How many of you are distracted in your life?
If you can get this one thing right, everything else falls into place.
Jesus is the greatest person who ever lived.
Jesus is also the greatest teacher who ever taught.
What is the greatest commandment that He ever commanded?
Matthew 22:34-40 (NIRV)
34 The Pharisees heard that the Sadducees weren’t able to answer Jesus. So the Pharisees got together.
Jesus was the common enemy of the two opposing religious parties of his time.
35 One of them was an authority on the law. So he tested Jesus with a question.
There are 613 commands in the Law of Moses. There are 365 negative commands and 248 positive ones. Keeping that many commands is a challenge.
Of the 613 commands, Jesus choose these two. These two commandments boils it all down to keeping them all.
36 “Teacher,” he asked, “which is the most important commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Love him with all your mind.’ (Deuteronomy 6:5)
38 This is the first and most important commandment.
The art of living is loving. The difference between an ordinary life and an extraordinary life is a whole lot of love. We must love everybody even those opposed to you.
We must love in three directions. Every issue in our life is an invitation to love this way. We love upward by loving God.
The key to the greatest commandment is having a loving relationship with God that God has invited us into. (1 John 4:19)
God doesn't love us on our good days only. He loves us because love is in His core. We give all of us in exchange for all of Him. This drives all the other loves.
39 And the second is like it. ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ (Leviticus 19:18)
We live inward by loving our self. When we respond to God's love, it helps us to have a good relationship to ourselves.
Loving only ourselves is breaking our world. People must love upward with love for God first to love inward with love for ourselves to work. (2 Timothy 3:1-2)
Left to our own devices we are going to destroy ourselves even if it feels right.
The key to loving yourself is through the cross of Jesus Christ because that is how God loves us.
Self love without God breeds radical self confidence. Then, there is radical self hatred. Most of us fall somewhere between these two.
The cross says to the self confident that we must submit to him to live.
The cross says that you have self worth because Jesus died to have you. If God can forgive you, who are you to not forgive you?
We love outward by loving others. We love our neighbor as we love ourselves. The order is important.
We must love God first to love ourselves in a Godly way. When we fix our love for ourselves, then we can fix our love for others.
We base our love for others upon God's love for us and not by their actions.
We've got a strategy to reach the world, and if we do it without God's Spirit we're going to mess it up. (Acts 1:8)
40 Everything that is written in the Law and the Prophets is based on these two commandments.”
Notes taken from Daniel Fusco, Guest Speaker at Saddleback Church
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