In his sermon 'Educated Fools Attacking the Resurrection,' Scott Brown delves into the profound significance of Matthew 22:34-40, where Jesus articulates the greatest commandments: to love God with all one's heart, soul, and mind, and to love one's neighbor as oneself. Brown emphasizes that these commandments encapsulate the essence of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, presenting the foundation of true faith and spiritual life. He highlights the centrality of love, explaining that all scripture hangs on these commandments. The sermon explores the different dimensions of love through biblical examples, showing that genuine love integrates both feelings and actions. Brown also addresses the Pharisees' attempt to trap Jesus, noting that love must permeate every aspect of life, including family and societal relationships. Moreover, he warns against the danger of being 'not far from the kingdom of God,' urging believers to truly embrace God's love and grace. Finally, Brown underscores the importance of acknowledging one's need for divine mercy and the transformative power of Christ's sacrifice, thereby inviting a deeper, holistic love for God and neighbor.

Good morning. Today's Scripture passage is Matthew chapter 22, verses 34-40. But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. Then one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him and saying, Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Let's pray. Oh Lord God, we thank you for your mercy, for your love. Lord, we thank you for loving us.

Lord, we thank you for taking people who are your enemies and teaching us what love is, Lord, by first loving us. God, we pray for your mercy to continue to be poured out on us, or that you would give us understanding today, that you would bless the words that we preached here today, or that you would teach us how to love you more and to love one another. Amen. Well, a few days ago when we were in Africa, a few of the men, one early morning, got up and made a long hike to the top of a mountain. On that mountain, they were able to observe the whole city.

And it was a very wonderful and rich experience. People go up there to pray to this part of the city, outside of the city. And it just, you know, it's always thrilling to get up above and to see the landscape below you. And we have a passage of Scripture that's like that. But it's like Mount Everest.

It's like being on top of the world and seeing the whole of Scripture. Here from this passage the Lord comes in answering what seems to be a simple question offhand, perhaps very strategic, perhaps out of a heart of hunger. And he answers in such a way as really to take you to the top of the world, to have everything that was ever said in scripture put in its proper light. And he gives the interpretive key to every single section, every single book, every single word of Scripture. And so I want us, as we engage in this passage, to consider the enormous significance of our being here at this time as a church.

God has us before such a passage of scripture that is so, so important. And of course, there's nothing more important in a church than these two things that are communicated here. And There's nothing more important than we could consider today. I pray that somehow God would give us a spirit of awe, a sense of anticipation, a heart that desires to learn more about what is here, this kind of love. This kind of love.

And whatever we believe here together, whatever stage in life we are as Christians or non-Christians, then it's judged by this summary statement here. Because this really is as if the church has gone up to the top of Mount Everest and has before him the landscape of the world, the world of the Word of God. Now there are a number of statements I want to make about this passage before we enter into it. Number one, it is a summary of the message of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Number two, it presents a clear statement about what it means to be a Christian.

Number three, it describes the essence of genuine spiritual life. Number four, it is the foundation of all true faith. Number five, it shows the way to eternal life. If you do not love God in this way, you will not inherit eternal life and you'll be like those we read about in Matthew chapter 13 just recently, the lawless ones who are thrown into the lake of fire. Number six, it is an example of our dilemma and our great need.

The commandment exposes how needy we are of the grace of God because of the holiness of the law. And here, Jesus repeats the demands of the law by quoting Deuteronomy 6. And the demand is for all, all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength. This is God's standard. And our dilemma is that anything short of that plunges you into perdition.

And so it presents the great dilemma and the enormity of our need for the blood of Jesus Christ to cleanse us from all of righteousness. Number seven, it discloses a condition of humanity that there are people that are not far from the kingdom of God. These nine words, you are not far from the kingdom of God. This speaks of a condition, a certain place that you can be in in life where you are very close but you are not in. And it does not matter how close you are if you're not in.

Number eight, it exposes the centrality of love in the Bible. And what we find is that the heart of love for God is affection in the heart toward God. That the heart of fidelity to the law is a heart of love for the lawgiver. And it so explains what the sons of Korah, those disobedient, slanderous sons of Korah whose lives had changed, and they came to the place where after many, many years after their fall, they could say in Psalm 42, as the deer pants for the water brook, so my soul pants and thirsts for the living God. And What we learn here is that on these two commands of love, summarized in one single word, love, hang all the law and the prophets.

So it speaks of the centrality of love for all things. And so first of all we see the setting in verse 34. Look with me at verse 34, but when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. So there was a gathering after the Lord Jesus Christ demolished the argument of the Sadducees by a single verb tense out of the book of Exodus, going straight to the writings that they appreciated. And the Pharisees have a meeting.

They are united in their opposition to the Lord Jesus. They have a common enemy, both the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and they're trying to trap him. And in this whole chapter, there's this attempt to trap the Lord Jesus Christ. On the one hand, they're trying to discredit him before the Romans and make him appear to be an insurrectionist who will not pay his taxes. And that's why they ask him the question about taxation.

And on the other hand, they want to dishonor him before the Jews. And they want to make him a rejecter of the law and a blasphemer and a heretic. And so our Lord is silencing his opponents by going back and explaining what the scriptures mean using their own scriptures to disprove their arguments. And so all of these questions are coming to the Lord Jesus in the temple court. Remember what the Lord has just done.

He has completely cleared the temple court. He has flipped over the tables. He stopped all the business. And now in this strange scene, his enemies are speaking to him and asking him questions in a genteel and in an erudite manner. And while they want to kill him, they are trying to appear to be such fantastic people as to engage in this conversation.

And so they are doing this because they are afraid of the people. Because the people think that he is a prophet. So it's their fear of man that has silenced them. And so they're trying to continue to work this political scheme to destroy the Lord Jesus Christ by asking them questions, political questions about taxes, eschatological questions about the resurrection, and now a question of first things, the greatest commandment. And so here this fearful group of haters of the Lord Jesus Christ are engaging him in this conversation.

And they have a meeting. And they gather together to discuss the matter. And out of that meeting emerges a man, a man with a question. And this question, As it turns out, is perhaps the most significant question that has ever been asked. And the answer is so clear and so beautiful, and it explains the heart of Christianity.

And so much so that the Lord Himself would say, on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. So that is the setting. Now the person who asks the question, we learn in verse 35, is a lawyer. And he is an expert in the law. Luke uses the word scribe, but he was he was part of the company of the Pharisees who had a high focus on on the legal matters of the law and he he was a lawyer.

Later in Matthew chapter 23, we will hear the Lord Jesus say, woe to you lawyers. And so there were problems among the lawyers. And was this the kind of man that the Lord Jesus was speaking of? There's some indication here that he's not your normal Pharisee. He seems to be unlike some of the other scribes.

They are always hostile. Christ always contradicts them in Scripture. This is the first Pharisee or scribe that seems to have a favorable treatment. And our Lord looks into his heart and he says that he's not far from the kingdom of heaven. And we don't know his motive, but he came testing him.

And the word that the Lord Jesus uses can be meant as a trap, like a wicked testing, and it can also mean the gathering of information. And so there are those that would say that this man was coming with a genuine broken heart before God, really with all of his heart seeking wisdom. You have others like John MacArthur who say, no, he came with a heart of wickedness as the context indicates. So whether, we don't know the heart of this man, but there are some indications that he's different than the other Pharisees. And That's not the point of the passage, but it's an interesting one to see how the Lord Jesus Christ deals with those who would ask him questions.

And so, this is a very wise and wonderful question that was asked. Aren't you glad that this question was asked? I mean, this sorts out all of Scripture for you. It helps you understand the whole intent of the Lord Jesus Christ. It helps you understand the kingdom of heaven.

It helps you understand everything about your life, about the whole purpose of your life, summed up in one single word. You know, the Lord is so kind to do that, isn't he? To come and give us one word that explains everything. One word that can help us dissect our own thoughts and meditations toward God. One single word that helps you understand who you are as a man, who you are as a woman, who you are as a worker on this word love, because that's the measuring stick upon which you can lay everything in life.

And you have to ask yourself that question, where is the love? Where is the love in it? Whether it's toward God, whether it's in your work, whether it's in your church, whether it's with a relative, whether it's with your friend, this one word pierces the heart and exposes who you really are. Because it is a matter of the heart. So it's such an incredibly wonderful and important question.

And then we hear the question in verse 36. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? Now, the Pharisees were well known for dissecting and categorizing and prioritizing the law. And they distinguish between the light laws and the heavy laws. And there are 613 laws, if you want to count them that way, the way the Jews did in the Old Testament.

248 of them are affirmative, you know, considering things that you must do. What should you do? And the Jews believed, you know, that there was a law for each part of the human body. And then there were 365 prohibitions. As you can imagine, one prohibition for every day of the year, 365 days.

And so there were the heavy laws that were always binding, and then the light laws that were... Well actually they were less binding. And the Pharisees were always debating which were the light and the heavy laws. Which laws are always binding, not always binding, binding in certain circumstances? They were experts at trying to dissect the heaviness or the lightness of the law.

Well, that's what we do, isn't it? We like to categorize and prioritize them. And we actually live in a day where there are many people who actually say that, you know, all the laws don't really matter. That's the environment we live in today. In some ways it's opposite of the environment with the Pharisees.

In other ways, it's exactly the same. Because once you start trying to categorize the laws, you end up with the man's religion. So The Pharisees are distinguishing between the light and the heavy. And the Lord's answer to this question is important because he will say that upon these two commandments hang the whole law and the prophets. So he's setting two things in juxtaposition upon which everything else hangs.

And so the Lord's answer to the question is in verses 37 and 38. Jesus said to them, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and the greatest commandment. Now Mark records his answer this way. Jesus answered and said to him, the first of all the commandments is, hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment, and the second is like it. You shall, it is this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. So he is setting these two principles as the greatest, and they are like one another.

And here, you know, Matthew quotes a shorter section of Deuteronomy 6 than Mark does. And Mark quotes a far greater section of the Shema that's there. And so our Lord is taking this Pharisee into a journey, you know, into the heart of the way that the law is to be used in everyday life. And I want to just speak for a moment about really the centrality of this text in Deuteronomy chapter 6. Deuteronomy 6 was recited by godly Jews twice a day.

That would be 14, 650 times before you hit the age 20. That would have been recited in your home if you had lived in a law-keeping home. And Jesus is using Deuteronomy 6 as if everything rotates around it, as if it is the sun around which everything revolves, and that all the laws point to this center. He's taking this, and he's saying, this is that. And he's taking this law and is establishing its center and you know we know that if you if you break any other law you've broken this one law if you steal you've broken the greatest commandment.

If you bear false witness, you've broken the greatest commandment. If you've broken one law, you've broken them all. And every law is bound up in these two set in juxtaposition as the greatest. So the first thing about Deuteronomy 6 is that the Lord Jesus is making the Shema, his central argument for the central proposition of Christianity. And then secondly, notice the demand of it.

It's a command. Hear, O Israel. That's a command. And then thirdly, notice the solemnity of it. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

This, upon this law, hangs the holiness of God. The very name and nature of God is the heart of this law. And then fourthly, the comprehensive reach of it. It is meant to be on your lips when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. And then fifthly, the specificity of it.

It is not enough to be interested in God. It's not enough to study about God. It's not enough to be part of the people of God. You must love Him and you must come to Him with your heart. It's not enough to believe the facts, it's not enough to do the deeds.

Your heart must be there. So It's so specific that it reaches down into who you really are in your heart. Not your outward life or what you want people to think about you, but who you really are. It's so specific. It's such a laser beam and a pinpoint into the very soul, the very bottom of it all, who you really are when no one else is watching.

And then sixthly, the functionality of it. It's applied to everything. Everything you have. All your heart, all your soul, all your mind. Mark adds that the Lord Jesus said, all your strength.

So it includes absolutely everything. Again, it's the center of everything in your life. All streams, All trails, all thoughts lead to this center. And it's the functional center. It's the wellspring of life, as the writer of the Proverbs has said, everything about you comes out of this principle.

And then seventh, the practicality of it. It melts together the love of God and the deeds done in life together. And it actually brings family life and spiritual life and it melts them together as one. Because it's applied in the family. Moses is giving this principle to the fathers of Israel.

So it's the heart of family life, that fathers are to acknowledge the centrality of this and Consider it so central that they would speak it to their children. So it's a law of family life as well. In the same way that the family life is a spring that bubbles forth the waters of life into the world so this principle in the heart of fathers is meant to bubble forth over into his children. So you see the enormous practicality of it in that the heart and the home are bound together. And the implication is, if you love God with all your heart, the first way that you'll express it is with your little flock in your family.

It's perhaps the first expression of love for God. And that's partly what the prophet Malachi was talking about when he said, when the days of the gospel come, that he will turn the hearts of the fathers toward their children, and he'll turn the children's hearts toward their fathers. So it's a work of the Gospel in a man's heart that changes everything about how he thinks about his family, and it changes him, And it makes him this kind of man. So now, Moses doesn't mention mind. As I said before, Mark adds strength.

And so these four, heart, soul, mind, and strength, what do they mean? They're just representative of the whole man. Is it necessary to explain each one of them? And I would just answer that by saying yes and no. I mean, it really is simple enough for us to understand.

And yet, the Lord Jesus uses these words to help us grasp the reach and the breadth of it all. And, on the one hand, you find that it's the simplest principle that even a child can understand. Heart, soul, strength, and mind. It's so simple. Everything that you are.

But it's also legitimate to examine each word and see how these words are formed to make up the whole idea. So let's take these. First the heart. Our Lord is just affirming what Moses meant, that the whole being is involved in love for God. And it means that your salvation doesn't just include your beliefs.

It also engages your heart. Your inner thoughts have to do with your heart. You know, when you get to these terms, it's hard to separate them sometimes because, you know, out of the mouth, the heart speaks. You know, we know that the thoughts of the mind direct the heart. So these things are all intertwined.

And so I don't think that we can perfectly separate this in our own minds. The Lord can. He made us. He knows how we're built. And He can separate these.

But I'm not confident we can really separate them all that well, at least not all of them. But, you know, it's reflective of Psalm 103, where the psalmist says, bless the Lord, oh my soul, let all that is within me bless his holy name. That's an example of loving God from your heart. This is why the Bible says, watch over your heart with all diligence. As a man thinks in his heart, So is he.

Out of the heart the mouth speaks. But it's out of the heart that everything comes, but the real you is who you are in your heart. The heart yearns, the heart has desires, the heart has feelings, and everything inside of you that relates to God is a matter of the heart. And so here we've been created by God to have fellowship with Him in our hearts. We've been created to have a heart that desires holy things, that desires Him.

That says, you know, like the psalmist says, he says, He says, Oh, how lovely is your tabernacle, O Lord of hosts. My soul longs, yes, even faints for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. You desire, you desire more, and then you desire more. And when you go to times in prayer, you start out and you say, Oh Lord, Oh Lord.

Because it's in your heart, it's in your heart to love him. And you see yourself as falling so short of his love. But you keep saying, Oh Lord, Oh Lord, I believe. Help me in my unbelief. And then there's the mind.

This is the intellectual life. What you think about. What you feed your mind on. The determinations of your mind that flow from everything that you've been feeding into your mind. It's the whole idea of taking every thought captive.

And then there's your strength. After using your mind to love God, you use your strength. All of your energy, the powers that God gives you, you know, from the time that you rise up to the time that you go to bed. Your energy that's given to your work, your conversations, your prayers, it's the whole man. It's the total categorization of what is man.

It's more than devotion to principles, confessions, actions, orthodoxy, belief. It's more than the devotion to churches and causes. It's the engagement of all of your capacities and your faculties and your resources and your energies. So we have to think of this command in terms of the way that we spend our energy, the way that we use our time. And you know, do we have time in our lives dedicated to God and then time not dedicated to God.

Like, you know, like, you know, like you've worked your eight hours and the whistle blows and now you're off. Is it part of your time or Is it all of your time? And this is the most important thing for every person here in this room today. Because the kingdom of God is a kingdom of love. Love for God, his ways, for his ordinances, for his people, for his commands, for his church.

The kingdom of God is a kingdom of love. It can be summed up in that one single word and all the law and all the prophets hang on those two propositions. So then he says not only love for God, so we have to ask ourselves about our love for God. Do you long for God? Are you like that harlot who poured out the alabaster vial on the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ?

And she was despised for it by those who looked on. The people who hate God really despise love. They despise delighting in God like that. But there was this woman who had been forgiven much, and she loved much. And there she was pouring out a very, very expensive ointment on the Lord Jesus Christ.

But she did it. She just did it because she loved Him. So the Kingdom of Heaven is a Kingdom of Love. And you know, we've gathered together here to do all that we can to try to nourish our love for God. We've been singing, we've been praying, we're gathered together in a room.

All these sinners gathered together, redeemed, all have such a debt before the Lord Jesus Christ that He paid. And He's really drawn us together to learn how to love Him. This is the purpose of all of our life together. So I pray that today God would give us a greater measure of His love. Our hearts would take another step toward Him in all these steps that we take toward Him in this life.

And then he speaks of love for your neighbor in verse 39, and the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And of course, again, we see how love is the central matter of this text. And he shifted from love to God to love to neighbor. Now the Hebrew language has almost a dozen words for love that identify the various classifications of love. In Greek there are three basic words, phileo, eros, and agape.

And there's some overlap. There's some synonymous, there's a synonymous nature to many of these words of love that are in the Bible. But the Bible is just not monotone about love. It describes so many aspects of love. Like for example, the very first time the word love appears in the Bible, it's the love of a father toward his son, where Abraham loved his son, which is a type, it's a type of a father's love for his son, that he would sacrifice his son for sinners, the very first occurrence of the word love in the Bible.

The second occurrence of love in the Bible is the love that Isaac had for Rebekah, this wonderful union that is so praised in Scripture and written so much about. And the scriptures say that Isaac took his bride into the tent and he loved her. He loved her. This was the nature of his relationship with his wife. The third example of love in the Bible is from Genesis chapter 27, at the end of his life when he said, prepare for me the tasty food that I love.

So there are different kinds of love, aren't there? Love between a father and a son. There's the love between a husband and a wife. There's the love for the things and the pleasures of this world. So the Bible is not monotone at all.

There are so many ways. In the Song of Solomon, the focus is on love's desire, love's desire, longing and delight. And the phrase in Song of Solomon 8, chapter 8, verse 67, love is as strong as death. And, you know, we find the Lord Jesus when He weeps over Lazarus. The word that He uses, the word that is used to explain it is phileo in John 11.35, but in 11.15, he loves him with an agape love.

You have David and Jonathan. You have Jesus and the apostle John. John, the disciple whom Jesus loved. So there are many colors, many textures of love in the Bible that explain what this is like. And perhaps it is, they've all been laid out there, all these various colors and textures, to help us understand the nature and the texture and really the color of God's love, so that we can see how it works with fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and in all kinds of relationships.

Now, One of the most staggering propositions of Scripture is that the evidence of our love for God is proven, verified by our heart of love toward man. Now that's a scary proposition, but this is the proposition of this passage of Scripture right here. And I'd like to this morning try to provide a number of examples, sort of a journey in love through the Scriptures. We've already talked about a number of them, but I'd like to drill down on various passages of Scripture to help us understand love better. And as we go through these things, we should be asking, Oh Lord, search me and penetrate my heart, try me and know my ways, and see if there's any wicked way in me.

It's always important that the people of God are lancing the wounds of poison from lack of love. Do you think that God's people will ever fall into a ditch on the area of love toward one another? Well, the Bible assumes that you will struggle with love. That's why there are so many commands about it. That's why there are so many passages of scripture that explain the different situations that love is challenged.

The Bible has been written to help you lance the wound and relieve yourself of the poisons of hatred in your heart. So I've been praying that that would happen to me and to my family and to our family here. That somehow the Lord would use this to lance the wind and let love flow again. Now the first example, sort of the first demonstration of this love, it's a passage of Scripture that's very famous. We all know it.

Many of you probably memorized it. But It shows this inseparable relationship between the feelings of the heart and the deeds of love. They are just completely inseparable. 1 Corinthians 13. If you could open your Bibles there.

Verse 4. Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy. Now envy is a secret sin. Nobody can see it.

When you're talking and you have a heart of envy, there's no color of envy that comes out of your mouth to tell everyone that you're envious. It's a secret sin. Love does not parade itself. Love is not puffed up. It does not behave rudely, does not seek its own.

Here you have in every phrase here you have this mixture of action and internal feeling. You cannot separate. It is not provoked. It thinks no evil. It does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth.

It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. And what this passage teaches us is That feelings without actions is not love. And actions without feelings is not love. Because it's something that's real.

It's real on both sides of the balance sheet. That's example number one. How the heart and the actions are completely inseparable before God. Before man, they're very, very easily separable. And we make judgments about people all the time about what they say on the outside.

Sometimes we make judgments on what is going on on the inside and we say, I know what he's thinking. I know his heart. I've seen that a hundred times. I know. I know what's in its heart.

This is a completely fraudulent and wrong idea. Because so much of this matter rests on what is secret in the heart. And then the second example is partiality. James says that love without actions is not really love. But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in the mirror. For he observes himself and goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does. If anyone among you thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one's religion is useless. Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their trouble and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

And in chapter 2 verse 8 we read, If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, you do well. But if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors. Whoever shall keep the whole law and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all." And he goes on and on and continues with an example of the devil who believes intellectually, he believes the doctrine, but his heart is far from God. Example number three, love for enemies. In Matthew chapter 5 is a very long section that speaks of how we deal in our hearts and in our lives with our enemies.

And again, the Lord Jesus Christ is assuming that you'll have enemies and he says about that rejoice and be glad. That's part that's how you one way that you love your enemy is it begins with your heart of rejoicing. Now when your heart is not rejoicing, it's a reminder that you're not loving your enemies. This is the first warning sign for me. When I'm not rejoicing, When I'm not rejoicing, I know my heart has turned dark.

God has given me an early warning system. And he talks about murder in your heart in verse 21 in Matthew 5. You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder, and whoever murders shall be in danger of the judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, Raka shall be in danger of the council.

But whoever says, you fool, shall be in danger of hell fire." And then he speaks about a situation where you're going to worship And there you remember that your brother has something against you. And he says, leave your gift there before the altar. First go your way and be reconciled to your brother. Then come and bring your gift. And then he talks about agreeing with your adversary, agreeing with the person who's dragging you into court.

And then he talks about, immediately after that, love and marriage. And how love breaks down in marriage. Through virtual adultery. Adultery of the heart. And he says, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not commit adultery.

But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you, for it is better for you, it is more profitable for you to enter than one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell." So he addresses lovelessness, what it looks like in marriage, and how lovelessness creates adulterous hearts by sessions of virtual adultery. Again, we're trying to define what love looks like here. And then he speaks of divorcing your wife. And then he speaks of love in your relationships and how love dies on a lie, and how lying to people spreads lovelessness.

And he says, again you've heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oaths to the Lord." And then he talks about how love dies when something wrong has been done to you, when someone has actually wronged you. And he says, you've heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I tell you, do not resist an evil person. Whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him too.

Give to him who asks you. And from him who wants to borrow from you, do not turn away." So he's itemizing all these different opportunities for people to do wrong to you, including when they borrow from you. And, you know, Who hasn't had wrong done to them at some level? All the way from breaking something that you have, or slapping, all the way up to slapping you on the right cheek. You might just think a minute, all the people who've done wrong to you.

And so what's your rejoicing level on those matters? And then the Lord Jesus speaks of loving your enemies or hating your enemies and He says, you've heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you. Why? That you may be sons of your Father in heaven.

For He makes His Son rise on the evil and the good and He makes His reign fall on the just and on the unjust. And then he says, for if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so?

Therefore, you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect." And there the Lord, you know, He says again what he's saying here in the greatest commandment, that it involves all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength, you must be perfect at it or you stand condemned. So these Pharisees, they had a very active religion, but they didn't love people. And we see how this lack of love works out in Matthew chapter 23, very vividly. And so what we learn here, love is not a monotone. Love is expressed in every imaginable kind of situation.

And here in this very text, the Lord is quoting Leviticus 19 verses 17 and 18. And He's saying, you shall love your neighbor as yourself." That's the quote. And if you could just turn to Leviticus 19, 17 and 18, and let's look at this. Now, this is the chapter that has all kinds of really interesting things in it. It says, don't put a tattoo on your body.

It also says love your neighbors yourself. Which one passed away? You have to ask that question. But here in this same chapter, very close in proximity, the Lord Jesus quotes Leviticus 19, You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor and not bear sin because of him." In other words, one aspect of love is rebuke your neighbor.

You might think, well, if I was really loving, I would be such a nice guy that I would never come against sin anywhere." Those are a lot of parents feel this way, that's not loving to spank their children or rebuke them. You know, there are whole school systems that are built on this rebuke-free system. It's just ludicrous, for one thing, but it is definitely against the Word of God. And here, you know, he says, you shall love your neighbors yourself, and you shall surely rebuke your neighbor. But you don't hate him in your heart when you do that.

So, if you're rebuking your neighbor and you have hatred in your heart, you need to understand what's happening here. And then he says, you shall not take vengeance nor bear grudge against any of the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. We could go to Romans chapter 13 to see another color, another texture in the grand scheme of love. Love does no harm to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law." Romans 13, 9, and 10.

This is why John says that love of God and love of neighbor are inseparable. In 1 John 420, he says, if someone says, I love God and hates his neighbor, hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, How can he love God whom he has not seen? And the commandment we have from him, that he who loves God must also love his brother also. And he says later, for this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome.

First John 4, 20. We could go to the Good Samaritan. We could go to so many places. We could go to Romans chapter 12, particularly the last half, to speak of what love, love really looks like. Now perhaps this doesn't need to be said, but I want to just make sure that we say it since most of us grew up in the 20th century.

Because in the 20th century, One of the most ridiculous, harmful ideas was that you need to learn how to love yourself before you can love people. And this is not a command to love yourself. In fact, the Bible says in the last days men will be lovers of self. And it describes this kind of apostasy. And he's saying that you love your neighbor as yourself in the same way that you already adore yourself.

So our problems don't really spring from lack of self-love. They spring from self-love. And that's what the Lord is saying here. And then he gives the significance of these two commandments in verse 40. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Now What we learn here is that every commandment, everything in Scripture, is a commandment of love. And here what we find is that the law and the Gospel are in harmony. The condemnations of the Law drive us to Christ. They show us our sin. They teach us how to live.

They are two handmaidens that work together in a coordinated effort to convict of sin, to save out of the terrors of the law, and then to sanctify by defining what the love of God looks like in the world in practical living. There's a note in the 1599 Geneva Bible that says, the gospel doth not abolish the precepts of the law, but rather confirm them in their commentary on this text. What had happened with the Jews is that the Jews had separated the law from faith, And modern Christians separate the law from life. And modern Christians are not terrified by the law, so they're not terrified by their sin, and they become a law unto themselves, and they do not feel the enormity of God's mercy that's necessary toward them. And they can't really know the greatness of the salvation that Jesus Christ has accomplished by obeying all the laws for them and dying for them because they could not keep the law.

Now, The view that I'm giving is really just the Puritan view of the law, that it was an instrument of grace to drive us to Christ. As Paul said to Timothy, a law is good if one uses it lawfully. Or as Paul said, the law is holy, just, and good, but only if you use it properly and You're the Lord Jesus is using it properly obviously the law is a schoolmaster to drive us to Christ in 1654 and the English Puritan William Strong wrote that the law is the servant of the gospel. Robert Traill, another English Puritan in his commentary on Galatians, says the law leading to Christ serves the gospel, and the gospel serves the law in fulfilling it so you cannot separate the spiritual and the relational in in the kingdom of heaven And you cannot separate the law and the gospel. They serve one another.

The law drives men to Christ, and Christ relieves them of what drove them to Christ. By shedding his blood on the cross. So I think that God has given us such an opportunity to consider our love. Do we do as 1st Peter 4, 8 says, above all things have fervent love for one another, for love will cover a multitude of sins. Now then he says be hospitable to one another without grumbling.

You know, just people might mess up your stuff if you're hospitable to them. Their children might come and do something or break something or something like that. And then this man's response is recorded in Mark chapter 12. So the scribe said to him, well said teacher, whether that was genuine or not we don't know. It sounds genuine.

You have spoken the truth for there is one God and there is no other but He. And to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." He really was preaching the gospel to the Lord Jesus at that time. He gave him the heart of the gospel. And the heart of the gospel is a heart turned in repentance toward God, genuinely. And Then Jesus saw that he answered wisely and said to him, You are not far from the kingdom of God.

And then Mark adds, But after that no one dared to question him. So he answered wisely, he had insight, he understood. And he was near because he understood. He understood that it was not a matter of ceremonial performances. He understood that it wasn't based on outward life.

It was an inward love that works itself out in real life. This is what it means to believe in the gospel. Now, I'd like to go to applications now and try to catch this up in some hopefully practical things. The first application is this. Let's examine our hearts for any coldness toward God that causes hatred toward a brother because hatred toward a brother is by definition coldness toward God.

And, you know, this is a summary of Christianity, and it is a summary using one word, love. This is why Paul said, without love I am nothing. This is how significant this is. Now, the Bible has so many stories about the breakdown of love. And some of the most heartbreaking are those that happen in families.

And that's why you have Cain who hated his brother. You have Esau hating Jacob. You have Joseph being hated by all of his brothers. You have Saul hating David. Now, I just want us to bring this right to a family level.

If you can just isolate your thoughts to your family, to your spouse, to your children, to your in-laws, and all those who are in your family. Nobody gets to choose their own family. God gives you your family to glorify His love. Every family has quirky things about it, and you might hate as a result. If you think, if you think that you can love God and hate somebody in your family, you are fooling yourself.

If you think that you can be angry and resentful and filled up with unfulfillment and you have to recognize that the problem is bigger than that other person. Your problem is not with your wife. Your problem is not with your husband. Your problem is not with your husband, your problem is not with your brother or your uncle, your problem is with God. Your problem is with God.

You will never make progress unless you recognize that. And it means that you are rebelling against His laws of love. It means that you're rejecting his counsel. It means that you're refusing to obey him. You don't need a new spouse.

You need a new God. You need to repent. Everybody thinks that they just got a different whatever. They can be happy. I think the man who said this was right.

If you have to move more than 18 inches to be happy, You'll never be happy. So this first question is, examine your heart for coldness toward God that causes hatred toward your brother, particularly in your family life. Secondly, it's so important that we see what is really here, and that is our great need. We have such an enormous need. This commandment exposes how needy we are for grace.

This commandment leaves none of us proud. It cannot. And the demand of the law in Deuteronomy 6 is a demand for perfection. And while it should terrify us that we do not love, it should drive us to desperation about our own unrighteousness, it should of all things reveal to us how needy we are of the mercy of Jesus Christ. Because God does require all.

All your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength, all of it. You shall be perfect just as your Father in heaven is perfect. All is God's standard. You remember if you were here we were going through the book of Deuteronomy how many times did Moses say all all all he says he says you will find him if you look for Him with all your heart and with all your soul in chapter 4. In chapter 5 he says, walk in all the way of the Lord, which the Lord your God has commanded you so that you will prosper.

In chapter 10 verse 4 he says, what does the Lord your God require of you but the fear of the Lord your God to walk in all his ways and to love him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul." In Deuteronomy 27, 26, Chris is the one who does not confirm all the words of this law. And all the people shall say Amen." Over and over again, this is the testimony of Deuteronomy. Jesus is doing exactly what Moses did. Do you see that? Jesus isn't treating the law any different than Moses did.

Because the grace of the law is seen in the law itself. The law demands grace because no one can stand against the commandment that demands all. And that's how there is grace in the law. Everyone knows that they cannot do all. The people who are standing before Moses are no different than we are.

They understood. And so We have to find ourselves either believing with our heart that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that He was crucified and He died and He bled for the sins of mankind. You either believe that with all of your heart, or you are condemned by the law that you cannot keep. And you're saved by His law-keeping and His sacrifice, because all of the anger that you and I deserved was laid upon him so that we could escape the terrors and the curses of the law. And so as we consider this, we should see our great need for his mercy and find ourselves such a humble and independent people.

And then thirdly, are you not far? Are you not far from the kingdom of heaven? And this just discloses a condition of humanity that there are people who are not far from the kingdom of heaven. There's a place in life where you're very close, but you are not in. And it's possible to have great interest and great questions and great associations and great thoughts and great desires and great morality, like this man who was close but he was not in.

This is a definition of a person who is religious but not converted, and They're not quite there. I know if you remember many years ago, a famous stuntman, Evel Knievel, was going to jump the Grand Canyon. And there was all this falderal and media attention and the whole world was watching and he went off the ramp and he almost made it. But not quite. And that was the condition of this man.

But there's a time, there's a time for everyone who's born in sin who repents. And it's a moment of time when they become a citizen of heaven, they enter the kingdom of heaven, they're born again, they receive a new heart. And that means that they were close, but then they were in. And there's a world of difference between all of our morality and the morality morality and the morality of Jesus Christ alone which saves. So are you not far from the kingdom of God?

There's a famous book written by Matthew Mead called The Almost Christian Discovered. Question number one. He answers, how far can a man go in the way to heaven and yet be almost a Christian? A man may have much knowledge and not be a Christian. A man may have great and eminent gifts and be almost a Christian.

A man may have a high profession of religion and not be a Christian. A man may go far in opposing his sin, but be almost a Christian. A man may hate sin, but be almost a Christian. A man may make great vows and promises, strong purposes and resolutions against sin, and yet be almost a Christian. A man may retain, maintain a strife and combat against sin, and himself be almost a Christian.

A man may be a member of a church, and yet be almost a Christian. A man may have great hopes of heaven, and yet be almost a Christian. And he goes on and on and on. But here's the question. At your funeral, which is coming someday, Will the Lord say, He was close, He was so close, but not in?

But you can move, you can move from not being far to entering in, to acknowledge the holiness of God and to say with all of your heart, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and to Repent of your unholiness and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and trust in his sacrifice for sin and love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and all your mind and all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself. So we are a people who have been called to have all of our lives summarized by one word, love. And like that former harlot who took the alabaster perfume, she gave because she loved, and she loved because she was forgiven so much. And the Lord desires that our love be like that. And that we would be a people who would say, my heart yearns for God, the living God.

And that we would be a people of whom it was said, by this all will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, we have been before such wonderful words of yours. They have dissected everything.

They've summarized everything. They have put us on the mountaintop to see what all the rest of it means. So, oh Lord, you would burn these words deep in our hearts and make us a people who love. Thanks for watching!