Love Means Obedience
Matthew 22:34-40
Agatha Burgess is 87 years old and lives in the small mill town of Buffalo, South Carolina. She gets up every morning at five o’clock and begins cooking, and she has been doing this for over twenty years. She gets up and cooks for the local Meals on Wheels. At 11:00 A.M. volunteers come by her house and take the food she cooks to elderly people who can’t cook for themselves, or for other needy folks.
By noon, another group of people come to Agatha’s house for lunch. Mill workers, judges, truck drivers, anyone who comes at noon gets to fill their plates and go back for seconds. Agatha runs an all you can eat kitchen. For all this, they pay $ 2.75. She knows that’s too much for some of the folks who come by, so if they don’t pay she doesn’t say anything.
A Newspaper reporter was doing a story on this remarkable woman and asked her the obvious question, why? Why do you do this 5 day a week every week? I need you to listen to Agatha’s reply because it is the heart of our message tonight. She said “I do this because I love it. I always wanted to be a person that lived by the side of the road, and could be called a friend to man. She said that she would continue to do this until she died because this is what she lived for, and these people coming everyday mean so much to her.
Agatha Burgess probably knows more about our text tonight than I do, but she isn’t here, so you are stuck with me. Let’s read it, and then let’s pray.
Matthew 22: 34-40
(Prayer)
We have heard this passage our whole life but have you ever stopped to ask yourself what it means to love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind?
The passage we just read was first spoken in Deuteronomy 6:5 there it reads this way: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
So to understand what it means to love God with heart, soul, mind and strength, we need to know what those things meant to the ancient Hebrews.
To the Hebrew these three places in the body meant something.
The heart was the place where decisions were made, where emotions were felt, where thinking was done, where secrets were hidden, where desires came from. You could decide with your heart, feel with your heart, think with it, hide things in it, and desire with it.
The soul was the place where decisions were made, where emotions were felt, where thinking was done, where secrets were hidden, where desires came from. You could decide with you soul, fell with your soul, think with it, hide things in it, and desire with it.
And guess what you do with your mind? Decide, think, feel, hide, and desire. Heart, soul, and mind are used interchangeably in the Bible.
All three of these parts referred to the same thing. So what’s the point of the passage then?
When the Bible says that we are to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, it doesn’t mean that there are three or four different aspects of our existence, all of which must love God. It means that we are to love God with all that we’ve got. It means total commitment. It means total obedience to God.
A professor of theological ethics opened his class for the semester by reading a letter from a parent to a government official.
The parent complained that his son, who had received a good education, gone to all the right schools, and was headed for a good job as a lawyer, had gotten involved with a weird religious sect. The father continued that the members of this sect controlled his every move, told him whom to date and whom not to date, and had taken all of his money. The parent pleaded with the government official to do something about this strange religious group.
Then the professor asked the students, "Who is this letter describing?"
There was quite a debate, with the class discussing some off the wall group cults, like the Branch Dividend’s, or those who were going to join the spaceship at the tail of Haley’s Comet. After about 15 minutes of discussion the Professor revealed that the letter was from a third century Roman parent concerned about a group of people called.... Christians.
It doesn’t sound so weird now does it?
The greatest Command of loving God with everything you’ve got means that we’ve got to be willing to follow our freely chosen master to whom we give total and complete allegiance, attention, and adoration. When the command to love God this way was first given, it was surrounded by a context that demanded obedience.
Deuteronomy 6:1-9 says: “Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the rules that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
You see love means obedience. I bet you thought that I was going to tell you that since Jesus came, love means something different; some touch-feely emotion, some warm and fuzzy feeling. Well I’m not going to tell you that, I can’t. To Jesus, love meant the same thing it meant in Deuteronomy.
Remember today we talked about what John wrote in John 14:15 he said, "If you love me, you will obey what I command."
When I was in high school and college I was really big on the counter culture. I dressed differently, acted differently; listen to music that I knew would drive my parents bonkers, I even wore two different color shoes just so I could get a reaction. My mom used to walk into a clothing store and find the ugliest thing in the store and buy it for me, she knew I would love it.
In College I had a moment of reality. Some rebellious friends of mine and I were at a youth rally, and we were goofing off during a break and this older man came walking by staring at us. I knew what was going to happen, it happened all the time, he would make some derogatory comment about how he didn’t know what this world was coming to and we would say something spiritual like, well Jesus loves us anyway.
But this time that’s not how it happened. When he got to us he said, “Hey guys do you want to be rebellious, counter-cultural, unusual, distinct, extraordinary, and down right weird?” No one had started this way with us before so he had my full attention. He then looked at us smiled and said “If that’s what you want love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. The world just won’t get it.”
You know he was right. When we love the Lord with all we’ve got, we will definitely be counter culture, and people will think we are a little off. But I would rather be off from the world then at odds with God.
Well if the greatest command is found in John 14:16, "If you love me you will keep my commandments."
Then the second must be found in John 15:12; "My command is this: love each other as I have loved you."
It would seem from reading the scriptures that the best way to love God is to love God’s children. To be, as Agatha Burgess put it, a person who lives by the side of the road - someone who is a friend to people.
You guys understand this better than you think you do.
When I was in college I spent a summer working with the Leonard Street Church of Christ in Pensacola Florida, as a youth intern. It was a wonderful summer and I got to live with the Rene’ family. My parents came down for my birthday and when they arrived, the first person my mother hugged wasn’t me, but Mrs. Rene’.
She stood there for the longest time thanking her for taking care of her son, for worrying about him, for holding him accountable, for making him keep his room straight, for loving him. My mother felt loved by that family because that family loved me.
The best way to show your love to someone is to love their kids. I didn’t understand it that summer day in Pensacola, but I do know. You want to win my friendship, my affection? Be good to my boys. And I believe the same could be said for everyone here.
When Jesus was asked which is the greatest commandment, he didn’t hesitate. "Love God with everything you’ve got." But then he added something which wasn’t asked. He told the questioner the second greatest commandment.
There were hundreds of commands from which Jesus could have chosen. But the one He chose was the one that requires us to love God’s children. I think the reason He chose that one is because it’s the best way of loving God himself.
In 1 Corinthians 3: 16 - 17 Paul explained why the way we treat each other is so important to God.
"Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple."
In Matthew 25 Jesus said it this way; when you feed the hungry, you feed me.
When you house the homeless, you shelter me.
When you visit the imprisoned, you visit me.
For some strange, inexplicable reason, God identifies so closely with us that our pain becomes his, when we are loved, he is loved. We are his body, he is our soul.
I think sometimes we have a hard time believing that God identifies with us. That God loves us so much he feels what we feel. Some of us just can’t believe that God would want to be so intimate with someone so, so ... what’s your adjective?
Dirty? Shamed? Broken? Worthless? Hopeless?
James says that the word of God is like a mirror. We stand before it soul-naked and see ourselves as we really are. No pretence. No masks. Nothing to hide the wounds and scars of sin.
Some of us tonight feel like Peter in the High Priest’s courtyard, nailed by the piercing eyes of Jesus right in the middle of denying that we know him.
Some us feel like David caught in Nathan’s narrative trap, guilty as we can be and nowhere to hide.
Some of us feel like old Noah, hung-over and shamed by our reckless behavior.
Some us feel like Elijah standing outside the cave with the wind of God ripping the rocks apart and carving up the landscape, scared to death that his judgment might fall on us.
Could God love something so filthy? Would He really allow us to come into His presence?
Let me ask you this. Why would Jesus tell us that the first and greatest commandment is to love God with everything we’ve got, if God doesn’t first love us with everything He has?
Why would God call us to love each other, if love isn’t what He already feels about every one of us?
Even in your sin God loves you. Even in your brokenness he comes along side and offers a shoulder to lean on. Just as you are he invites you into his everlasting arms where he will hold you forever.
And that’s what He invited you it tonight. Do you need a place to lean? A place to find comfort and stability? Lay your burdens down at the feet of the one who first loved you.
