Loving God and Neighbors: Revisiting the Commandments with Fresh Eyes | Matthew 22:34-40

The following resource is brought to you by Real Life Community Church in Richmond, Kentucky.

We hope you're both challenged and encouraged by this message from Pastor Chris May.

Matthew, chapter 22, beginning in verse 34.

Matthew 22 · chapter mention

The Word of the Lord says this but when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?

And he said to them you shall love the Lord, your God, with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your mind.

This is the great and first commandment, and the second is like it you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

On these two commandments Depend all the law and the prophets.

It's the Word of the Lord, and you may be seated.

Well, each Christmas season is charged with fierce discussions.

They happen in church, they happen around your dinner table, and the discussion is this.

The debate is this what Christmas movie is the greatest of all times?

Oh, isn't.

Oh, thank you, man.

This is not going well for me.

Thank you, I'm bleeding and Siri's talking to me.

So we have these debates every Christmas season about which Christmas movies the greatest of all time.

And today I've got great news I'm going to end the debate.

We're going to settle this once and for all.

Are you excited?

And so I got this idea last night to post a poll on Facebook.

Many of you saw it.

How many of anybody in here vote Okay?

So we had many people on Facebook vote for their favorite Christmas movie and so here are the top 10 traditional Christmas movies.

Number 10, the Charlie Brown Christmas that's the Stout Dick right there.

Number nine it was a ride in, it wasn't one of the choices but got a lot of votes.

White Christmas.

Number eight Rudolph, you can.

You can shout if I.

You know clap, if I say your favorite here.

Miracle on 34th Street is number seven.

Number six how the Grinch stole Christmas.

By the way, fox News put out a study and did a poll and, because this is important news, they looked at every state's favorite Christmas movie.

The favorite Christmas movie of each state and ours is apparently how the Grinch stole Christmas.

Number five is home alone.

Number four Santa Claus with Tim Allen Come on.

That's Nikki's favorite Christmas vacation.

That's a good one.

And my favorite.

Number two Elf, buddy Elf, come on.

And number one it is settled.

The greatest traditional Christmas movie is it's a wonderful life, a great movie.

All right, I had a little caveat on the question that says diehard is not a Christmas movie and in the in the choices.

One of the choices was I'm mad that diehard is not a Christmas movie and if I'm being honest and fairness, that was number the number one answer, and I would just say we have a bunch of heathens that would vote for a diehard.

So in our text today we find another long discussed, heavily debated topic, namely it's not about Christmas movies, but it's about what is the greatest command in the Old Testament.

See, jewish teachers had long debated this issue which of the commandments in the Old Testament are the greatest, or which of them gives a good summary of the whole law?

There's 613 commandments, cause.

So you can imagine it's like hey, could you just summarize that in one law?

For me one or two.

And so this was a constant conversation.

And so in the passage we find this expert of the law, a law you're a scribe of Pharisee and he comes to Jesus and he says Jesus, which commandment is the greatest?

Settle the debate Now.

Jesus answer to this question is known as the law of Christ, or the great commandment, or commandments if you like.

Jesus answer here.

I know it's familiar, but I want you to listen intently because it is of vital importance, because it answers one of life's biggest questions there.

Believe it or not, there are bigger questions in life than what's the best Christmas movie.

One of the questions that we ask all the time, we hear all the time, we grapple with all the time and humans have done this since the beginning is what is the purpose of life?

What's the?

Maybe it's a phrase like what is the meaning of life?

What is my purpose here?

Why were we created?

And so those are deep, rather deep and philosophical questions, and you can find all kinds of answers about that on the internet.

But here Jesus gives a very brilliant and concise answer.

He says the greatest commandment is to love God and love people essentially, and so the greatest, the top of that, is to love God, which means this the chief aim of man, the chief purpose of man, coincides with the chief commandment, the Westminster Catechism.

Very first question is what is the chief aim of man?

And the answer is to enjoy God and to glorify him forever.

That's it, everything, everything, lord, you are everything to me.

So, jesus, answer, answer in at first glance is quite seems quite simple, doesn't it?

But this is is normally the case in the Bible.

It's a very charged and loaded answer.

So I know you're familiar with it, but listen anyways.

I promise you you will learn something.

So very simple.

Outline today the greatest commandment.

What is it, what does it mean and how do we live it out?

Easy enough.

What is it?

What does it mean and how do we live it out?

So, what is the greatest commandment?

Look again at Matthew 22, 37 and 38.

Jesus said here's the greatest commandment you shall love the Lord, your God, with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your mind.

He says this is the great and the first commandment.

Okay, so out of 613 Old Testament commandments that were incumbent upon the Jews, jesus says there's one of greatest importance.

There's one of greatest importance and it comes actually from the book of Deuteronomy.

Don, you're going to love this the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 6 and verse 5, and it was and is still to Jews such an important and familiar verse.

Deuteronomy 6 · chapter mention

So let me read.

Let me read Deuteronomy, chapter 6, actually verses 4 and 5.

Deuteronomy 6 · chapter mention

If I'll give you a second, if you want to flip there with me, here it is Deuteronomy 6, 4 and 5 here.

Oh, israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one.

You shall love the Lord, your God with all of your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

And do you know that for thousands upon thousands of years the Jews have used these two verses as part of a daily prayer, recited twice daily, called the shema?

Now the shema gets its name from the first word in the verse.

It's the Hebrew word for here.

The translation is the Jewish word shema now committed you.

Still to this day, they pray this shema prayer twice a day.

Now the shema listen.

It begins with the words here oh Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one.

Jesus says here this in our text.

So you have Deuteronomy here.

What's it say here?

The Lord, our God, this isn't just any God, this is the Lord, our God.

And Jesus says the greatest commandment is to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, your soul and your mind.

See, the command is not just to love God as a concept, it is not just to choose any old God that you wish to worship.

Jesus says, and God says in Deuteronomy love the Lord, your God, hero, israel, the Lord, your God, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one.

This is not any Lord.

This is not God as a concept.

This is Jehovah, this is Yahweh.

He is the one whom we are to love with all of our hearts, mind and soul.

You know, there's this erroneous idea in the contemporary real world today that all roads lead to heaven, that all roads lead to God, that as long as you're worshiping some God and and and you know, admitting and and recognizing that there is a God, it doesn't matter.

You do your, you know you go to God your way, I'll go to God my way.

You serve your God, I'll serve my God.

It's all the same.

No, beloved, there's one God, god hero, Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one.

There's one God.

The true and living God is the only one worthy of all of our love.

We're to love him with all of our heart, soul and mind.

So there it is Love, the one true God.

Now you may notice here a slight difference in Jesus words quoted in Matthew and the command in in Deuteronomy.

Did anybody pick up on that?

See, deuteronomy says, if you look at it again, to love God with all your heart, soul and might.

But Matthew says that he quotes Jesus and here he says that Jesus says to love God with all of our heart, soul and not might, but mind.

Now even more interesting, by the way, let me just say there the old Testament did not have a word that the Hebrew language did not have a word for the word mind.

So there, there it is might, but Jesus uses the word mind.

So then we go to Luke 10 and Mark 12.

And those gospels give us the same story and then they say they quote Jesus is saying oh, your heart, soul, mind and strength is like.

Which is it?

Is it?

Are we to love God with our heart, soul and might?

Are we to love God with our heart, soul and mind?

Are we to love God with our heart, heart, soul, mind and strength?

Which is it Like?

We need to clarify this today, see, to ask this question which which version did Jesus actually say?

It misses the point altogether.

There's there's something much more important here, and it's the repeated word.

What?

What is the repeated word there?

There's two actually.

Well, I'm sorry, in Matthew 22, that one verse, there's a repeated word love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, all and Okay, what's the point?

The everything.

That was a fitting song today, wasn't I didn't even do that on purpose the word all here.

Here's the bottom line.

What is?

The first, the greatest, the chief command given to the people of God to love God with every faculty of our being.

That's it, the chief aim of man.

To enjoy God and to glorify him together.

To love him with all of our hearts, amen.

So the supremacy of this command.

It points us to our purpose.

You're looking for your purpose.

I mean there might be sub-purposes in your work and to be a father or mother, whatever it might be, but you know, you look to Jesus and he gives you your purpose.

It is to love God with all of your heart.

So I don't care where you're at on this, you know social, economic spectrum.

Let's say I don't know what kind of job you have.

I don't know if you're a CEO or you're at the bottom of a company.

I don't know if you're single or married.

I don't know your IQ.

But listen, you have a purpose.

No matter where you're at, you have the same purpose of every other human being created in the image of God, namely to love God with all of you.

You know, if you want to know the purpose for why you were created, people are, you know, debating this all the time.

It's like go to the Bible.

Go to the Bible.

If I were to hold before you today you know some new invention, the only way you would know the purpose of that invention.

There's two ways, actually, you could know the purpose of that invention.

One is to talk to the inventor, the creator.

The second is to read the instruction manual.

Beloved the Lord's given us an instruction manual and he tells us why we were created.

The secular world, you know, here's what it insists.

It says a secularist say, oh, you need to find your purpose, and the way you do that is you look within.

Really, that's not logical.

You know, to find the purpose of an invention is not to look it within, it's to look outside, to talk the creator, to look outside the invention itself, at the instruction manual.

Man, we don't like to do that.

That's what we should do, right?

And so, yes, if we want to know our purpose, we go to the Bible.

And here it is the chief purpose of man, every man, every woman, is to love God with all of our being.

So Jesus was asked the greatest commandment, and he gives it.

But then he kind of veers off and he says oh yeah, by the way, I'm gonna add a second one.

He wasn't asked that.

And he says here it is.

You know, the second is like it to love your neighbor as yourself.

Now why would he add the second commandment, though he wasn't asked?

I'll tell you why because the second commandment is inseparable from the first.

The two hang together inseparably.

Let me just read you 1st John, chapter 4.

John 4 · chapter mention

We love believers.

We love because he first loved us.

If anyone says, listen, I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar.

Listen, for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.

And this is the commandment we have from him whoever loves God must also love his brother, or you could say, neighbor, in his book.

This is a hilarious story, honestly, and sobering one, that I came across yesterday.

It's from a book called the Dangerous Act of Worship and it's written by Mark Labritan, and Mr Labritan tells the story of an experience he had in a worship service one time where the the worship leader, he opened the service in prayer and encouraged everybody man, let's worship God today.

And he prayed and he said God, fill this place with your presence, lord, draw us all into worship.

And after he prays, he comes down onto the floor and he stands right in front of the people on the first couple of rows and he's kind of singing raptuously from the floor and as he does, he's got his eyes closed and his hands lifted and he said that this author said that the the song service was about two hours long.

You ever been to a church like that?

And he says the entire time, this guy who is saying Lord, draw us all into worship together.

He said his eyes are closed, his hands raised and that he's like dancing and he's stepping on people's toes literally the entire time.

No apology, no acknowledgement.

He's he's stepping on them.

And this is so interesting because it illustrates, I think, a significant problem in the church today, namely that worship, worshiping God, sometimes is it the expense amongst Christians?

It's at the expense of loving our neighbor.

It let me say it like this sometimes we worship God, are we attempt to, without any regard for our neighbor.

You know I've heard people say I love God but not.

But you know I'm not too fond of people doesn't work.

Doesn't work.

First, john, if you say you love God but you don't love your brother, which is not just your blood brother, if you don't love your brother, if you don't love other humans.

He says you're a liar.

Who in the world would leave an iPad on and then a cell phone?

The preacher do as I do, not a not as I say.

So who is Jesus calling us to love?

This is a question worth asking.

Who is your neighbor?

When Luke's account of the same story, he takes it a little bit further.

And Jesus actually, after giving the story, that the question is asked who's my neighbor?

And then, what parable does Jesus give you?

Remember?

You got it?

It's on tip of your tongue.

Parable of the good Samaritan.

There it is the yeah, okay, the pair of the good Samaritan.

And the point of that story is is this that our neighbor includes every race, every nation, every social economic class and watch this, even our enemies.

How you doing commands?

Not so easy, is it the love?

Let me quote Augustine here the love of?

Here's what he says.

The love of God is the first and great commandment, but love of our neighbors is the mean by which we obey it.

Augustine says since we cannot see God directly, god allows us watch this, to catch sight of him through our neighbor.

By loving our neighbor, we purge our eyes to see God.

So love your neighbor and you will discover that in doing so, you come to know God.

Now listen for a moment.

Your love for people can serve as a visible gauge, revealing how much you truly love God.

When I asked the question this morning do I really love God with all my heart, soul, mind, strength, everything within me?

One of the gauges is how do you love people?

How do you love people?

That's a sobering thought.

Are you glad you came to church this morning?

So there it is, the great commandment.

It's to love God, to love people.

What does it mean?

What does it mean?

Well, there is a dangerous misconception, really popular amongst what we might call liberal Christians.

So oxymoron, isn't that that loving?

Here's the misconception that loving God and loving people replaces the laws in the Old Testament.

In other words, they would argue that the Old Testament is about rules but the New Testament is about love.

You know, you have people and I've seen this they they advocate for what in the Old Testament and, honestly, the new, what the Bible calls sin in abominations.

And here's their end.

And I say listen, the Bible forbids that.

Well, that's the Old Testament.

The law of Jesus is to love right.

Look at verse 40 in our text.

On these two commandments, jesus says, depend all the law and the prophets.

He does not say they replace, he said, the other laws, all other 611 laws in the Old Testament.

They hinge on these two commandments.

So they don't cancel Jesus, what we call the law of Christ, the great commandments.

They don't cancel out what God says in the Old Testament.

In the English language we often use love, the word love as a noun, but in our text you know that the word love, it's the Greek word agapeo, which is a verb, and so it's seen in the story again of the good Samaritan.

What we find is this is love is not just a feeling.

The good Samaritan didn't walk by you know the man in need and just have kind of pity in his heart and just love him as an affection.

You know what he did.

He helped him.

Love.

In the Bible it is an action.

It is an action and the Bible teaches us that loving God involves obeying God.

Again, you cannot separate these two things.

In John 14-15, here's what Jesus says.

We all say oh sure, I love Jesus, but here's what Jesus says if you love me, you will keep my commandments.

Now notice what he doesn't say.

He doesn't say if you love me, please keep my commandments.

He says you will.

You will keep them.

You want to know.

Do you love Jesus with all of your being?

Do you strive to keep his commandments?

Throughout my years in ministry, I've heard many people who live extremely immoral lives and they claim to love God and they even say things.

This is really common.

Well, I still pray.

Well, good for you.

But if you're living like that and you don't care and you're not convicted, I can promise you one thing People get mad, but it's the honest truth.

If this is you today, if you're living in sexual sin and unrepentant, if you're living in habitual lying or whatever, if you cheat, if you steal any of those things that the Bible forbids, if you're always losing it on people and you're sinning in your anger and you have no conviction about it and you do not repent, I don't care what experience you've had at the altar, I don't care what you claim.

You do not, according to the Bible, love God.

That's preaching right there.

So then this begs the question so if loving God with all of our being includes keeping his commandments, are we bound to 613 commandments in the Bible?

And if you turn to your bulletins.

We've got all 613 commands microscopically printed and we expect you to memorize them and follow in this week.

Well, the answer to that question is, yes, the Old Testament applies to us, but no, we aren't, I don't believe, required to keep all 613 commands.

And a helpful way to think about this is we can kind of divide the law in the Old Testament, the 613 commands, into three categories.

So we have civil laws that were given to Israel and these are, you might say, judicial laws that pertain to Israel at a specific time in a specific culture.

Now, because we're in a different time in culture, actually we couldn't even keep some of those commands.

They would not coincide with the laws of America, but they can still serve as guiding principles.

So it's not that we just trash them.

They're helpful principles but we don't have to keep those laws.

You know, to a T, let's say, then you have that civil law, then you have what you might call purification laws.

Purification laws, and they were about the ceremonial laws, you might say, but they were about the Israelites' worship rituals and they were for a time because they pointed forward to Christ who fulfilled the ceremonial law.

These laws were given to show Israelites how to be clean, how to worship God, how to approach God, but in Christ we are made clean, so we don't have to go through those rituals anymore.

Aren't you thankful?

Then, finally, we have what we might call the moral law or, as we know them, the 10 commandments.

The 10 commandments I believe they're timeless laws that tell us how to live life's pleasing to God.

Christians, we are still to follow the 10 commandments, and here's how I know that, because you know that 9 of the 10 are repeated in the New Testament.

The only one that's not repeated, anybody know?

Remember the Sabbath?

Now, the reason that is is because, again, the Sabbath is fulfilled in Christ.

We rest in Christ 24-7, but we ought to still, I believe, take time every week.

Man, this is convicting to me.

We ought to take time every week for God-centered rest.

So the law of Christ to love God and to love people.

You know what it is.

It is a summary, if you think about it, of the 10 commandments, so it doesn't replace them, it summarizes them.

Listen to this, think about the first four of the 10 commandments.

They teach us how to love and obey God, and so think about Jesus commands love God with all of your being.

If we love God, we won't have command one any other guys before him.

We won't make idols, we won't take his name in vain and we will take time for God-centered rest.

But then Jesus says you know what?

There's another command you need to know and that is to love your neighbor as yourself.

That's a summary of the last six commandments and I won't list them all.

But if I love my neighbor, I won't lie, I won't commit adultery, I won't steal, so on and so forth.

You see, this the law of Christ.

This is the point.

It doesn't replace the 10 commandments, but it summarizes them.

Loving God is to obey God and loving your neighbor is to serve your neighbor.

Now the great commandment, or the law of Christ, if you like.

It's not less than obedience, but it is more, it is more.

A few months ago I came across a video of Dennis Prager.

He's this really famous non-Messianic, meaning that he doesn't believe in Jesus, but he's a traditional non-Messianic Jew, and in the video I was shocked to hear.

This just blew my mind.

It was an argument about viewing pornography and he argued that in Judaism that would not be considered a sin, and here's why he demanded that Judaism is a religion of works.

And so he says listen, if you're looking at this stuff and you know, as long as you're not bound by it, he says listen, as long as you're not acting it out, it's fine.

It's fine because all that matters is that with our you know bodies that we obey God.

I have a real problem with that.

We've seen from the Sermon on the Mount that the law of God, it includes our hearts.

Jesus said this, remember, in Matthew 5, he says you don't commit adultery.

Good for you.

But if you lust after a woman, you've already committed adultery in your hearts.

You haven't murdered anybody.

Jesus says wow, that's great.

Nobody in here has done that, right.

Somebody said I didn't say do you want to do that?

I said have you done that?

But Jesus says this oh, you haven't committed murder, good, but if you hate your brother, you're guilty of murdering your heart.

What's the point?

God doesn't just want our obedience, he wants our heart.

He wants people who want to worship him, who worship him out of love and who obey him out of love.

And they want our outward.

He wants our outward obedience to match what's in our hearts.

You know, if you have children, you probably said to them let's say you told them to clean their room.

And they say I don't want to.

And you say I don't care what you want, do it anyways.

I don't want to go to school, I don't feel like it.

I don't care what you feel, do it anyways.

So you've probably had a child.

If you had children, you know when they were young they'll do whatever you say.

But they've got their arms folded and they want you to know they hate it.

You know, I don't care, you're doing it.

God does care.

He doesn't want us walking around obeying him with that.

I can't believe.

I don't want to do this.

No, he says I don't want that kind of obedience.

I want your heart.

I want a heart that that desires to obey me, that loves me.

It's not a New Testament idea, by the way.

Dennis Prager as scholarly as he might be, I think, misses a lot of scriptures in the Old Testament.

Let me just give you Isaiah 29, 13.

There God chastises his people because they draw near to them with their mouths and honor him with their lips, but he says their hearts are far from him.

He's not interested in heartless obedience.

So here it is.

The law of Christ requires us to love God, to love people, which means that we obey God and serve others out of hearts of love.

Are you with me?

Final point, I'll move quickly through it.

How do we do it?

Is anybody doing a great job of this right now, like, are you living this out perfectly?

Okay, then we need to know how to do it.

How do we do this?

The point of the passage is we can't, we can't, and of ourselves, we can't.

That's what the law reveals our incapability of living up to the standards of holy God.

So at first glance, we read the great commandments and we think, wow, pretty easy, I just love God and love people.

Sure, I love God.

But then, when we take time to consider the commandments and what it means to love God and love people, we realize that none of us are good enough, moral enough, loving enough, to keep the law of Christ.

Here's the thing In and of ourselves.

Do you know, even when we obey the laws and this was the problem with the Pharisees we don't do it with the right motives.

We do it for one of two reasons Out of fear God's going to strike me down, or out of pride, which was the Pharisees Look at me, I can do this.

So this is worth thinking about.

If you think today, well, I can keep the great commandments, you actually prove in that moment that you can't, because you're taking pride in your own morality and pride, by the way, is a sin.

So how do we keep the commandments?

God demands this of us, but we can't do it.

Where do we go from here?

First step is this First step to living out the law of Christ is to actually admit that we can't do it.

You see, we think so many people in our you know that we witness to they think, okay, I like this Jesus thing, but I've got to do something first, I've got to clean myself up first, and then I'll come to Jesus.

Well, if you are waiting to do that, you'll never come to Jesus because you can't clean yourself up.

If you could, jesus would not have had to come.

So the first thing you need to do if you want to live this out, we must realize and not, by the way, not just at the beginning of our relationship with Jesus, but even today we still realize in and of ourselves we can't do it.

We can't do it.

We've got to come to terms, particularly non-Christians.

They have to come to terms with their own depravity, their own malevolence, the wickedness of their own hearts.

So that sounds kind of like bad news.

We can't do it, but we admit that.

And then that leads us to the second step, which is this where we failed, Jesus was successful.

Jesus is the only one to ever live out and obey perfectly the entire D of the Old Testament, and to do it with the right heart.

Yet he was the only one ever live it out, the only one on earth that didn't stand condemned.

But at the cross, do you remember what he cried out?

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Our sin, our incapability of following the laws of God, has separated us.

It has caused us that the sentence is death and to be forsaken forever by God, our Creator.

But Jesus, who did not deserve to be forsaken, was forsaken so that we, by faith, do not have to be forsaken.

Through Jesus, we can draw near to God.

And when we come to Jesus, here's what happens he brings us to God and he changes our hearts by His Spirit and he actually empowers us to live out these commands.

So don't, as a Christian, don't think well, I still can't do it.

You can't do it on your own, but Christ has given you and he's given me everything we need to live out these commandments.

That's why Paul says walk by the Spirit and you won't fulfill the lust of the flesh Every day.

Walk by the Spirit.

Remember, this is not in my own strength that I'm going to live this Christian life.

It's in the strength of the Lord.

Walk by the Spirit, submit to the Spirit.

You watch movies all day like Die Hard.

You listen to music that's not glorify God and then you wonder man, why am I always stumbling?

What you put in is what's going to come out.

You want to walk by the Spirit.

You put in godly things.

You read the Word, you pray, watch who you hang with, minister to non-Christians, but let your people, the ones from whom you gain wisdom, let them be men and women of God.

You'll hear more and more the voice of the Spirit of God and you will be able to submit to the Spirit of God and you will walk in these commands.

If you would come to the keys, please.

First thing we must do if we want to walk in these commands we admit that we can't do it, that we fall short, but we come to Jesus as our fulfillment.

Let me say it like this Before we can give the love that Jesus demands, we have to first become recipients of love.

Again, 1 John 419,.

We love because he first loved us.

We cannot give what we do not have.

That's why non-Christians can't give love to this extent.

But as we're filled with the love of God, we become channels of the love of God.

So in closing, even as Christians, let me just say we still fail at times to love God and love people perfectly.

Has that been you this week?

But the question I have for you are you striving to love God with all your heart?

Are you striving to love your neighbor as yourself?

I want you to.

The cross is covered a bit, but can you see the top of it at least?

I want you to think of this.

I want you to just look at the cross for a moment.

The vertical piece of the cross.

You know what it reminds us?

It reminds us that Jesus loved God perfectly.

We have this vertical beam Even in his agony, even in the garden of Gethsemane, he said Lord, if there'd be any other way, but not my will, but yours be done, he obeyed the Father.

Cross is a symbol of loving God with all of your being.

The horizontal piece reminds us that Jesus also went to the cross for our good, to restore relationships.

He came to save his people from their sins.

The cross is a perfect illustration, a beautiful illustration of loving God with your whole heart and loving your neighbor as yourself, beloved.

We are called to follow in Jesus' footsteps and bear our own cross.

In a moment I'm going to sing a song.

Read us this song Hallelujah, what a Savior.

And I love this verse.

Bearing shame and scoffing, rude In my place, condemned, he stood, sealed my pardon with his blood.

Hallelujah, what a Savior.

It's the purpose of life to love God with all of our being and to love people fiercely.

The only way we can do it is to cling to that cross every single day.

Stand with me, let's pray, father, oh, how we love you.

We want to love you more.

We want you to be the center of our lives.

We thank you that you sent Jesus again, as I always frequently say, that you sent Him to do for us what we could not in a million lifetimes do for ourselves.

We could not keep the law because we are utterly depraved, but you sent Jesus, who perfectly, perfectly obeyed the law, perfectly loved you, perfectly loved his neighbor and yet there he stood, condemned at Calvary, forsaken so that we didn't have to be our substitute.

So let us remember today that when we come to Jesus, that he changes us, that by His spirit we are made new.

We are new creations in Christ and we are now empowered to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and to obey your word and to love people with everything in us, to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Help us in that aim today.

If there's one here who is deceived, if they claim to love you and to know you but they live in habitual sin, lord, may their eyes be open today and may they repent.

If there's one here that's trying to earn his or her way to you through keeping commandments apart from Jesus, let them come to the cross today and admit that they can't do it on their own.

May they turn holy and fully to Jesus Christ and may their life be changed today we pray these things in Christ's name, amen.

Thank you for listening.

If you'd like to know more about how you can have a relationship with Jesus Christ, or if you have questions about our church, you can email us at info at myrealchurchorg.

Real Life Community Church is located at 335 Glendon Avenue in Richmond, kentucky.

We invite you to join us for worship Sunday at 10.45 am or Wednesday at 7 pm, and visit us online at myrealchurchorg.