for my neighbor,
doesn't it?
But that's not true.
You show them your love for God by
hearing how He tells you to share that
love that you've directed exclusively towards Himself.
Sharing it with this one and that one
near at hand and in the distant and
uttermost places of the earth.
By the services that you can do with
your hands use of your mind and of
your lips and in a myriad other ways
but all to show forth the excellences of
Him who has called you out of darkness
into His marvelous light.
Last Lord's Day morning we gave thanks to
God for His unspeakable gift.
I wonder whether God has any reason to
acknowledge this morning our love for Him.
Could it be that He is saying to
us as a congregation what He said, what
Jesus said to another church after ascending to
be with the Father you have left your
first love.
Oh God bring us back there to listen
and to love.
Let us pray.
Our Heavenly Father we thank you for this
good day.
It is good because you have made it.
It is good because there are promises that
relate to it.
And it is good because you are in
it.
And we have not only your word and
the symbols of the sacrament but we have
your presence, your real presence by the Holy
Spirit and the word.
Oh God take our hearts and our lives
afresh to be your own.
As we move to the table ordained by
our Lord and being kept by us to
His glory and for our profit may the
Spirit brood over us.
We ask it now in His holy name.
Amen.