Radical Implications for Loving God

Last week, as we looked at Luke 19:45-48, we watched Jesus was being burned up with zeal for the Lord’s House, for right, proper and fitting worship as he cleared the Court of Gentiles. In my preparation for last Sunday's sermon, Scripture began to read me. Words started popping in to my mind as I watched Jesus’ red-hot passion for the kind of proper and fitting worship that the God of the universe deserved.

Enraptured. Consumed. Devoted. Enthralled.

If there were a machine that could do an x-ray of my true affections, what would they reveal? I wondered out loud if those words would describe my walk with Christ. What about you? What would it reveal about the condition of your heart?

I ended with some questions for you to wrestle through (read them here), but here is the first set of questions: Do you delight more and more in the majesty and glory of God? Does your heart incline to worship God more consistently and intelligently and earnestly and intensely today than it did five years ago?

This Sunday, we are going to be looking at Matthew 22:34-40:

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Jesus is going even deeper... When asked what is the most weighty or great commandment for us to keep, he was clear: we are to love God with our totality! Frances Ridley Havergal’s hymn "Take My Life" reflects what it might look like for us:

Take my life, and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.

Take my moments and my days; let them flow in ceaseless praise.

Take my hands, and let them move at the impulse of Thy love.

Take my feet, and let them be swift and beautiful for Thee.

 

Take my voice, and let me sing always, only, for my King.

Take my lips, and let them be filled with messages from Thee.

Take my silver and my gold; not a mite would I withhold.

Take my intellect, and use every power as Thou shalt choose.

 

Take my will, and make it Thine; it shall be no longer mine.

Take my heart, it is Thine own; it shall be Thy royal throne.

Take my love, my Lord, I pour at Thy feet its treasure store.

Take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for Thee.

So, Jesus in his final week of ministry reminded his followers and the religious leaders of that day and he still reminds and implores us today to  “Come to me, and I will give you fullness of joy. I will satisfy your heart and soul and mind with my glory.” This is the first and great commandment.

But he doesn't leave us there! With that great discovery - that God is the never-ending fountain of our joy - the way we love others is forever changed. If we fulfill the first commandment, it will have radical, radical implicaitons on how we love others...

Join us this Sunday!