The First and Great Commandment

Now notice in this verse he’s called a scribe. In the previous he’s called a Pharisee and a lawyer. So you can see there’s a mixture of these various people. Verse 29, And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind and with all thy strength.

This is the first commandment. Now you’ll notice in verse 29 and 30 that verse 29 is not found in Matthew. They hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. And this is how you explain the differences for those of you that have studied these things, how you explain the differences between Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John is when they cover the same event and some things are there and some things aren’t, Matthew just didn’t cover the first part of what he said.

It’s not hard. It’s not nefarious or anything like that. It’s just that he started at a different place. Verse 31, And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. And the scribe said unto him, Well, master, thou hast said the truth, for there is one God and there is none other but he. And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the soul and with all the strength and to love his neighbor as himself is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.

When Jesus saw thee, the answer discreetly he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. And no man after that durst ask him any question. You’ll notice one other small difference, which is that in Matthew, the man’s motivations are suspect. He’s not sincere in his question. Mark doesn’t mention that. In fact, Mark mentions at the end the fact that Jesus says he’s not far from the kingdom of God.

And so we’ll talk about that in just a minute. Let’s pray together. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for the chance to again study your word. And because your word is our spiritual sustenance, Lord, we live by every word of God. We pray that you would so work in our hearts and drive it home to our hearts. Lord, you would help us to respond to it and consider it, Lord, and not take it just as the word of men, but as it is in truth the word of God.

And so, Lord, such an important passage and such important principles here, Lord, let us not look upon them lightly. Help us, Lord, to be changed by them. And we ask these things in Jesus’ name. Amen. All right, now if you go back to Matthew, as I said a minute ago, that this man’s question is insincere, right? We know that. And you have this weird thing where he’s asking an insincere question, but in Mark it’s revealed that although he is insincere, he’s not asking because he wants to know the truth, he’s asking to tempt Jesus and get him into a pickle, yet at the end of it the Lord reveals to him that he’s got some things right.

Even if his motivation is wrong, he is kind of getting close, right? That’s what he says to him. This is the third insincere question that the Lord has dealt with just in this chapter. If you remember, the first insincere question dealt with the tribute money, the tax, right, with the image of Caesar Augustus on the money. And then the second insincere question dealt with the resurrection from the Sadducees.

And here is the third one. So basically everywhere the Lord goes during this last week of his life, he is, I mean, he is avoiding land mines here. They’re constantly trying to trap him. And think about this in verse number 34 of Matthew 22, verse 34 and 35. It says, he asked him a question tempting him, and the question is, which is the great commandment of the law?

Now notice this man asks Jesus for a single command, but Jesus gives him two in response. Now he wants, he wants, he’s trying to put Jesus in a bind. He’s trying to kind of pigeonhole the Lord Jesus to name a single command as the most important command, because you know what he would do in that moment. If Jesus said, this command is greater than all the other commands, you need to do this command, then at that moment the lawyer would retort and would say, ah, so you’re saying we don’t need to do the other commands.

What about this command and that command and this command? So you’re saying we don’t need to go to the temple, and you’re saying we don’t need to do the sacrifice, and you’re saying we can eat pork, and you’re saying none of these other commands matter. The moment the Lord nailed it down, at that moment he was going to be accused of ignoring other commands and thereby he would be accused of creating like a false contradiction.

The Lord’s answer was just obviously perfect, because the Lord did not give one command, He gave two, but basically what he showed was all of these other commands that are on the mind of this lawyer, now this is not an attorney, this is someone who studied the law in its true meaning, a lawyer. This man who had studied the law of God, he knew the laws, he knew all the hundreds of laws that the Jews kept, both those that were in scripture and those that aren’t in scripture, that were enforced by the elders and such in tradition.

But the Lord’s answer kind of wrapped all the laws up in two commands. So his answer, though it was just two commands, encompassed all of God’s commands, and in that way he answered him wisely, right? He answered him with discretion so the man could not accuse him and that’s what happens at the end. The answer, he couldn’t answer it, because Jesus answered covered all the other commands that are probably on his mind.

Now you’ll notice the two great commands, and we’re going to concentrate primarily on the first, but I want to give you a little bit of background. Verse 36 says this, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? And Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. And this is the first and great commandment.

And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Now let’s go, I want to take you to a couple places because I want you to see where these come from. And then I want to show you something. Deuteronomy, if you would look at Deuteronomy chapter 6 and Leviticus chapter 19. We’ll be right back in Matthew after this. Deuteronomy 6 and Matthew chapter 19.

Deuteronomy chapter 6 and Matthew chapter 19. I’m sorry, Leviticus 19. I apologize. You know, preachers, when they preach, their brain ain’t working half the time they’re talking so. Deuteronomy 6 verse 4. This is the verse that the Lord quotes to this lawyer. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

Pretty clear, right? Look at Leviticus 19 now. Leviticus chapter 19. We would look at verse number 18. Thou shalt not avenge nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. I am the Lord. Now if you’ll notice one thing about these two passages, neither one of them is in the Ten Commandments. You notice that? In fact, especially, now you could argue in Deuteronomy 6, that’s very close to the Ten Commandments passage in Deuteronomy, but you could argue, but especially Leviticus.

This is just kind of a random kind of verse. Remember, the second greatest commandment in the law is not found in the most prominent place in the Bible. It’s found in kind of a side place, a place you wouldn’t really know to look. And Jesus says this is the second greatest commandment in the law. What’s more, the first and the second greatest commandments in the law are not found in the Ten Commandments.

You know, in our time, of course, we know in our world, in our culture, in our political things, in our political life, the Ten Commandments are a big thing. Are they going to be posted on the wall? Are they going to be in the Supreme Court? Or they’re not? In schools? Or not? And that’s a big thing these days. But neither one of these commands are part of the Ten.

But they’re more important. So you have the Ten, and they’re above that. Both of them are above the Ten Commandments. They are the first and greatest commands of the law. So sometimes we have this idea that the Ten Commandments are the most important commands that God has. That is not true. That is not true. What we’re reading right here is more important. If you were to kind of gauge importance, they’re more important than the Ten.

So with all the talk of the Ten Commandments we have these days, we have to keep this in mind. The Lord puts them before the Ten Commandments. In fact, he says something in Matthew 22. You want to go back there. He says in verse number 40, on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. That means all of God’s Word in the Old Testament Scripture, including the law, are actually dependent upon these two commandments.

So even the Ten Commandments, as important as they are, are actually dependent upon these two commandments, even though these two commandments are not really in a very prominent place in Scripture, especially the Leviticus version. Now note the Lord gave his answer in two commands. The question was, what is the greatest commandment? The Lord’s answer was, there are two. Look back if you would very quickly at Exodus chapter number 20, which is the Ten Commandments, because the Lord’s answer kind of patterned after the Ten Commandments a little bit, at least in one way.

Exodus 20, verse number 1, it says this, and God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me, one. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

Now I want to pause here a second. Just hear me out. When I was in Buffalo we went to a basilica in a small town, one of these huge basilicas. It was patterned after St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, same shape, just scaled down. And when we went into that basilica, there was one object that was the center of attention. In other words, the basilica was beautiful as far as marble and intricate paintings.

It was just like a basilica. It was just like a basilica in Italy. They had all kinds of carvings and all kinds of beautiful architecture and things like that. But the focus of the entire room, the focus of the entire place was one particular item that was in the very back, kind of past the dome, because basilicas are usually laid out in a cross. And so in the very back behind the altar was the focal point, the largest statue.

Obviously the lights were on it. And so that’s where all of the attention in the basilica is drawn. It was, it’s obvious. Just like when you come in our church, the attention in our church, and this is on purpose, is this right here, because the idea is the Word of God is supposed to have a prominent place in the church. Right? That’s why we do it like this.

But that object that was the center of attention was a statue of Mary with a crown on her head, holding a baby Jesus with a crown on his head.

And while looking at that statue of those two figures that were there, Mary was certainly more prominent than Jesus. In the visuals, Mary was prominent in that statue. And that, listen, that was the focus, the focal point of the basilica. That is a direct violation and transgression of this second commandment.

When the Lord says we’re not to make images, it says this, Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image nor any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. And yet that is held as a center point and an object of veneration and or worship. I’m just saying it’s a violation of Scripture.

I continue, verse five. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children under the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. Verse seven. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

We’ve already covered this. That’s number three. Verse eight. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. I won’t read all the rest of the verses related to the Sabbath, but they’re there. That’s number four. The first four commandments deal with man’s relationship to God. You see that? No other God. Idolatry, taking his name in vain and keeping the Sabbath. And then starting in number five, verse 12, begins from five to ten are commandments that relate ourselves to other men.

Verse 12 says honor thy father and thy mother. Obviously, if you have a series of commands that deal with other men, the first priority is those closest to us, right? And so our father and our mother. That thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not kill. That’s six. Thou shalt not commit adultery. That’s seven. Thou shalt not steal. That’s eight.

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. That’s nine. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house or anything that is thy neighbor’s at the end of verse 17. That’s ten. So five to ten deal with our relationship to other men. Now remember, going back to Matthew, the Lord summarizes the law in this way. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength, and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

He, like the Ten Commandments, divides this up into kind of two broad categories. That which relates to God and that which relates to men. And that which relates to God is of primary importance. And secondarily is that which relates to man. So you can kind of see these two broadly match. These two broadly match. Now, notice again back in Matthew 22 verse 37, the Lord says, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind.

This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Now the first command, you know what it does not deal with? It doesn’t deal with anything that you do.

It deals with what you love. Both commandments. Isn’t it amazing? All the emphasis in the New Testament is on love, right? Over and over. This is Jesus talks about love in the book of John, 1 John. Over and over. It’s all in the epistles. Love, love, love is kind of a foundational principle. And this is where it’s from. It’s from what our Lord said when he was on earth when he was talking about the law.

But in this greatest commandment, the one that is of the highest priority, it has nothing to deal with the activities that you do. It has to do with what’s inside of you.

He says, love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. You know what? You know all three of those places are not on the outside. Have nothing to do with what you say or where you go or how you live. It has to do with what is on the inside of you. And the Lord says, this is the greatest commandment.

Do you see that? And it deals with love. It deals with love toward God. Love toward our neighbor. You all know that the law of God was originally given.

As a method to convict us of our sin, right? You’ve heard of the Ten Commandment Test, right? Have you ever stolen anything? Have you ever told a lie? Right? Have you ever used God’s name as a curse word? You know, you’ve heard of that. And you know what? That’s valid. That’s good. In fact, I heard a testimony yesterday of a man who came to Christ because he was involved, he was addicted to pornography.

This is years ago. He was addicted to pornography and someone shared with him or showed him the scripture of whosoever looks upon a woman less after has committed adultery, which is part of the Ten Commandments. And that was the catalyst that brought him to Christ, that conviction from the law. Okay, so we might do the Ten Commandment Test. And we could, through the Ten Commandment Test, we can look at ourselves and we can say, all right, have I broken God’s law?

Am I righteous? Because if you or I have broken God’s law, even once, we are not righteous. We’re not holy. You cannot be righteous if you have broken God’s law. That you have disqualified yourself from that term. You’re not holy. You’re not righteous. That’s why we all need a savior, because we’re not. We think of ourselves as a little bit righteous and the Lord says you’re not righteous.

Righteous is 100% or zero. If you violated God’s law, you’re at zero. You know what? I’m at zero. I’m at zero. But that’s just the Ten Commandments. Apply that same principle to you if the commandment is love. Wow. What if the Lord said this? If you’re a good person, you can go to heaven. And obviously, we want to test ourselves based upon the ideas of goodness that we have.

I’ve never stolen anything. I’ve never told a lie. I’ve never committed adultery. I’ve never bowed down to an idol. Now, we take the biggest things we can find and we say, therefore, I’m good. Of course, we don’t broaden it out. But what if that wasn’t the test? That’s fine. That’s good. But what if that wasn’t this? What if we took the greatest commandment and we measured ourselves by that?

Have you loved God with every ounce of your very soul for your whole life? Who in the world is free of guilt? I mean, I would dare say that I don’t know a day in my life where I could honestly say that I have done that commandment to its fullness. Do you? And yet, the Lord says, if you’ve broken His commandments, the least of them, you’re guilty of them all.

What about if you’ve broken the greatest? Listen, listen, you and I, we don’t have a hope. We don’t have one hope, not a puff of air of hope in being righteous in ourselves. Because we have not loved God. And we haven’t even gotten to the second part, loving our neighbors as ourselves. We haven’t even gotten there. This standard is astronomical. This is out of this world. And the Lord says, remember, it’s above the Ten Commandments.

Listen, this is why it is impossible for a person without Christ to make it to heaven. This is why it is utterly impossible for a person to be righteous in themselves. Why it is utterly impossible that a person might be good. It cannot happen. It cannot happen. If we compare ourselves to this commandment, we are absolutely, totally devoid of hope. You think God’s going to judge us for not loving Him?

If He, listen, if God cannot lie, yes, He will. Because this is His commandment. And it is the greatest commandment. I think we’re all going to be surprised when we, when we, I think a lot, I say we all, as man in general, we’re going to be surprised when we stand before the throne of God. And He judges us. And His first item of business is not whether we said the four letter word here or there, or whether we skimmed a little bit off of our company’s money or property, or whether we smarted off to our parents.

Or no, His first item of business, I think, is probably going to be, you didn’t love me. You didn’t love me. But do you know what we do? Is it not true that we concentrate all on the outward things? And the greatest commandment has nothing to do with the outward. And it’s not that the outward doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter as much. It’s not first and greatest.

The first and greatest commandment doesn’t deal with the outward at all. It deals with the inward. And it is the one that condemns us most harshly because it is the one that we violate most frequently. Oh Lord, help us. Oh, that desire, that inward desire, we barely have enough, we can barely muster enough love for the Lord to just do the least, just the least. But He says, all your heart, all your soul, wow, wow.

You know, we might be able to, for a number of reasons, to suppress what are our inward inclinations so that we can kind of muster the strength we need to obey the Lord or be nice to others. In other words, one of those kind of clear outward commands that we’re familiar with. We might be able to muster enough strength not to use God’s name in vain or muster enough strength to keep our hands off other people’s property or whatever, those outward things that are easy to measure.

But this command does not deal with that. This command deals with much more than that. Even if a person musters outward obedience to God, yet we can still very easily and often are guilty of a violation of this command and therefore guilty of His law. Wow.

Look back at the verse if you would, verse 37, just to repeat a little bit, thou shalt love the Lord thy God. Verse 39, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Boy, the word love has been so destroyed. The word love has been so destroyed. Love in the romantic sense has been totally obliterated in our society. It is destroyed. It is unrecognizable compared to Scripture. It has nothing to do with the Bible.

Listen, when you get married and God says to love your wife, He’s not talking about your feelings. It has nothing to do with your feelings. You might not feel like loving her. You might not be in love with her, and yet God says to love her as Christ loved the church. Because love is not just the sentiments, the warm feelings you have toward people. But listen, you all know, you all are in this world, you know, that is exactly what people think love is.

God is not saying thou shalt have warm, heartfelt feelings toward the Lord. That’s not what He is saying. That is not what He is saying. You see, in the Scripture, love toward God is very frequently connected to obedience to His command, and often put in front of His commands. Just like with your wife, or with your husband. If you love your wife and love your husband, that love then produces certain things in your relationship, does it not?

It does. The love produces things. And so, listen Sam, if you and Anna are at odds with each other, and that’s going to happen from time to time over the years, you can still choose to love your wife. You can make a conscious decision that you are going to love her, and you’re going to do right by her, regardless of how you feel. That is possible. You can do that with your kids.

And you certainly can do it with the Lord. Listen to these verses, Deuteronomy 5-10, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me, notice what it says, and keep My commandments. Deuteronomy 11-1, therefore thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and keep His charge, and His statutes, and His judgments, and His commandments. Notice how it pairs them together. When the Lord said in John 14-15, if ye love Me, keep My commandments, that wasn’t new to Christ.

He’s just quoting the Old Testament. He’s just reiterating the thing that’s always been written, which is love to God is connected to, and has association with, keeping His commandments. It’s always first, but it does have connection. You can’t separate the two. Loving God and keeping His commandments are related. Okay? Listen to Joshua 22-5, but take diligent heed to do the commandment and the law, which Moses, a servant of the Lord, charged you to love the Lord your God, and to walk in all His ways, and to keep His commandments, and to cleave unto Him.

Nehemiah 1-5, and said, I beseech the old Lord God of heaven, the great and terrible God, that keepeth covenant of mercy for them that love Him, and observe His commandments. John 14-15, if ye love Me, keep My commandments. John 14-21, He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, He it is that loveth Me. 1 John 5-3, for this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.

Listen. This is what love looks like, okay? In practice, love toward God, it is an undeniable scriptural truth. It might go counter to current Christianity that is so concentrated on this kind of touchy-feely kind of thing. The songs are all about that. It’s all about the way you feel about God. Love toward God is way more than that. And it manifests itself in obeying His commandments. I know commandments is a curse word in Christianity.

I get it. But it’s still in the Bible. This is what love to God looks like. It is evidenced by keeping His commandments. And so if a person does not keep God’s commandments, it cannot be rightly said of that person that he loves God. He does not. You say, well, but I have this, I really like God, and I have this warm feeling toward God. That’s not what we’re talking about.

That’s not what we’re talking about. You see, if a sentiment, a warm feeling like love is today, if that’s what we say, so in fact, that’s the way people think. So, Brother Jim, if you’re witnessing to someone on the street and you say, do you love God, almost 10 out of 10 people are going to say, yeah, oh yeah, I love God. Oh yeah, I love God.

You love your neighbor? Oh, I love my neighbor. Oh yeah, oh yeah. But when they say that, what they’re thinking is, do I have warm fuzzy feelings about God in my heart? Or some might even say, if they want to be more true, do you think God is cool? God is cool. Me and God, we’re cool. You see, this is how love has been greatly diluted. See, listen, that same person, please listen.

That same person who says, yeah, I love God, I really have a warm feeling toward God, and that’s my word, I get it, can live in open rebellion, continual rebellion to God’s commandments and still think that he loves God. And all the while, God is saying, you do not. Because that’s not what we’re talking about. You see, to love God is to keep his commandments. They’re directly related.

How many Christians are there, listen, I’d say Christians with air quotes, that are involved in sodomy, the trans movement, and open immorality? Christians, people, I’m talking about professing Christians who say, I love God, but they’re living with someone they’re not married, which is a sin. That is sexual immorality. That is wrong. And God, the Bible says God will judge whoremongers and adulterers. That is wicked. And yet people live like that because that’s what all their peers do.

And I want to tell you something, that person does not love God. But there are literally millions of people that go to church who say that very thing, Oh, I love God, I love God. And they’re shacked up with someone who’s not their husband or their wife. That is a contradiction. And that is one of hundreds of things we could say. People get hammered every single weekend in violation to God’s word.

People who dishonor their parents and disrespect them and cut them to pieces behind their back. Listen, that is not love to God. You cannot say with one breath, I love God. And then everything you do is in violation to His commandments. You do not love, I’m just here to tell you, you do not love God. You do not love God. But this is how we’ve come to understand love.

So if we know that loving God is related to keeping His commandments, then what is the Lord saying regarding this first and greatest commandment? You know what He’s doing? He’s simply this, He’s drilling down to the very core of what we do. And that’s why He’s putting the spotlight on the inner man first. It is the first and greatest. That is first and priority, greatest in importance.

And He puts the spotlight not on the outward manifestation, but on the inward. Because if the inward is right, if there is true inward love toward God, the outward is going to fix itself because after all, all the outward commands hang upon this inward question. And as I said a minute ago, keeping commandments, the word commandment itself is like a religious curse word. It literally is. And you say commandments, you’re supposed to keep the commandments of God, and people are like, oh, commandments.

You’re just a legalist. What? Have you not read the Scripture? Jesus our Lord said, if ye love me, keep my commandments. You know what that means? There are commandments and He expects us to keep them. Right? He has commanded us, we are obligated to obey Him, even as a New Testament Christian. And if we don’t, we are sinning against God. But even though that’s the case, and that is true, He places the priority and the greatest significance not on the outward obedience but on the inward love.

You see the emphasis is different. Do we not in churches create lists of rules and regulations that everybody is supposed to follow, places you can’t go, places you should go and can’t go, things you should say and not say, and we create lists of rules. And listen, I have rules in my own life, that’s fine. We create lists of rules but then we measure it all by that.

And oftentimes to the total exclusion of our heart, to the total exclusion of the inner man and of love. And yet that is the greatest command. It could be, brothers and sisters, that the reason why we have such a hard time obeying God’s commands is because our love is not present. Listen, that’s just a reality. Little or no inward love makes it very difficult to do the thing on the outside.

But you see, our obedience to His various commands, however many they may be, is really at its core a matter of our love to God. If we love God, we would do them. And if we don’t, it is because we don’t love Him, to put it bluntly. If this commandment, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul and with all thy mind, if this commandment is the first and greatest commandment, then it should be our first and greatest priority.

Our priority then should not be just making sure we conform to rules and laws that are on the outside. That doesn’t mean the outside doesn’t matter at all, but it’s a matter of priority and importance, do you see? First and greatest, that’s where I get that. First and greatest. But see, that’s what I’m saying. What we’ve done in our extremely religious circles, especially in churches like ours, that are very conservative-minded and are really very serious about the Word of God and serious about doing what it says, and that’s a good thing.

What we’ve done is we’ve left out the heart, we’ve left out the core, and so we think if there’s just outward conformity to these rules and laws, then that’s good enough, and the Lord’s saying, it is not. You have still violated the first commandment.

So we should not be aiming just for that. We should start with the inner man. We should do things because we love him. We should obey because we love him. So the question of because is super important. It is the most important. Why do you do the things you do? Why do you obey the Lord the way you obey the Lord? Why do you avoid that thing that the Lord tells you to avoid?

Why, why, why? That is what this command answers, and that is the most important question. You see, there are two ditches. The one ditch says, because I do this and that and the other, therefore I love God. With no regard for the inner man, whether he’s affected or whether there’s actually any true love toward God at all, because people, listen, people keep rules like that for a lot of reasons.

Sometimes it’s to maintain appearances. Sometimes it’s because that’s the way they were brought up. Sometimes, in other words, it’s not always, it does not always follow that because someone keeps the outward commands of God, it is because they love God. They can neglect, listen, we can all neglect the inner man, the love. The love is the driving force. It’s the motivation. It’s the power generation of the Christian life.

But then there’s the other guy who says, I love God, but I don’t do this or that or the other that God commands me. Well, that’s the other ditch. That’s not love to God. It’s a warm sentiment, and has nothing to do with what he says, and that’s not correct either. So you have ditches on either side.

Imagine Valentine’s Day comes, and you take your wife flowers because that’s what you’re supposed to do, and you just throw them at her. Flowers grow everywhere. You did it. You bought your wife flowers. Congratulations. I don’t think it’s going to be accepted. Right? And I know that’s kind of an extreme example, but it does illustrate the truth. What is the motivation? Your wife cares about that. Your husband cares about that.

You care that what is driving the action, and God cares too. He does. It is his first priority. You see, all of our obedience is supposed to grow out of and spring forth from a heart of love to God, love with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength.

And if love is there, you will not have to worry about the obedience. That’s the beauty of it. If the love is there, you won’t have to worry about the obedience. You won’t have to worry about whether you share the gospel, or whether you can make it to church, or whether you can give your offering, your tithes and offerings to the Lord. You won’t have to worry about avoiding those things that God forbids, as he says we shouldn’t do.

You won’t have to worry about reading your Bible and praying if the love is there, and it’s a measure. That’s what love does. It drives us. But if we have just the outward conformity, what does it produce? You know what it produces? An outward conformity without any sincere love toward God in the heart, the inner man, produces very unhappy Christians who appear on the outside to be doing all the things they’re supposed to do.

It produces Christians with ungodly attitudes all the while that they are doing all the things that they’re supposed to do. That is not God’s will. The Lord doesn’t want our church or any church to be filled with people who are doing all the right things in order but are unhappy about it, who are sulky and angry and hateful toward each other and hateful toward others outside. That’s not, listen, he wants, get the love right and the rest will come out because it’s the first and greatest commandment and because all of God’s other commandments hang and are dependent upon that.

So that means our focus should be on that question of love. So I just want to ask you, man, what a probing question. Do you love God? Is it evident in your life?

Why do you obey when you do obey? Let’s pray.