Our Instruction Manual to Eternal Life
July 16, 2000
As we start this mornings sermon we are not going to have just one main text but we are going to read several scriptures and talk about all of them as we go.
I know that you have all heard me use a lot of these scriptures and we will be using them a lot more.
To start with I want to read Matthew 6:33
33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
This is the first thing that God wants us as His people to do, First we need to seek out Gods kingdom and become born again and then all of the other things of life will have a fuller meaning.
If you put God first, He will put you first!
How do we do this?
Romans 10:9-11
9 For if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
10 For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved.
11 As the Scriptures tell us, “Anyone who believes in him will not be disappointed.”
So what the scripture is telling us to do is to tell Jesus that we are truly sorry for all of our sins, for the way that we have been living and for all of the bad things that we have been doing and most of all, mean it!, when we say it!, we have got to feel it in our heart!
When we ask Jesus to come into our lives we need to be ready to make a commitment to Him that we are ready to start our new life in Christ!
Now that we are ready to start our new life we need to do as the scripture says in Matthew 5:48
48 But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.
So how does this perfection take place in our lives?
Just as I said last week, we are starting out just like a new born baby, and how does a new born baby start out on milk.
They don’t start out eating meat they start on milk.
That’s the same way that a new born Christian starts out one step at a time.
Don’t try to read the whole Bible in the first day, don’t expect to have the power in your prayers that you want to have, but most of all don’t allow yourself to become discouraged!
Discouragement is one of the biggest things in a new Christians life that can cause to fail.
Being a child of God is a growing process, it’s not just boom I am someone new and I’ll never make another mistake as long as I live!
You have got to grow and know that you will have your up’s and down’s, you will make mistakes and you will sometimes fall back but what you need to know is to always get up and shake yourself off and start all over again.
Before long you will be like the new baby starting to walk and soon you won’t be falling near as much as you were in the beginning!
Let’s look at what Paul says about Pressing towards the Goal in,
Philippians 3:12-21
12 I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection! But I keep working toward that day when I will finally be all that Christ Jesus saved me for and wants me to be.
13 No, dear brothers and sisters, I am still not all I should be, but I am focusing all my energies on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead,
14 I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us up to heaven.
15 I hope all of you who are mature Christians will agree on these things. If you disagree on some point, I believe God will make it plain to you.
16 But we must be sure to obey the truth we have learned already.
17 Dear brothers and sisters, pattern your lives after mine, and learn from those who follow our example.
18 For I have told you often before, and I say it again with tears in my eyes, that there are many whose conduct shows they are really enemies of the cross of Christ.
19 Their future is eternal destruction. Their god is their appetite, they brag about shameful things, and all they think about is this life here on earth.
20 But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior.
21 He will take these weak mortal bodies of ours and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same mighty power that he will use to conquer everything, everywhere.
Paul was just about a perfect a Christian that there ever was but you can see from these scriptures that he was always trying to improve his relationship with God!
His thoughts were always on the goal at the end of his time here on earth!
That is exactly where we all need to be in our walk with Christ, ever striving to be perfect even as our Father which is in Heaven is perfect.
Now as we go on let’s look at what Jesus had to say about this next step in,
John 13:34-35
34 So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.
35 Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”
You see here that Jesus is giving us a new commandment!
We not only need to Love the Lord our God with all of our hearts but we also need to love one another!
Now this love that I am referring to is not a great big love in like the hippies of the 60’s called love, that was an emotional love.
I am talking about a spiritual love, a kind of love that can only come from the Father, a kind of love what has sustenance, that has meaning, a love that has the power of God in it.
Jesus made it very clear that the world would know us by our love, like it said in John 13:35.
People will begin to see a difference in your life almost right from the start of your new conversion.
Now let’s look at what Jesus said in Matthew,
Matthew 22:34-40
34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees with his reply, they thought up a fresh question of their own to ask him.
35 One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap him with this question:
36 “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”
37 Jesus replied, “ ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’
38 This is the first and greatest commandment.
39 A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
40 All the other commandments and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”
This makes it really easy to be a Child of God because when you have the Love of God truly in your hearts you will find that the other commandments will become easy to obey.
Paul tells us that we must forget the past, not only those things that we are most ashamed of but also the things that we are proud of.
You might say why?
Because dwelling on either one can hinder our spiritual progress and prevent us from pushing ourselves to do better.
In other words we stagnate rather that multiply.
Paul said that spiritually mature Christians are like athletes, always pushing towards the finish line, not allowing anything to hinder them from reaching it.
Our goal should be to please God I all that we do. How can we do this?
By showing His Love to those around us. In fact it is absolutely vital that we love with intensity.
How can we get this Love that we need?
By praying and asking God to fill you with His love.
You see God’s love is magnified whenever we share it with others. God never intended for us to hoard it or to cover it up.
By extending that compassion, warmth and unconditional commitment, you become more than just a person with the title of Christian, you become a true child of God!
Do you see, the lack of God’s love in our hearts can stop us from receiving results from God!
You see a lot of people will go to church on Sunday and tell how much they love God and how much they love being with the others in the church and bang the next thing that you know they look over across the isle and see something that they don’t like or hear something that they don’t like and there they go off the deep end and they stop coming to church and on and on and on we go.
You see to say that you love God and show no love or care for others will make a liar out of you.
Love is more than an emotion, it is a force!
Love when working the way it is supposed to work will bring changes in peoples lives, not just your life but the people around you as well.
The force of love is a very powerful force.
A man who loves God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength will never take God’s name in vain.
He will never place anything above God in his affections.
He will remember the Lord’s Day and keep it holy.
If you love your neighbor as yourself, you won’t lie to him.
You won’t steal his possessions.
You won’t cheat him in business.
You won’t violate his marriage.
When you love your neighbor as yourself, you’ll never do anything to intentionally hurt him.
These elements are increasingly rare in our society.
We tend to live with the attitude, "What’s yours is mine, if I can take it from you."
Our society increasingly acts as if men owe nothing to their neighbors.
We think only of our own lives, ignoring the needs of others.
You see love is a decision. It is not based on feelings, however there is a type of love that deals with emotions and romance, which is important.
But the kind of love God gives us is so much more.
When we begin to understand God’s kind of love, we will experience that power that come as a result of the force called love.
Let’s read some more scripture, look in,
1 John 4:7-21
7 Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
8 But anyone who does not love does not know God—for God is love.
9 God showed how much he loved us by sending his only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him.
10 This is real love. It is not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
11 Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other.
12 No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love has been brought to full expression through us.
13 And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us.
14 Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.
15 All who proclaim that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God.
16 We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in him.
God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.
17 And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we are like Christ here in this world.
18 Such love has no fear because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of judgment, and this shows that his love has not been perfected in us.
19 We love each other as a result of his loving us first.
20 If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a Christian brother or sister, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we have not seen?
21 And God himself has commanded that we must love not only him but our Christian brothers and sisters, too.
And do you see how that ties right back with what Jesus said in,
John 14:15
15 “If you love me, obey my commandments.
Do you see that the love that we are talking about boils down to just plain and simple obedience,
If you love Me, obey my commandments!
Obedience is the key to experiencing a true love relationship with the Father. By keeping His commandments we demonstrate our love to Him!
Then the question might arise how do we keep His commandments if we don’t know them?
I am not just talking about the ten commandments I am speaking of the true word of God.
You see God has given us guidelines to live by in His Word and the more time that we spend in reading and praying and going to church the better equipped we will become to fight off the attacks of satan.
Lets look at what is says in,
Matthew 4:1-10
1 Then Jesus was led out into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to be tempted there by the Devil.
2 For forty days and forty nights he ate nothing and became very hungry.
3 Then the Devil came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, change these stones into loaves of bread.”
4 But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say,
‘People need more than bread for their life;
they must feed on every word of God.’ ”
5 Then the Devil took him to Jerusalem, to the highest point of the Temple,
6 and said, “If you are the Son of God, jump off! For the Scriptures say,
‘He orders his angels to protect you.
And they will hold you with their hands
to keep you from striking your foot on a stone.’ ”
7 Jesus responded, “The Scriptures also say, ‘Do not test the Lord your God.’ ”
8 Next the Devil took him to the peak of a very high mountain and showed him the nations of the world and all their glory.
9 “I will give it all to you,” he said, “if you will only kneel down and worship me.”
10 “Get out of here, Satan,” Jesus told him. “For the Scriptures say,
‘You must worship the Lord your God;
serve only him.’ ”
You see, how will we ever be able to challenge the devil with the words “ it is written, “ if we don’t know what is written?
How can you ever demonstrate to God that you Love Him if you slip back into your old ways and hang out with your old friends, if you want God’s blessings then you must obey His commandments.
It is vital for us as children of God to assemble ourselves together with other believers, studying and reading the word in order to keep our minds renewed.
Do you know that God doesn’t want us to come to church and fall all over the floor crying and moaning “Oh God I love You “ and then get up and go back to your seat and look over across the isle and say, “ what are they doing here, you should have seen what she was doing the other day”, and on and on and on we go.
Do you know that to love others we have to first learn to love God!
Our horizontal relationship with one another is based on our vertical relationship with God.
So the very first thing that we need to do is to as it says in, Deuteronomy 6:5
5 And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.
Do you know that there a lot of Christians that love each other more than they love God.
There area lot of people that try to show that they love Him by there good works, in other words what they do in and for the church, but that is not what the scripture tells us to do first.
That’s like getting the cart before the horse!
Jesus said the evidence of our love is in keeping God’s commandments and not by our good works!
Anytime that we disobey God we are not putting Him first, and when we don’t put Him first we run into trouble.
Partial obedience is disobedience!
Delayed obedience is disobedience!
Look at what it says in, John 15:9-14
9 “I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love.
10 When you obey me, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father and remain in his love.
11 I have told you this so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow!
12 I command you to love each other in the same way that I love you.
13 And here is how to measure it—the greatest love is shown when people lay down their lives for their friends.
14 You are my friends if you obey me.
God is not trying to push us around, He just wants us to do what we say that we are going to do.
He is trying to move up to His standards in our relationship with Him.
You need not expect God to honour His commitment to you if you keep on living in sin and don’t do as you promised God that you would do.
Hebrews 2:3
3 What makes us think that we can escape if we are indifferent to this great salvation that was announced by the Lord Jesus himself? It was passed on to us by those who heard him speak,
We must always strive to become perfect in our walk with God.
When we fail to do this we lose out on our benefits from Him.
We have to love others to express our love for god, because like it says in, 1 John 4:20
20 If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a Christian brother or sister, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we have not seen?
Do you know that it is easy for people to come to church and tell God how much we love Him, but He tells us that if we don’t love one another then we are a liar.
This morning I want us to consider what it means to love God and love our neighbor because all moral responsibility hinges on these two affections.
I. Loving God
God isn’t just someone we worship and serve.
He’s someone we know.
We have a relationship with Him.
He has shared his life with us. We love Him as we love any other person.
A. Love Him Passionately – "with all thy heart"
1. The heart speaks of emotion
a. There are times when you laugh aloud with God.
b. There are times when you weep before Him and you know He understands your sorrow.
c. There are times when you shout and rejoice with Him.
d. We need to be careful that our relationship to God doesn’t become routine, "old hat."
2. "All the heart" speaks of exclusiveness.
a. I have affections that belong exclusively to my wife. I will share them with no other woman.
b. Loving God with all my heart means that my first spiritual loyalty is to Him.
B. Love Him Personally – "with all thy soul"
1. The Soul speaks of identity.
a. The soul is what gives us personality.
b. Our temperament, our likes and dislikes, our fears and anxieties are expressions of the soul.
2. The soul speaks of intimacy.
a. We communicate on different levels.
• I don’t bare as much of my soul (personality) with a stranger as I do a friend.
• I am more intimate with my family than with anyone else.
b. God wants us to love Him with ALL the soul – on the deepest level of intimacy, holding nothing back.
We don’t have to be afraid to be ourselves when we are worshipping and communicating with God.
We don’t have to put on a mask, or assume a false character when we come into God’s presence.
God wants to change our lives, but He can’t do that until we are honest about what’s inside.
How can He remove a fear if we won’t admit to it?
How can He deliver us from bitterness or lust if we deny it?
Not until we come to God as we are will we have the opportunity to leave differently than we came.
C. Love Him Expressively – "with all thy strength"
1. Love has to find a way to demonstrate itself. It makes you want to DO something.
2. The greatest example of this is God’s own love. "For God so loved that He GAVE."
I know God loves me because of Calvary.
There, God made the supreme sacrifice of love – His very life.
There was a Valentine’s Day card.
And on the front, it said, "I asked God how much He loved me. Stretching His arms wide, He said, ‘This much.’
And then He died."
Jesus loved us to death – to the death of the cross.
That’s what Calvary is all about.
It shows us how far God in love was willing to go to save a sinner.
D. Love Him Intelligently – "with all thy mind"
This statement helps us avoid extremes. It keeps us balanced.
1. Emotions must be balanced with truth.
a. Emotionalism occurs when experience takes priority over the Word of God.
b. Feelings and faith must be governed by the facts of God’s Word.
2. Devotion must be guided by Scripture.
a. Loving God with all your heart doesn’t mean that you neglect your family.
b. It doesn’t mean you are to be disrespectful to authority.
Jesus is reminding us that we are to love God the same way He loves us.
We must not respond to God’s whole-hearted love in a half-hearted manner.
We are to love Him with ALL the heart, ALL the soul, ALL the strength, and ALL the mind.
I think Jesus is also telling us that until you love God as you should, you will never love your neighbor as you could.
I think that is born out in our own experience.
To the degree society has become more secular, it has also become less sensitive.
II. Loving Your Neighbor
The Principle
If I were to ask you how you are to love your neighbor, probably all of us could give the right answer: you are to love your neighbor as you love yourself.
Great, but what does it mean?
Let’s keep it simple.
Loving your neighbor means that you do for him whatever you would do for yourself.
• When you have a need, you attempt to meet it.
• When you have a hurt, you attempt to heal it.
• When you have a responsibility, you attempt to fulfill it.
We don’t have to be taught how to love ourselves.
It comes naturally. We are experts at it.
The trick is to keep self-love from becoming selfishness.
We need to be constantly reminded that as we love ourselves, so we are to love others.
B. The Parable
Matthew 22:37-40
37 Jesus replied, “ ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’
38 This is the first and greatest commandment.
39 A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
40 All the other commandments and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”
This is one of the most familiar parables in the Bible. It doesn’t need a lot of explanation.
I just want to briefly point out three things that it teaches us about loving your neighbor as you love yourself.
1. Your neighbor is anyone you can find to help.
The parable begins with just a certain man.
A lot of things we consider important are not mentioned.
We are not given his name or his standing in society.
As far as we know, he could have been a thief who fell victim to other thieves!
The only thing we know about him is that the hand life dealt him at that moment left him alone and in need.
Let me ask a couple of questions.
Do you find yourself judging the worth of a man before you decide whether you are going to help him?
Do you only feel comfortable helping those who are just like you?
Do you let the color of their skin, the length of their hair or the style of their clothing determine to whom you will love as you love yourself?
2. Loving your neighbor involves the affections.
• The priest looked on the victim with a total lack of concern. He had no time to get involved.
• The Levite looked upon him with curiosity.
• The Samaritan looked upon him with compassion.
The difference in the three men is that one had his feelings touched, and he responded to those feelings.
But what if people take advantage of our kindness?
What if they don’t appreciate what we do?
It doesn’t matter.
Read the parable again.
There is no mention of the victim’s response to the kindness of the Samaritan. Why?
Because loving your neighbor isn’t contingent on his sense of appreciation.
We’re to have a powerful love – "Just do it."
3. Loving your neighbor requires action.
It’s not enough to be concerned.
It’s not enough to feel compassion.
You have to get involved.
You have to get a little blood on your toga and dirt on your kneecaps.
You have to invest some of your time and give of your treasures.
You have to do whatever it takes to take care of your neighbor … just as you do whatever it takes to take care of yourself.
Conclusion
The close of every message is a time for an examination. Let me make a couple of observations.
1. You can’t love God until you first accept His love for you.
How can we say we love God if we reject the love He has shown us in giving His Son for us?
The proof of God’s love is the payment Christ made for sin when He hung on the cross in our place.
2. Do you love God with the same whole-hearted love He has shown for you?
3. Have you loved your neighbor as you love yourself?
All moral responsibility hinges on the two affections of love for God and love for our neighbor.
We may not be able to expect this kind of love from the lost, but it is what the world needs from the Christian.
It just boils down to this. We need to seek the face of the Lord God Almighty. Then we need to work on our perfection. To be able to work on our perfection we must follow the commandments.
If there is anyone here this morning that wants to seek God and accept Him as their personal Saviour the alter is open and we will be glad to pray with you.
The need is here today and the Holy Spirit is tugging at your hearts door, please don’t let another time go by with out accepting Him as your personal Saviour.
