All You Need Is Love

Even more so, we have many ways of relating and pursuing these ideas that aren't with real people. We're people not pursuing real love with real people because we insist we need to be free. We're entertained constantly by things that look like love, romance novels, pornography, Disney love, They all present a picture of something magical or erotic that simply twists God's good gifts. It really leaves us unsatisfying because they cannot be truly enjoyed.

Love is a good gift from God. God is love. God richly loves us. He is generous in his love. He designed us to be loved by him and designed us to love him. Love is one of the most important words that we have as Christians and as humans, but it's so confusing because we apply it to so many different things and talk about it in so many different ways. We all long for love. That's because you're designed to long for love. We have a hard time experiencing it. We have an even harder time committing to it.

As we look at our text this morning, God has sent his Son because he loved us, to show us love, to restore us in love, so that we can love truly again by his grace. This morning we're looking at a text and all of God's Word is good, all of God's Word tells us truth. There are certain parts of scripture we want to highlight sometimes. Anytime it says, this is God's will, that's a significant moment to hear, this is God's will. This is what he desires. Jesus is telling us the greatest commandments today. And hear how good these commandments are for you. They're directing and instructing you to know what love is and who is truly lovely. This is one of those texts that really we should be meditating upon constantly because it summarizes the entirety of scripture.

All of life is meant to be focused on learning how to love God more as he's worthy and to love our neighbor properly. Augustine teaches the wise life is one whose loves are properly ordered. We can actually define sin as having a disordered love. Loving good things the wrong way. That's usually the idolatry that Christians fall into. Loving something good, but out of bounds according to what God created it for and designed it for.

These two great commandments, they're worthy of our meditation as we've been reading Psalm 119. Delighting and loving is helping us have a properly ordered love to love God more and to love neighbor more. That is our goal in looking at this text, to consider how we might have more grace and wisdom to grow in love, holy love of God and neighbor.

If you're new with us, we're walking through Matthew. If you don't have a Bible, please take that one in front of you. The whole summary of the Bible is to love God and love neighbor, as we just heard. As we look at our text, I want us to walk through it in a little bit of a different way. The first thing we're gonna look at is the trick question. This whole section is set up by different groups trying to trick Jesus. They're trying to stump God. So it's an exercise of folly, the entire thing. We see the Pharisees, they ask him, what do we pay tax to Caesar?

He answers them. The Sadducees ask about the resurrection and marriage. He silences them. Now we come to after seeing how he silences the Sadducees, they ask another question. Next week, we'll look at the question Jesus asked that silenced them. But notice the conclusion,

46. And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions. The one true wise God has spoken. Here, we want to look at this trick question, though. The Pharisees asked him about paying taxes. The whole idea there is they're trying to get him in trouble with the Roman government or with the people. The Sadducees asked him clearly an odd question. They don't believe in the resurrection, but they ask, who will this woman be married to in heaven? And Jesus makes it clear he is not the God of the dead. If you're new with us, we learned to have a callback on that. He is not the God of the dead. Be prepared. Now they see Jesus silence the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and they ask him a question.

The lawyer is trying to get him in trouble once more because there's always been an ongoing debate about which laws might be greater, heavier, lesser. I should say anyone in church who really wrestles with God's law, who really meditates upon it. We all have some kind of debate internally. How do these laws, how are they ordered? If you're taking the law for what it is, God's word to us, there's a way to wonder which ones are weightier, which ones are greater. Good news for you today, Jesus tells you. Let me give an example.

Some traditions insist lying is the greatest sin. So there's a greater weight to lying. The rationale? We all fell into sin because of a lie. We are to worship God in spirit and in truth. Lying would be opposed to who God is, and it would be opposed to worship. The truth will set you free. So above all, truth.

Lying is seen as the most significant. Lying would be one of the more significant lies, or laws, rather. Not lying would be one of the more significant laws. I use that as an example, not insisting thou shalt not lie is heavier, but there's a way in which we must think about the laws and how they relate to each other.

There are 613 commandments and prohibitions. Ten are set aside to give us a grand focus, but of all the laws, Jesus asks which one is greater. He gives an answer. Love God with all your heart, with all your strength, with all that you are. That really would summarize that first tablet of the Ten, if we were to think of it that way. Love your neighbor as yourself, that's a way of fulfilling that second tablet of the Ten Commandments. The laws are what God commands of us, tells us is good. They also prohibit us from doing what is bad. The law is a wonderful protector of us. It directs us to know what is good to pursue and it protects us from pursuing what is wrong.

The law is that, I think you can actually think of them this way, that they establish the rights of others. Do not steal. People have a right to their own property. Do not lie. People have a right to the truth. Do not have any other gods before me. God alone is worthy of your worship. They're protecting rights and protecting us from doing what is wrong. We must believe there's truth behind these laws. It's not arbitrary. All the law is summarized in these two commandments. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your strength, and your mind. And love your neighbor as yourself. Given the key word here is love, let's look at just what it means to command love.

I find this somewhat fascinating and a significant dilemma. Take the command, do not steal. All right, that seems pretty simple. That's an action. All I've got to do is refrain from physically taking something from somebody else. That kind of basis of a simple action seems simple, very basic. It requires self-control and avoiding inaction.

The command of love is deeper. The command of love is speaking of my desire, my affection, very much my purpose. The command to change my heart is so much weightier than the command to change my behavior. The greatest commandments are focused on your heart, what you desire, what you delight in.

Can we just feel how daunting that is? Change your heart. Decide you should be delighting in something different. I want us to feel the full weight of how important it is what we delight in, where we direct our desires, what kinds of things we entertain and allow to change what we desire.

This is the most significant underlying principle in the command. You have agency in your love. You have a responsibility with what you love, how you love, who you love, in the direction you send your love. You're not supposed to be a slave to your passions and your thoughts. You have responsibility. You have agency.

Now, let's be clear what love is not in the sense of love the Lord your God and love your neighbor. It's not random acts of kindness. It's not just trying to do a few good things to feel good and make others' lives a little simpler. It's not random, and it's not just acts of kindness. It's also not romantic love. It's not being carried away with passion. It's certainly not something you fall into. Young adults, if you ever find yourself having fallen in love, my encouragement to you is to get out as soon as possible.

Love is a promise. It's a commitment. Direct your desire. Direct what you delight in. Love has very much to do with your purpose. It involves emotion and action, but it can't be mere action. It can't be mere emotion. There's a volition to it. Love, true love, it changes your direction, your priorities. Love by definition must be costly. By saying yes to one love, you're saying no to many others. When you say yes to a spouse, you're saying no to every human being with that kind of love. Love is costly.

There's an exclusivity to it. Love moves you. It changes how you feel. how you think, how you act towards someone. Love is meant to be binding and meaningful, which is contrary to what the world tells you. To truly find love and enjoy love, you need to be as free as possible. No, love is promise making and keeping and commitment. Loving someone means you give yourself over to them and seek to lift them up.

Fake love, Disney love, lust, they also drive you in direction and action, but it's enslaving and distorting. The love of God truly satisfies and lifts you up and makes you whole. These false loves, the unholy loves, they bind you and capture you. They distort you.

The two commands of love, vertical and horizontal, love him who is greatest with the greatest love, Love those near you as equals. They have a necessary correspondence throughout scripture. The call and command to love God. Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

The reality is we're designed for love. We're designed to love. It's hardwired in our system. We are going to love someone or something. It's part of worship. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to propose that we make a category called sacred love. I'm not convinced we need to think this way, but for this morning, we're going to entertain this and you can talk to me about it afterwards.

I wanna call the sacred love is that love that God designed for you to have with Him and for Him alone. It's your control love. It's your great love. It's the love with all. It determines how everything else will be loved. We're gonna call it sacred love because it's the divine love. It's a worshiping love. It controls you and all your other loves.

In sin, we direct that sacred love to anything other than God, usually the self. Instead of loving God with all of our heart, our hearts get bent in back on us, and we love ourselves as if we're the greatest. We're either drawn to God's love and directing our love to Him, or we're being driven by our own loves and moved here and there and shift in every possible direction. We're either enticed with a long series of crushes that leave us confused, or we love God who can truly be known and enjoyed.

The ultimate love to be desired and enjoyed and pursued is with Christ. As His church together, as we all rejoice in the great love He's given to us, And we practice that love with one another. Two pictures of love in scripture. We looked at one last week. Christ loves us as a bridegroom who loves his unlovely bride and makes her lovely. The other, God the Father adopts us in love, brings us into his presence, cares for us as our father. Both of these proclaim this and picture this powerful Picture of love. Love the Lord your God. Let's just think for a moment, who is that? Who are we loving so that we know how to direct our love and to whom we're directing it? First, you're to love the Lord your God who is your creator. He is not the God of the dead. I said be ready, folks. He is not the God of the dead.

He, the God of life, created you to live. He is a God in whom we live and move and have our being. The Father of lights from whom every good and perfect gift comes. He's the creator who gives. He gives life. You're created by Him to be with Him, to move toward Him. designed to communicate with God, just an amazing gift, an amazing ability as image bearers.

He loves us, even though we're lesser in being. God chose to love us and make us to know his love. We're fearfully and wonderfully made in his image. It's important we start with the Creator, because as our Creator, we love him who made us, And everything he makes is good. We learn to love him who is perfectly good. Secondly, we love the God who's not just our creator, but our savior.

He is the Lord, your God. He's Yahweh. He's the God who has given covenant, faithful, steadfast love. The friendship series on Wednesday night A couple of times it came up, we just had to define this Hebrew word, chesed. The steadfast love of God that he's made promises and he will keep them, even when it hurts, even when it requires sending his son to die for us.

The God who saved Israel from the Egyptians, from those who were slave masters abusing them so that they could come out and serve him in love. He frees his people. He saves the people who grumble against him. so that we can learn how to be thankful with gratitude and that he loves us. He loves the people who are unlovely, unhappy with his love.

We're called to love him who created us and him who saves us. We are commanded to love the one true good God. This is a good command. Commandments can sometimes feel weighty because we don't like being told no. But just step back and think about what God's telling you. He's commanding you to love Him who is most lovely. God's command is good. It's good for you. He's commanding you to do what is right, good, and true. You're not called to love something that's horrible. painful, you're loving Him who's perfectly and worthy of love, who truly satisfies you in love, who's given you the greatest love.

Again, the Father who sent His Son to die for you, the Son who laid down His life for you, the Holy Spirit who is inside of us, stirring up and helping us to know what it means to receive His love and give Him love. We're an amazing God. to show us mercy, and to keep his promise of love, to reveal his love even while we were sinners hating him. Again, we pretend there is this sacred love. Is your strongest love, your greatest love towards God who is worthy as your creator and as your savior? Why will we love him? Why will we love him?

He's your creator, he's your savior. Well, again, God's most lovely. That's just a fact. You must love him because he's most lovely. He who is most lovely is most worthy of your love. He is holy, holy, holy, glorious and great, righteous and true. He's worthy of your affection. Your adoration. Your devotion. We, by definition, should love him because of who he is. But we don't.

So really, we begin to love him because he first loved us. We begin to love God because he first loved us. This is the first way in which we love God. Again, we should love Him because of who He is as our God, our Creator, and as He is the one who truly is worthy of love, but our sin loves everything else. This is where we start to see the grace of God. He loves us while we are pursuing anything and everything else He created with the love He deserves. He loves us and shows us his love that even while we're pursuing other gods and so-called gods, he comes to us to show us his love. What if he realizes God woos us? We might look back and say in our salvation, yeah, at that point we loved God. That's probably not true. I think you probably loved what he gave you. Forgiveness for sin.

God woos us by giving us the one thing we cannot get on our own, forgiveness, peace. He comes to us and offers us what we cannot get, what we cannot find, and that's why he woos us. He gives us good gifts. But the ultimate end of those gifts is that we would love him as the giver. As sinners who are coming back to our right minds, having our hearts straightened out, he sees how twisted we are, how corrupt we are, how dull we are. He commits himself to love us and to draw us, first by loving what he gives us, and then we love him who is the giver.

Of course, we love him because he first loved us. That is the foundational principle. God sent his son. God so loved the world and their rebellion that he sent his only begotten son so that we might not die but live. Do you know this love? You have to know that love that he has given you in salvation, wooing you with all the gifts so that you would actually rejoice in him, the giver.

Now as we think about this, because love is such a confusing concept, because it's a word we use way too broadly, let's talk about some wrong reasons to love him. Why you shouldn't love God, or how you shouldn't love God. First, you do not love him so that you'll get something else you love more. We're gonna lead into this and really wrestle with it, But too often we want to love God because we hope he'll give us something we also love.

Make sure we understand what I'm presenting here. God woos us by leaning down and giving us gifts that will first draw us to him, but ultimately the goal of those gifts is to draw us to him. That's not the way we too often love God. We love him just so he'll give us the gifts we want. Listen to the difference. Loving the gifts as a way toward loving Him, or loving Him so He will give us the gifts we really love. The first of those is Christianity. The second is every pagan religion.

He leans down and gives us good gifts so we'll love Him. We then take for granted those gifts, we take for granted that grace, And we think if we love him, then he'll give us those things that we love more. We try to woo God and convince him and manipulate him. It's like a toxic spouse that's using the other person for some other end. We should love the Lord our God because of who he is and what he does.

He gives every perfect gift. He's generous and he's free. If you wrestle with your love of God, this is where I challenge you to start. First, how generous, how free, how rich he is in love. He gives and gives abundantly and is never less in love. He gives all that we need. He has not withheld anything good. that the songs we sang this morning, I encourage you, if you wrestle with if God is truly generous in love, meditate upon the words of the songs, the love of God.

Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made, were every stalk on earth a quill, and every man ascribed by trade to write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry, nor could the scroll contain the whole. through stretch, though stretch from sky to sky. That's a beautifully poetic way of saying there's no end of his love. He's rich. Finally, how do you love him?

Well, our text says, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. Now, I believe here the focus is all of you. Your thoughts, your desires, your actions. Another place it says with all your strength, all your body. God created us to give Him everything. He is worthy of your desires, your devotion. He's worthy of your thoughts, your meditation, to think God's thoughts after Him. He's worthy of your actions, your behavior. Love Him with all. Again, the sacred love. It orders all our loves.

The love we give to God has no qualifiers. It puts nothing in pencil. There's no IOUs. There's no manipulation. There's pure, joyful, absolute pursuit of love. Let's maybe drop this down one more. You love people with your words. Do you love God with your words? Prayer. Praise. Adoration. Thanksgiving.

Do you love your God with your words and the way you talk about Him? Do you love your God with your words and the way you talk about others? Do you bless God and curse man? Do you love God with your time? Do you love God with what you prioritize in putting in pen or putting in pencil? Do you praise God and love Him with your location, where you are, and what you do?

Your energy. What are you pursuing with the most zeal and commitment? These are all things that are showing us where our love is. If you wanna know where your love is, look at your calendar and your checkbook. Checkbook is something you spend money with. We're very practical people.

We like to pretend there's some kind of idea of love, and we like the idea that we might love God, If it's not truly commitment, and you feel the costliness of it, it's probably not real biblical love. So Christian, do you struggle to trust God, devote yourself to God, and commit to Him in faithful worship? Is it difficult for you to present yourself regularly with His people to worship on Sundays, to seek Him in prayer and study every day? Do you really practice the discipline of denying yourself, carrying your cross and following Him?

All these are acts of love. Again, the first place, see His great love for you. The goal isn't that you'd hide more in shame and become more isolated and therefore less loving. His love draws you out. His love brings you near. Let's be real clear, love is terrifying. Because if you do it right, you're making yourself vulnerable. To love another human makes yourself vulnerable. I don't see any heads nodding in affirmation. If you've loved somebody, you're vulnerable towards that person. Here's what's vulnerable when you love God, your love of sin.

That's all he's going to take away. The only thing vulnerable when you seek and commit to love God is He will challenge your love of sin. That's what you stand to lose. That's it. He makes you whole again, true again. But vulnerable to love God, the trustworthy good God, is He will call you to repent of sin. Is He worthy? Desire to do what is good and right. To love him who is most lovely. To love him who is most loving. Second command. It's like it. Shall love your neighbor as yourself. Okay, the who. Again, love is a commitment. Love is costly. This isn't sacred love.

But there's a call to commitment and promise making, and who's your neighbor? I think the best definition of who your neighbor is, it's the one near you. So just look around and see your neighbors. When you're in your neighborhood, and you're in a dorm, wherever you are, your neighbors are those who are most near you, the people next to you. Every human being who is made in the image of God is made equal and worthy of love. Your neighbors that you're called to love most are the ones God has ordered and put near you.

Now, notice, love the Lord your God with all is a different qualifier than love the Lord your God as yourself. It's a different kind of love. Again, there's an orderliness to it. There's a sacred love that God alone deserves, and there's this love that we would give towards others that we would have for ourselves. We're equals. God's greater than you, but we're all equals.

The nearness is significant because we can kind of pretend we're loving people who are really far away, and loving people really far away is not costly at all. Loving people not near us, guess what? There's no conflict. That's easy. People can be difficult.

Real people are designed to have real face-to-face loving relationships. It's amazing we can do calls, video calls, communicate all the time, but loving others is being near someone. Every human being made in the image of God is equal and worthy of that same love. The whole idea of love your neighbor as yourself is built upon the fact that we're all made in the image of God.

Okay, question you might have, what if they're evil or gross? The radical ethic of Christianity is that you love your enemy because your enemy is a neighbor. All right, you're not going to trust them the same way that shows good, but you pray for them, you greet them, you love your enemy. You love your enemy as yourself. You're not going to trust them because they'd be dangerous, but you never disregard what God has said about someone. No matter how evil, they're made in his image. Christ loved those who knelt him to the cross, if you have a difficult time wrestling with us. Christ loved you when you hated him.

We all should have a difficult time loving our enemies. And the best way to really wrestle with what that means is to see that we had made ourselves enemies of God. And he loved us, who's greater than us. So we love our neighbors, those near us, even the difficult ones. And it's not just the ones near us, but there's a location near us and then a covenant near us.

Fellow Christians. I want to introduce one more concept. So your neighbor is every image-bearer near you, even the evil ones. But then there's a new commandment Jesus gives. Love one another as Christ loved you. So the qualification is important. Love the Lord your God with all. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love one another, fellow Christians, as Christ loved you. To wrestle with this, who loves you more, you or Jesus?

Great Sunday School answer. That's right. There's a higher love. And really, love begins here. Loving those who are under the same love. Loving those who are experiencing the love of God. Loving those that can help you grow in that love together. That vertical and horizontal, they go hand in hand.

Church membership is how I've just found a wonderful way that it puts limits on those I'm responsible to make sure I'm loving in a costly, sacrificial way. If you think you're loving everybody, you're probably loving nobody. There's a way in which we're focused and seeking to build up and care for and pursue others in promise-making, promise-keeping, their well-being producing love. It requires covenant, commitment, and priority. Well, why would we love our neighbor as ourself? I've already said it's equal. This is where that ordered love comes in.

You can't love a sinner in themselves because they're sinners. We love them because who they truly are is who God designed them to be, and that is an image bearer. We love our neighbor according to God and because of God. If we set ourselves as the judge of who we should love and how we should love, we'll end up hating everybody, even ourselves, if we're really honest. But we love them based upon what God has said. You see, we will love others more truly and better if we do so according to God and as part of our love of God. That's what it means that there's one sacred love that controls all of the loves. Loving neighbor is not an end in itself. Loving our neighbor is one of the ways we love God. Loving our God is an end in itself. Love your neighbor.

Again, this can be terrifying because it makes you vulnerable. It's easy to be calloused. That's why loving our Christian brothers should be a way of healing and understanding and trusting people again so that we can be faithful. Loving neighbor is not random acts of kindness. My neighbors, it's those who live near me, it's covenant, those who are in this commitment together to walk according to Christ. Thinking through who is near you and who are you covenantally united with.

That's who we should call to love. True godly love lifts up. As we love God, he lifts us up to be more pure, to be more true. Our love for him calls us near him and helps us be sanctified. As we truly love others, we're lifting them up towards God. True godly love fulfills and satisfies. We enjoy God as we love him, and we learn to enjoy others as we love them truly. To love seeks to bless them and for their benefit. As we conclude, I want you to see there's a bonus love.

Self-love. The Bible never commands self-love. We do it, it's assumed. We love ourselves. We will not love ourselves well until we love ourselves according to the will of God and the Word of God. There's an abusive kind of self-love that just entertains and entices every kind of sinful desire. The person who's an addict loves himself too much in the wrong way. That strips us of peace. We live in an anxious age over self-love. A wrong kind of focus of love. The love of God and the love of self that truly follows from the gospel of Christ gives you peace, gives you joy, gives you purpose. We all love ourselves, usually too much in the wrong way.

That's why Christ came to restore us to know how to have peace with him in love, peace with our neighbors in love, even peace with ourselves. love. These commandments flow from the gospel that God first loved you so that you can believe in Jesus Christ and be forgiven and know the great lover God. Christian, we can seek to have God's wisdom order our loves for God, our neighbor and ourselves.

We pray with me. Father, we come before you as a people who loves shoot off in all different directions at all different times, and oh, that's confusing. Thank you that you have designed us to love you in a way that brings goodness and order. Thank you that Christ has come to love us to restore that order. May we all long to know your love for us and know how to better order our loves, to enjoy you and all that you've given us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.