Ecclesiology is the doctrine of the church, and we are studying that, focusing on that this year. And on Sunday nights, we'll be seeking to build on our foundation so that we can grow and thrive as a healthy church. And when I say grow and thrive, I'm talking about you growing and me growing, not necessarily bringing in new people. We do ask the Lord for that kind of growth, and we work toward that kind of growth. But right now we're focusing on the growth of our personal individual health, our corporate health as a church. We can thrive the way the Lord wants us to. We understand what our foundation is, right? As a church, what's our foundation? We've seen it in Ephesians chapter two, that the chief cornerstone is Jesus Christ. The apostles and prophets are laid against that cornerstone, and we build on that foundation. Christ is the master builder, but we, by our lives coming as living stones, lay down ourselves into this architecture, this spiritual habitation that God is building. 1 Corinthians 3.10, that's not our text for tonight, but I just want to note Paul's injunction that every man needs to take heed how he builds. So building on our foundation as a church family, as a church body, as a church structure, doesn't just mean we put our enthusiasm into whatever we're doing. It means being very careful that we are structuring this according to the blueprint of the wise architect and on the alignment of the chief cornerstone. So in order to do that, we outline three essential elements of ecclesiology, of church function to be healthy. Theologians such as David de Bruyn have done this in the book The Conservative Church, but these are those three essential elements. Number one, orthodoxy. And that is right doctrine. It means that we seek to know God. The second is orthopraxy. Maybe you've heard that one but less often. That is right practice. We are allowing our behavior to follow through from what we know about God into obedience to God. Those two often take a lot of our time and attention, and those two together can really give the appearance of health, but what's often missing, as we saw in the diagnosis of the church in Ephesus of the first century this morning, is a third element that's essential, and that is orthopathy, the right affection, the love for God. None of these can be missing and a church remain healthy. All three are essential. They must work together and we're just gonna look at a survey of several scriptures to see how these relate and focus especially on that third one as a follow-up from this morning's message. And I hope that you see as we study these that everything we do at Thompson Road that we're trying to fortify one or more of those essential elements of this church Christ is building to try to increase our knowledge of God. to try to put into practice in a better way our obedience to God and try to cultivate a rich love for God. So I hope you're occupied with those things, that those things are on your prayer list for yourself, for this church, as God sees fit to grow us and help us thrive. Let's talk about that first one a little bit, knowing God. Much of our Bible, specifically much of our New Testament, is occupied with instruction in doctrine, helping us to know what God expects, what God is like, what we are to understand theologically, doctrinally, about the different areas of study, everything about the Bible, everything about God, about the Holy Spirit, about Jesus Christ, about the church. These are our doctrines, things that we learn and come to know. So because much of our Bibles are filled with this, much of our time in our church gathering is occupied with learning and teaching and sharpening each other in the knowledge of scriptural things. Can you truly follow God without right doctrine? No, certainly not in a mature way. Not in a sustained way. So how do we fortify our orthodoxy? Well, three ways are really simplistic. One, study. And as we study, two, we learn. And as we learn, we also communicate with God. And what that means is that God speaks to us through His Word. We speak to God through prayer and through these things we are seeking better to know God, to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior. Please open your Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 6. Deuteronomy 6, a foundational passage in the Old Testament. Some of you recognize it with the Hebrew word shema, the word hear or listen, and it's referred to by that way in shorthand because this is a chunk of a few verses that became so prominent to the Israelite thinking as well it should have that devout Jews recited this every morning, every evening. So it really encapsulates the old covenant really in a in an accurate and succinct way. Deuteronomy 6. Look at verse 1. Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments which the Lord your God commanded me to teach you. All right, see how it starts with that element of orthodoxy, of right doctrine. Here are judgments, commandments, here's what you need to know. Here's what God has commanded me to teach you. Here are things you need to study. Here are things you need to learn. Here are things you need to understand. Okay, so orthodoxy, super important, right? But insufficient by itself, right? We can't just have orthodoxy. It's not enough just to know. It's not enough just to know. James 2.26, faith without works is dead if you have orthodoxy. But what you know about God doesn't translate into obedience to what you know. You're missing that orthopraxy, the right practice. You have a dead faith. So orthodoxy's so important, but just a start. So let's talk about that second element, orthopraxy, the right practice, obeying God. This has to do, first one has to do with what we know, what we believe. Second one has to do with what we do, how we behave. Keep reading in verse 1, we left off halfway through the verse. So here's what you need to know, what you need to understand, what you need to study, what you need to learn. What I need to teach you and the purpose of this right knowledge is so that it will translate into right behavior. You have to do these things. That, verse 2, you might fear the Lord thy God to keep all His statutes and commandments which I command thee. So verse 1 said you have to understand His statutes and commandments. Verse 2 says you have to keep all His statutes and commandments. You've got orthodoxy, orthopraxy. Thou and thy son and thy son's son all the days of thy life and that thy days may be prolonged. Hear, that's the word shema, hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it, that it may be well with thee. and that you may increase mightily as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee in the land that floweth with milk and honey." Here, that you may observe to do it. Romans 2.13 tells us what? The hearers, not the hearers of the law are justified before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. James 1.22, be doers of the Word, not hearers only. If you think that by knowing all about God and understanding Scripture well and having good theology and right knowledge, right belief, that you are right with God, you are deceiving yourself. There has to be a doing, an obedient practice. of those things you know. John 13, 17, after modeling love to his disciples and giving rich instruction to his disciples, he said this, if ye know these things, orthodoxy, happy are ye if ye do them, orthopraxy, putting it into practice. Alright, two very important elements, right? But, Do you see, we saw this morning, those two are insufficient by themselves. It's not enough just to know and to practice. That can feel like enough. That can look like enough. It can seem like you're killing it. If you know the right things, then you're putting them into practice. but it's insufficient. We've gotta have that third element, orthopathy, right affection, love God. Pick it up in verse four. Hear, O Israel, that's the word Shema again. The Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love. Started with the orthodoxy, then he moved to the orthopraxy, and here's the orthopathy. Love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart. Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up, and shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes, and thou shalt write them upon the posts of thine house and upon thy gates. And he goes on to talk about when the Lord thy God shall have brought thee into a land which he swore unto thy fathers, which you didn't build, in verse 11, houses that were full of good things that you didn't fill it with, wells digged that you didn't dig, and so forth, to remember, to beware, lest you forget, and lose that love. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Okay, so that's our foundation. And then if you can, I don't want to use a mixed metaphor, I shouldn't say foundation. Our foundation is Christ the cornerstone, the teachings of the apostles and prophets. But this is our footing. Let's go to Mark 12 then. And you're familiar probably with how this plays out. I said that that Deuteronomy passage, a good one to have highlighted in your Bible and just really spend some time in. Especially verses 4-6 there of Deuteronomy 6. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind. The Israelites recognized that as very important and really incorporated it into their daily speech and lives. Some even taking literally those verses about putting it on their foreheads and hands. And so they made leather straps and phylacteries and things to literally put on their bodies and on the doorposts of their house and so forth. to remember these things, and then Jesus affirms here in Mark 12, a few other passages in our Gospels, the primacy of that command, of that love. You remember this one, starting in verse 28 of Mark 12? One of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, which is the first commandment of all?" Now, the Jews, especially the religious leaders, they just loved questions like this. They're obsessed with these laws. Their orthodoxy was spot on. Their orthopraxy was a matter of obsessive compulsion. And so they had enumerated 613 laws in the Old Testament. And they lined that up to be one with every letter of the Ten Commandments. 613 letters in the Hebrew giving of the Ten Commandments. And so they found 613 commands. They weighed out how many were in the negative, don't do this. How many were in the positive, do this. And then they tried to categorize which ones were light and which ones were heavy. And there was disagreement about this. So a question like this, is a big one. And Jesus answers, you know how He answers in verse 29, the first of all the commandments is, comma, quote, Deuteronomy 6, 4. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first commandment. Baldo 613, this is it. And the second is like, namely this, verse 31, that thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. Okay, so this is Jesus' commentary. The whole Old Testament, what's the most important? It goes straight to this, love. Love is the most important commandment in the Old Testament. It's also the second most important commandment in the Old Testament. Jesus delineates both. Kids, if you're filling out your Kids Corner Bulletin tonight, your key word is love. The Shema, this statement of loving God with all your heart is central to both covenants. So in the old covenant, it was recognized as central. Jesus affirms that and then really just shows how central it is as he's inaugurating the new covenant, showing that this command to love God is just organic. It's essential, what it means to be a follower of God throughout any period in time. But it is essential for us, no less than any other age, certainly, as a church. So let's talk about the type of love God deserves and commands. Because our culture asks the question, what is love? And people are looking for that, and people are trying to figure it out. And the answers are, I would say all over the dartboard, most of them aren't even on the dartboard, where they're missing the mark when it comes to defining this. And certainly there are different kinds of love, and it's all right to use that word in different ways, okay? Because maybe some of you love pizza, all right? Or maybe you love your spouse, and we understand there's a difference there, certainly hope so. But what type of love is it that God demands? And deserves, certainly. One thing to notice is that it apparently can be commanded. All right, so that should tell us something about what type of love it is. Because you can't command someone to love pizza. You can't command someone to have warm affectionate feelings toward another. So if all you're talking about is desire, or a positive feeling toward someone, that must not be the kind of love God is after, because this is the kind of love that can be commanded, demanded. What type of love is this? Well, we are commanded, let's note this, we're commanded to love God with all our hearts. And this is big. This is big. This is the greatest commandment. In the whole Bible. Is it true that we love God with a little of our hearts? I should speak for myself. You might say, hey, I love God with all my heart. Don't lump me in with that. But could it be true that we love God with a little of our hearts? If this is the greatest commandment and we're not getting it, where does that put us? This is stop, drop, and roll. If we can't get this figured out, put life on hold, stop, pause everything. Because maybe we love God with a little bit of our hearts. It's not only the primary command, it's the preliminary commandment. In another one of the Gospels, when Jesus is having a conversation with one of these scribes, he says it this way, all the other commandments hang on this one. So wow, if I'm missing on this one, throw the whole thing out. a dire diagnosis for my personal walk, if this is it, this is what it all hangs on, this is where it all starts and ends, God help me if I'm not there to love you with all my heart. Okay, what does this mean? We have to stop loving other things, stop loving other people. There's no room in my heart for anything else. God has to have all of it. Well, I'll mention a few verses this morning. We just quickly glance at 1 John 2.15. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, The love of the Father is not in him. So there are competing loves. And we can misplace a love that rightly belongs to God. Also mentioned in Matthew 10.37, He that loveth her father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. He that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. So is God forbidding us from loving other things or loving other people? We have to say no to that because we see other scriptures that do command us to love our children, to love our spouses, to love one another. Yet there can't be a love that competes with or when it comes to a test of my priorities and loyalties that would supersede this love. It's not a wholehearted love if there's give and take. Sometimes God wins out, sometimes the world wins out. Sometimes God wins out, sometimes my family, my kids, my parents, my spouse win out. 1 Corinthians 7.33, Paul expresses this concern that marriage, as wonderful as it is, if you get into it, understand that there is a risk that it could avert your affection and attention away from full-hearted service to God. And in Luke 14, strong language is used. He says, if any man come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." Again, we take this with Christ's other teachings where he does command us to love others, to love our parents, to love our children, to love our brothers, to love our spouses, So he's talking about a type of love, and he's talking about a degree of love, and he's talking about the stratifying, the ordering, the prioritizing of our love. if our love for Him is not so great, so overruling, so superseding, that everything else is subordinate, subject, sub-pointed to that love to the degree that the difference is light and dark. Love and hate looks like hate. It's so far down the line in comparison to our love for God. That's where we need to be. And anything else is missing the greatest commandment. Jesus says it's not worthy of me. And He says in Luke 14, cannot be my disciple. without getting there. So with that in mind, it kind of makes sense when he tells the rich young ruler who asks, how do I inherit eternal life? What does the law say? How do you read it? And he goes back to these commandments. Love God. Worship God. Don't kill. Don't commit adultery. All these things. Jesus says, what one thing you lack. Go sell all that you have. Give the proceeds to the poor. Then come follow me. And that seems out of line with a lot of Jesus' other teachings because he doesn't command that of anyone else. It doesn't include that in the gospel presentations, that it's not ever presented in other places about how to get into a relationship with God. That's not mentioned. So it seems out of place until we realize that here's a man A rich young ruler who had orthodoxy. And he had orthopraxy. He knew all the rules and he was keeping them. But there was something he loved more than he loved Jesus. And Jesus wanted to show him, unless that changes or you're willing to have that changed, then you're missing it all. It all hangs on love. So there's degrees of love and subordinations of love. So Jesus can say to Peter, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He wanted Peter to love his fellow disciples. In fact, a few chapters earlier, he told them to over and over again in the upper room discourse. But as much as he wants Peter to love James and John and the others, he demands that Peter love him, love Jesus, more than these. So much more that when the two compete, there's no competition. Let's have the heart chart, the heart chart. So this is, if this is, if I'm, it's all like a little too academic and lofty, and how do I get my head around this? This is how I've shared it with the teens before. So we love a lot of things, right? And you've got there, we love God. We love maybe some of us fashion, maybe some of us food, and maybe some of us football, and maybe some of us music, entertainment, and other things. You have sports and hobbies. All these things in our hearts, and there's a relationship there too, pictured. You know, our human relationship with a significant other, a family member, a friend. So these things compete for love in our hearts, right? And a lot of us, our hearts kind of look like this. And if we have the graph to kind of show we love God with a little bit of our hearts. And in the divine diagnosis, this is what the EKG would show. Commanded to love God with all our hearts, we love God with a little of our hearts. Supposed to look like this, right? But that still doesn't seem right because God's there and everything else is there. How can I love God with all my heart and there still be room to love other people and things? Well, when it comes to my relationship, whether it's a relationship you're pursuing, maybe you're engaged or dating or something like that, or a relationship you're in, you're married, can I submit that to my love for God? Well, it's, can I pray, God, if this relationship that I'm pursuing is not right for me, if this person will not help me to follow you, if this is outside your will for me, I surrender it to you. I will walk away from this because you are more important. And it kind of, God permeates, your love for God overwhelms that love for that other person and absorbs it into it, subjects it under it. It's okay to enjoy richly the good things that God provides, like fancy shoes or something like that. I'm also not going to let that become part of my security, part of my image, my source of joy, a misuse of my stewardship. And so that love has to be brought under the love for God. And if it can't be, then it has to go. My love for food is okay because God created it and gives it to us richly to enjoy. But if it becomes a source of security, or it crosses the boundary into gluttony, or it takes away from what God wants me to pursue Him in, then I've got to be able to turn it over to Him. or let it go. Now, you let food go, but you know what I mean. With the hobbies, those sports, the other things, I've gotta be able to turn that blue or it's gotta go. The music, the entertainment, if I can't say, God, I want this to please you as I listen to this, well, if this is full of filth or if this is sensual in nature or if this is stealing my heart away toward worldly things, it's got to go. Otherwise, if I can subordinate it to my love for God, then yes, I can love others and love other things and enjoy richly the things that God has given, but only in so much as those facilitate my love for God and are in harmony with my love for God and subordinate under my love for God and never competing. If it's competing, it has to go sell it, give it to the poor and follow Jesus. whether you eat or drink or whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God. So here's a big question. How do we cultivate a love for God and increase that love to permeate our entire being? That's a big question. Just look how big that question is. It's got to permeate our entire being, heart, mind, soul, and strength, Jesus says. Is that question looming that big for you? I hope it is. This is your brain right now. That's the question on it. And there's not an orthodoxy formula that I can give you that gets you there. There's not some orthopraxy, do this, this, this, and then you'll be there. Because love is of God. We love Him because He first loved us. And when we're born of Him, He gives us a love. And when we fellowship with Him, He grows that love. Okay, so I'm going to give you some points of orthodoxy and orthopraxy, but understand that these have to work in concert. You can't be earning or manufacturing this love. Pray. God, help me love you more. God, show me what is in my heart, what is stealing my affection and devotion that is currently misplaced and drawing away from love that you deserve. Show me a love that's not correctly subordinated to you. God, help me to love you more. Reflect. Just to sit down and take time and think about, reflect on God's character, God's nature, God's attributes, God's beauty. The great things that he's done for you. You can't love what you don't appreciate. and appreciation often takes conscious time and effort, especially for busy people in an affluent society and full schedules, trying to worship someone we can't see. Gotta take time to reflect. Gotta take time to meditate. A similar idea, it's taking scriptural truth, assuming that I've been in church to hear it, that I've been in scripture to read it personally in my private time, and I'm bringing back to memory those truths, those precious, words of life that as I meditate on them and hide them in my heart and mull over them in my spirit, God uses those to prune away inordinate desires, misplaced love, and to redirect and to cultivate that love that he deserves. See, love, when it's not just a feeling, it's something that can be commanded. And not only does God command it, He commands how much to do it. So this is something we do put forth effort, that we do give attention to, that we do cooperate with. And we understand that love isn't automatic. It's not a feeling. Not this kind of love. It has to be Part nature when you're saved, but part nurture when you're being sanctified. And so we nurture that love, Deuteronomy 6, by visible reminders on my hand, on my forehead, on the doorpost. By audible reminders as I get up from my couch, as I lay down in my bed, as I stand by the way, as I walk in the road. I am allowing scriptural truth, truths about God's beauty, reflections and meditations from His Word and from my fellowship with Him to insert themselves into my mind, into my mouth, into my ears, into my eyes throughout the day. nurture and exposure can either increase that love or the wrong kinds of nurture wrong kind of exposure can diminish that love. Hey, somebody really needs to hear this. Media does shape your affections. And if I love God with a little of my heart, and I'm on my phone and my TV and my radio for nine hours a day and I can't figure out why I don't love God more, know that media does shape your affections. Know that the people you spend time with will have a significant impact on the shaping of your affections. Could work for infections too, but you wanna stay away from that. Scripture, hymnody, prayer, Christian fellowship. These things do shape our affections. You might come tonight and leave and not feel much different, but you have had an exposure to and a nourishing from, a nurturing in. Blessed truth, sacred doctrines, the presence of God. These things will have a cumulative impact if your heart's engaged. My kids complained this week about mushrooms. Don't like the mushrooms. Do I have to eat this? As parents, we have two choices. We can capitulate and limit or remove mushrooms from their diet, just keep it off their plate and out of their palate. Or we can double down and actually increase and mandate mushroom exposure until they like them. Worship. Worship is the reason that we are called, the reason we are saved, the reason we're being built up. 1 Peter 2, to offer up spiritual sacrifices is why we're called. That we should show forth the praises of him who called us, that's why we're called, to worship. Worship can be pure orthopraxy. I'm singing this song because I'm supposed to, reading the Bible because I'm supposed to, giving the offerings because I'm supposed to. Or it can be orthopathy, expressions of love. Worship offered outside of right doctrine, right practice, and right affection is actually harshly rejected by God again and again in Scripture. I'm looking carefully at my expressions of worship and asking God to be pleased and following what He says as I present it. Finally, depreciate self. Say with John the Baptist, he must increase but I must decrease. Too low a view of God is caused by too high a view of self. Too low a love for God is caused by too high a love for self. And love for self, which is the norm in an individualistic society, in an entitled generation, in an affluent country where you can get a drink of water and you didn't dig the well. And you can have a slice of bread and you didn't plant the grain. And all of these things that come very easy to us and relatively compared to other generations and countries, relatively inexpensively and available to us, can really lead to a self-dependence and entitlement that we don't even know is there and can eclipse love. We pause and remember that every good gift comes from God and we are dependent on Him daily. Now the love, the orthopathy, if that's all you had, would you be okay? No, that one's insufficient by itself. Though it's the greatest commandment, it's not like, okay, what do the Beatles say? All you need is love? That's not a biblical view. Let's see why real quick. We're two minutes and we're done. Romans 10, one and two. Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved. Paul's praying for his lost countrymen. What was their problem? I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. The zeal was there, the knowledge wasn't. They had orthopathy, but they didn't have orthodoxy. Or you have Jesus in John 14 verse 15. If you love me, Keep my commandments. True orthopathy will always produce and work hand in hand with orthopraxy. When I love God, I will obey God. Paul's prayer for the Israelites was that they thought they loved God, but since they didn't really know him, that their love wasn't biblical. I hope you don't look at all that and say, well, it's too complicated. There's too many elements to that. Too many big words. Well, ask God for help. But ultimately it's really not. It's really not complicated. And it's not such that we ought to come to church and come to Scripture and approach our conversations with others overthinking and analyzing everything. Oh, do I have all three elements? And are they all in balance? And are they working in concert so that God can accept There's just a humble, surrendered, but proactive and participatory and zealous pursuit of God. Follow Him. Just do what Jesus did. And the simplicity of it is kind of illustrated in Luke's account of this conversation where there's this question about what's the greatest commandment? The answer is it's to love God with all your heart. And the follow up is, well, if I'm gonna love God with all my heart and love my neighbor as myself, who's my neighbor? And Jesus illustrates how all of these things that maybe are charted out and pontificated and big words to explain, and Jesus has just chosen a simple story, moving, touching, timeless story of the Good Samaritan. A man going by the road is beaten and robbed and left for dead. Along comes a priest. The priest has a picture of orthodoxy. They knew it all. They had the Torah memorized. They could recite these laws for you. You pass by the other side. Here comes a Levite, a champion of orthopraxy. He knew everything to do and everything not to do so that as a Levite, he could stay morally and ceremonially pure. Can't go near that person. If he's dead, I could risk contaminating myself, losing my purity, my ability this week to be able to enter the temple or whatever else passes by the other side. And then here comes a Samaritan, simple person. You don't think of a whole lot of theological training or set apart as a special tribe to represent in temple worship like the Levites were or any of that. But you just see orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and orthopathy all rolled into a guy helping somebody out. Because he loves God and loves his neighbor as himself. So can we just have that in our minds and have a go thou and do likewise? Doesn't that sum it up? Well, it's good to close with a hymn. Pastor Jeremy's gonna come and lead us. Hope you can sing as an expression from your heart of love for the Savior, but let's pray.