Father, we thank you for changing our hearts that they might speak from the depths of those words, Thee will I love. Lord, we thank you that your creation was created by love and for love. and that we are part of that creation. Father, as we then attend to your commandments to love, we pray that they may not be burdensome to us, but may be our delight. Open our hearts to see the great washing ocean of your love, that we may say simply, we love because He first loved us. For this we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. You have me for these five weeks because there are in fact five commandments to love that I have found in the New Testament. There are probably others as well, but we'll attend to these. And we come to them mindful that Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Over these weeks we'll be looking at these five and we'll see how they actually interrelate and inform each other in a rather wonderful constellation of love. Let's just begin by looking at them. I've listed the five that I've chosen there. Hero of Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. So that is our theme for today. Second, you shall love your neighbour as yourself. And the third, a new commandment for Jesus, I give to you that you love one another just as I have loved you, so you are to love one another. And then fourthly, what I say to you here, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. And fifthly, those four came from the words of Jesus, And then John says, little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth. So that's our five for these five occasions. But before we get into them, we need to give some thought to the question, what is a commandment in the kingdom and the reign of God? Well, I think it's firstly helpful to call it a covenant commandment. That is, an appropriate directive given in the context of a love-bonded relationship. I think it's very important for us as the people of God to see that that is the very specific context of these commandments. We can see in Exodus that the Ten Commandments were not just ten moral standards, they are ten very good moral standards, but for Israel they were much more than that. They were the Torah, that is, the guidance and directives of their covenant God for blessing of his people. This is the way. They were given to Israel by their Redeemer God. God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt. He had covenanted them to himself and he was taking them to the promised land flowing with milk and honey. So what a context. And if you leave that off, it just is terribly raw and becomes something else actually. So that God says to them, I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Now that is an enormous preface. Brought you into the promised land. Therefore, and then the Ten Commandments follow, you shall have no other gods before me, etc, etc. So first of all when we're dealing with commandments it's very important for us to divest ourselves of the world's view of a commandment. There is out there a satanic definition of what it means to be commanded, seen as oppressive, as unreasonable, as harsh, as limiting. And Satan, did God really say? So we need, if we are to enter into these new covenant commandments, to divest ourselves wholly of that view and see this covenant context. The second thing we need to see, and this is equally wonderful, is that each commandment of God in the covenant of God is a promise. God not only gives the command, but he gives the grace needed to obey it. Early in our ministry, while we were still in college, God gave to me this verse from Thessalonians, Faithful is he who calls you, for he will surely do it. And you see, my formula up until getting that was Faithful is he who calls you, so you better do it. True obedience to God then is always an act of faith, not of words. Does that speak a revelation? True obedience to a true commandment is always an act of faith, not an act of words. So the prophetic promise is, you shall. It will come to the heart. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. And we'll see in the course of these studies that in Christ all of these five commandments will be fulfilled in us in progressively deeper ways and ultimately in the Kingdom. How wonderful. John says, By this is love perfected with us so that we have confidence for the Day of Judgement because as He is, so are we in this world. A little later, we love because He first loved us. Now let me just pause there. We haven't started our first commandment but we have set that ground for understanding commandments. Firstly, that a commandment is a covenant commandment. It comes in the context of deliverance and provision and promise. And secondly, that each commandment is, as a word of God to us, a self-fulfilling prophecy. We shall. Any comment or thought there before we dive into the first of our commandments. It is, and if we didn't have it, we wouldn't be where we needed to be, would we? We'd be in a place that was, we'd be pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, which is not very elevating. Q. Does the word commandment need to be softened? I think we need to get over that hump. If we soften commandments, do we actually help people? Surely we need to heal their understanding. Because God does direct us. He commanded me to leave the farm. I was very happily ensconced. He meant it. He did actually want me to do it. Go! So commandments, unsoftened, are part of life. But as we shall see by the end of this study, we come to delight in them. It does. The obedience of faith, excellent. Yes, the commandment is given in love and obeyed by love and it is a commandment to love. Question from the audience. Yes, I am a great opponent of two non-biblical words which are challenge and commitment, because they are not biblical words, they are humanist concepts. But you're right, you get a challenge in church if you're not careful. OK, let's begin our first commandment. One of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with Jesus, with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked Jesus, which commandment is the most important of all? And Jesus answered, the most important is, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. We note that this commandment is not one of the ten, rather it is found in Deuteronomy where it says, Hero Israel, the very same words, the Lord our God is one, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. Now let's beg the question, let's ask the world's question, why should we love God? God has created all things as the expression of His love being, as the one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. When we love it is because we know God and are living in Him. Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. God is love, God created in love, God created us as love creatures. He is the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, and it is His nature to love all that He has created. However, sin and its resultant guilt has turned the heart of all people into enmity towards God, and might I say enmity towards His commandments. And so we see in Romans, for although they knew God, they did not honour him as God, or give thanks to him. But they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God, and the love of it, for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. But the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts when we realise that it was actually while we were still sinners and enemies of God, while we had in us that inclination and disposition that is so described in Romans 1. It was while we were in this condition that Christ died for us. Now you could actually expand this point of the study into a whole series of studies in itself that our obedience, as has been said, the obedience of faith, can only and ought only to flow out of our responding to that love. If it ever comes out of something else, it's going to be something else. The love that God is seeking is the love that responds to His grace. Grace alone then has the power to turn our enmity towards God into genuine love. For God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead and at trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. It's wonderful to see a new Christian in the first flush of their first love. It actually awakens in us something that ought not to die. But Jesus through John said in Revelation to one of the churches, you have lost your first love. and how easy it is that that can happen. So that's the wellspring out of which we love. I'm reminded of John Wesley's conversion when his heart was strangely warmed and he said, and I immediately began to pray for all people and most especially for those who have despitefully used me." So out of that first love springs loving us, and that is as it should be. Thus we have two great reasons for loving God. He is our faithful creator, sometimes we need to be reminded of that, and our merciful As forgiven and cleansed children, we are free to love Him wholeheartedly. Let's turn to this little word, ALL. With all your heart, soul, mind and strength. What does that mean? It doesn't mean that we are to love God to the exclusion of everyone else, to be a religious obsessive. Rather it means there are to be no allegiances that rival God's place as the one true God. You shall have no other gods before you. Our love for God is to be whole-hearted, not double-minded. And be encouraged, dear brothers and sisters, that we will wrestle with double-mindedness until our baptism is complete in death and resurrection. We will always find that there is something there suggesting itself. The flesh, the devil, sin. And so I guess we come to that word all and the commandment to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, we come to it every day. We are renewed in it every day. Paul says in Romans 6, I have been preaching recently on our baptism into Christ and Paul says, consider yourself therefore dead to sin and alive to God in Christ, and present yourself not to sin for works of unrighteousness, but to God for works of righteousness. I think that considering and that presenting is a daily thing. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double-minded. I always find James a bit... sort of... If we could get beyond that, we'll see that he has a very important point to make. It's not to burden us, but our hands do need to be cleansed. Our hearts do need to be purified. Double-mindedness does need to be rooted out. Don't be discouraged if you find that that is the case one day or every day. That is your lot until your baptism is complete. Idolatry is the reverse of this commandment and there are many carved images in our materialistic and acquisitive world. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. Now, ancient idolatry was something that is present in some countries today but not really in the same form in our own because we have superseded it with a far more impressive idolatry of images. The TV screens are getting bigger and bigger and the images that are flashed at us through various visual medias are for the purpose of invoking a lust in us, a desire, an idolatry, even if it's for a new pair of shoes or a car. Oh, what a feeling. Those car adverts today, they are evil. Because they don't tell you that it has a very safe braking system or that it's got so many airbags. They give you this stylised picture of yourself in your car. moving through the European mountains like you're in a Monte Carlo race or something, and then you get out and stand outside your car. And one of the images that is used more than any other image today in idolatrous advertising is the female form of saddling, because they know that it invokes a response and so they use it without consideration. So all love of the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. To love is to desire, isn't it? And idolatry is to desire something instead of God. How are we going? We're going to look now at how we are to love God. But before we do that, have you any thoughts about this? It's fun to think how that double mind is always there, not consciously there. I can only struggle with the feeling that I should be able to get over this double mind. I should be able to move on from here to here. I think I've come to accept that my default position is me, and it crops up a lot, but it doesn't bother me as much as it used to. I can sort of say, here, that's me, now get on with it. But I can remember in the past, really, why did God not make me a single man? Why did He make me a double man? Answer to make you strong in faith. Yes, the old nature, you can leave it aside and go to the new because by faith you understand that however appealing that old is, it has been crucified, it has been judged, it has been put down and if you lift it up, It will be very smelly. Yes, that's wrong. Our mind is going to naturally be filled up immediately. Nothing can break us out from God. Otherwise, there is a unity of mind between us and you. This will give us a strength. in a way, than having two things to choose from all the time, and picking up good and evil. And what happens is that it just is automatically a division. And with the non-heroism of the Order of One, which I'm thinking of in creation, that's the image. I think one of the games we play with God is to leave the door open to idols. Paul says in Ephesians and Colossians, put to death therefore certain things. Come and bury them. But we say, oh no, I'll put them in the cupboard, I might need them one day. Do you understand the game we play? And as you rightly said, we actually conceive of ourselves as in a situation of choice. Will I do God's way today or will I do the other way? Really the word is saying, no, come on. And that's why this commandment I think is a great blessing to us. Come on, come to it, all. Surrender to it. So how are we to love God? Well the commandment says with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind and with all your strength. So maybe we can unpack that a bit. Your heart it seems to me in the scriptures is fundamentally your will. With it, you resolve your love for God to worship and serve Him alone. In Jeremiah it says, for the heart of man is desperately sick and deceitful. beyond all else. So in the labyrinths of the will, there can be other intentions, other resolves, other things you might do if you get an opportunity. So to love God with all of your heart is to be one will with Him, which you can be in Christ. Your soul, or your psyche in Greek, is your life, your person, it's you. And with it you are in love relationship with your Heavenly Father. It is a person-to-person love relationship. And consequently you are known as a person who wholly loves God. I have spoken in these parts in the fulfilled tense. This is how you are in Christ. So come to it, lock, stock and barrel. Your mind is your perception, your thinking. your outlook, your memory, and with it you believe and trust and praise God. Let me just pause to give you a warning. Last night Shirley and I went to see the film Calvary, which is currently showing in the cinemas. It was the only thing at the event that looked remotely suitable for Shirley and me. So we went and saw it. Let me just say, don't bother. It had the makings but it didn't get there. It was the story of a Catholic priest in Ireland. But I said to Shirley on the way home, a story is governed by the outlook on life of the author. And for me, the outlook on life of that story was quite inadequate. It was very negative and came out of a bitterness, I guess, that perhaps the author felt and there was certainly cause of things that could create bitterness in the things that were brought out in the story. But for a believer, one came away and said, That certainly isn't my outlook, and for a film about a servant of Christ in a film called Calvary, for me, that doesn't do it. It's a counterfeit. So now you can go and watch them and see whether you agree with me. You want to spend the money. Now all of that in the context of loving God with your mind. Outlook is an amazing thing, isn't it? I love the poem, said Hanrahan. We'll all be ruined, said Hanrahan. The farmer squatted around after mass. And it was dry, oh it's dry they said. If it don't rain soon, if it don't rain soon said Henryk and we'll all be ruined. Well it rained and it rained and it rained and there were floods and squatters squatted around chewing grass after church and they agreed with Henryk and if it doesn't stop raining we'll all be ruined. Anyway, it did stop raining and the grass grew with the great abundance of rain, and it grew and it grew and it dried off in the summer. Farmers came to church and they squatted around and they agreed that if there was a bushfire, we'll all be ruined, said Henri Hen. It's a lovely poem, a bit of Australian history. But you see, Hanrahan's outlook, his frame of mind, his consciousness, like the person who wrote the storyline of the film Calvary, falls short of the reality of God. And so we have as part of our responsibility for ourselves to create a mind that honours God. a perception of the way things are in the world that is realistic enough to face not only the terrible evils, but also can see the glory of God and still praise Him. To love God, in fact, is to have the mind of Christ. who even in crucifixion was able to say, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. He was to the fullness of his life and service one who loved the Father with all his heart, soul, mind and strength. Finally, your strength is your body, your actions, your work and your service. So your labour is a labour of love as to the Lord. I think it's helpful in imbibing this commandment and living it out to actually think about what those four aspects of loving God actually entail, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. I must confess that I wrote this study some time ago but it was only at 6.30 this morning that I actually put those elaborations of those four things in and as is often the case, you think well, the whole thing would have been much less adequate without us. attending to that. It's interesting, isn't it? Andrew Wilson, many years ago, a lovely Methodist minister, was over in Germany at the Sisters of Mary, a place that was a working It was a working Protestant nun situation. It was like Islam as well and they went through One, it was cold in the morning, I think there'd been ice or snow and so forth, and they came to the dairy and there was one of these nuns with galoshes on and a raincoat and everything, squishing the manure out of the dairy and it was a really rotten job. And Andrew said, Why are you doing this? And she said, for the love of Jesus. And that was her, you know, using her strength that it was Jesus oriented, Jesus centred. I used to love swishing out the dairy. Jeff, I must confess I haven't. The Hebrew, in one of his avatars, the one that was hard, was, in Mechakar it was all the soul, and in Mechakar it was all the strength. And now, of course, in the Greek, we've got four. So, has the Hebrew got more meaning packed into, say, Mechakar? It's probably the soul I would think, but that is not a considered comment. Yeah, interesting. I had a chat with Grant Hall about that one. He said in the Hebrew they sort of divide a person like this a bit. They are just one person. So if you really get the science, it's just like God with all His servants. I think the nefesh is the broader concept of your soul. Greeks have a different concept of souls than what the Hindus do. It may not be the right, you know, that might have a problem finding the right translation for nefesh in Greek. You have to double it up. Possibly, yes, I don't know. I find it helpful to carry this through to that practical level of the heart, soul, mind and strength, because that's where it actually gets flesh. Furthermore, we love God in the following way, especially by, the Bible says, delighting in Him. We're created, as I've said, to delight and to desire. And to love God is to make Him the delight of your heart and the focus of your desire. Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. Don't delight yourself in the Lord so that he will give you the desires of your heart. That's not with me. And rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice. The Bible also says that we are to love God by keeping his commandments. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is, Jesus said, who loves me. And it's here that we see that To the one who genuinely loves God, His commandments are not onerous. When a young man is smitten with the love of a young woman, to travel a hundred or two hundred kilometres to be with her is nothing. If it were not so in his heart, it would be a much harder thing to get there. 2,000. Over to New Zealand mate. 6,000 on an electroprop jet I tell you. That's a very good point isn't it. It's no effort for us. Like my wife has 9 grandchildren, as I do also. and she would have them all at our place at once. Nothing is too much for the grandchildren. No, let them come, because she just loves them. So, to keep his commandments, says John, is not burdensome. In fact, as the great, long psalm on delighting in God's commandments says, your commandments are my delight. That's an interesting state to be in, isn't it? Here we see a radical change of attitude towards God's commandments is a sign of our conversion, our change and new birth in the Holy Spirit. His commandments are a delight, they're not burdensome to us, we run to them. That's a sign of our conversion. Then we love God by loving His people. When Jesus had finished breakfast on the beach after the resurrection, He said to Simon Peter, Simon son of John, do you love me more than these? Yes Lord, you know I love you. He said to him, feed my lambs and then again tend my sheep. To love God is to please him and to minister to that which is dear to his heart. If a husband has a wife who loves her garden and the husband ministers to that garden to assist its well-being, it is the expression of his love for his wife. I noticed him right at the start actually. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep and those who love him do the same. It is our expression of our love for the Lord. What then a blessed commandment this is, and how wonderful that it can be fulfilled in us. Heavenly Father, it is indeed a blessed commandment, and wholly fitting and right, and truly worthy and appropriate. Bring us therefore, in all our heart, soul, mind and strength, to delight in it and to fulfil it with joy. Lord, we think of the little boy who, carrying his brother, said famously, Sir, he's not heavy, he's my brother. Lord, your commandments are not heavy. They are Your commandments and we love them and You strengthen us in them. Do so we pray more and more through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.