Gods Highest Law - Ed Kropf 6-8-24

Greetings this afternoon in the name of Jesus, the King of Kings, the

King of the Greatest Kingdom of the past and of the future, appreciated what

we heard this morning on the kingdom and also the citizens of the kingdom,

and the way we end this afternoon here we're going to zero in a little

bit more on the commandments. How the citizens of the kingdom need to act

if they are going to follow their leader, follow the king. You think

of a king and the king giving out his commandments, his edicts for his

subjects, and so it is it is imperative that we follow the commands of

our king if we want to remain in the Kingdom of God, God's highest

law. If we would read he can turn to Mark chapter twelve, where

the text is taken from here today. But if we would read the beginning

of the chapter, the rulers of the people were testing Jesus. They were

asking him questions, and there was things about taxes and about marriage. And

if you would read Matthew's account, it says that he put the Sadducees to

science silence. And now this is the Pharisees turns. The Pharisees are testing

him here. And one of the things about the Pharisees is they had a

lot of laws, and they spent a lot of time. By what I

understand, they had over six hundred laws. They spent a lot of time

discussing those laws, looking at what is the most important law that was most

important for them to follow. And so that's the background here. Let's begin

reading Mark, chapter twelve, verse twenty eight. And one of the scribes

came, and, having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had

answered them, well, ask him which is the first commandment of all?

And Jesus answered him. The first of all the commandments is here, 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. 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, all the strength, and to love his neighbor as himself is

more than all wholeburn offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that, he

answered discreetly. He said in him, thou art not far from the Kingdom

of God. And no man after that durst ask him any questions. And

so we have them asking Jesus what is the greatest commandment here? And Jesus

takes them right back to the law. He gives them actually more than they

asked for. He gives them them two commandments. But the interesting thing is

he takes them back to something that they were very familiar with in the Law.

And I'd like to read this from the Old Testament as well, Deuteronomy

chapter six. It's very similar, but I would like to pull some things

from this passage as well. Begin reading in verse four, hero Israel,

the Lord our God is one lord. And thou shall love the Lord thy

God with all thine heart and with all thy soul, and with all that

might. And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine

heart. And thou shalt teach them diligently under thy children, and shall talk

of them when they citizen the house, and when they'll walk us by the

way, and when thou liest down, and when they'll riseest up, and

thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be

frontlets between thine eyes, and thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy

house and on thy gates. And these verses are very well known to the

Jews. To the people, these are known as the Shema. If I'm

saying that right, and as I understand it, maybe even to this day,

devout Jews would repeat this phrase at least verse four twice a day.

That hero is or the Lord our God is one Lord. And this is

the first verse that they teach to their children. And if Jews wear phylactories,

which are those little boxes on their foreheads and on their arms, this

is what is written in those boxes, The Lord, our God is one

Lord. And I will just point out another another interesting fact here. The

word Lord is Elohem, which is plural for the Trinity, as part of

the Godhead. And so we have the greatest commandment here, love the Lord

your God with all your heart. What does that mean for us? We

think about that today? What does it mean for me to love the Lord

our God with all our heart, and Deuteronomy it says here to love with

all our heart. I believe that's our innermost being, the very core of

our body, with all our soul as a spiritual aspect of our lives,

and then with all our might would be all our physical energies as we live

our lives putting that to work. And so we are putting our whole selves

into our love for God, our love for our creator, our King,

the king of our kingdom that we are in. And when I think of

love and think of what we think of as love today, you know,

there's a romantic type of love that we think about maybe around the time we're

married, before and for a little while after we're married, but if we're

going to have a successful relationship, there comes a time when that love to

continue loving is is a choice that we make. And this love is a

commitment at some point that we make that we are going to to love our

spouse. And I think about that, if we are going to love the

Lord our God with all our with all our heart, that at times,

at times that is a choice that we make as we are going to be

followers of God, that we make a choice, that we love the Lord,

our God with all our with all our being, with all our our

heart, soul, and mind. There's times that our flesh is not going

to to feel like loving God, to go against our flesh because we want

to do what our want to do in our love for God keeps us following

God and doing His will and commands in our lives. Says here in verse

six and Deuteronomy that these words to be in our heart, these words that

He commanded us to be in our heart, in our heart, our in

our innermost being, where we will remember him. Having this love is a

personal relationship with Him. And I thought about this when we were leaving yesterday

morning. We were headed towards Missoula, and maybe for those of you that

don't know, I drive a dump truck. And we got into town.

There was several trucks. There's a truck and company I recognize around Missoula,

several dump trucks, a couple of trucks pulling side dumps, and one of

the side one of the drivers of the side dump trucks, he always waves

whenebody sees me on the road in my truck. He recognize his truck.

Apparently he recognizes me, and we always wave. I recognize the truck,

recognize the driver at least as good as I can see him in the cab.

But I don't have never met the man, but I recognize him.

I Almo, you almost get the feeling you almost know him because see him

on the road numerous times. I think about that with our with our love

for God and having a relationship with God, and too too often we have

the knowledge of God. We can sit in these meetings here like today,

and we can sit into the sound of preaching every Sunday at home, and

we know, we know who God is, we know about God. But

I think about having these words in our heart, the personal relationship with Him,

that we know him, that we commune with him, and we cannot

truly love something that we don't know, and that as an integral part of

our lives. And I think of the result of having the love of God

in our heart, and I think it's very interesting that he goes right in

from that, right in from having the words of the Law in our hearts.

The first thing we do is we teach them to our children. And

I see this as our walk of life as we live. It doesn't gets

more personal that our families are those who know us the best. And I

believe that our first and foremost responsibility is to our families and the training of

our children. Sometimes it's hard for us as church leaders to know how to

or to make all that match, but I believe that our our first mission

field is to our our children. And I see this as a as a

walk of life that we we teach our children. We talk about it at

home, and we have an awareness of God and find ways to point our

families to God as we as we as we go through life. There's there's

things in nature, There's there's the work of God in people's hearts. It's

not luck and it's not happenstance. It's the work of God in our in

our lives, and an awareness of God as as we live our lives.

And I'd like to take this beyond our our family. I've always maybe thought

of this passage as that, but I'd like to go a little bit beyond

that. And it talks where it talks about when they walk us by the

way, and I would like to think broader than that. As we leave

our homes as we go out into society, as we face the world,

that we speak of God and we think on Him throughout the day, whether

we are at home, whether we are at work, as we as we

mingle with the world, that we find opportunities to speak of God by the

way, and it's easy. As we go about our work, we get

engrossed in our work, but we think of think of God and his his

goodness too. And I think about if we have this awareness of God at

the core of our beings, does that affect who we associate with and where

we go, where we find ourselves in life. Here and then we have

the second commandment, Jesus said, the second commandment like unto the first.

The first commandment is love God with all your heart. And we don't have

we understand that one. Maybe don't have a a lot of problem with that

one. But then we have the second commandment here, Now shall love thy

neighbor as thyself. And I'd also like to look in the law here Leviticus,

chapter nineteen, verse sixteen. I hardly knew where to start and stop

here with this, but begin reading a verse sixteen. Thou shalt not go

up and down as a tale bearer among thy people. Neither shalt thou stand

against the blood of thy neighbor. I am the Lord. Thou shalt not

hate thy brother in then heart. Thou shalt not in anyways rebut thy neighbor,

and not suffer sin upon him. 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, and I suppose for most of us his

command is at least as hard, if not harder, to follow than the

first. The first command? What does it really mean to love my neighbor

as myself? In Ephesians, where it talks about the husband and wife relationship,

it says no man ever yet hated his own his own flesh? But

what does it really mean to love our neighbor as ourselves? And again,

I think, like our marriage relationship, love our neighbor is going to be

a choice that we make, a commitment that we make at some point that

we are going to love our neighbor as ourselves. It's not going to come

come naturally. And it mentions here tail bearing, and I wonder, I'm

afraid I don't take this as seriously in my own life, as I as

I should. Sometimes in some things I have seen recently and pondered as interesting,

how easily we can see tail bearing in someone else's life, and how

easily we miss it in our own, And we never seem to notice if

we are guilty of this, or maybe we something we want to ignore.

And you know, we as men, we like to look, we like

to point blaze. But I don't think the ladies have a corner on tail

bearing. I think us men are as guilty of that as anyone, And

so we decide that all I want tail bear. So I'm just I'm just

going to say anything. But it says here as well, not even to

hold a grudge against our neighbor and loving, loving others. As we as

we love ourselves and we we like the best for ourselves, we might as

well admit that. And we want others to like us. We want others

to think highly of us. We want acceptance from our peers, and we

enjoy praise. We like when others notice and say what they appreciate about us.

And I think about it as we look at ourselves, and you know,

we we have a hard time maybe seeing ourselves for what we are sometimes,

but we we tend to put ourselves in a good light. Maybe we

made a mistake, but we really didn't mean to, or we'll try to

do better, but we're really we put ourselves in a good light, and

maybe we don't even see the effects of our mistakes on others the way the

way we shit, and we we like to give ourselves a benefit of the

doubt. Well, next time, you know, I slipped up, but

next time I'll I'll do better in that. And I think we each have

have blind spots in our own lives that we see and and you know,

the thing about a blind spot is is that I don't I don't see it.

A flat out don't see what's the blind spot in in my own life.

And I think there's often that we appear to others, probably a lot

different than we see ourselves in this. And so am I as we think

of how we view ourselves and and want others to view us? Am I

willing to extend the same grace to others around me that I expect them to

extend to me as well? I believe that love for my neighbor is not

just toleration for my neighbor. I believe that that love. I think too

often we try to keep our feelings just bottled up where no one sees.

And I'll be all right, But what is really love for my neighbor?

Does this mean that I give to my neighbor everything that I would desire to

have? And I think the way that we want to be treated in the

respect that we desire from others. And Jesus said, there is no greater

commandment than these two commandments. Love the Lord your God, love your neighbor

as yourself. And Matthew says, on these two commandments hang all the law

and the prophets. And I think I believe it's right if you condense everything

down in the commands of Jesus, that it comes down to this is loving

God and loving your neighbor as yourself. So simple, that's so hard for

us to follow at times. And I think that therein Mark the the scribes

response to Jesus answer there is very very interesting for a man with understandings of

only the Old Covenant. But it says that loving the Lord is better,

is more than all the other commands, better than all the sacrifices and the

burnt offerings. That what God desires is the love love for him, and

that you think about if you study the laws and study the covenants, it

is not the act, the act of the sacrifices. It is not the

act of that that God is after. What God and God's highest desire is

not that blood should be shed. Was it was necessary and important, the

blood needed to be shed for the sacrifice or sin. But God's highest desire

is a people that serve him out of love, and that they recognize God

for who he is, for what he has done for them, and the

mercy that He has extended to them, and the people that turns around and

loves Him with their whole hearts, and then out of that follows obedience to

Him. And if our heart is full of love for God, love for

our neighbor must flow right behind that. I don't believe it is possible for

us to have a heart filled with love for God and there to be room

in our heart for hatred for our brother. Think of what does this look

like in twenty twenty four today? And if we look at our own lives

as we observe others, what fruit what are we looking for in people's lives?

In our own lives today John twenty four thirteen. Jesus answered and said

it to him, a man love me. He will keep my words,

and my father will love him, and we will come unto him and make

our abode with him, and in our society, in our freedom of this

land that we live in. I think claiming to be a Christian comes pretty

cheaply. And there's a lot of people that claim to know God. A

lot of people claim to be followers of Him and that they know him.

But how many people are there that their lives do not reflect the love and

obedience to the teachings of Christ in their lives? And or there are a

man you'll mention some of the perversions this morning. And we live also live

in a culture that condones the murder of unborn babies. And yet some of

this is is all encompass under loving God and loving loving our neighbor. And

and we live in a culture that has driven with a desire for wealth and

for pleasure. And how does loving God with our heart affect the way that

we do business and the quality of the work that we do. And I

some of this I don't hardly know where to start. And stock with the

half an hour of time here, but just the overarching principles here. And

I think some of this is is more than what we don't do, but

what we we do as well. That loving God first means that we do

the work of the Lord willingly. We give the work of God first place

in our lives. And this includes serving God in foreign lands, and we're

going to hear about about some of that tomorrow. But I believe that overall

it is serving God where God calls