Sure, right. And when my wife and I lived here, that's one of the ways we survived as well. When we lived here, we didn't have much of an income. There's not a whole lot of money in this church. There's a whole lot of food. There's a whole lot of building. Not a whole lot of money. And that was one of the ways my wife and I survived. Was living off of the food from Trader Joe's. Well, it's good food. And they especially have good pumpkin pies. And about two years ago, that's kind of what I lived off of, was those pumpkin pies, right? And almost every single one of you, when you see me, you go, Kevin, you have lost weight. Okay, which I have. Okay, since we moved away. And one of my favorite things to eat from Trader Joe's, we don't get it a lot here in the pantry, but if any of you have ever gotten it, it's those little licorice bites. They're strawberry flavored, and they come in like a clear plastic pack, and they're incredible. And that is my, I don't really like candy, but gummies and licorice, I love. OK? And just last January, when I was about at my heaviest, my wife decided we should start juicing. OK? Not juicing as in steroids. OK? Juicing as in taking fruits and vegetables and turning them into juice. And we started having two to three meals a day for the last nine months of just fruits and vegetables in a juice. OK? Well, those are really good. Sometimes they're not all that really good. But I can tell you one thing that I was craving a lot was licorice. And we kept going to the stores, and it's like they would haunt you. They knew exactly where you had to go in Rite Aid, or the different stores, and they'd put the Twizzlers right there where you could see them, where you go to check out, and there would always be a special, buy one, get one free, Twizzlers. And every time I'd go, I was like a little kid, asking my wife, can we please get the Twizzlers? And every time, the answer was no. No, we went to the Seacoast a few weeks ago to visit my sister and my brother-in-law and they had a Trader Joe's nearby and we were getting some food to go and relax at the park together, see a play at the park. So my wife surprised me and she got some of that strawberry licorice. and she brings it to the park, and we had Qdoba for dinner, and so we had three Qdoba bags sitting kind of around our chairs at the park, and I put my licorice in the Qdoba bag. While I left to go do something, and I was gone for about two minutes, and I came back, and while I was gone, somebody had thrown away two of the three Qdoba bags. And I go to the one that I know I put the licorice in. I know I put it in there. And I go and I look in that bag, and guess what? It's not there. And immediately tears started coming into my eyes. My point. But I look over at Liz and I go, uh, where's my licorice? And she goes, well, where'd you put it? I said, in this bag. And she goes, are you sure you put it in that bag? And I look over the trash can, and before I know it, all of you know I'm germaphobe. Most of you who know me from before, okay, I'm a germaphobe. But you know what? Within two seconds, I was in that trash can, pulling out those canova bags, looking for that licorice. I couldn't find it, and it turned out that it was hiding under my wife's chair. But you know, because I love that licorice, because I had an intense passion for it, in a sense, okay? Desire for it. You know, I was willing to put away social norms for a second. I was willing to put aside my cleanliness for a second, and all of a sudden be going through a trash can, looking for it. Love will make you do crazy things, won't it? Love, true love, puts aside yourself for the other thing. True love in a marriage is putting your desires and your wants aside and serving your spouse. True love in the church is putting aside your desires and doing what's best for the other people in the church. Loving God with all of our hearts is putting aside ourselves and serving God. Jesus in Matthew chapter 22, he has the leaders come to him. All the time you see the Pharisees and the Sadducees, they're trying to trip him up. They're trying to make him say the wrong thing. They're trying to stump him. They're just trying to get him in trouble. And the Sadducees had posed a question to him, and he silenced them with a phenomenal answer. that's in verses 29 to 33. But then in verse 34, it says, when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Santrices, this is another religious group, they came together in the same place. And one of them, an expert in the law. So not an expert as in the law of the lands, but the law of God. So he was an expert in the Old Testament, say. An expert in the law asked a question to test him. He said, teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest? Now this is Jesus' response. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. And then he says something interesting. He says, this is the greatest and most important commandment. And then he tacked something else on. He says, the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets depend on these two commandments. So let me ask you. If you've put your trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, and you want to follow and honor and please Him, what are the two things we should focus on? Loving God and loving others. Loving God and loving others. That's what he says. He says, all the law and the prophets depend on these two commandments. So you know what, if you're putting yourself aside, just as I shared in that story, putting my cleanliness aside, going after that licorice, if you're willing to put yourself aside and follow in love after God and love others, you know what you're going to be doing? You're going to be following all of God's commands. Isn't that interesting? We're gonna look at this. I know that illustration is silly, but I think it gets the point across. So Jesus, he's approached and asked, what is the greatest commandment? His answer was to love God, to love others. If you truly want to please the Lord in your life, if you want to live out your salvation, salvation that Jesus Christ has given you, this is what you need to do. Love God, love others. But how do we do it? All that we ought to do is summed up in those four words. But let's first talk about what exactly is love, okay? Because this world, love, has been distorted a lot, hasn't it? You go throughout, you see the high schoolers dating each other when they're 15 years old and they're so in love with somebody, and then they break up and they hate him immediately, and then the next week they're already in love again. Is that true love? It's not true love, okay? That's not the love that God's talking about here. So what is it? Well, we can look at a biblical definition of love in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, four through seven. It says, love is patient, love is kind, love does not envy, it is not boastful, it is not conceited or prideful, it does not act improperly, it is not selfish, it is not provoked, it does not keep a record of wrongs, finds no joy in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for the prophecies, they will come to an end. As for languages, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will come to an end. But what's the most important thing? Love. Now let me clarify one thing. When it says love believes all things, do you think it's saying that you're supposed to believe all the religions and believe all the different things out there. That's not what that said. It's saying you believe others when they come and they say, I'm sorry. Okay, you have somebody steal flowers from you, and they come back and they apologize, and they say, I won't do it again. And then you look at them suspiciously and say, I don't believe you. Is that loving that person? No. So that's what he's saying there. I just wanted to clarify that. Because some people will turn to that verse and say, see, you need to be accepting of everybody and everybody's beliefs. That's not what the Bible teaches. The Bible very clearly teaches there's only one way to heaven. That's through Jesus Christ. But that's a definition of love. is simply, as we already stated, putting others first. Something easily to remember is put yourself on the shelf. Got that? Put yourself on the shelf. You put yourself aside and you put others and God first. That's what love is. What's the source of love? I'm gonna share with you. Can we simply as human beings have a true biblical love on our own? We can't. Who do we need to get the power from? Who do we need to get the strength from? God. And 1 John 4, 7 says, I'll turn there as well. I'm gonna read this to you. 1 John. We see very plainly that love comes from God. Dear friends, let us love one another because love is from who? God. And everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Do you see what he just said there? Anyone that is born of God, so what does that mean? Anyone who has put their trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and has been born again, you know what the result is going to be? You're going to love God and love others. You're going to be a loving person. So the source of our love for others is from God. So do you depend on yourself? No. You know, we can pull off a good show and can't we sometimes? But if we're not depending on God, we're not truly loving others. What are the actions of love? John 14, 14. I'll read there real quick. We're just turning around a little bit back and forth at the beginning. Once we get going, we'll stay in the passage. John 14, 14. It says, if you love me, 14, 15, sorry. If you love me, you will keep my what? Commandments. What Jesus says, the actions of love is what? Obedience. So you know what, if you have a child, I'm going through this a little bit with my one-and-a-half-year-old. They start to get a will of their own, don't they? And you'll notice he's a little too young to understand still. OK, we try to correct him and help him along the way. But as your kids get older and they get to their teen years, when you ask them to do something and they simply do it because they don't want to get spanked, Nowadays, they don't want their iPhone to be taken away, or they don't want their iPad to be taken away, or they don't want their Xbox to be taken away. Are they loving you and obeying you? No. What do you want to see them? How do you want to see them obey you? When you say, it's time for bed, put away the video games, you want to see them obey you out of what? Out of love. Because love should be what motivates. Obedience. That's what Jesus says. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. So do you see how Jesus, when he's asked what's the greatest commandment, how he can say, listen, if you love God and love others, that's keeping all of my commandments. Because if you love him, what will you do? You'll keep his commandments. One other verse, right there. Verse 21, he says, The one who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my father. I also love him and will reveal myself to him. So that's the actions of love. The obedience of love though, Bible actually goes further. I wanna put it to you this way. Let's say my wife and I are sitting on the couch and she has her morning coffee, okay? So it's not really a want, it's a need. She needs her morning coffee when she wakes up, okay? And the coffee table is on the right side of the couch if you're sitting on it. So if I'm sitting in my corner and the coffee's on the other side of her and she says, Kevin, would you please hand me my coffee? And I reach over and I grab the coffee and I hand it to her and I kind of put it in her lap and it splashes a little and I do it grumpily because she bothered me from reading my book. Am I showing her love? I just obeyed her. I just did what she asked me to do, but there's not a loving attitude in it. You know what? Loving God isn't simply obeying His commandments. You know what? 1 John 5, 3 it says, for this is what love for God is, to keep His commandments. But then He goes even further. Now His commands are not a burden. They're not heavy or they're not a weight to us. So when you truly love God, you will love Him by keeping His commandments. Love Him not because we first loved Him, but why? Because He first loved us. And we will not only simply keep His commandments, but we'll keep His commandments out of love for Him and out of joy for serving Him. Now, let me ask, are there times in our lives where we don't want to obey God? Are there situations that come up where you think, man, I know what I'm supposed to do, I know it's right, I know it's biblical, but I don't want to do it. There are times like that. Does that mean you're unsafe? No, it's a struggle between your flesh and the spirit. Romans talks about that all the time. We'll touch on that more in a little bit. So I wanna ask, what's our motivation? Why should we love God? Why should we love others? Well, our first motivation to love God, we see some Old Testament examples. In Exodus 20, God gives the Israelites, does anybody know the 10 commandments? He gives them the 10 commandments. We often start in the 10 commandments and we start off right on the first commandment. You know what? God gives a little thing before the 10 commandments. And he says, I am the Lord your God, which brought you out of Egypt, therefore, you do these 10 laws. So he doesn't just give them the 10 laws, and the first law is what? Thou shalt have no other God before me. In other words, you shall love me supremely. But you know what, he doesn't just command that, he says, listen, you love me, you keep me first because I redeemed you out of Egypt. I saved you from slavery. And it goes on, you see that in Deuteronomy 6, verse 5, Deuteronomy 10, 12. What about the New Testament? We're living in the New Testament, aren't we? So, we see 1 John 4, 19, I already quoted it. We love God not because we first loved Him, but why? Because He first loved us. Romans 5.8 says, but God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. God showed his love while we were still in rebellion and hatred to him. That's love. That was him putting himself aside for us. And therefore, what should our reaction be? To love God. So, so far I've been talking, in a sense, to believers. I wanna address you, maybe if you're sitting here today, you have no idea what this guy is babbling on about. You have no idea and have never experienced the love of God. You have no idea why you would ever love him back. Maybe you're angry with God. Maybe you can't understand why God allows babies to die. Or your parents to get cancer. or your grandparents to get cancer, the list can go on for your spouse to leave you, to be in a tough living situation. Folks, I'm here to tell you today, not from my words, but from God's word, that God loves you. I actually heard a song on a Christian radio station while I was driving in today. He started off by saying, I looked at the world around me and I got upset. And I actually shook my fist at heaven and said, God, why would you let these things happen? Why don't you take care of this? And God's response simply is, I have. 2,000 years ago when my son died on the cross. Amen? And we have the opportunity now, though we live in a sinful world and a painful world and a world full of corruption, we have the incredible gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Folks, the only way we can love God with all of our hearts and love others as ourselves is if God has given us a new heart. And the only way you can have a new heart is by calling on Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Jesus Christ is not a swear word. He's not something that is just said when your dad hit his thumb with a hammer. He's not your homeboy. He's the savior of the world. He is the son of God who came 2,000 years ago. He lived a righteous life. He never once sinned. I sin every minute. He never once sinned. He lived the perfect life. He followed the law that Jesus is talking about here perfectly. And he did it for you. And then after living a completely perfect life, all he did was love God and love others. And then they took him and they whipped him, they spat upon him and they plucked out his beard and they nailed him through the wrists and through the feet upon a tree. And they hung him there and he suffocated and bled until he died. And he did that out of love for you. And when he, right before he died, he said, in the bloody bath of Jesus Christ so that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. If you've never called upon Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, folks, God loves you and he wants to spend eternity with you. You're going one of two places. There's no purgatory. You know what I wish there was in my human flesh? I wish there was a purgatory where we could pay for our sins for a little while, but there's not. According to the Bible, there are two places, heaven and hell. And you will either spend forever in hell paying for your sins, or you will spend forever in heaven because Jesus paid for your sins. It's your choice. Will you call upon Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Will you make Him Lord in your heart? Ask Him to forgive you of your sins. It's a one-time thing. It simply says, call upon the Lord and you will be saved. And you know what happens? God gives you a new heart so you can love Him and you can love others. That's not what saves you, but it's a result of your salvation. It's just like you have all these big players, like, here we go, we're in New York now, I'm used to New Hampshire, so I've got to think Boston Red Sox, but I'm not going to say that name here, all right? So you have the Yankees, and let's say you have somebody from the Boston Red Sox come to the Yankees, and they give him a paycheck, and they have that time where he holds up the jersey, and he becomes a Yankee. And now what does he do? He goes and he plays for the Yankees. Is he a Yankee because he plays for the Yankees? No. He's a Yankee because he signed the contract. And now, therefore, he plays for the Yankees. Folks, our salvation is that same exact way. You're not saved by doing good things. You're saved because of Jesus Christ. Him doing the good things and Him dying for you. But now that you're on His team, now you do good things. Now you love God with all of your heart. Now you love others as you love yourself. Make sense? So folks, call upon Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Those of us who have, we should follow this motivation to love others and to love God. So what are you thankful for? I mean, we could go on past salvation, couldn't we? God gives us so many wonderful gifts after that. I must admit, when my wife and I had to move away from here, we moved to my home church and I was going to work with them, but they didn't have housing available for us immediately. Which means I live, we live with my parents. I absolutely love my parents, and they're wonderful people. But as most of you know, a married couple should not be living with their parents. It doesn't work so well, especially with a baby. And I have to admit, moving away from you guys was probably one of the hardest things, if not the hardest thing, we've ever had to do in our lives. So not only are we living with my parents, but we're living in a place where we don't necessarily want to be at the time, and we just have to come away from people we love. And you know what started to sink in? Kind of some depression. And we struggled with that, and we weren't finding joy in the Lord. We weren't finding things to be thankful about. And then the church took me on, and they gave us a nice apartment, and we had a place to live, and Russell had his own room for the first time. It was a beautiful apartment, and we were extremely blessed. And all of a sudden, what happened? We were happy. Let me ask you though, were we truly thankful to God at the time? You know what we realized? We weren't. You know, our attitudes haven't changed. And you know what, if God had taken away that apartment from us and put us back with my parents, we would have had the same grumpy, depressed attitude immediately. Why? Because our attitudes didn't change. But my wife started reading a book called 1,000 Blessings, I believe it's called. It really pointed out to look at your life and thank God for all the little gifts that he gives. And I remember coming home from work one day. I believe I was teaching Bible class to the juniors and seniors in high school. I came home and Liz had laid Russell down for a nap. And she said, we're just so blessed. And she goes, I was putting Russell down for a nap and through his crib he waved to me as I left. And she goes, normally I would have just thought of that as just, oh, that was cute and moved on. But you know what? I took a moment and realized he is a gift to us from God. So folks, what else can you be thankful for? Yes, we have our salvation, and that's awesome, and that's the most wonderful thing, but there's so many more things to be thankful for. You guys ought to love God with all of your hearts. I ought to love God with all of my heart. He is so good. Why, though, should we love others? Number one, God loves them. We should love what our God loves. John 3.16 says what? For God so loved the world. God loves the people of the world. You look at Jesus' life through the Gospels. Constantly the Gospels say Jesus was moved with what? Compassion or love for the multitudes. Jesus loved people. By going even further though, if people have put their trust in Jesus Christ, you have to love them even more for they're children of God. You know, I've already mentioned about Russell. He's such a wonderful little boy, and he is like a little me, you know, which is scary sometimes, okay? But you know, he was in church nursery, and I came to pick him up from nursery, and he hadn't been treated well. So he's sitting there crying in the corner, hungry, with a dirty diaper. and hasn't been played with, this didn't happen. But if this did happen, okay, and I show up and the nursery worker greets me friendly and talks about how much they appreciate me and how much they love me, would I feel like they truly love me? No, because they didn't take care of my son. And I love him. So folks, how can you go throughout your life? How can you go Monday through Saturday and hate other people? and get frustrated with other people and see them as simply somebody in your way. Somebody keeping you away from getting the things that you need to get done, done. Somebody that got the flowers that you wanted or got the more, the fuller cart than you got. And all of a sudden you dislike them, but then you come to church on Sunday and you say, I love God. It's backwards, isn't it? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If you love God, you will love what He loves, and He loves people. So that's our motivation to love others. We're commanded to love others as Christ loved. So we get a little more into That, but Ephesians 5, one and two says, be you therefore followers of God as dear children and walk in love or live in love as Christ loved you and gave himself for you, a sweet smelling sacrifice unto God. So just as God gave himself or just as Jesus gave himself up on the cross for us, we should be willing to give up ourselves for others. Philippians chapter two says, let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being found in the form of a man who became humble, he became a servant unto death, even the death of the cross. So Paul says there, not only did Jesus love us so much that he humbled himself, became a man, became obedient, became obedient unto death, but he even became obedient unto the worst death you could die. And that's the mind. That's the humility that you ought to treat one another with. So when you look at your life, what do you need to fix? I have a lot of things to fix. Am I humble like Christ? Humility isn't just putting yourself down. Humility isn't just thinking lowly of yourself. Humility is thinking highly or to put ourselves on the shelves. I was reading a book called Marriage Matters. He made a statement, marriage has changed when we are willing to love consistently over time, not because our spouses change, but because we're in a growing relationship with God. This author recognizes that as you love God more, you're going to love others more. So how do we love God? And how do we love others? Exodus chapter 20 verses one through eight, that's 10 commandments, I already mentioned that. The first four commandments talk about Israel's relationship with God and the way they ought to live. I've actually preached this message, this tiny message right here on Exodus chapter 20. I'm gonna make it really brief, just an overview of it. It's almost time to go. But God lays out for Israel ways to protect their relationship with him, okay? Are we living in the Old Testament now? No, okay? But can these truths still apply to us to help us protect our relationship with God? Absolutely. So what's the first commandment of the Ten Commandments? Thou shalt. Thou shalt have no other God before me. Or in other words, thou shalt love me first, supremely and only. I'm it, I am the God in your life, none others. So number one, how do we protect and love God, keep our relationship with him? God is number one. And when I say he's number one, I mean he's the only one. It's just like those sports teams. If Yankees are your number one team, that doesn't mean you then root for the Red Sox on the side. It doesn't work. Yankees is the team. But you know what? God is the only one in your life. Then he says, thou shalt not make any graven images unto yourselves. How does that apply to us? We don't really struggle, I don't think, with making little images and worshiping them. Well, you know what is interesting? There is the fact that people made images back then and worshiped Baal through them and different false gods. But also, if you know the Old Testament well and Genesis well, when Moses is up on the mountain getting the Ten Commandments, what are the Israelites doing? They're down at the bottom of the mountain, they don't know where Moses is, and they say, Aaron, make us a golden calf. And they make an idol. And then Aaron says something very interesting. He says, behold, the Lord, your God, which brought you out of Egypt. Are they worshiping a false god there? They're not. They're supposedly worshiping Jehovah. but they're worshiping him the wrong way. They're trying to worship him through that golden calf. So what does God want? Us to worship him correctly. He wants us to worship him correctly. A New Testament clearly lays out how we worship him in a church together and individually. We sing to him, we pray to him, we study his word, we continue in the doctrine of the apostles or God's word. That's how we worship him, that's how we praise him. Number three, thou shalt not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Does that mean in an angry way? Not necessarily. Vain, the idea behind that Hebrew word is thoughtlessly. So I encourage you, when you talk about God, when you pray to God, reverence Him. That's number three, you reverence God. You wanna protect your relationship with Him. You don't take his name in a thoughtless way. It could be in a number of ways when you pray. And I'm not thinking of anybody particular here, okay? But have you ever heard somebody pray and they say God's name like every other word? So instead of saying um, they say, oh in God I pray for this, oh in Lord I pray for. Does it really seem like they're thinking about God's name there and holding it in reference? How about when we sing songs, and we sing that we're worshiping Him, and that He's first, and your mind, in your mouth, with your mouth, you're singing the words, but in your mind, you're thinking about what food is going into your cart, or what you have to get done after service. Are you thinking, are you taking the Lord's name in vain? You are. We must reverence God's name. Number four, he says to the Israelites, honor the Sabbath day. So what does God want? He wants us to give him what? Time. God wants our time. So maybe you come to church on Sundays and you think that's enough. A relationship, seven days a week. When I first started dating Liz, it wasn't like Mondays, I spent time with her, and then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I was off hanging out with my friends. I don't think she would have liked that very much. Maybe she would have liked that. I don't know. But you know what? If you want to have a relationship and a loving relationship with God, you put time into it. You spend time with her. You spend time in this book. Your time in this book isn't just when you're here. Time in this book is when you're at home, when you're at work. If you can't do it at work, don't get in trouble. But take time for Him. Guys, love God, love others. If you have a new heart, this is what should happen. Does it automatically just absolutely happen? No, but God gives you the power and the freedom to now do it. If you're not saved yet, call upon Jesus. God loves you and you need to be saved. You need your sins forgiven. Let's pray. Lord, thank you so much for your word. Pray that you would help us love you and love others. That we would take ourselves, put ourselves aside, worship you and protect our relationship with you and treat others as Christ has treated us. Pray that we would share God's love throughout the community here. There are thousands upon thousands of people here right around us. I pray that we would reach out to them as the gospel. I pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.