Do you like commercyals? Oh, I love commercyals. I, I would rather watch commercyals than watch the show. I wouldn't, I just, I love commercyals. Love the, the, they're short, they're small. They're creative. I just, I love everything about it. And have you seen the new series of commercyals? Out of Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin. Yeah. Not familiar with that. Well, that's the headquarters of the old Johnsonville sausage people. That's right. They have a whole new series of commercyals and they are super, super fun. Here's just a little, some of the, the transcript of one of the commercyals. They sound kind of like this. So outrage is all the rage angst is our new national pastime. Just a thought from out here in Johnsonville. What if, instead of keeping it angsty, we all keep it juicy. Like a perfectly cooked Johnsonville sausage. Oh, yeah. Turn down the temperature just for a bit and let your flavor. Flags fly. Imagine if what starts feeding us again is not the bots, but the brats. Hey, here's to us when we keep it juicy. I love it. I, I mean, I've, I've seen several of them. It's just fantastic and just totally brill for this time of life. This moment in our society when there is lots of anger and there is lots of angst and there is lots of rage a time when liberals are canceling conservatives and conservatives are canceling liberals a time when airlines are canceling flights a time when Netflix is canceling TV shows a time when health gurus are canceling bacon. This would be a really, really good time for us to turn the heat down just a little bit. And I'm telling you a grill full of bratwurst. That, that, that'll, that'll bring a good vibe. I mean, that's a thing that's good. But here's the deal. At some point, the fire on the grill will go out and all the brats will be eaten. So, is there something that lasts longer? Is there something that can go deeper to help us at home to help us at church, to help in our community, to help in our country, to help in the world? Is there something that has a deeper impact on the angst and the rage in our world? Well, we continue our series, the greatest word ever and it is in the greatest word ever that we find that something that, that thing that has a deeper impact than just a really, really good bratwurst commercyal. And what is that greatest word that we find that hope in? Well, we're going to look together and see our message today. Is everyone needs it and we're going to be looking at Matthew 22. Verse 39 a lawyer came up to Jesus and said, hey, Jesus, what's the greatest commandment in the world? What's, what's the greatest one? And Jesus is responding to him and he says this in verse 39 the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So it feels like we showed up in the middle of the commercyal, right? If this is the second part, then what happened in the first part? Well, right before this, Jesus told the lawyer that the greatest commandment, the foremost commandment in the universe, the most important thing you can possibly do is to love the one true sovereign God with all of your heart and all of your mind and all of your strength and all of your soul. Now to love God like that means that we love God with all of our attitudes, with all of our emotions, with all of our thoughts, with all of our feelings. We love God with the whole existence of who we are, all of, of who we are, all of our. And the word we used last week was was muchness, the muchness of what we own of our possessions of what we're able to do every part about us. We seek to love God with all of our heart and mind and soul and strength. Now, what's our motivation for that? Why should we even attempt to do that. Well, there's about 1.7 gazillion reasons why we should love God this way. But for the sake of time, we're just going to note one. We should love God with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength. Because without God, we don't exist, we don't exist. You were not created from just some cloud of dust in space. You have been fearfully and wonderfully made. You are so unique and you've been fearfully and wonderfully made through the amazing system of creation that was established by the love of the one true sovereign God. And because the amazing miraculous fingerprints of God are all over your life right now. It makes reasonable rational sense at the very least to consider loving your creator with all that you have. Jesus turns to a lawyer and he says, I've got an answer to your question. What's the greatest commandment? Will the greatest commandment? The most important thing you can do in life, exclamation point is to love God with all that you have. And that's for all people, past, present and future. That's for Christians and non Christians. The most important thing that anyone can do and anyone can pursue is to love God with all that we have. And then he says, and the second greatest commandment, the second foremost commandment is a lot like the first one and that is love your neighbor in the same way that you love yourself. So how do you love yourself? It's a fair question when we think of this, love your neighbor in the same way you love yourself. Ok. Well, how do you love yourself? What kind of food do you want for yourself? What kind of car do you want for yourself? What kind of clothes do you want for yourself? What kind of house do you want for yourself? What kind of job do you want for yourself? What kind of, what kind of money do you want for yourself? What kind of health or, or safety or comfort do you want for yourself to love your neighbor in the same way you love yourself is to take whatever your answers are to those questions and other questions like it and to want those same kinds of things for your neighbor to want those, those same types of things for your neighbor. So then the question comes, well, who's your neighbor? Well, according to the whole of the teaching of the Bible and very specifically, according to what Jesus says about the good Samaritan, your neighbor. Is anyone? Your parents, are your neighbors, your spouse is your neighbor, your kids, are your neighbors, your grandkids, are your neighbors, your grandparents, are your neighbors, the people you work with, are your neighbors, the people you go to church with, are your neighbors, the people you go to school with. They're your neighbors. The agnostic is your neighbor, the atheist is your neighbor, the person you're stuck in traffic with on I 26 at 530 on a Friday afternoon, they're your neighbor, the person that you're standing in line with the DMV. They're your neighbor. The Israelis are your neighbor. The Palestinians are your neighbor? A Republican? Is your neighbor? A democrat. Is your neighbor. A conspiracy theorist. Is your neighbor a woke influencer? Is your neighbor? Are we uncomfortable yet? You hear anybody in that list that you don't want to love in the same way that you love yourself? Look, we're, we're not perfect. OK? And we're not going to love perfectly. You are never going to love your family and your friends or anybody else on this planet perfectly and neither will I. But what Jesus is bringing us to is is this question if we are going to claim to follow him, are we going to listen to his command? And his command is to love our neighbors in the same way that we love ourselves? It's not an option. He doesn't say you don't have to love that person if they don't agree with your religion, if they don't agree with your politics, if they don't agree with your social idea about things, he doesn't say, you know, it's an option. You don't have to love that person because you don't like their gender pronouns. He didn't say that. Now. Does that mean we have to affirm everyone's religion and politics and gender pronouns and everything else. No. See the, the call that Jesus is moving us toward is godly affection, not godless affirmation. There's a difference. We can show affection without showing affirmation. Is that easy. It's super hard. But because of the power of the gospel and because of the love of Christ inside of us, we can take that difficult balance and we can pursue it. But here's the thing, if we're honest, we don't really want to pursue it. We don't, I mean, we, if we get down to the, to the nuts and bolts, we don't want to strike that balance, you know why? Because it's just easier to hate or complain about or ignore or avoid or rage about someone that doesn't look like us, think like us, vote like us or spend their Sunday mornings like us. It's just easier. The problem is that's not what Jesus did and that's not what Jesus calls us to do. Well, look, we aren't talking about being foolish, ok? I mean, if someone breaks into my house tonight and threatens me, I'm not going to go, hey, you know what I'm supposed to love you in the same way that I love myself. So look, I'm just going to sit over here in the corner with my lavender cream frappuccino and you do whatever you need to do, ok? You know, I mean, that's not what we're going to do right. Here's the thing that's not me loving my neighbor in the same way. I love myself. Here's why myself doesn't want my house broken into all myself, doesn't wanna get beat up with a baseball bat while somebody's breaking into my myself doesn't want my rare collection of Hamilton Porter baseball cards stolen. Ok. So, so the reality is myself would not want those things. Therefore, that would not be a way for me to love that person in the same way. I love myself. The call of Jesus is not to love foolishly but to love faithfully. What does that mean? Well, to be faithful means to be loyal and steadfast. So, so does that mean that we have to steadfastly and loyally love someone who hates God and doesn't vote like us? Well, no, because you can't, at least not on your own. You see the, the picture we have here is the power of the first commandment, the power of loving God first and most with all of our heart and mind and soul and strength. The power of that does something it puts fuel in our tank. It does something to the inside of us that affects what happens on the outside of us. To love God with all that we have means that if we are faithful and steadfast in our love toward God, we will have what we need to love other people, we'll have what we need to faithfully obey the second greatest commandment. And that second greatest commandment is one of the absolute hardest things in the universe to do. It's, it's hard to love others in the same way that we love ourselves. But part of the command is found in the love, the command to love God first and most will give us what we need to love others in the same way we love ourselves, even people who are not like us. That that's the, that's the reason Jesus gave it to us that way. Oh, you're looking for the greatest commandment. Well, first, you need to love God with all that you are. And if you do that, you'll have the gas that you need to do the second. But if you don't do the first, you won't do the second. And if you do the second, it will lose its value without the first. If all we do is love people in general and don't help them, love God, then we have actually been unloving toward those people. If all we do is love them in this life, but don't love them toward God toward them, finding God, then we fail both commandments. On another day, Jesus was talking to his closest friends and he said this in Matthew 544 love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Can you imagine being one of those guys that day? Oh gosh, that sounds great. Jesus can't wait to get started on that. Loving my enemies. It's not natural. It's not, it's not how we think it's just easier to get angry at our spouse. It is. It's just easier. It's easier to get ticked off at our parents. It's easier to get frustrated with our kids. It's easier to cancel that liberal politician. It's easier to cancel that conservative talk show host. It's, it's just easier than it is to love any of those people in the same way that we love ourselves. So, in essence, we could say that our entire society is doing the easy thing. We, we're just all moving in the direction of doing the the easy thing. And is the easier thing working? Are there less problems in families as we do? The easy thing is we ignore the command of Jesus and we, we just kind of do our own thing. Is, is there less problems at home? Our political battles improving our government are rants and raves and rages on social media. Is it, is it making us less anxious, less angry? Are don't tread on me flags, making us stronger. Our rainbow flags making us more loving. Is it working doing the opposite of what Jesus has called us to do? Is it, is it working? Does it seem to be having the impact and the influence that we think it would be happening or even that we hope would be happening? Look, we're not trying to promote some kind of hippy dippy pie in the sky. I love fest. All right, we're not, we're not being foolish. That's, that's not what's happening. We're simply asking this question, if we are going to profess to be Christians, will we listen to the commandments of Jesus? Or are we going to ignore the one who loved us and gave himself up for us? And if we ignore the one who loved us and gave himself up for us, are we doing it? Because what he's asking us to do is uncomfortable. What he's asking us to do pushes us in our political beliefs and our religious beliefs and our social beliefs. Are we unwilling to obey Jesus because we don't like it because it doesn't fit in our narrative. CS Lewis and Mere Christianity said this. The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you love your neighbor act as if you did that. That sounds a bit crazy at first glance. All right, it sounds like fake it till you make it, you know, fake it till you feel it, you know, and I mean, we don't wanna be fake, right? But see someone's noted that, that our society look, this isn't in the last 10 years. This goes all the way back to the garden but, but it feels bigger now. And, and in our society, there's this thing that says that if you don't feel it, that that self expression of what you feel. If you don't feel it, then it's not authentic. Therefore, it's not real. And so we take that and we go, ok, I I like that. If I don't feel it, it's not real. So if I don't feel like loving that liberal politician, I don't have to. If I don't feel like loving that conservative talk show host, then I don't have to. And that works unless you're a Christian. Because if we are Christian, the math changes and we do actually have to love people who are not like us in the same way that we love ourselves. If our faith is real and not Phony Greg Morse says that this kind of love pursues this type of attitude. He says this love your neighbor as yourself, regardless if they have wronged you, that really applies to marriage by the way, love your neighbor as yourself, no matter how unpopular they are. Love your neighbor as yourself. Notwithstanding the fact that they embody every pet peeve that you didn't even realize you had until you met them. I can feel that one, right? You can feel that one. Yeah, we, you, we already know that one person just, they just popped in our head, right? It's tough. I mean, this, this sounds impossible. Let's be honest. I mean, it just sounds impossible. So how do we, how do we do it? How, how do we pursue this? Well, it all goes back to the first commandment. It all goes back to our attitude toward God. Greg Morse goes on love God with everything no matter how busy you are. Love God. With everything, no matter how angry with him, you may be love God with everything, no matter how sick, tired or confused you are. We were out of town for a wedding this weekend and my youngest daughter was, was in the wedding. And so they had to stay until everything was over last night. And then they had a three hour drive, uh, back to our house last night and, and I heard and her boyfriend and so imagine if at midnight last night, you know, MEREDITH calls me and says, hey dad, you know, we had a wreck and I say, well, sweetie, I, I got to preach tomorrow. I mean, you know, I, y'all are just going to have to sort it out. I'll, I'll catch up with you tomorrow after church. No, I'm going to throw on my Scooby Doo robe and my night rider slippers. And I'm going to head as fast as I can to go find where they are. Right? Why? Because I love them. How much more should I love the one who created me? How much more should I love? The one who has rescued my soul from the curse of sin? So that when I die, if it is in a wreck, I won't die forever. But I will wake up on the other side of death in perfect peace, perfect joy, perfect love because of what he's done for me. How much more should I love him? One of the reasons I'm standing before you today is because of Becky Baden, Billy Don and Becky Baden, raised three great boys and their youngest son, Jason will always be one of my most precious friends. Becky and Billy Don both. But, but I, I know Becky for the purposes of, of what I'm sharing has prayed for me so many times. I mean, oh, more than I can imagine. And her prayers she journaled in, in a little prayer book at the church that, that Karen grew up in. My wife grew up in every week, multiple times. Becky prayed for me over and over again. Becky's funeral was, was Friday morning and I just immediately thought of how thankful I am for her prayers and her love. In fact, you know, I'm, I'm just in a, in a season where, um, there are so many things that just, just grip me. I mean, Karen told me I was on this end of the building, I walked down the hall and walked in my office and sat down and just, just started weeping when I heard about Becky Dyne just, she just, she has meant so much to me in my life. She's been in the hospital for a few weeks and one day as she was laying there in the hospital, she kinda started herself and, and woke up and just got really mad because she thought she was already with Jesus and she got really upset and her caregiver who was sitting there with her said she almost immediately after being upset, said, Lord, please forgive me for being upset. Please forgive me for questioning your timing. You know who says things like that? People that love God first and most and when you love God first and most you will love other people. People like me and you may not know this but sometimes I'm not easy to love, but Becky loved me and I loved her and our love was birth out of our love first and most for God, listen, that angry crazy woke liberal neighbor of yours. They're going to be hard to love and this is for you, Harold. Um that angry crazy woke liberal neighbor is going to say you're hard to love. Yeah, we, we may not know that but just in case you didn't know every single one of us every now and then we're hard to love, you know, but here's the thing because of the power of the gospel because of the love of Jesus Christ that is in us. We can love it won't be easy. But we can again says Lewis, the rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you love your neighbor act as if you did. And then he goes on as soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets when you are behaving as if you love someone, you will presently come to love him. However, if you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking them more. Did you catch that math? The math is refusing to love. God hurts you, refusing to love others, hurts you. But learning to love God helps you and learning to love others, helps you. This is the, the picture the the power of the gospel. The power of the gospel says behave with love and Lord willing the feelings will follow but don't wait for the feelings, make the choice because of the Gospel because we have been loved, choose to love. But someone may say, you don't know my spouse. You don't know my kids. You don't know my parents. You don't know my crazy woke neighbor. You don't know my crazy conspiracy, the conspiracy theorist, neighbor, you, you don't, you don't know but you're right. I I may not know them but I know Jesus and I know that in the simplest ways that Jesus was brutally executed for my sin and your sin that Jesus endured the cross and all of its shame so that we would not perish forever. He endured the cross and all of its shame to free us from the curse of sin. And his sacrifice is enough to stir us to at least pursue the second greatest commandment. And if the sacrifice of Jesus is not enough for you to pursue the second greatest commandment, then you probably do not know him. Now, is that a strong statement? Are we going to have moments. We're not going to want to love our neighbors. Absolutely. But as a philosophy, as a way of life, we must, if we are going to claim to follow Jesus, learn to pursue loving our neighbors in the same way that we love ourselves, including the people who are not like us. We have a sweet dear saint in our church who's experienced um so many years of, of, of physical and, and, and medical and, and emotional pain. And they were sharing with me recently, some of the more recent things that they've been struggling with and in the middle of sharing, they, they just stopped and they said, but you know, when I think of Jesus and I think of what Jesus has done for me and they couldn't even finish the sentence. They, they just started tearing up, you know why? Because the love of Christ was compelling to them. The love of Christ was controlling and, and overwhelming to them because friend, when we consider the wondrous cross on which the prince of glory died for us when we consider what he has done, when we consider that, that he who knew no sin became sin for us and that by his wounds, we are healed and set free, loving someone who's not like me, loving someone who disagrees with me. I don't know there's a different energy that comes into that conversation, but I want you to know everything inside your heart and mind and every single thing inside of our Southern culture, our American culture and the culture of the world will say, don't do it, don't do it. But the command of Jesus, we'll keep coming. Yeah. Yeah. Do this because I have loved you go and love, go and lead people to my love. Has your soul been healed by Jesus? Have you received his salvation? Have you repented of sin and, and turned to him? If so, a reservation has been made yesterday was my 28th wedding anniversary. And uh we made reservations to eat somewhere while we were on the road on Friday night. Have you ever made reservations? And it didn't go quite like you wanted it to go? Yeah. Uh so we made reservations at a place that we had eaten before between here and Atlanta. Great food. Everything's fantastic. I called ahead. Made the reservation real, real sweet girl on the phone said, do you want to sit in the room where there is live music or where there is not live music? And I said I would like to sit where there is not live music, you know, anniversary wanna you know, hang out and talk. So when we got there, guess where we were seated, we were not seated in the place where there is no live music where there was live music and we just like, couldn't, couldn't hear ourselves think. Now I should let you in a little secret here. I'm the kind of guy that's not going to ask for a different table. I am and I'm going to tell you why if you've ever waited tables, you know exactly what I'm getting ready to say. Once they assign you that table, you have been assigned a waiter or a waitress and if you move, they just lost a tip. So I'm that guy, I'm like, I'm going to sit here and listen to this loud music because I got a whole weekend because I'm going to tip that person because I'm not going to let him leave. So it's just a little secret of my work mind and how I think. Um but you know, sometimes reservations don't work the way we want them to work, right? I want you to know that will never happen with your salvation. Never listen to what the Apostle Paul told the Colossians church. Colossians. One, beginning in verse three, we give thanks to God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ praying always for you. Since we heard of your faith in Christ, Jesus and the love which you have for all the saints because of the hope reserved for you in heaven. Don't, don't miss that math. The way that we're able to love is because of our reservation. We're not able to love because that person in front of us is lovable. Ok? We're able to love because that person in front of us does not define our existence. It does not define our eternity. Our hope that has been reserved in heaven for us defines our existence. We have a reservation of hope. Not like, hey, I hope dinner goes well. Not like hope like, hey, I hope the anniversary goes well. Not like hope like, hey, I hope the wedding goes well, but hope that cannot and will not disappoint us because that hope has been purchased guaranteed by the blood and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is risen. He is risen indeed. And that's why our reservation is perfect. The people we are called to love, they're going to disappoint us and the people that are called to love you. They're going to be disappointed. We, we're going to always be disappointed. But the hope that we have in Jesus Christ will never disappoint us. Never. Becky Vaden has had some mild dimension in recent years and, and it's caused a lot of things to have to change in her life. But one of the things that her dementia has never changed is her hope, her hope has never changed. On another one of those days, she was sitting there and she woke up and she said, well, this isn't heaven. She was right. This isn't heaven. And no matter who gets elected and no matter how much money you make, no matter how great your health is, no matter how wonderful the dinner or the wedding or the anniversary may be, this will never be heaven. It's not supposed to be. But there is a hope in heaven that is supposed to be exactly what it's supposed to be. And for my friend Becky Von this morning, her hope did not disappoint. She no longer has a reservation. She's arrived. That truth impacts our ability to honor the second commandment. It just does because the hope of our reservation becomes the fuel. We don't have that kind of hope inside of us. We don't have the hope of heaven that we can touch right now. But we do have the hope of that reality and that hope is enough to fuel our hearts, to love people that we struggle to love and we will struggle to love them, but we love them as if we do. Why? Because the greatest word is love and the love of God through Jesus Christ makes it possible to do the impossible. The love of God through Jesus Christ fuels our hearts deeper and longer than a really great Johnsonville sausage commercyal. Jesus turned to the lawyer and he said, love your neighbor in the same way you love yourself and dear friend. I will simply say the message of Jesus has never changed.