This sermon is taken from my latest book, “The Greatest Commands: Learning To Love Like Jesus.” Each chapter is sermon length, alliterated, and focuses on the life and love of Jesus. You can find it here:
www.amazon.com/gp/product/1606471120
Love God. Love People.
Scott Bayles, pastor
First Christian Church
There’s an old story about a professor who was assigned to teach an introductory class about time management for Freshmen orientation. Without saying a word, he walked into the classroom and set a one-gallon, wide mouthed glass jar on the table in front of him. Then he produced about a dozen tennis-ball-sized rocks and carefully placed them, one at a time, inside the jar. When the jar was filled to the top and no more rocks would fit inside, he asked, “Is this jar full?”
Everyone in the class said, “Yes.”
“Really?” he said. Then he reached under the table and pulled out a bucket of gravel. He dumped some gravel into the jar and shook it, causing pieces of gravel to work themselves down into the spaces between the big rocks. Then he smiled and asked the group once more, “Is the jar full?”
By this time the class was starting to catch on. “Probably not,” one of them said.
“Good!” he replied. Then he reached under the table and brought out a bucket of sand. He started dumping the sand in and it filled all the spaces between the rocks and the gravel. Once more he asked, “Is this jar full?”
“No!” the class shouted.
Again he said, “Good!” Then he grabbed a pitcher of water and began to pour in the water until the jar was filled to the brim. Then he looked back at the class and asked, “What is the point of this illustration?”
One eager student raised his hand and said, “The point is, no matter how full your schedule is, if you try really hard, you can always fit something more into it!”
“No,” the teacher shouted, “that’s not the point. The truth this illustration teaches us is this: if you don’t put the big rocks in first, you’ll never get them in at all.”
He undoubtedly made his point. The problem is—sometimes it’s hard to know what the big rocks are supposed to be. Life can get pretty hectic at times. We have projects at work, priorities at home, and a plethora of extra-curricular activities. Sometimes it can all be pretty overwhelming. We don’t always know where to start.
And then there’s God. What matters most to him? What are his top priorities? And what about the Bible? Let’s face it—that’s a pretty big book. My Bible has over 1,300 pages and it’s a “thin-line” version. Have you ever picked up your Bible because you knew you ought to read it but then just put back down in frustration because you didn’t know where to start.
Well, if you’ve ever wondered what was most important to God, you’re not alone. What mattered most to God was a topic commonly debated among Rabbis in Jesus’ day. Believe it or not, they identified 613 specific commands in the Torah (what we call the Old Testament). Which one was the most important? Which one took top priority? They would argue endlessly. So it’s not surprising that, when a young Rabbi claiming to be something special comes along, the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees (who were the religious leaders at the time) would draw Jesus into their debate.
Jesus’ answer to this all-important question would reveal a great deal about his own heart—which, of course, is the heart of God. My promise to everyone reading this is that you won’t be able to set it down without knowing where to start, what matters most to God, and what the big rocks should be. Here’s both the question and the answer from God’s word:
One of the teachers of the law came and heard Jesus arguing with the Sadducees. Seeing that Jesus gave good answers to their questions, he asked Jesus, “Which of the commands is most important?”
Jesus answered, “The most important command is this: ‘Listen, people of Israel! The Lord our God is the only Lord. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second command is this: ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ There are no commands more important than these.”
The man answered, “That was a good answer, Teacher. You were right when you said God is the only Lord and there is no other God besides him. One must love God with all his heart, all his mind, and all his strength. And one must love his neighbor as he loves himself. These commands are more important than all the animals and sacrifices we offer to God.”
When Jesus saw that the man answered him wisely, Jesus said to him, “You are close to the kingdom of God.” And after that, no one was brave enough to ask Jesus any more questions. (Mark 12:28-34 NCV)
God’s Laws are very similar to Russian nesting dolls. Have you ever seen those? They’re these wooden dolls that open up and there’s another doll inside. You open that one up and there’s another one. Each doll contains another until you get down to the smallest one.
Well, God’s Law are akin to that. You start with the entire Bible, open it up, and inside you find the 613 Torah laws. When you dig into those, you can narrow it down to the 10 Commandments—God’s basic laws of right and wrong. And nestled snuggly inside the 10 Commandments are two very simple principles: Love God. Love people. That’s what matters most to God! These are the Greatest Commands. These are the big rocks! As simple are those two commands may be, let’s explore them individually for just a moment.
I. Love God:
In the first part of his answer, Jesus quotes the Hebrew Shema, or Deuteronomy 6:4-5, “Listen, people of Israel! The Lord our God is the only Lord. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.” Each individual word here holds special significance.
Throughout the Bible, the word for heart (kardia) encompasses the physical, emotional, and spiritual life of human beings. The heart is the source of our feelings and emotions. Feelings like joy, sorrow, depression, despair, happiness, and cheerfulness are all said to originate in the heart. To love God with all your heart then, means to love him deeply and personally—like the love shared between a father and son or a husband and wife.
The word soul (nephesh) refers to the entire life of a person—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life. Perhaps, the best way to understand it is that your soul is both who and what you are. If someone where to ask you who you are, you might give them your name. But that’s not very descriptive. If I wanted to be more specific, I might say, “I’m a father, a husband, a pastor, a teacher. Most importantly, I’m a follower of Jesus.” Loving God with all your soul means allowing God to define who and what you are.
Next, Jesus adds a word that wasn’t originally in the Shema. He says to love God with “all your mind.” The mind (an English word translating several Greek or Hebrew terms) is the center for intellectual activity. This is where we do all our thinking and learning. Loving God with all your mind implies centering your education on him—learning and growing in our capacity to fathom his vastness and mystery. Studying him until overwhelmed by his power, his love, his grace, his beauty.
And then, Jesus says to love God with “all your strength.” Strength here has nothing to do with the amount of weight you can bench press. It signifies your energy output—your work, your job, whatever it is that you put effort into. Paul eloquently explained what it means to love God with all your strength when he said, “In all the work you are doing, work the best you can. Work as if you were doing it for the Lord, not for people” (Col. 3:23 NCV).
When we put all of these pieces together, the passage explodes with significance. Essentially, Jesus is saying to love God with all of yourself—every fiber of your being. That’s quite a command. It’s hard enough to love a spouse or children who can be seen and touched. How are we supposed to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength? The answer is—we do it with his help.
There is an often abused verse in the Psalms that says, “Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4 NKJV). Many people assume that if they simply show God lip service that he will start giving them everything they ever wanted, but that’s not what God is telling us here. God is saying that if we delight ourselves in him—if we make him the desire of our heart—then, and only then, will he give us what our heart desires. He’ll give us himself.
John Piper, author of Desiring God, sums it up this way, “Take all of your longing and focus it on God until he satisfies it completely.” As we draw nearer to God, he comes nearer to us. As we learn to love him more, he opens our hearts to greater love. Max Lucado—who has taught me more about the heart of God than anyone else—explains, “God rewards those who seek him. Not those who seek doctrine or religion or systems or creeds. Many settle for these lesser passions, but the reward goes to those who settle for nothing less than Jesus himself. And what is the reward? What awaits those who seek Jesus? Nothing short of the heart of Jesus.”
Hopefully it’s becoming obvious why Jesus said that this is the greatest command. But Jesus not only gave the greatest command, he gave the second greatest as well.
II. Love People:
When Jesus said, “The second command is this: ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself,’” he was still quoting from the Torah—Leviticus 19:18 to be specific. And this was also an often misunderstood passage.
During Jesus’ lifetime, Rabbis were often busy arguing over the meaning of the word neighbor. For most of them, a neighbor was a Jew who strictly observed the Law. Other people were hated and considered enemies. Jesus sought to broaden their definition of neighbor so he told them the story known as The Good Samaritan (which would be better titled The Loving Neighbor), in order to teach them that a neighbor is any person we encounter who has a need of any kind. The question isn’t, “Who is my neighbor?” but, “Am I being a neighbor?” Loving your neighbor essentially means loving the people around you—all of them.
Loving our neighbor is second in importance only to loving God because loving people is really just an extension of loving God. Jesus couldn’t have given us the greatest command without also giving us the second greatest command, because the two are completely entwined. Loving people is the visible manifestation of loving God.
In Gary Chapman’s best-seller, The Five Love Languages, he identifies five primary ways in which people both express and receive love: words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, physical touch, and gifts. We can certainly use our words to express our love for God through prayer or singing. We can even spend quality time with God through devotionals or Bible reading. But, how do you perform an act of service for God without serving another person? How do you give a gift to God without giving to a human being? How do you physically touch God without touching people? You can’t! But when we serve, touch, and give gifts to other people, we are nonetheless doing it for God. Jesus once said, “I tell you the truth, anything you did for even the least of my people here, you also did for me” (Matt. 25:40 NCV).
Loving God means loving people. And loving people means going out of our way, rearranging our schedules, or using our resources to meet the needs of the people around us. When you put your arms around someone who needs a shoulder to cry on, you are fulfilling the greatest commands. When you give an expected gift to someone struggling to pay their rent, you are loving your neighbor and your God. When you take time to shovel the snow from the driveway of an elder neighbor, you’re carefully placing a tennis-ball-sized rock into the jar.
Ultimately, we love people the most when we share with them the same loving relationship with God that we have. Preachers and missionaries often talk about the Great Commission, when Jesus said, “So wherever you go, make disciples of all nations: Baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Teach them to do everything I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19-20 GWT). But Jesus never called this command great. The command that he calls great, the one he calls the most important, is the command to love. When we learn to love one another, out of compliance to that command flows the ability to make disciples.
Dee Brestin and Kathy Troccoli make some relevant observations about Jesus’ command to love one another in their joint endeavor, Falling in Love with Jesus:
Do you know what the Bible says is the mark of a Christian? Is it our views on abortion or homosexuality? Is it our involvement in a Bible-believing church? Is it our doctrinal stance on salvation?
No. What arrests people, what causes us to stand out from the world, is not our convictions, as important as those may be, it is love. When we can live a life of love, the world sits up and takes notice.
“All people will know that you are my followers,” Jesus said, “if you love each other” (John 13:35 NCV).
All of this sort of begs the question—how loving are you? The Bible offers us a little test. It describes what perfect love looks like. “Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance…love will last forever!” (1 Cor. 13:4-8 NLT).
Against this standard none of us really measure up. When it comes down to the two most important commands God has ever given, not one person has ever kept them fully in all of history—that is, except for the one who gave them. Jesus is the only one of us who ever lived the commands to love God and love people to the fullest. In fact, something amazing happens when you replace the word love with the name of Jesus in the passage above: Jesus is patient and kind. Jesus is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. He does not demand his own way. He’s not irritable, and he keeps no record of being wronged. He does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Jesus never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance…Jesus never fails!
This rest of this series is dedicated to the life of Jesus—the ultimate example of perfect love lived out. It is my goal, and I hope yours as well, to keep the commands that Jesus himself calls most important. And if it is our desire to grow in our capacity to love God and love people, then we must learn to love like Jesus—whose life demonstrates for us what real love looks like, what matters most, and what the big rocks really are!
