Sermon for 6/18/2002
The Great Commandment
Matthew 22:34-40
Introduction:
John Blanchard stood up from the bench, straightened his Army uniform, and studied the crowd of people making their way through Grand Central Station. He looked for the girl whose heart he knew, but whose face he didn’t, the girl with the rose.
His interest in her had begun 13 months before in a Florida library. Taking a book off the shelf he found himself intrigued, not with the words of the book, but with the notes penciled in the margin. The soft handwriting reflected a thoughtful soul and insightful mind. In the front of the book, he discovered the previous owner’s name, Miss Hollis Maynell. With time and effort he located her address. She now lived in New York City. He wrote her a letter introducing himself and inviting her to correspond. The next day he was shipped overseas for service in WW2.
During the next year and one month the two grew to know each other through the mail. A romance was budding. Blanchard requested a photograph, but she refused. She felt that if he really cared, it wouldn’t matter what she looked like. When the day finally came for him to return from Europe, they scheduled their first meeting- 7PM at the Grand Central Station in New York. “You’ll recognize me,” she wrote, “by the red rose I’ll be wearing on my lapel.”
So at 7 he was in the station looking for a girl whose heart he loved, but whose face he’d never seen. I’ll let Mr. Blanchard tell you what happened:
“A young woman was coming toward me, her figure long and slim. Her blond hair lay back in curls from her delicate ears; her eyes were blue as flowers. Her lips and chin had a gentle firmness, and in her pale green suit she was like springtime come alive. I started toward her, entirely forgetting to notice that she was not wearing a rose. As I moved, a small, provocative smile curved her lips. “Goin’ my way, sailor?” she said while moving her hips. Almost uncontrollably I made one step closer to her, and then I saw Miss Hollis Maynell. She was standing almost directly behind this sensual lady. A woman well past 40, she had graying hair tucked under a worn hat. She was more than plump, her thick-ankled feet thrust into low-heeled shoes. The girl in the green suit was walking quickly away. I felt as though I was split in two, so keen was my desire to follow her, and yet so deep was my longing for the woman whose spirit had truly companioned me and held me up during the war. And there she stood. Her pale, plump face was gentle and sensible, her gray eyes had a warm and kindly twinkle. I did not hesitate. My fingers gripped the small leather copy of the book that was to identify me to her. This would not be passionate love, but it would be something precious, something perhaps even better than love, a friendship for which I had been and must ever be grateful. I squared my shoulders and saluted and held out the book to the woman, even though while I spoke I felt choked by my disappointment. “I’m Lieutenant John Blanchard, and you must be Miss Maynell. I am so glad you could meet me; May I take you to dinner?” The woman’s face broadened into a tolerant smile. “I don’t know what this is about, son,” she answered, “but the young lady in the green suit who just went by, she begged me to wear this rose on my coat. And she said if you were to ask me out to dinner, I should go and tell you that she is waiting for you in the big restaurant across the street. She said it was some kind of test!”
WBTU:
A. Arsene Houssaye wrote, “Tell me whom you love and I will tell you who you are.”
B. Who and what do we love? Not what you do, but what do you love to do. Do we love Jesus Christ and things associated with Jesus Christ.
C. Victor Knowles- The biggest test we will ever face is loving a God whose letters we have read, whose heart we have come to know, but whose face we have never seen.
C. Jesus said, “Love the Lord Your God with all your heart, and soul, and mind.”
D. A wise man once said, “A great commitment to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission will grow a great church.”
E. Summary statements of Jesus teachings.
Thesis: WE should be committed to the Great Commandment. What is the Great Commandment and what does it mean to our lives? Matthew 22:34-40
For instances:
I. Background and introduction of text.
A. This is the last week of Jesus life before his crucifixction.
B. The Pharisees have asked Jesus a question to try to get him into trouble. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?
C. Then the Sadduccess came and asked Jesus a question about the resurrection and marriage.
D. Pharisees come back together once more to try to trap him with his words.
E. A lawyer. An interpreter and teacher of the Mosaic law. Not a lawyer but really a scribe, teacher, Rabbi, expert in the law of Moses.
F. This questioner wanted to know the essence of Jesus’ teachings. If we could describe our lives in one sentence, what would that sentence be? One last message to give, what would it be?
G. Rabbis of Jesus’ day were much exercised to find summary statements of Old Testament Laws and establish relative importance. About 700 commands in Old Testament. Early Restoration leaders did this. Walter Scott.
H. This man has two reasons for asking this question. One, was to trip Jesus up in his words and please his party, the Pharisees. Another, I am sure, was to understand the teachings of Jesus better. He wanted the Cliff notes of Jesus teachings.
I. Jesus gives his teachings in summary form. First commandment is found in Deuteronomy, soon after the Ten Commandments, the greatest commandment.
J. Love Your neighbor, from the book of Leviticus on a section on moral laws, retribution and compensation. Similar to Golden Rule (Luke 6:31)- Do to others as you would have them do to you.
K. Hang law and prophets. Everything else just expands on these two themes. Loving God and loving each other.
L. We need to be committed to love. Most important love to God. Everything hinges on this, even love neighbor as yourself.
M. Jesus is asking us this morning, “What kind of a lover are you? Michael Jackson- I’m a lover, not a fighter. God is love, the essence of the gospel is love.
II. Vs. 37
A. Love in its truest sense demands abandonment of self to God. True love is not a feeling or an emotion, it is a decision to sacrifice and give yourself to another. We choose to love or we choose not to love.
B. Many people love themselves, but this is not love it is selfishness. J.B. Phillips said, “The man who does not love God is really in love with himself, his position, his success, his pleasure.” Look in mirror and adore ourselves.
C. Loving God involves giving our lives in worship and service to Him.
D. Jesus said, “Worship the Lord Your God and serve Him only.” Love.
E. Some people do there duties that they think will get them to heaven, but they do not love God. Do these things not with their hearts, souls, but with a sense of just getting them done.
F. We are to love God supremely. Nothing else is to take the place of God. If anything does, it is idolatry.
G. Do we love to pray, love to study, love to sing, love to do things for church and for others. Or is it something that just has to be done, no enjoyment in it. No joy of the Lord. Like taking out trash or unclogging the sink.
H. God always loves us, takes delight in us, but do we love God? Do we enjoy God?
I. Some people seek God not to know and to love God, but just to get what God can provide. A.W. Tozer- We must repudiate this great, modern wave of seeking God for his benefits. The sovereign God wants to be loved for himself and honored for himself, but that is only a part of what he wants. The other part is that he wants us to know that when we have him, we have everything- we have all the rest.
J. Heart-
1. Throw our whole selves into the love that we give to him.
2. Surrender is the key word in loving God.
3. Jerry McQuire- “You complete me.”
K. Souls.
1. Lives. We are to love God more than our own lives.
2. We must be ready to give up house, home, liberty, friends, comfort, joy and life, at the command of God.
L. Mind.
1. In this episode Jesus leaves out strength and just says mind. In Luke 10 Jesus talks about strength.
2. Why leave out strength? If God has our mind, then he has our strength, for the mind controls the body.
3. To love God intellectually is to become a student of God- a student who really takes an interest in God.
4. I love history. Preoccupied with history.
5. Shouldn’t we be somewhat preoccupied with God? Lovers get preoccupied with their beloved, they notice things about the one they love.
6. Remember those dating days.
8. To love God with al one’s mind means taking an interest in God and in the peculiarities of God. It means letting God be God. We cannot put God into our molds.
9. Lovers give their beloved a good-sized benefit of the doubt. Doesn’t God deserve at least the same benefit of the doubt that we give to anyone we love?
10. What about all of the evil and wrong in the world? The Bible tells us that God does not act badly, but it sometimes looks as if God acts badly. Why doesn’t God stop it?
11. Don’t take it out on God. Must throw ourselves at his feet. Don’t look for an excuse to bail out on God.
12. Some people are content just to know the basics of God. Anti-intellectualism is the sin of lazy people or fearful people who content themselves with first impressions and who resist the pain it takes to grow beyond them. God is deep but some men are so shallow.
13. People who refuse to truly learn more about God. In USA, we have no excuse. It is just that we are lazy and really don’t love God. Don’t adore God.
14. Love of God is not just simple knowledge of God. Many people have knowledge of God and his Word, but it does not lead to love. Sometimes it leads to pride and arrogance and selfishness. Can lead to hatred of people who do not follow God or to those who are ignorant.
16. Love must lead us out into the lives and places of other human beings in order to do them some good. Love must act. If we love God we will love the creation of God.
III. Love Neighbor. (vs. 39)
A. Some people do not love themselves.
1. The Bible does say that we are nothing without God. WE are worse than nothing, we are wicked, vile, reprobate, unable to do good things.
2. However, when we are Christians, we are something. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross for us. We are something through Him.
B. Cannot love ourselves if we have no love of God. Do you like yourself? People do not like their appearance, their family traits, their abilities, their environment, their past, their failures.
C. God don’t make no junk. God values you and loves you. He gave his best for you.
D. First thing is to love God. Cannot love ourselves or others if no love of God. Oh, might do some good things from time to time, but for selfish reasons.
E. Our deeds must spring from a deep love of God. Oswald Chambers confessed, “If I work for God because I know it brings me the good opinion of those whose good opinion I wish to have, I am a Pharisee. If I love Jesus Christ, I will serve humanity, though men and women treat me like a doormat.”
E. Those people who drive us crazy or who have failed us or used us, if we love God, we will love even the unlovable.
F. Matthew 5:46- If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?
G. A Christians will be a lover of the people of God, warm and sensitive to God’s own, a lover of people who don’t know God, a lover to his own family, a lover at work, etc.
H. James P. Kinney- Six humans trapped by happenstance in bleak and bitter cold, Each one possessed a stick of wood, or so the story goes. Their dying fire in need of logs, the first man held his back, for on the faces around the fire he noticed one was black. The net man looking across the way saw one not of his church and couldn’t bring himself to give the fire his stick of birch. The third one sat in tattered clothes he gave his coat a hitch. Why should his log be put to use to warm the idle rich? The rich man just sat and thought of the wealth he had to store, and how to keep what he had earned from the lazy, shiftless poor. The black man’s face bespoke revenge as the fire passed from his sight, for all he saw in his stick of wood was a chance to spite the white. The last man of this forlorn group did naught except for gain. Giving only to those who gave was how he played the game. Their logs held tight in death’s still hand was proof of human sin. They didn’t die from the cold without they died from the cold within.
I. Must express our love for God in service to others. If not we just sit, soak, and sour.
Conclusion:
A. What should we be committed to? A great commitment to the Great Commandment will grow a great church.
B. 1 John 4:7-10
