The First and Foremost Command

God, we fear you with all the reverence and respect and obedience that word implies. Thank you for who you are. Thank you for what you’ve done in us and for us. Help us respond to that with the love that that honors you. Thank you in Jesus name.

Amen. Let’s be seated and kids, this is your chance. Run now while you have it. Because I’m going to talk and you just won’t enjoy that, I’m sure. Well, let’s have a fun New Year’s.

Did you enjoy watching Oregon get creamed by Ohio State? Some of you applaud. I don’t know. Well, you know, it’s amazing how our brains work. And that was over in 30 minutes later was like, well, I’m with life and something else.

It’s that way with TV shows when I was younger, I used to watch them and I used to get upset when somebody would stop me before they were finished. And yet I observed as I grew older that in 10 minutes, it didn’t really matter. Just life just moves on. So, hi, Doug. Go ducks.

Yeah, very good. Always next year. That’s right. When I was a kid, I used to play with Lincoln Logs. Remember those things?

Your kids play with Legos and so forth. But today, in our house, we have Waffle Blocks. Where’s George? There’s George. All right.

Their kids are over in play with Waffle Blocks. They’re this foot by foot square molded hollow plastic building thing that has three prongs on each side and two prongs at the top. And they’re all molded and they’re fun and light. And you can put them together. And you can build things.

You can imagine what that’d be like in kids that fun with those things. And you know, you can put them together a couple of different, we can put them together in all kinds of different ways and build all kinds of different things. And there’s two ways to put them together. Because there’s two on the top, two prongs at the bottom, three at the sides. And you can align the two with the three and put them together and the tops will be even.

Or you can align the three with the three and the tops will be uneven. Now, if you’re like me and George, we want to put the three with the two so the tops will be even. It’ll be a strong structure and so forth. And it works out just fine. George is an engineer.

And I’m just a perfectionist. Anyway, but there’s no right way or wrong way. Because the purpose of these things is it’s a toy and you can have fun. You can build whatever you want. And you can build this structure that looks like a box and a house and whatever in nice square corners.

Or you can build this abstract art thing. There’s nothing on the box that says you can’t do that. But in my brain and George’s brain, you can’t do that. There’s a right way and there’s a wrong way to put those waffle blocks together. Thank you very much.

Anyway, the Pharisees and the Sadducees treated God’s law like waffle blocks. And there was a right way and a wrong way to put those things together. And their debates were endless on how to do that. And Jesus came face to face with that one time with the Sadducees. And tried to trip him, trap him, one of their little mental exercises about this.

See, the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. The Pharisees did. That was the constant source of debate. And the Sadducees had this little mental exercise experiment, if you will, that they would often share with the Pharisees to kind of trap them into saying, yeah, that’s a conundrum. Or they would in a little bubble environment where they spoke to each other about things they believed.

They would say this to each other and make them feel good. And it went like this. If the resurrection is real, this was their argument. And think about this. There was a woman and she married this man.

This man was one of seven brothers. And in the course of time, she married and he died. And under Hebrew law, when he dies, the brothers were supposed to take her in and marry her. That’s part of their social security system. And their argument went that the first husband died and so she married the second brother.

And then that man also died. She married the third. And he also died, married the fourth, all the way through the seventh brother. Now, men, you don’t want a wife like that. First of all, drive you to your grave apparently.

But anyway, she married all seven of them. And their argument went like this. In heaven, in the resurrection, if there is a resurrection, whose wife would she be? And they’d pass themselves in the back when they talked to each other and say, oh, see how strong this argument is. And to the Pharisees who didn’t have any better answer to go, you’re right, that’s the conundrum.

And they’d win their point. And the Pharisees would counter with some other point and so forth. And they’d go on and on and on. So the Sadducees, he’s thinking they’re smart. But we’ll put this to Jesus because we know there is no right answer.

So if he put it to Jesus, energy is a typical fashion. He just cut them to the quick and said, you don’t know the law nor the power of God. Because in heaven, no such thing as marriage or the Gibbonian marriage, they’re like angels is the words he uses. And he said, in regard to the resurrection, so you’re wrong on that point, it doesn’t matter, you missed it. And in the resurrection, in the scriptures say that the Lord says, I’m the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, he’s not the God of the living, not the God of the dead, but of the living, there is a resurrection.

So he just undermined them, boom. And then when the audience, not the audience, but the people standing around watching this, they’re the Pharisees. And he probably thought, wow, he resolved this conundrum, we’ve been dealing with for a long time. And that was a pretty good deal. So they, in Mark, he, in Matthew’s account of this, came to him and said, Lord, which is the greatest commandment?

And the first question that comes to mind is you’re thinking, well, are they simply following up the Sadducees test with their test? And the answer is no. This was an honest question for them. And we see that by Jesus’s response later in the passage, where he honors the person asking the question. So this is an honest question to them, which tells us that the Pharisees sincerely wondered, which was the greatest waffle block, okay?

Because they put them together. And so their school of thought went like this, their thought went like this. There are over 630 some odd commands that they identified in the books of Moses, 630. And there’s no possible way we can obey all 630. So which ones should we emphasize?

Which ones have more weight than the other? Which ones will get us to where we want to be with God? A serious question for them. And I think Jesus understood that, because their heart in this situation was right. We want to obey God, which is the most important.

And their schools of thought were like this. Some were on the, the most important one is circumcision. The most important one is keeping the Sabbath. Or the most important one is obeying the sacrifices and the festivals and those sorts of things. They had these different schools of thought and argued amongst themselves.

And it was a conundrum for them. They couldn’t obey all 630. That’s physically impossible. But which ones were the most important? So they asked Jesus this question.

And he answered like this. We see this in Mark. One of the scribes came and heard them arguing and recognizing that he’d answered them, the Sadducees, about the woman and the husband’s in the resurrection. And he answered them well. And they asked him, what commandment is the foremost of all?

Jesus answered, the foremost is, here, oh Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord and you shall love the Lord your God with all your strength, all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And the second is this. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. And the scribe, the Pharisee, said to him, I teach teacher, you have truly stated that he is one and there is no one else besides him.

And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength and to love one’s neighbor as himself is much more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. And I mean, Jesus saw that he had answered intelligently. He said to him, you are not far from the kingdom of heaven. And after that, no one would venture to ask him any more questions. So Jesus honored the question.

Honored the person asking it. But he laid down this first and greatest commandment. So we’re going to look at that this morning. Jesus’ fundamental response to this waffle block question, which of the blocks, which of the ways to put them together is the most important, was to simply reject the foundational premise of that question. He did that with the Sadducees, their foundational premise was there’s going to be marriage relationships in their resurrection.

And he totally undermined that, pulled that really off my drum. And in this question regarding which is the greatest commandment, the premise seems to be that God honors the obedience to ritual commands, that those are really, really important to him. And I’ve lost my way in my notes because I like this. This is fun stuff. The point is, it’s not about the waffle blocks.

It’s not about which one is most important. It’s not about which way you put them together. It’s about the larger picture that matters here. And in answering this, Jesus showed how he dealt with the waffle blocks of scripture as well. Because if you look at the quotes, if you look at Matthew and Mark, they’re different.

And if you look at the source material for this command from Deuteronomy 6, and we’ll get there in a moment, it differs. In Matthew, he says, “You should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.” With Mark, it says, “All your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” And if you go to the Old Testament, where they’re citing these things, in Deuteronomy, it says, “You should love the Lord together with all your heart, soul, and might.” Jesus also had access to the Septuagint, which was the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament.

So Jesus had access to the Hebrew words and the Greek words for these texts. And the Septuagint says, “Mind, soul, and strength.” So how did Jesus deal with this? He added them all together, which is why we see in Mark, he says, “With all your soul, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and all your strength.” He simply adds them all together.

The bigger picture is more important than the details. It’s not which is right, Mark or Matthew, just put them both together. It’s fine. That’s how Jesus did it here, which is more important, the Septuagint or the Hebrew translation. Let’s put them both together.

It’s the inclusive. Ed and I had a conversation somewhat like this today, this week. The idea was, don’t get lost in the waffle blocks and that there’s a right way and a wrong way. I understand the waffle blocks and that there’s two ways to put them together, but don’t say it’s right or wrong. I used to work for a boss.

Nobody liked her because there was no difference in the way to do things. If you’ve ever worked for a boss and the person says it gives you a command and you do something and you don’t happen to do it the way they wanted you to or they thought you should, even though the end result was what they asked you to achieve, the way to get there was different than what they wanted and if they labeled that as right or wrong and berated you because of that, you’re kind of thinking, “Oh, wait a minute. “We got there. “The math I took,” and you label that right. Anyway, it’s my way or the highway or let’s just look at the results.

Anyway, waffle blocks. He rejected their foundational premise. He gave them the forgotten foremost command that they asked for and I resolved their conundrum, which is most important, because he said on these two, and Matthew, it comes through really clearly, all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. Everything rests on those two. We’ll cover that second one next week.

This is the first one, the love the Lord your God. So let’s look at Deuteronomy six. Where does Jesus get this great command? We’re looking at Deuteronomy six verses one through nine. I’m gonna read it for you here.

By the way, I’m gonna give you the setting. This is where Moses is going to give Israel all over the commands of God. So imagine him stepping up, giving the preamble and then launching into the commands, preamble. Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the judgments, theresies and waffle blocks. They probably look for the differences between commandment, statutes and judgments.

If that was important. Anyway, now this is the commandment, the statutes and the judgments with the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you so that you may do them in the land where you’re going over to take possession of, so that you, your son and your grandson will fear the Lord your God to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you all the days of your life and that your days may be prolonged. Now Israel, you shall listen and be careful to do them so that it may go well for you and that you may increase greatly just as the Lord, the God of your fathers has promised you and a land flowing with milk and honey. Here’s where Jesus cites. Here, oh Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These words which I’m commanding you today shall be on your heart. And you shall repeat them diligently to your sons and speak to them when you sit in your house, when you walk on the road, when you lie down, when you get up, you shall also tie them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets on your forehead. And you shall also write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. These folks were so intent on obedience at the heads, those little flactories, the boxes that they would wear on their foreheads, which was obedience to the of this command, they had things on their doorposts, which is obedience to this command, they wore things on their hands, which was obedience to this command.

They were really intent on obeying, which was good, partway. So Moses, as we see in this passage, taught them these commandments for two reasons. Number one, that they would obey them, and by that obedience they would be safe and they’d be prosperous, but also that they would fear God. And see that in verse two, I guess, yes. So that you, your son and your grandson will fear the Lord, your God, to keep all his statutes.

Obedience stems from this fear of God. Before any ritual command was given, which follows this block of text here, before he goes into any of the ritual things, he gives this first and greatest command that you shall love the Lord, your God. Now it seems evident to us that that’s a command, but they may have missed it because they dove so deeply into the details. And they probably noted that this was a preamble to the commands and therefore not a command itself, but something perhaps it was obvious. And again, they overlooked the whole idea of fear.

Now the interesting, the Greek word that’s used for fear here is the word phobos, which does speak to fear, but in the scriptures, fear is, of course, a lot more than that, and you know this. It’s not this being afraid, but it’s essentially a deep reverence and commitment to God’s commandments and who he is. It’s a recognition of his power, his holiness, a deep respect, a full understanding that this is a God who can slay hundreds of thousands of people in the blink of an eye, and move right on. They knew that about God. So they had this fear.

And then that preamble also, there’s this fear and love that comes into this preamble that we saw here. The Lord, your God is one, and that goes back into the history of many gods, we’re not gonna get there. You still love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your strength. So fearing him and loving him is somehow a preamble to obeying him. And the order of things here, but they missed it.

But a typical Jesus’s fashion in his teaching, you see this a lot in Matthew where you’ve heard that it was said, but I say to you, this is what Matthew’s doing, what Jesus is doing. So what he’s doing here, you look at all these commandments, but I say to you, look at the preamble, look at the foundation for these things, fear and love. They were so intent on obedience that they missed, they were blind to the whole concept of relationship. And that’s really what you see in Jews today. And in Muslims for that matter, they see a God that is holy, worthy of fear, demanding of fear and obedience, but not some with whom they can relate personally.

Abani has a bunch of friends, she’s made friends with some Jewish women in our community, and they meet for lunch and fun stuff, and they are wonderful people, they’re fun to talk to, but this always comes up, they see her as different, and they are intrigued by the fact that she has this relationship with God. It’s so foreign to them, they don’t understand how God is someone you can relate to, and her conversations with them are wonderful. In fact, we’re getting together with them in a couple of weeks, aren’t we? So that would be fun. But obedience in this Deuteronomy text, and in Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees, is premised on the agape love for God.

Now it’s interesting, we look at agape here, Jesus chose the word agape for this. And it encompasses a range of things, everything from friendship to romantic to this love of God. That word is all encompassing, and it doesn’t differentiate, it’s as poor a word as is our word love. It does the same thing. But in Greek, they divided this all out, and I bet every one of you have heard sermons about the difference between agape and fileto and arrows, and there’s one other.

What is it? Fileto, I mentioned, there’s actually a fourth that’s used very rarely, so that’s why it’s not up here. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Jesus chose agape because, oh, he should know for one thing, and that’s the one that’s most fitting. Because fileto and arrows are based in attraction, and agape is not about attraction, okay?

It’s about unconditional love, compassion, compassion, and selfless giving. Let’s look at the difference here between agape, fileto, and arrows, because we are commanded, Jesus said, to love the Lord of God, to agape the Lord of God. And next week we’ll see that we’re to agape. Our neighbor as ourselves. Basis, focus, and motivation if you’re taking notes.

The basis for agape is on inherent worth in a desire to serve. The inherent worth of the person you are loving. They’re inherently worthy of love. Why are they worthy of it? Simply because they’re drawing breath.

That’s the value God has, that’s what we place on them. That’s their inherent value. They’re drawing Beth, they’re worthy of our love, okay? Fileto is the basis of that is shared experiences and mutual respect, and arrows is based on a physical attraction, romantic attraction. The focus of agape is on selfless giving and compassion.

It’s an outpouring of ourselves to them. For arrows, the focus is on desire and passion. For fileto is on companionship and shared values is a focus. The motivation behind agape is a compassion and a desire to uplift, a desire to build up, or to glorify in the case of God, to uplift in the case of our fellow man. For arrows, the motivation is desire and longing.

For fileto, it’s affection and loyalty. So we’re commanded to agape God. The first and greatest commandment. Jesus lays this out. That should be our focus.

But let’s start with agape by looking at what comes before it in Deuteronomy. Fear of God comes before the love of God in Deuteronomy. The fear of God. We’ve already talked about that. It’s not this emotional.

It’s rather, it’s like what we sang, okay, this morning. There’s a lot of fear of God in that. The fear of the Lord is the recognition of His majesty that paves the way for a deeper, more intimate knowledge of Him. Okay? You’ve got one of these in your bullet in this morning.

You have that? Get it out. We laid the premise, so I’m gonna go through this real quickly here just so you’re recognized and remember what it’s in. Our purpose in life is to glorify God, right? Okay?

We glorify God by the things we say, our words, and the things we do, the way we live. Jesus only served to glorify God to the extent that He is Lord and in control of our life. We’re not gonna let anybody have that control all over our life unless we have a love relationship established with them. We can’t love anybody unless we know them. We can’t know them unless we spend time with them.

And time with God is spent a prayer in the Word. And the word is if we discipline ourselves to do it. So this charts about where do we put our focus? It’s not on the waffle blocks of the individual commands. It’s on the simple thing of spending time with God and disciplining ourselves daily to spend that time with Him.

Okay? So that as we spend time with God, we get to know Him. And as we know Him, a love relationship develops. From this love relationship then, we allow Him to take control of our lives and the extent that He controls us and the natural outpouring of that and outworking of that is that our words and our life serve to glorify God. It works the way up.

So from this love relationship to the obedience, you can see the relationship there. And that’s what Jesus is getting at. This is the first and greatest command. You have to love Him in order to obey Him. That’s what He was saying here.

Working that way up. But there’s something that precedes love, and we talked about that just now. It’s the fear of the Lord, a recognition of His majesty that paves away for a deeper, more understanding and intimate knowledge. Proverbs 1-7 states that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. The reverential attitude towards God is essential for acquiring that true wisdom and understanding.

And fear involves a respect and obedience. Okay? God isn’t a buddy. Love object like a human being would be a love object. God is much higher than we are.

Way above our emotions. Way above all of that. Our emotions are petty in front of Him. He values them no doubt. Okay?

But He’s much higher than that. There’s a respect and the obedience to Him that comes out of that respect. This involved in this fear. This is what fear is all about. A deep respect and awe and obedience.

A reverence that creates a receptive heart for learning for God. So you can’t love God unless you progress from the fear of God. So let’s look at the boxes now in this chart below this love relationship that we have with God. And let’s ask where does fear fit in? Well, we saw in Proverbs 1-7 that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

So I want you to take your pens and below this know Him box that you have there, put another box right in here between time and knowing and put fear of God. And I want you to put Deuteronomy 6, 1 and 2 as the verses. As we spend time with Him, a holy fear, a reverence, a respect for who He is and develops. And the more that develops, the more we get to know who He is, the more we know who He is, the more we love Him. We can’t love God unless we progress from fear to knowing to being with Him.

And here’s the key point I’m trying to get at. Jesus said this is the first and greatest commandment. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all their strength and all your mind. But that is not a command we can obey. You can’t obey that command.

You have to grow your way into it. You see the difference? If I were to command you to tithe, you could do that. You could decide and act and do that. But the command to love God is not like that.

It’s not something you can decide to do and do it. Starting today I’m going to love the Lord. No, it doesn’t work that way. Does that make sense to you? It’s the time spent with Him that produces this, that doesn’t produce it actually.

God impressed you. He stresses Himself on you when you were in His presence about who He is. And that’s when you develop a fear of God. When He impresses that on you and you begin to embrace just who it is you’re in communion with. And the more you spend time there, the more you know how He thinks, what He values, what He wants.

And then from that knowledge develops in a relationship. And intimacy, a love. You grow your way into the obedience of this command. So let’s advance in that growth cycle and let’s say you are there. You have this love relationship built on this knowledge of Him which is built on this fear of Him which developed because you spent the time you put the work in at the bottom.

And that’s what we love like. Let’s go there. For those of you who are taking notes, you can sketch an outline and we’ll fit in the things here. I’m going to talk about heart, soul, mind, and strength. And under each of those I’m going to give you three things that it looks like.

Okay? Let’s start with the heart. Here’s what agape love for God looks like when we love Him with all of our heart. There’s three things we’re going to see. Passion and affection.

We’re going to see an emotional commitment and we’re going to see a whole hearted devotion. What does that passion and affection look like? First of all, there’s a desire to be in communion with Him. It is a passion. It’s a desire.

We experience joy and delight in His presence. That’s loving your God with all your heart. There’s an emotional commitment. We prioritize His desires above our own. We experience sorrow.

For the sin in us and those around us. There’s a passion for His presence and there’s a sorrow for sin that we’d see with that emotional commitment. And if we love the Lord or God with all of our heart, there’d be this whole hearted devotion where we’d seek to please Him in all things. It comes from an emotional base. We want this.

There’s no hidden agendas. There’s no secret sins that we’re holding. We have this whole hearted devotion. What does it look like to love the Lord to God with all your soul? There’s three things here that we’re going to look at.

There’s a spiritual vitality. There’s a life of obedience. And there’s genuine humility. Regarding spiritual vitality, we have a vibrant and an active faith marked by prayer, worship, and a hunger for God’s word. That hunger for God’s word is a biggie.

It’s an active and vibrant faith trusting Him and wanting time in that word. There’s a life of obedience. We strive to live a life that reflects His character. When we’re loving the Lord or God with all of our soul, we want to reflect Him and align with His will. Life of obedience.

And there’s a genuine humility that we would recognize and feel our dependence on Him. It would be ever-present, this dependence that we just live in and we know and we understand. Because we fully acknowledge His sovereignty in all areas of life, genuine humility. Loving the Lord or God with all your mind, what are we looking at there? What do we see in someone who loves the Lord or God with all their mind?

We see an intellectual pursuit of God. We would see wisdom and discernment. And we would see an active, active faith. For the intellectual pursuit, we would be seeking to understand God’s truths through study, through reflection, and through contemplation. Putting our mind at work to get to know God better.

We would see wisdom and discernment in how we lived. Because we’d be applying biblical principles to all areas of life. And this is interesting to me. We’d be making wise choices, readily discerning His will. Loving the Lord or God with all your mind involves making wise choices.

Relationships, money, time, activities. All of it. Wisdom and discernment. Loving the Lord or God with all your mind would demonstrate an active faith. We’d be using our intellect to serve God, whether that’s through creative expression, intellectual pursuits, or by sharing our faith.

God values your mind. Like to love the Lord or God with all your strength. Let’s look at three things here. Dedicated service, perseverance in faith, and boldness in our witness. With all your strength, we’d be using our talents.

Dedicated service would be using our talents, our resources, and our time to serve God and to serve others. Putting everything He’s given us to work all of our strength. We would be persevering in faith. We would endure trials and difficulties with courage and hope. Trusting in God’s promises.

This dedicated service that we talked about at first is an outworking of what we do. This perseverance of faith is all of our strength in our internal. We want our heart and our mind and our soul. Enduring trials with courage and hope. With all our strength, we’d be bold in our witness.

Sharing our faith with others even when it’s challenging and uncomfortable. You shall love the Lord or God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. You’d be seeing these things in a person who does. What it doesn’t look like so much is simply running feeling to feeling to feeling. I feel emotional this morning because of the things we said and prayed and saying and whatever, and God made me feel good and I feel good in return, so I must be loving God with all my heart.

There’s one part of it, I suppose. It isn’t just that. Of course, it’s not works based. I know I love the Lord, my God, because I’m obedient in every single thing you told me to do. No, I hate that.

You want to love the Lord? God? You want that love relationship? Like I mentioned before, you have to grow into it. To get there, you have to spend time with Him like David did, except without the sheep.

Communing with God continually. Meditating on His word continually. Think about a spouse in your relationship there. Think about a child in your relationship with their relationship with the child. How do you show love to them?

You spend time with them. A child especially. They know you love them because you spend time with them. It all comes down to time. And they were talking this weekend.

And we don’t control that. So let’s spend that time right now. We’re going to share communion this morning. And the communion is at time with God of remembrance. And the service come forward.

Jesus commanded us to remember Him with the bread and the cup. And this is a time of reflection and a time of relationship that we have with Him. And we do this in communion with Him. In the sense of developing that fear of God and that love relationship with Him. So as you do this, I want you to reflect on your personal level of degree of whatever the right word is, of fear of God.

Knowledge of Him and love for Him. Reflect on that. And this is a new year. There’s changes to be made. That was a good time.

Things are reflection. Let’s pray. Father, we love you. And we give ourselves to you. We really do not know how to grow into that love relationship with you other than simply spending the time and letting everything else happen in the course of that.

We honor that this morning with us as we spend this time with you. Amen.

Transcript machine-generated from the sermon audio, so it may contain errors. 5,801 words.