Questioning our Lists

We all

live... If we're gonna live lives that are

somewhat organized,

you have lists.

Right?

List. Do you go to the grocery store

without a list? Who goes to the grocery

store without a list?

Jane does not let me go to the

grocery store without a list because I... That

looks good. I could use that. Yep. Need

that. That might be good and I come

home with a bunch of things that never

get eaten or used, so she does the

grocery shopping. She goes with a list. How

about playlist? For your favorite music platform. I

love

making playlists.

How about your Christmas wish list?

Your birthday wish list.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but how

about you with little ones, your school supply

lists?

Oh, I know.

We're already coming around the corner to get

back to school. I remember when our kids

were little. It was,

Back to school night, blink

field day. Back to school night, blink, field

day, school supplies.

How about your bucket list?

Right? Your bucket list, the things you wanna

do or see before you kick the bucket.

Right?

So

speaking of lists.

I read a a list of a hundred

things to do before you die.

And I was quite surprised that y'all for

help wasn't 1 of them.

Thank you, Meghan.

She's my plant and the audience to giggle.

Any dog people,

innovation. Dog people.

Okay?

I like other people's dogs. I just don't

like having a dog, but here's the list

of the 10 worst dog breeds. Let's see

if your dog is on this list.

I know.

Number 1,

there. Number 2, are.

Number 3, no,

Number 4, bad.

Number 5,

dog, number 6, breeds.

Number 7, only. Number 8, bad. Number 9,

owners.

There are no bad dog breeds, only bad

owners.

And coming in at number 10 is Chihuahua.

Y Taco bell. Right?

Jane asked me to put ketchup on the

grocery list. And now I can't read it.

Keep going, Scott, you got this.

I finally crossed running a marathon off my

bucket list. There was no chance I was

ever gonna do it. I'm glad it's gone.

Lastly,

I hired a handyman, and I gave him

a list of things to do at our

house. And when I got home,

He had only done number 1, number 3

and number 5

because it turns out he only does odd

jobs.

I'll be here all week. Tip your waitress.

We're in a series called ask the rabbi.

And we've been going through the gospel in

looking at

questions that were asked of Jesus, who asked

those questions?

Why did they ask? What was their motive?

And what was Jesus response? And I've really

enjoyed this and we've had really good feedback

that most of you have really enjoyed this.

So appreciate that.

Today, we're gonna look at a passage

a question that was asked of Jesus,

probably at least 3 times.

Let me read this to you.

1 of the scribes came and heard them

arguing and recognizing that he had answered them

well.

Asked him what command is foremost of all.

What's the greatest command? Jesus answered.

The foremost is hero israel.

The Lord our God is 1 lord, and

you shall love the Lord your God with

all your heart, with all your soul, with

all your mind

and with all your strength.

And the second is this, you shall love

your neighbor

as yourself.

There is no other command

greater than these.

What is the greatest command? Jesus?

In the old testament,

the in the Hebrew Bible, there are 613

commands. There's a list

of 613

commands.

And the... Those commands were divided into into

2 categories. You had the heavy more binding

commands,

and then you had the light

section, which is the the less binding.

The context of this question that's asked of

Jesus

is the ph we're trying to

test Jesus.

Did he love God's law? Did he... What

was his

interpretation and understanding to the law?

What's the greatest command? Jesus

quotes

what the the Jewish people call the sc,

which is

the word in Hebrew to hear to hear.

Sc.

Sc Israel. I not el.

You didn't know I spoke Hebrew, but I

do a little bit.

Hero Israel, the Lord, our God. The Lord

is 1. And that was that whole passage

in D64

through

about 10 is the creed of judaism.

Most orthodox Jews would and still do today,

recite that passage

have it memorized and recite it out loud

at least twice a day.

And then Jesus adds to that,

Levi vi 19 verse 18.

And he tells them

all of this list of commands every single

1 of them that you've read, hang on

these 2 peg of

love god with all you have.

And love your neighbor as yourself. All of

the commands flow

out of out of those that command to

love God and love your neighbor.

I don't know if you like me.

If you have a a short attention span

sometime,

long act

explanations where you out,

anybody relate to that just a little bit

or how about

tedious

rules,

rules for just rules sake?

I'm probably breaking those rules. If they don't

have love behind it, and it's just a

rule to have a rule,

it's

It's

those those wear me out as well You

ever read the book of.

Fall asleep, man, it's a tough book to

read because there's all these different tedious

commands and things told to do.

So what I love about what Jesus has

done for us here is he gave us

the cliff notes

on all 613

commands.

The cliff notes are... Everything flows from your

love for God and your love

for your neighbor.

If you look at the 10 commandments. Right?

The first

4 of the 10 commandments are about loving

God. The second 6 are about loving your

neighbor.

Don't lie. Don't steal, don't murder, etcetera.

And so for us to get the most

out of this, we have to see... What

what is Jesus

telling us today? How does this apply to

you and I in the year 20 24

in the season of life that you find

yourself in

because the gauge of disciples ship

and our

transformation is our ability

to love God be loved by God and

love our neighbor as ourselves. That... That's the

gauge. That's what we're looking for. The... The

measure of maturity is love.

And the root of sin

is a failure to love.

Sometimes sin is defined as breaking god's law.

Yeah. I get that. Sometimes it's missing the

mark.

Defined as, but ultimately, when when we send,

it's a failure to trust God,

obey God,

and I'm doing something against my neighbor. Somehow

some way. That's ultimately

the root of sin.

And I think it begs the question

on this greatest command, why would god command

us

to love him.

It's a fair question.

What? He doesn't need our love?

Why would he command us to love. This

is so important.

Anything God commands

of us to do or not to do

it's out of love. He wants what's best

for you and I.

Because God loves us too much to let

us

share our hearts

and our worship with a lesser joy than

him.

Because the ultimate joy is found in loving

god and being loved by God

and love God.

Let's talk about this. What does it mean

to love God. What does it mean? Let's

it? Try to answer that question.

To love God, first of all, means I

daily choose

to give him the whole of my life.

I daily choose to give him the whole

of my life.

That means you value god

above all else.

Value is the essence of worship.

The word worship that we say in in

modern English today comes from the old

English way of of speaking of the word

worth ship,

the worth of something.

So we worship what we value.

I think this is so important. When you

and I

see

all of our life

as acts of worship to God,

then we will be we will be giving

him the whole of our life. We will

be loving God when he we see everything

that we do from little things to big

things as acts of worship. The apostle Paul

put it this way in Philippians 01:21. He

Philippians 1:21

said to live as Christ,

and to die his gain.

To live as Christ. To live as Christ

is to give god the whole of my

life every day.

Give him the whole of my life, and

I think this is important.

That you and I as followers of Jesus

followers of Jesus that we don't compartment minimize

our lives. We don't compartment minimize him

in our life. What I mean by that

is

I work.

I have a family. I have friends,

I have hobbies.

And I follow Jesus and go to church.

That's compartment minimizing.

What we need to do to live as

Christ is he is the

foundation

And from from him, flow, my work, from

him, flow, my family, my friendships, and my

hobbies. He's the he's the totality of our

life.

So spend your life on what matters most

to Jesus.

What matters most to him, spend your life

on that.

See Jesus in the ordinary.

Right? From, like first Corinthians 10:31 says whether

1 Corinthians 10:31

you eat or drink due to the glory

of God.

Eating and drinking are pretty ordinary

thanks, and we do that with thankful and

grateful.

Changing a diaper to the glory of God.

Your job turning a wrench. Whatever you do,

see it as an act of worship

to God.

Secondly,

what does it mean to love God? It

means I choose daily

to seek to do his will.

With my life.

Seek to do his will wake up in

the morning and say God,

I give you my will.

Because the do God's will, you're gonna have

to let him be in charge of your

will. You're gonna have to turn your will

over

to him.

And I got good news. If you want

to do the will of god, you will.

Because if you want to do God's will,

it means your heart is in position.

For him

to move your life in the right direction

that's best for you and that you're gonna

have an impactful life

on others.

And as Brian said earlier,

his will is love that we love him

and that we love 1 another and that

we obey his commands.

Jesus said his commands are not burdensome.

He said, follow me, and you'll find rest

for your soul. Jesus said this in John

15,

This is my command,

love 1 another. The way I have loved

you.

This is the very best way to love.

Put your life on the line for your

friends.

You are my friends when you do the

things I command you.

In Matthew's gospel, Matthew 5, 6 and 7

is a very

long descriptive version of the sermon on the

mount.

In Luke's Gospel,

in Luke chapter 6,

Luke 6 · chapter mention

it's a condensed version of the sermon on

the mount.

And you know the sermon on the mount

has some some tough things in there.

Like love your enemies.

Pray for those who per you.

If they ask you to go 1 mile,

go 2 miles.

Anybody see, better not spoil it for you

Anybody wants the chosen

Alright. You know what I'm talking about there

I'm going the this extra mile. I'm not

gonna spoil it for you, but thank you.

You should watch it. It's free, download the

app. Very cool.

Life giving for sure.

But at the end of the sermon on

the mount in Luke 6,

Jesus

says this. He says, now, why do you

call me Lord Lord

and do not do what I say.

He's puzzled by that.

You're gonna call me Lord, but then you're

gonna not do what I say.

Any good father or mother has experienced that

before with your kids. Like,

I'm your dad. I'm your mom. I love

you. I have your best interest at heart.

But how much more the perfect god

in heaven says, why do you call me

Lord and not do what I say. Why

do you not put into practice?

Why do you not forgive those who wrong

you? And so forth.

And I think we summarize

if if to love God is to give

him the whole of my life and my

will,

then what we're gonna have to do is

is

answer this question.

In any given circumstance,

ask yourself what does love require of me?

What does love require of me in these

relationships or I wrong somebody or they wrong

me

or I'm frustrated or what... What's love

require

of us,

then we'll love God.

How do I love God?

How do we love God? Like, what... How

is that tangible to love

a being that we don't see?

You know, who doesn't need me? He doesn't

need any of us. How do we love

him?

And I'm gonna kinda go a reverse way

on this?

Is the the first thing to love God

is I need to know that I'm loved

by the father.

You need to know if you're gonna love

God,

give him your life, give him your will.

You need to know that you are infinitely

loved.

First John

puts it this way. John, the apostle says

we love him because he first loved us.

It's gonna be hard to love God if

you don't know or believe that the father

truly loves you. If you don't know and

believe that it's gonna be hard for you

to love him. People who have had difficult

earthly fathers.

Who maybe were abusive or absent or whatever.

It's not easy to love someone who doesn't

love you back.

But in our situation with our heavenly father,

he loves us

eternally.

How do I know he's loved you? Eternally.

Go to Ephesians 1.

From eternity pass, before he ever created the

universe,

created Adam and eve his love was put

upon you and set upon you. You were

on his mind in eternity past.

Let that sink in.

His love is perfect.

Perfect love, casts out all fear.

His love is

unconditional.

He doesn't put conditions on his love. He

loves you because he created you.

And his love is personal.

We all say God is love, God loves

people, but we don't often personalize it for

ourself. I think it was a augustine

He said that god loves each of us

as if there was only 1 of us.

He loves you with that kind of love.

I'm on a Facebook group

theological group, people talk about scripture and their

walks with Jesus. There's thousands of people on

this Facebook group.

The other day I just kinda scrolling through

some of the comments and this guy

had said, I think I'm done with this

whole faith thing. He said my dad

is filled with cancer. My dad was a

pastor and serve god all his life and

now he doesn't even recognize me sometimes.

And he'd had had some other people die

and, like freak motorcycle accidents recently.

And he was like,

God can't be good if he's gonna allow

this kind of stuff to happen.

And we've all been there.

Something bad happens in your life and you

start thinking, God trying to teach me a

lesson.

No.

The father doesn't

abuse people to try to teach them a

lesson.

Life happens.

Bad things happen because we're in a fallen

and broken world, and I love the honesty

of Jesus.

In John 16 33,

he said,

In this life, you will have trials and

sorrows of many kind.

But take courage. I've overcome the world.

This we we want this life on this

earth to be heaven, and it's not, and

it never will be. As good as life

can be,

This is not heaven. The best is yet

to come. In the new heavens and in

the new Earth where there will be no

more sin, no more Sorrow, all wrongs will

be rite by Jesus. We're not there yet.

So make margin in your life for trials

and Sorrows, but no.

That that doesn't change the love of God

for you because we look at our circumstances.

The other thing, we we look at our

circumstances and try to base God's love on

that or our feelings.

And feelings are roller coaster right. Sometimes you

have doubts. Sometimes you want God feels a

million miles away.

What determines his love for you is the

incarnation of Jesus Christ. That God the son

came into this fallen broken

endemic world

became 1 of us

entered into a body like ours,

and

lived a perfect life,

died to brutal death, sac death, but rose

again.

That's

cross right there is what determines God's love

for you and I. What he was willing

to do for us.

The second thing on how do I love

God kinda goes

with the first 1 and it's this. I

need to abide in Jesus and walk in

the spirit.

And I believe abiding in Jesus

and walking in the spirit are the same

thing. It's just saying it a little bit

differently.

Jesus

tells us this, he says, abide me and

I and you

as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself,

fruit of itself

unless it abide in the vine.

So neither,

can you unless you abide in me?

I am the vine. You are the branches.

He who abide in me, and I and

him he bears much fruit.

For a apart from me, you can do

nothing.

God

is

people say, well, what is God? God is

an eternal

relationship between the father's son and spirit.

1 God, 3 persons. They've existed

eternally. From eternity paths to eternity future. God

is a relationship

Now,

Jesus, God the son, when he came into

this world,

he took on an additional nature. A human

nature that he will have

you know, for the rest of eternity as

well.

But in in this fall world in a

body like,

in a mind like you and I have,

he perfectly abide in his father.

His life demonstrated what it means to be

connected to the father at all times and

to do his will to love his father

with all he has

and love people.

So as we abide and Jesus, we're abiding

in the father.

And then the holy spirit produces the fruits

of the spirit, which is love, joy, peace,

patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness,

self control, faithfulness.

Those things are produced by the spirit as

we abide

in Jesus and walk in the spirit.

Alright. Let me make this practical. How do

I love God?

This is important. This is where we totally

participate

with the Lord in this. I need to

practice

integrated disciples shit.

Integrated disciples ship. I'm not trying to throw

out big words there.

It's something I I came up with years

ago,

that

we need the... To to love god, heart

soul mind and strength. I need to love

him with my head, my mind, I need

to love him with my heart and love

him with my hands.

Head, heart and hands. You've heard that if

you've been around here for any time that

that the our model of integrated disciples ship

is head, heart and hands.

Now when you think of,

you know, some people are more wired

in the mind area, you know, intellectually as

as you read scripture as you

see a new truth as the dots are

connected,

You're like, whoa, God you're amazing. That's totally

me. Like, I love studying and scripture and

and loving god with my mind.

But that doesn't mean I don't get to

love him with my heart and my hands

either. And you're gonna find as I describe

this to you,

that you're probably wired

in 1 of those to to lean more

heavy on either of the head, the heart

or the hands. It's just the way god

wired you.

Years ago, we studied a book together called

the sacred pathways by Gary Thomas. And if

you've never read that book. A I highly

recommended. I'll say the in sacred pathways,

Gary Thomas. It's a life changing book, to

your disciples ship to Jesus.

Because in there, he came up with 9

different

spiritual temperament

And a spiritual temperament is, when and where

do you feel closest to god?

When and where do you feel closest? To

god. Some of the temperament where I just

mentioned the intellectual part. When my mind is

moved, I feel close to God.

But for somebody else,

when you're out in nature.

You're on a hike and you're praying or

you're by river and you have your bible.

You just feel closer to God when you're

outdoors. Nurture that.

You

somebody else you feel closest to god as

you're just serving somebody.

You're literally just serving somebody that's gonna talk

about the hands part to that. Somebody else,

it's enthusiastic worship. Now, I feel close to

God when when we're experiencing him and and

enthusiastic worship. Somebody else, it's

it's when you're by yourself,

contemplating

Jesus

in

prayer. Somebody else, it's tradition.

It's the traditions of of the sac

It's the tradition of the Creed.

It's the tradition of Him in reading Him.

Traditions is my second,

temperament.

And we're in a,

you know, non denomination church where we don't

really

have a whole lot of opportunities for that.

So I have to do it on my

own.

I read from a little h.

I recite the Creed. I feel close to

God

in that as well. And if that's you,

that's good, because that's how God wired you.

Learn how to practice these things. So let's

go through this real quick. Number 1, the

head,

head is loving god with your mind.

It's thinking about God.

Thinking about God. I read a book 1

time where a guy said that Another form

of prayer is thinking about God. I was

like, sometimes I feel like I got spiritual

Ad when I'm praying,

I'm like drift off and oh, squirrel, you

know, and you you start mine starts going

somewhere else.

But I think about god all the time.

So Was like, okay. And I I can

I can receive that? Learning to control your

thought life.

Thoughts,

Are the lead to worship, thoughts lead to

sin because thoughts

lead to feelings and feelings lead to behavior.

Everything starts

in the mind,

even moving the heart. The apostle Paul put

it this way. He said, don't copy the

behavior in the customs of this world,

but let God transform you into a new

person

by changing the way you think.

Then you will learn to know god's will

for you, which is good and pleasing and

perfect.

So to love god with our mind, and

we all need to do this,

is have a have a daily intake of

scripture,

scripture intake.

We... It made it so easy in our

world to to to listen to the bible.

On the the U version app. If you

don't like to read, you can listen to

scripture. But daily, flood your mind

with scripture study.

Scripture.

Learn scripture.

Discuss scripture with other people. That's a way

of loving God with your mind.

And then learning to understand better and to

interpret

scripture better. Second thing is the heart.

Head, heart and hands. To love God, with

my heart is taking what Jesus said was

the greatest command, and it's learning to love

God with that in most first part of

me. That seat of affection is what,

when the bible talks about heart, it's not

talking about the thing beating, right? Now. It's

talking about that in most part of who

you are, the seat of affection.

As Proverbs says, from the heart flow, all

the... Wells springs of life.

Ephesians 05:18

Ephesians 5:18–20

through 20

be filled with the holy spirit,

singing

songs and h and spiritual songs

among yourselves,

and making music to the Lord in your

hearts,

and give thanks for everything to God the

father in the name of our Lord Jesus

Christ.

That's a that's how

what we do is we sing from our

heart. When we come to worship together corporate.

It's not watching the worship team or listening

to Christy singh.

It's us entering in in and contemplating the

words and singing psalms and Him

from our heart.

Now you don't need to be a church

to worship. You know that. Right? You can

worship in the shower, worship the car.

I say belt it out. I'm a terrible

singer, but man, I like to saying when

I'm listening to worship songs, and and I

don't sing very good, but God doesn't care

right? Like, he's he's looking at my heart.

Prayer thing pray from the heart, learning to

pray in a relational

way

to God.

He's our father,

and we we talk to him, and we

listen for the holy spirit to speak back

to us.

Loving God with your heart is ado.

Jesus I adore you.

It's humbling ourselves, giving him our best of

factions.

Head, heart and then hands.

Head heart and hands. And to love God

with our hands

is to be the hands and feet of

Jesus, Right? It's loving god with all your

strength

by loving your neighbor,

by loving your spouse,

by loving your family.

By loving your friends by loving your community.

It's loving your neighbor as yourself. Next week,

we're gonna look at what does it mean

to love our neighbor in in that question

that was asked of Jesus, who's my neighbor.

We're gonna delve into that next week. So

I'm not gonna

I'm not gonna talk a ton about this

right now, but

I love this verse in Romans 12:11.

Romans 12:11

Never be lacking in Z.

But keep your spiritual fe, serving the lord.

Keep that fire lit in your heart.

By loving god with your mind

and loving god, with your heart and soul,

and by loving people.

That keeps that spiritual fe

in our hearts going that flame at the

every day. Because you know what? If we

don't fan it into flame and stoke the

fire,

There's so many things vying for our attention

and our affection. Am I right? Every day.

So we need to be mindful of this

relationship that we have.

The other day,

I was on a walk,

and

Sea who sings with us on the worship

team often when she's not working,

I saw her car in our neighborhood.

And she has this little yellow kia with

a ovation sticker. I was like secrets in

our neighborhood.

And as I was walking up this hill,

I could hear her talking.

And I walked and I I saw and

I said, hey, Sig. And she said, hey,

Scott. And she's with a,

this little girl

who couldn't be more than 5 or 6

years old that

definitely was handicapped and had some sort of,

you know, down syndrome or something. And secret

as a caregiver.

And they were she had a coworker

with her and she introduced me. Hey, as

my pastor. Yeah, so forth.

And they were just taking care of this

little girl.

Who... This is what Sig does with people

in giving care. People who can't even give

back

to her.

And she was just loving on this little

girl, and they were gonna take her for

a walk. I've seen this little girl be

walked on our neighborhood a ton. I said,

yeah. I've seen her before. High acuity potato

and she like, hey, and

I saw the hands of Jesus

in sea.

I saw sea

loving God with all her strength.

She have to say anything or do anything.

She was just being the hands

of Jesus to this little girl.

She was loving her neighbor.

Martin Luther,

he said, God doesn't need our good works.

He said, but our neighbors do.

He doesn't need our good works, but people

do.

Let's be a people who

daily, it's

intentionally,

and we wanna love God.

With all that we have.

None of us are gonna do this perfect.

Only Jesus loved God perfectly

in his neighbor as himself perfectly.

But we certainly can strive

to

become like him and let him transform us.

That's what he wants

for each of us. You stand with me.

After we, we're gonna sing a rep prize

of you've always loved me.

After we sing that, I'm gonna

close us in prayer, but I wanna invite

you if you'd like to take comm,

we have comm in the back corner over

there.

And, Vicky and Joe Mona. Be back there

to help lead you if you would like

that. We take comm corporate,

the first Sunday of the month, but we

also offer it for people individually

on a, all the rest of the Sundays.

But as we sing this chorus,

go back to how do I love God,

I need to know I'm love by the

father.

And you are loved infinitely and perfectly.

And from there, everything else flows in learning

to love God.

Let's sing this together.

You have always

May the lord bless you and keep you,

make his face shine upon you,

lift up your count, be gracious to you

and give you his peace this day.

And forever more.

May you know

how loved you are?

May you know

the grace of god through the Lord Jesus

Christ?

May you know the fellowship of the holy

spirit?

And may you know

love for 1 another

in this community and the friendships

that are here

Lord thank you that you created us for

relationship.

You've now redeemed us through the Lord Jesus

for an eternal

relationship with you, and we say yes to

that.

Say yes

to Jesus, agree with him today that he

is the Lord of all

and he's the savior of all.

Where we agree with you?

Cast your burdens upon the Lord.

Cast your heartache and cast your your your

struggles.

On the lord.

Let him sustain and you trust him.

Lord, we trust you.

We give you our burdens today.

Thank you for your love in Jesus name.

Amen.