The Love of God – The Divine Command

[00:00:00] Turn with me in the old testament to the book of Deuteronomy and chapter six, the 6th chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy, from verse one. [00:00:29] Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the ordinances which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go over to possess it, that thou mightest fear the Lord thy God to keep all his statutes and his commandments which I command thee, thou and thy son and thy son's son, all the days of thy life, and that thy days may be prolonged. [00:01:03] Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it that it may be well with thee and that ye may increase mightily, as the Lord the God of thy fathers hath promised unto thee in a land flowing with milk honey. [00:01:22] Hear, o Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one. [00:01:31] And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. [00:01:40] And these words which I command thee this day shall be upon thy heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up, and thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thy hand, and they shall be for frontlets between thine eyes, and thou shalt write them upon the doorposts of thy house and upon thy gates. [00:02:16] And then in the New Testament, in the gospel according to Mark and chapter twelve, the 12th chapter of the Gospel according to Mark, from verse 28. [00:02:39] And one of the scribes came and heard them questioning together, and knowing that Jesus had answered them well, asked him, what commandment is the first war? [00:02:54] Jesus answered, the first is, hear, o Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. [00:03:06] And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind and with all thy strength. [00:03:16] The second is, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. [00:03:24] There is none other commandment greater than these. [00:03:30] And the scribe said unto him of a truth, teacher, thou hast well said that he is one, and there is none other but he. And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love his neighbor as himself is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. [00:03:51] And when Jesus saw that, he answered discreetly. He said unto him, thou art not far from the kingdom of God, and no man after that durst ask him any question. [00:04:06] Shall we just bow together in prayer. [00:04:13] Our heavenly Father, we do thank thee as we come to thy word this evening that thou has said through our Lord Jesus that the spirit of truth will guide us into all the truth, and that he will take of the things of the Lord Jesus and make them real to us. And, o Father, we want to tell the speaker and hearer together that were dependent upon that ministry of the Holy Spirit. [00:04:39] We thank thee for the provision thou hast made for us, Lord, and we would together appropriate that provision, that this may not be a misspent time or in any single part futile. Let that spirit of quietness come upon us all and grant, we pray, Lord, that we may hear thy voice and that the word of Christ shall dwell in us richly. We ask it, Lord, in his precious name. Amen. [00:05:15] When I introduced last night the burden that was on my heart for these few times that I have with you, I drew your attention to a sentence in the letter of the apostle Paul to the church at Philippi in Philippians chapter one and verse nine. I pray that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all discernment, that ye may approve the things which are excellent, and that you may be sincere and void of offense unto the day of Christ. [00:06:13] I want this evening, without any further introduction, to dwell upon the divine command. [00:06:25] Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength, and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. [00:06:53] Now the key to everything is found in the nature of God, and one of the simplest. And yet at the same time, the most profound statements in the whole book is contained in one John and chapter four and verse eight, and again in verse 16. [00:07:19] God is love. [00:07:24] It does not say merely God loves. That is a fact. [00:07:32] Every one of us who's been born of God, who has tasted the salvation of God, knows that God loves and that he first loved us. [00:07:43] But the statement is fathomless. [00:07:48] It is profound. [00:07:50] It is absolutely basic. It is all inclusive. God does not merely love. [00:07:58] God is love. [00:08:03] When the word of God says that God is love, it says far, far more than that he only loves. That would be wonderful enough. [00:08:16] But that his nature is love is beyond our comprehension. We taste a little and it fills us with ecstasy. Which child of God has ever been touched by the love of God or filled with the love of God to their measure and not known? Some kind of ecstasy, some kind of being carried out of oneself? I feel sorry for christians who dont believe that there can be or should be any such experience. [00:08:48] The more of such experiences the better, especially if we are moving into days of suffering and days of pressure and days of strain. It is not that we want mere emotion or mere ecstasy or mere thrills, but to be touched with the love of God and moved by the love of God and filled with the love of God to come to some individual and original experience that God is. Love is something surely basic. [00:09:25] It must be something transforming. [00:09:33] No wonder the early Methodists spoke about an experience that they called perfect love. [00:09:45] God is love. [00:09:50] We must note that there are only two such statements, and they are both found within this letter, and the other is very like it. It's this God is light. [00:10:04] You find that in one John, chapter one and verse five, God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. [00:10:17] And light and love are a theme that runs right through the whole Bible from Genesis to revelation. [00:10:30] The correlation of light to love and love to light is something you will find in every single book, the Bible. [00:10:46] I cannot spend too much time on that, except I would just like to take the words of the Lord Jesus when he put it very simply, as it is contained in his statements, as recorded in John 15 and John 14 and verse 15, if ye love me, ye will keep my commandments. [00:11:16] And again in verse 23, Jesus answered and said unto him, if a man love me, he will keep my word, and my father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him. Or verse 21, he that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me, and he that loveth me shall beloved of my father, and I will love him and will manifest myself unto him. It seems in some christian quarters that this matter of love is always put over against law, as if law is one thing and love is another, as if the commandments of God are one thing and the love of God is another, as if somehow truth is one thing and grace is another. And if you taste the love of God, you're free from commandments, you're free from law, you're free from the word of God, you're free from its restrictions. It is not so the Lord Jesus not only said it in these few instances as recorded, but again and again and again. [00:12:38] And so we find it in many of the letters. [00:12:43] It is not that we have a whole list of regulations and laws to try and keep as under the old covenant, but rather that the spirit of God has come within us with the law. [00:12:54] And now the dynamic of the whole thing is love. [00:12:58] Because we love God, we shall be found spontaneously keeping his word. Some people say to me they no longer have to keep the Ten Commandments. But that's nonsense. [00:13:10] The ten Commandments have come within you. [00:13:15] If the spirit of God has come within you, then the ten Commandments, the ten words of God, have come within you. And you're not all the time thinking of do's and don'ts, but you're just thinking of him. And as you walk with him, you are spontaneously keeping the law of God. How can anyone love the Lord Jesus Christ and break his commandments? How can anyone love the Lord Jesus Christ and despise his commandments? It is impossible. If we love him, we will be sensitively aware of every word that he has said. We shall be somehow conscious of the need to appreciate, to understand, to obey what he has said, not only in letter, but above all in spirit, light and love. [00:14:10] They are everywhere. [00:14:12] Don't ever be sidetracked by some of these things that hold out some kind of experience of the love of God that frees you from the commandments of the Lord Jesus. We are in danger in some charismatic circles of having such, bless me little groups. You know, the kind of things where we all just get together to be blessed and we only think about ourselves, our own upbuilding and everything else. It never enters our head that the Lord Jesus said, go and make disciples of all nations. [00:14:51] It never enters our head that he has appointed us to go and bear much fruit. It seems as if the only thing that worries us is just praising the Lord, worshipping the Lord, and getting our own needs sorted out. [00:15:08] We can go in the same way with the whole matter of the church. We can see church truth, but it can turn us inside out and upside down in the wrong way, so that in the end we become so church truth conscious that everything else goes by the board. [00:15:27] There is no such thing as loving God without being aware of the full spectrum of his commandments. [00:15:40] Let me say it again. It's not that we've got to nail up the 618 laws that every good orthodox jew must keep and somehow try to keep them rigidly. This would be a terrible bondage and heaviness to us all. But if the spirit of God has come within us, then every single commandment in the Old Testament, which has a spiritual meaning, if not a literal meaning, still to be understood and hell must come within us. Isn't it so? [00:16:18] Jesus said, if anyone teach the least of thee to break these least of these commandments, he shall be least in the kingdom of God, he said, I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill the law. [00:16:36] Now, if that is how the Lord Jesus came to fulfil it, not to destroy it, not to negate it, not to throw it out, but to fulfill it, and then by his spirit, come within us to keep it so that his law is written in our hearts and his spirit is put within us. This opens a new gate, a new door. It brings us into a new dimension of joy, of freedom, of glory. [00:17:10] It is not a question of compulsion, it is not a question of duty. But it is the love of Christ which constrains us. For the first time, our dynamic becomes the love of God because we were first loved by him. This love, therefore, let me say straight away, is not what it is often understood as a kind of slushy thing, a kind of merely sentimental thing. We drool, we sort of. [00:17:45] We sort of. We are at all sort of slushy and doe eyed. [00:17:51] That kind of idea of love. Of course, it puts most men right off from the start. [00:17:59] They feel it's contrary to their nature. This isn't love that God's looking for. Of course. There must be sentiment in it, of course. There must be emotion in it, of course. There must be feeling in it, of course. [00:18:12] But this love is something strong and firm and rock like. It is enduring. [00:18:23] This love is both the most wonderful thing about God and the most fearful thing about God. [00:18:34] It is the most wonderful thing in the whole universe to be loved by God. But it is at the same time the most fearful thing in the whole universe. Some people think it's only wonderful. Let me tell you, it's fearful. [00:18:52] For once the Lord loves a person, he will not let them go. He will relentlessly pursue them until finally hes cornered them, even if its on their deathbed. [00:19:08] But in the end, he gets from you what he wants from you. He brings you to the place that you ought to have come to perhaps years before. [00:19:27] Once God sets his love upon somebody, there's no escape. [00:19:33] That is both our security and our fear. Why does the writer to the Hebrews say, every son whom he receiveth, he scourgeth? [00:19:47] It seems rather foreign to modern ears. But what it means is simply this, that it is the security of a love which is firm, strong, and cannot be deceived or deluded. [00:20:04] That is the kind of thing that gives a child in any family security. [00:20:10] When they have the kind of love that lets them do anything, go anywhere, choose anything, be anything, they grow up insecure. [00:20:18] But when there is some kind of love which cares for them, cares enough to discipline them, cares enough to chasten them, that brings a security into that child's life. [00:20:35] So it is with us all, the love of God. How wonderful it is, how fearful it is. [00:20:45] Then I want to say one other thing about this matter of the nature of God. [00:20:50] He is love. [00:20:53] That's what lies behind the creation of the universe. [00:20:57] That's what lies behind the creation of man. [00:21:02] That is what lies behind the redemption of man. [00:21:09] That is what lies behind the goal of God, the end he had in mind when he created the universe and when he created man in his image. It is divine love that is behind all these things. [00:21:27] Sometimes in this fallen world, when we see its contradictions and its depravity and its unhappiness and its anguish and its suffering, and when we see the storms coming upon the righteous and the unjust, and the sun shining on the unjust as well as the just, we are tempted to question the love of God. But, dear child of God, behind the creation of this universe and behind the creation of man and woman, of mankind, and behind that glorious work of redemption which was wrought by our Lord Jesus on the cross, is the love of God. [00:22:11] And behind the goal of God, the aim of God, the strategy of God, the purpose of God, lies the love of God from beginning to end. It is a love story, a divine love story. [00:22:36] Now, the heart of the matter is this, and I would like to take you for one moment back to the Old Testament and back to the fifth book of the Old Testament, the book of deuteronomy, from which we read this evening. [00:23:06] Deuteronomy, or as old mister Sparks used to say, Deuteronomy means simply the repetition of the law. [00:23:24] Now, whenever God says something twice, we need to give serious attention. [00:23:34] And it is a very interesting thing. And I was greatly tempted in these times that I have with you this year to take the times God says something all over again. [00:23:51] Because each time he goes to the bother of going right back over everything and saying it all again. It is with a very deep and great significance. [00:24:04] You see, all that we have in the book of deuteronomy has already been given to us, except the death of Moses. Thats the only new thing thats added. [00:24:12] Everything else is there. So why does God waste pages of the book? [00:24:19] There are all kinds of things we would have loved to have known. Are we going to eat in heaven? Are we going to recognize each other in heaven? What are we going to do in heaven? [00:24:28] Is there a millennium? Or is there not a millennium. You know, all these things that we all get tied up on and all the rest of it, all the things. If only God had used all these chapters to pack in that kind of information instead of going all over what he's already said. Anyway, we've got Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and numbers. Why go over it again? [00:24:53] God does exactly the same thing with the first and second book of Chronicles. [00:24:59] Some of you probably have got started on chronicles and got lost in those genealogies. They seem to be endless, don't they? But they go right back to Adam, and then they trace the whole story from Genesis to Ruth all the way through all those books. And one will say, well, why? Why waste all these chapters in the book? Why not give us a bit more extra revelation, new revelation? Why go over everything again? And then, in particular, it goes over the four books, one and two, the first and second book of Samuel and the first and second book of kings. Why? [00:25:39] But there is a reason for it. You see, when you come to the New Testament, you have three gospels, all of which tell you the same story from a different angle. But then you have a fourth gospel, which was not written like the other gospels, but is an interpretation. It is as if that gospel sums up everything and says, this is the heart of the matter. [00:26:03] With those others, you've only got part of the truth, you've got the history, you've got the facts, but you have not got the heart of the matter. Chronicles does exactly the same. It's as it were. God puts his finger on a matter. It is the house of God and Jerusalem. And he puts his finger on that and says, this is the heart of the whole matter. This is the heart of all my persevering with mankind. [00:26:33] Now, the Book of Deuteronomy is just like this. [00:26:41] If you read the book of Deuteronomy very carefully after this evening, maybe you want to get it in the modern version. I don't know. But if you read it and you have some knowledge of those other books, you will come inescapably to one conclusion. [00:27:07] What is that conclusion? [00:27:11] It is simply that it is a matter of love. [00:27:20] Now, it is an interesting fact that love for God, or God's love for us, is mentioned only once in all those four books, and that is in Exodus, chapter 20 and verse six. But when you come to Deuteronomy, every chapter seems to talk about the love of God. It's about God loving us and choosing us because he loved us. And this is why he chose you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth. And then comes the cry, you must love the Lord. [00:28:01] Because God is love. [00:28:04] Only love will satisfy him. [00:28:08] Did you hear that? [00:28:10] Some people are so used to it as a kind of gospel address that it just goes over them. Because God is love. Only love will satisfy him. [00:28:21] Knowledge will never satisfy him. Understanding will never satisfy him. Zeal will never satisfy him. Your work and energy will never satisfy him. Your giving of your money will never satisfy him. The giving even of your body to be burned will not satisfy. [00:28:39] Only when you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength will God finally be satisfied. [00:28:54] He loves you, and he will not be fobbed off with anything else as a substitute for love. But we believers are past masters at substituting love for work. We make work. We put work in place of love as if we work our fingers to the bone. Surely God will understand. If we give our energy, God will understand. If we attend meetings, God will surely look upon us favorably. But God can't bear it when the love is gone. It is obnoxious to God. [00:29:36] Only love satisfies God. [00:29:42] Now you find this everywhere in the book of Deuteronomy. Look at deuteronomy. And chapter seven and verse six to eight. For thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God. The Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a people for his own possession above all peoples that are upon the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people, for ye were the fewest of all peoples. But because the Lord loveth you, and because he would keep the oath which he sware unto your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you out of the house of bondage from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Now look at chapter six and verse five. We read it earlier. [00:30:37] Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might. [00:30:47] Or again, chapter ten and verse twelve and 13. And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee but to fear the Lord thy God to walk in all his ways and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, to keep the commandments of the Lord and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good. Or again, chapter eleven and verse one. Therefore thou shalt love the Lord thy God and keep his charge and his statutes and his ordinances and his commandments alway. [00:31:31] Or again, chapter 13:00 a.m. i boring you with all these scriptures. But you see, this matter of love is not mentioned only once in those four books. And now as we go over the whole of these books, we find it again and again and again. Chapter 13, verse one. If there arise in the midst of thee a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he give thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee, saying, let us go after other gods which thou hast not known, and let us serve them. Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet or unto the dreamer of dreams. For the Lord your God proveth you to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Ye shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him, and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him and cleave unto him. Or again, lastly, in this book, chapter 30, verse six, and the Lord thy God will circumcise thy heart and the heart of thy seed to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul that thou mayest live in that I command thee this day to love the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways and to keep his commandments and his speech, statutes and his ordinances, that thou mayest live and multiply, and that the Lord thy God may bless thee in the land whither thou goest in to possess it. And again, lastly, verse 20. To love the Lord thy God, to obey his voice and to cleave unto him. For he is thy life and the length of thy days that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob to give them. [00:33:46] I wonder whether any of us have really understood the significance of deuteronomy, because what it is really saying is there is a divine love story behind your creation. [00:34:04] There is a divine love story behind your formation. [00:34:09] There is a divine love story behind your redemption. [00:34:15] There is a divine love story behind your transformation. [00:34:22] There is a divine love story behind your education and training. God has a plan for you. And the Bible is the revelation of that plan. Some people believe that salvation is the plan of God. But salvation is only part of that plan, since we are all fallen creatures. [00:34:47] Salvation is the means by which God puts us back into his purpose, back into his plan. And so the Bible is a love story. It begins with a marriage, and it ends with a marriage. It begins with a marriage in the second chapter. And we are told later that this institution of marriage is a mystery and it is to represent and manifest the eternal desire of God for his own. [00:35:23] When we come to the end of the Bible, we have a marriage. [00:35:29] Only the marriage at the end of the Bible is between the bride and the Lord Jesus, the lamb and the wife of the lamb. [00:35:42] And then wherever we look through the book, it becomes clearer and clearer. Most people look upon the little letter of Ephesians as the high water mark in the New Testament of revelation. And here in Ephesians and chapter five, we read these wonderful words, verse 25. Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for it, that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the words that he might present the church to himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. And then a little later on in verse 32, this mystery is great, but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church. [00:36:44] What an amazing book the Bible is. When we begin to see it in these terms, not just the raw of God or even the truth of God, but the light of God bringing us into the love of God and the love of God leading us into the light of God, then the Bible becomes the most thrilling book in the whole world. [00:37:16] It is not for nothing that almost at the heart of the Bible there is a little tiny book that has been called by modern and liberal theologians. And I am not exaggerating a bawdy love ditty. [00:37:34] It is the song of psalms. [00:37:38] I prefer to believe the jewish tradition concerning the Song of Psalm, that it was a revelation given to Solomon whilst he was praying of the love between the Lord and Israel, his people. [00:38:05] If that is so, it lifts that little book into the holy of holies. [00:38:13] It is not just a question of salvation. It's not just a question of sanctification. It is not just a question of service. It's not just a question of work or sacrifice. Suddenly we discover that God loves us with a consuming love. [00:38:32] And there are three amazing little things in that song of Solomon. [00:38:38] When first she discovers that he loves us so much, she says, my beloved is mine and I am his. [00:38:53] That's where most of us begin. [00:38:56] We have hymns that say, mine, mine, mine, I know thou art mine. [00:39:05] We have hymns that say that we'll be crowned midst plaudits of angels and men, says one old hymn. Well, there's nothing wrong with it, thank God, many of us will be crowned midst the plaudits of angels and men. [00:39:25] And he is ours. [00:39:27] Blessed be God. [00:39:30] But that's where it begins. My beloved is mine and I am his. [00:39:37] Then when we go on in the revelation, we find that the bridegroom's not going to take it. [00:39:44] We find out that in this amazing love story he gets a little tired of her. Not tired. It's not that he doesn't love her, but she begins to treat him in a kind of indifferent manner. When he knocks on the door, she sort of says, I'm in bed. [00:40:01] I haven't got my shoes on, but I'll come, dear. [00:40:06] And she takes an awful long time slowly moving off the couch. [00:40:13] But when she gets to the door, he's gone. [00:40:16] And then she's seized with fear. There is a real love in her heart, but it has grown apathetically secure because she thought he was mine. Now he's fled. Now she goes out and she searches for him. She goes through the streets saying to everyone, o daughters of Jerusalem, where is my beloved? Do you know where he is? And they beat her up. [00:40:49] And so she goes on, I hope I'm not ruining the song of songs for you. But she goes on looking for her beloved. And then comes the next great thing when she finds him. And then there is a change. [00:41:02] She says, I am my beloved and he is mine. [00:41:11] A change has come, but it's not good enough for the bridegroom. [00:41:20] There is a further experience she has to go through. And then when finally they come to the marriage and the consummation of the marriage, she says, I am my beloved. [00:41:36] The mine has gone out. [00:41:40] She's come to the place where she's his. [00:41:43] And she's secure in that. She doesn't have to say, he's mine, he's mine, he's mine. It's enough to say I'm his. [00:41:53] And then she says, what shall we do for my little sister? [00:41:57] She's immature. Now, strangely enough, it wasn't our beloved brother watchman Lee, but it was none other than that very respectable evangelical Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission, who wrote a book called Union and Communion on this very little book. And he said, who can this little sister be? [00:42:21] Because she is obviously related to the bride, but she's immature. And the bride says to the bridegroom, after they're married, what shall we do about my little sister? She's immature. She hasn't come to the place where she can be married. And they say together, we will do this, and we will do that and we will do the other till we bring her to the place of maturity. And Hudson Dayla, no other person says, could it not be that those are the believers who do not go on with the Lord? [00:42:57] Not every believer will be in the bride, although everyone is potentially the bride. Because who are those blessed ones who are invited to the marriage supper of the lamb? They're not the angels. They're already there. [00:43:10] And it can't be the bride because it's in her and the bridegroom's honour. So who are the ones who are blessed? It says, blessed are those that were invited to the marriage supper of the lamb. [00:43:23] Oh, what a love story lies what mysteries there are of love in this whole matter, and how you and I need to understand that the God who saved us hasn't saved us in a mechanical way, just to use us, just to manipulate us, just to fill us, just that we may be objet d'art, you know, sort of things draped around the mansions of heaven, like trophies that they used to have in those old manor houses in England, a hippopotamus head and an elephant and a leopard. And some christians have got the idea that they've got seder now. They're trophies of grace, you know, sort of God says, look at so and so. Yes, I got that one at such and such a time. I got at such and such, and that one I got at such and such. No, no, no. There's something very different. The love of God for you is so consuming that it is like bridegroom's love for bride. [00:44:23] It is like husband's love for wife. [00:44:27] And that is the story of the Bible. [00:44:33] And thats why the Bible ends with a marriage feast in revelation 19, let us rejoice and be exceeding glad, for the marriage supper of the lamb is come. [00:44:50] And why, John says in revelation 21, I saw and I beheld the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven, having the glory of God. [00:45:02] He calls her the wife of the lamb. [00:45:13] Now to come back, if that is the heart of the matter, listen to the summing up of the Lord Jesus. [00:45:38] A scribe came to him and said, Master rabbi, which is the greatest and first commandment? Now, it had always filled rabbinic minds as to what really was the greatest law. [00:46:06] And only those who understand a little bit about rabbinical studies will know just how complex and analytical those studies can get and be. When I tell you that the greatest division that rent the synagogues in the Middle Ages was over, how many angels could stand on a pinhead you will understand a little bit about. It's not a joke. That is true. [00:46:40] They argued and argued and argued as to how many angels could actually get on a pinhead. [00:46:52] Now that may mean very little to you, but there is some value in this analytical and complex approach to law. It has produced a nation of lawyers, scribes. [00:47:17] Thats why. When David ben Gurion, I prime minister of Israel, was asked what it was like to be prime minister of Israel, he said, it is like being prime minister of two and a half million prime ministers. [00:47:41] The scribe came to Jesus and said, which is the first and greatest commandment? [00:47:49] And jesus replied in the age old way of the jewish people, by reciting what we call the shema. [00:47:59] Hear, o Israel, the Lord thy God. [00:48:04] The Lord is one. [00:48:08] Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. And the second is like to it, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. [00:48:36] In the Matthew account he said, upon these two hang the whole law and prophets. [00:48:48] It was as if Jesus condensed the whole Bible into one commandment. [00:49:00] Thou shalt love, as if he said, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength, is to love your neighbour as yourself. [00:49:26] Consider the tremendous scope of his statement. He said, the whole Bible is condensed in this. He said, the whole Bible hangs on this. [00:49:37] He said, as if the whole Bible springs out of this. It was as if he was saying, do you want to keep the whole Bible from Genesis to revelation? Then keep. Keep these two laws. [00:49:59] Note the simplicity. [00:50:04] A child could understand this. [00:50:08] You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. And you shall love your neighbour as you love yourself. [00:50:25] What simplicity. I wonder whether we believers have ever given the amount of reflection and meditation to this basic statement of the Messiah. [00:50:48] You see, will you notice? He says, you shall love the Lord your God, not you shall love teachings or doctrine, although we are to have sound doctrine and pure doctrine. Not you shall love the concept of God. There are some christians who love the concept of God. They dont love him. They love the concept. [00:51:18] Not you shall love the work or the service or the thing, but you shall love the Lord your God. Listen again. Hear, o Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one. [00:51:37] Not many things, not many purposes, not many lords, one Lord. [00:51:45] And everything is focused on him. What simplicity. [00:51:49] When a person is focused on the Lord their God, they cant go wrong. [00:51:56] When with all their heart and with all their soul and with all their mind and with all their strength, they love the Lord, the spirit of God will keep them in the way and keep them in the will of God and keep them within the work of God. [00:52:14] You can't go wrong. Oh, no wonder Jesus said, because iniquity shall abound, the love of the many shall wax cold. [00:52:30] If we are going to love things in place of the law, if we are going to centre on organization or service or the system of things or teaching or concepts or truths, instead of him, we are in danger. [00:52:49] The whole of church history has the evidence this people have gone astray because they have loved things or truths rather than him. [00:53:07] Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy strength. [00:53:15] Then I want you to notice the totality of it. [00:53:19] Its hard, isnt it really when you think about it, because all of us, I above all come so short, fall so far short in this matter. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind and with all thy strength, the totality of it. Heart, now in Hebrew things heart corresponds to spirit, heart, with all your heart, that's where it begins, that's where it begins, not with the emotion, not with the soul, but with the heart, that's where it must begin, with all your heart. [00:54:17] If you love him only with all your soul, you can go wrong, but if you love him with all your heart, youll be kept in the way and with all your soul. There are many believers who are frightened to death of the soul. [00:54:33] It is certainly true there has to be a division between spirit and soul, but the human personality is the human personality, and the Lord Jesus gave this basic word to us all. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul. Don't be afraid of your emotions, don't be afraid of your sentiment, don't be afraid of your feelings, with all your soul, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. Some people can't love the Lord with their mind. They say, ah, well, I can love God with my emotions, but not my mind. Oh, yes, you can, can, you can love the Lord with your mind. Your mind can come right under subjection to God and then your mind is released. There is nothing so petty or so small as great intelligence without God. [00:55:36] I have heard the most incredible thing said to me about the book by very intelligent people, theologians. I remember years ago being told how Elijah, I boldly told you some of this before. How when that fire fell down out of heaven on Mount Carmel, it was, as he said to us all, a room filled with men. He said, of course, we all know there is benzene on Mount Carmel. [00:56:07] And he said, the trench that Elijah dug, of course, he said, and filled with water. Well, it looked like water, but it wasn't water. That's why when the fire came, it licked it up. You've never seen fire lick up water, he said, have you? [00:56:23] But if it was benzene, of course I was amazed by this explanation. [00:56:34] And I remember in question time asking him, where did the fire come from? And he was very surprised. [00:56:45] And I said, maybe it was a larger cigarette. [00:56:57] Now, the point of the matter is here is great intelligence which comes up with an explanation of a biblical miracle which is non intelligent. [00:57:11] It's like the same man who said also to the same people when questioned, well, he said, Jesus never walked on the water. As we all know, there are parts of the Lake of Galilee which are very shallow. He walked on the seabed. [00:57:28] But this was an even greater miracle because, as I asked him later, how did Peter sink? [00:57:46] Quite honestly, it's best to leave the biblical stories as the biblical stories to be either accepted as they are written through faith. [00:57:56] But once you try to explain them and explain them away, what happens? [00:58:01] You end up with intelligent people giving a very non intelligent explanation. [00:58:10] So it happens when the mind is supreme, when the mind dominates, when our brain is the. The thing and even determines everything about God. No, we must love the Lord our God, not only with all our heart and with all our soul, but with all our mind. [00:58:31] For then God can give us revelation, God can give us illumination, which is a wisdom far beyond this world has access to and which is in itself totally intelligent and with all your strength. [00:58:56] Well, we must begin, I think, to finish. [00:59:02] But in this summing up of the Lord Jesus of this whole matter, this divine command, note it. It's a command. [00:59:12] God never commands us to do anything that through faith and grace we cannot do. [00:59:17] If God says, go and make disciples of all nations, we can do it by his grace and through the obedience of faith. If God says that we are to go and possess something, then we can possess it through grace, by his power, through the obedience of faith. [00:59:38] And so it is here in this matter. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind and with all thy strength. Beloved people of God, we are entering into years of shaking, of change, of strain, of darkness, of strife such as the world has not seen only the love of God will keep us, and that love of God will not be satisfied with anything less or other than that we love him with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind and all our strength. Now the Jesus said, and the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Some people feel well, I can love the Lord with all my heart, but to love my neighbour as myself. It's interesting that the Lord did not say in his wonderfully gracious way, thou shalt love thy neighbor with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. He said one marvelously simple thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. [01:01:33] Some christians, I'm quite sure, feel it's quite wrong to love yourself. But God takes it for granted. [01:01:43] Everyone loves themselves. The deepest instinct in us is self preservation, because we love ourselves. [01:01:50] Sometimes it's inverted. The people who suffer from a terrible inferiority complex. It's only because they love themselves even more than normal. [01:01:59] That's true. And they feel that somehow or other they should be more. [01:02:06] God takes this for granted. [01:02:09] If only you would love your neighbor as you love yourself, if only you would care for your neighbor as you care for yourself, if only you would think about your neighbor as you think about yourself, if only you would think about the welfare of your neighbor as you think about your own welfare, if you would only think about the satisfaction of your neighbour as you think about your satisfaction. What a world it would be. [01:02:38] Don't you think that we believers have fallen very, very far short in this matter of loving our neighbor as ourselves? [01:02:46] My word, we sometimes look upon our neighbors as just sort of heads to be counted. [01:02:53] We dont think of them often as human beings that God loves and Jesus died for. [01:03:02] We almost sometimes think of them as kind of fodder that can be brought into the church. [01:03:11] God doesn't look at it like that. [01:03:14] Thou shalt love not the multitude, but thy neighbour as thyself. [01:03:23] And if we are to love our neighbour as ourself, what about our brother and sister? [01:03:29] There is so much in the book about this. Let me just turn you to one or two in closing. [01:03:35] In Galatians and chapter five and verse 13 to 15, for ye brethren, were called for freedom only. Use not your freedom for an occasion to the flesh, but through love be servants one to another. For the whole law is fulfilled, filled in one word, even in this. [01:04:09] Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. But if ye bite and devour one another. Take heed that ye be not consumed of one another. This is what happens, doesnt it? Again and again in the fellowships of gods, people, they bite and they devour one another, and in the end they themselves are consumed. [01:04:29] The whole thing is swallowed up in backbiting and gossip and faction. [01:04:40] Through love be servants one another. Not through love be masters one of another. Not through love be teachers one of another. Not through love be correctors one of another. Not through love be leaders of one another. [01:05:01] But through love be servants of one another. [01:05:07] Look again in the same letter. Galatians six two bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. [01:05:20] So the apostle was quite clear about this statement of the Lord Jesus. He called it the law of the Messiah. [01:05:28] Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. [01:05:33] And it's interesting that the apostle takes the second part and says, that's the whole law being fulfilled, as if he takes it for granted that you're to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind and with all your strength, and that the outcome and consequence of that will be seen in your loving your neighbor as yourself. [01:06:01] Many will ask the question that a scribe asked Jesus, who Lord is my neighbor. And Jesus told a story. [01:06:12] He said there was a certain man who went on a journey down to Jericho through the wilderness. Now the journey down to Jericho from Jerusalem is a 4000ft descent through wild and wilderness country. [01:06:26] And in those days it was filled with brigands and robbers. And on his way down, this one was robbed and left half dead by the way. [01:06:37] And there came evidently on his way up to Jerusalem, a priest. [01:06:45] He knew the law of God. He kept the covenant of God. [01:06:51] He was a teacher of the word of God. [01:06:55] And he saw the man half dead, and maybe he remembered the law, that if he touched a dead body he would be unclean. [01:07:07] And he passed by on the other side. [01:07:12] And then there came a Levite, one who was supposed to look after the things of God, care for the work of God, a guardian of the worship of God. [01:07:26] And he saw the man half dead and he passed by on the other side. I wonder how many fellowships here are passing by on the other side. [01:07:42] I wonder how many groups here there are people half dead in our communities. We pass by on the other side. We're priests of God, we're God's levites. [01:07:54] We don't want to get involved with the half dead. [01:08:00] We don't want to get involved with those that are mangled half murdered with their problems and difficulties. It'll be a whirlpool we feel that will suck us into it and take us away from the real objective of God. [01:08:16] We pass by on the other side. [01:08:20] And there came a samaritan. [01:08:24] And when he saw him, he had compassion on him and dismounted and poured in out wine and oil and bandaged him up and set him on his own animal, and as far as we know, turned round and went back to the inn and said to the innkeeper, there's only one inn between Jerusalem and Jericho in the old days. And said to the innkeeper, keep him at my expense until I come again. And Jesus said, who was the good neighbor? [01:09:13] Sometimes it's better to be a samaritan in love with God than a priest who's lukewarm. [01:09:25] Sometimes it's better to be a samaritan mixed up than a levite who is separate from the world. [01:09:36] If the love of God is not in our heart and love for our neighbor as for ourselves is not being fulfilled, it is our condemnation. [01:09:57] So, dear friends, I must finish, but I want to finish with just a few. What should our response be? [01:10:06] Jesus said, hear, o Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. [01:10:13] Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind and with all thy strength. And thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. [01:10:30] What can be our response? Don't we all come short, both as companies of God's people and as individual believers? Don't we all fall short in this matter? [01:10:43] And is it not time for us to take heed, lest we move into these days with a delusion that we're right with God, that we're safe and secure when perhaps our love has grown cold? [01:11:02] I think we can only take the words of the bride or of the bridegroom in the song of Solomon. [01:11:16] Set me as a seal. Chapter eight, verse six. Set me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thine arm. For love, life is strong as death. [01:11:35] Jealousy is cruel as sheol, the flashes thereof are flashes of fire, a very flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench love. Neither can floods drown it. If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, he would be utterly condemned. [01:12:01] May God really speak to each one of us, and may this divine command be fulfilled, be heeded. [01:12:15] May we obey him, cleave to him, serve him, and above all, love him with all our heart. Shall we pray, Lord? We pray together that thou wilt take these poor words of mine and make them by thy spirit, like a sword in our hearts, dividing between soul and spirit, discerning the very thoughts and intents of our hearts, the very motivating forces of our lives. [01:12:56] O Lord. [01:12:58] Since thou hast said that the whole book is summed up in these two simple but profound commandments, o Lord, find us out and give us grace, Lord, that we may keep them and fulfill them. [01:13:21] And we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. [01:13:27] Amen.