The Greatest Commandment Series David Owens
Sermon #3: “Love Your Neighbor as Yourself” (Pt. 1) 10/5/03
Text: Mark 12:28-34
Introduction:
A. I want to begin this morning with the words to a song that was a big hit for Whitney Houston around ten years ago.
“I believe the children are our are future. Teach them well and let them lead the way.
Show them all the beauty they possess inside. Give them a sense of pride to make it easier.
Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be.
Everybody searching for a hero. People need someone to look up to.
I never found anyone to fulfill my needs. A lonely place to be. So I learned to depend on me.
I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone’s shadows.
If I fail, if I succeed, At least I live as I believe.
No matter what they take from me. They can’t take away my dignity.
Because the greatest love of all. Is happening to me.
I found the greatest love of all, Inside of me.
The greatest love of all, Is easy to achieve.
Learning to love yourself, It is the greatest love of all.”
1. I think we would all agree with some of the things in this song – children are our future. They must be taught well. They need someone to look up to.
2. But there are also some things we would disagree with strongly –
a. First of all, there is an absence of God. The message is very humanistic.
b. Second, the greatest love of all is not self-love.
B. Nevertheless, the reason I wanted to begin with this song is because I want to understand that self-love is important and necessary.
1. I know that statement probably surprises you.
2. We probably have never heard a sermon on the forgotten commandment: “LOVE YOURSELF!”, but that is what I want to speak with you about today.
C. This is our third week working with these texts on the greatest commandment.
1. We have noted that many were trying to trap Jesus by their questions, but such was not the case with the question from the Scribe. He really wanted to know what the greatest commandment was.
2. The Jewish scholars had cataloged over 600 specific commandments in the Law, and this sincere Scribed wanted to know which was the greatest. The most important one.
3. Jesus answered, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no greater commandment than these.”
4. Eugene Peterson paraphrases it like this, “ ‘Listen, Israel: The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.’ And here is the second: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ ”
D. So, Jesus is telling us to love God and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
1. By the very way in which he shapes these concepts of love, Jesus makes it very clear that loving ourselves is the foundation upon which all these other presumably higher loves are built.
2. In other words, those who loves themselves are those who are most able to love others and love God.
3. And those who loathe themselves are most likely to hurt others and despise God.
E. Studies of criminal behavior usually arrive at the same conclusions.
1. What kind of people become criminals of the worst kind – violent, murderers and rapists?
2. They are almost without exception people who have been treated so badly by life that at some deep level they have learned they are not worthy of love.
a. They may have been abused, been victims of racism, or raised in grinding poverty.
b. They may have been abandoned by family and left without anything or anyone.
3. And so, despising themselves at some profound level of the soul, they lash out in hatred – they kill, they abuse, and they destroy.
4. This pattern is most plain to see at the extreme boundaries of pathology and criminality, but to some degree can be seen in every community.
5. All of us have probably experienced the fact that the people who live life with a hostile and mean spirit are those who, for whatever reason, have a poor self-image and have little love for themselves.
6. And on the opposite extreme, all of us have seen that the people who are most capable of genuinely loving people are those who know themselves to be loved and see themselves as love-able.
7. I just do not think that we can genuinely love God or love others, without genuinely loving ourselves.
F. I know that this does not sit very well with many Christians.
1. Most of us have been taught the evils of selfishness since our earliest days. And rightly so!
2. Selfishness is evil, and we live in a profoundly selfish society.
3. We live in a time when grasping and hoarding have become virtues.
4. But what we must understand is that selfishness and self-love are polar opposites.
5. It is precisely when we doubt our own value and worth that we need to accumulate stuff to try to make us feel okay.
6. It is when we cannot appreciate our own worth that we find ourselves driven to measure our worth by the number or kind of cars in the driveway, or the square footage of the house, or the rings in our fingers and bells on our toes.
7. It is when we begin to doubt our own preciousness that we feel the need to boast about our accomplishments. In so doing we cry out: “Notice me. Please notice me. For I am afraid I am not worth very much.”
G. Jesus instructs us: “Love God and love your Neighbor as yourself.” How can a person even begin to do that if they have not already received love and therefore they love themselves?
1. It just can’t work any other way.
2. Love yourself. Then you can love God and love your neighbor.
3. “But Jesus,” we ask, “why should we love ourselves and how can we love ourselves?”
4. Unfortunately, Jesus doesn’t answer those questions here in our text in Mark 12, because that is not the question the Scribe was asking him.
5. But don’t despair, the Bible certainly answers those questions from Genesis through Revelation.
I. Why Should We Love Ourselves?
A. First of all, we should love ourselves because we are made in the image of God.
1. Scripture tells us that we are made in the image of God.
2. This is the Bible’s first defining word about us and who we are.
3. When God took that dirt and fashioned it and breathed life into it, he created us in his image.
4. And in the words of the popular tee-shirt, “God don’t make no junk.”
5. You and I are God’s image on this earth.
6. Loving yourself begins when you get to know the God who made you, and realize that you are fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God.
7. We have supreme worth and value simply because God made us in his image
B. Second, we should love ourselves because God loves us.
1. You probably predicted that I would make this point.
2. It is certainly the primary point that God makes throughout the entire Bible.
3. God loved Israel. God chose Israel. God redeemed Israel.
4. Then through Israel and under the Law God sent his own Son to fulfill the Law and to die so that we might live.
5. There is no greater demonstration of God’s love for us than that he would go to such an extent so that we could have a reconciled relationship with Him.
6. God loves us with a perfect, unending, unconditional love.
7. There is nothing we can do or say that will ever cause him to stop loving us.
8. That love is real. That love is for every single one of us.
9. God loves you and God wants you to love yourself because of his love for you.
C. Third, we should love ourselves because God believes in us.
1. God wants us to be successful in all that he has called us to complete.
2. He has so much confidence in us that he gives us his Spirit as a deposit and as our counselor and helper.
3. God has invested his all in us and he has no other plan than to work in and through us.
4. His eternal blessings await us in the place he calls heaven.
5. He is confident that many of us will respond to his love and will walk with him into eternity.
D. Can you agree with me that God wants us to love ourselves and that there are some very good reasons to love ourselves?
1. We can love ourselves because we are made in God’s image, we are loved by God and he believes in us.
E. The real challenge now becomes personalizing these truths.
1. I know I should love myself because God loves me, but how can I?
II. How Can We Love Ourselves?
A. First, I would suggest that we begin by telling ourselves the truth.
1. Very likely, others have said things to you that are not true, but you have believed them and have been living them out in your life.
2. Or perhaps, you have decided some things about yourself that are not true, and they are controlling your life.
3. Romans 12:2 tells us that we are transformed by the renewing of our minds.
4. Our minds can be renewed as we reprogram our thinking with the truth of God.
B. What kinds of things can we be thinking that will help us?
1. One important truth is that we are valuable and love-able because of God.
a. God gives us value and love. Therefore, we must tell ourselves repeatedly and regularly that we are precious and of value. We are loved by God.
b. As we program ourselves with these thoughts, we need to ask God to help us believe them and accept them for ourselves.
c. Personal note about the day this became real while at Harding.
2. A second truth that we need to work with is the truth that we are sinners, but we are forgiven sinners.
a. All of us are sinners and do continue to sin.
b. That fact is no excuse to continue to sin. God calls us to resist temptation and eliminate evil from our lives.
c. But in the process of all this, God wants us to live in a state of forgiveness.
d. If you are a Christian, then you are forgiven.
e. All your sins are erased. They are removed. They are gone.
f. You are forgiven because God says so, therefore, there is no point in carrying the guilt and shame of those sins any longer.
g. There’s no point in beating yourself up any longer. It’s over, because God in Christ says it’s over.
h. And that’s the truth we need to be telling ourselves.
i. And as we tell ourselves that truth we can more easily receive God’s love and then love ourselves.
3. So, we can begin to love ourselves by telling ourselves the truth.
C. We can love ourselves by treating ourselves with love.
1. I’m not talking about pampering yourself with a trip to the day spa, or getting a massage or a pedicure – although those things might be helpful at some point.
2. What I’m talking about is being patient and kind to yourself.
3. Don’t beat yourself up. Forgive yourself, when God has forgiven you.
4. Treat yourself with respect. Have proper boundaries.
5. Take care of your physical needs. Get enough rest, recreation and nutrition.
6. For instance, When Elijah the prophet was in a bad way, in 1 Kings 19, God prescribed a couple of simple things: sleep and a good meal.
7. The body and the spirit are interconnected and we need to lovingly minister to both.
Conclusion:
A. Lord willing, we will come back to this text next week and finish our study of this command “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
1. We have examined and tried to apply the command to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.
2. And we must learn to love our neighbor, but we are to love them as we love ourselves.
3. We cannot effectively love God or love our neighbor if we first cannot love ourselves.
B. If you have ever flown on an airplane you have watched the flight attendants teach the safety procedures.
1. They say, “If the airplane loses pressure, the oxygen mask will drop. If you are traveling with a child, put the oxygen mask on yourself first, then put it on the child.”
2. You have to put the mask on yourself first, because you can’t take care of another person if you first don’t take care of yourself.
3. You can’t love another person if you do not love yourself.
4. Learning to love yourself isn’t the greatest love of all, but it is a very important love.
C. All the love that we need to love ourselves and our neighbors is available to us, right now.
1. God is ready to love you so powerfully that your love for yourself and others will become natural and fulfilling.
