feel like Christian faith is really difficult and complex and challenging. It's a story about one day in the lineup outside of heaven. As these things go, Peter is the one who's greeting people and processing them. So the first one in line is a man. Peter greets him and says, welcome, I'm glad you're here. We'll begin to process your application. But the first thing I need to do is I have a very simple question for you. Man got visibly nervous. Peter said, relax. It's easy. Can you spell God? And then said, G-O-D, Peter said, great, come on in. This is not theologically precise by the way. Next, next in line was a man. Step forward. Peter said, welcome. We'll go ahead. You're here. I'll begin processing your paperwork. But first I have a simple question for you. Can you spell Jesus? And then said, J-E-S-U-S. Peter said, great, come on in. Third in line was a woman, a feminist. And not just a feminist in that she believed that women ought to be treated equally, but a militant fist in your face angry in your face kind of feminist. And she stepped forward. Peter was going to do his spiel. Welcome. We're glad you're here. He didn't get the spores. Welcome, I was mad. She said, don't just a dog on minute. Down there below, I had to put up with all of you male dominated, patriarchal, sexist, misogynist, all the nonsense. I'm not going to tolerate it up here. And Peter said, whoa, whoa, it's a simple question. Can you spell Bosnia, Herzegovina? I feel a lot of times like my faith goes from can you spell God, to can you spell Bosnia, Herzegovina? It feels very challenging. It feels very complex. It feels very difficult. I want to say to the graduates, whether you're just graduated from Kennell Christian school, or Westminster Christian, or Florida Christian, or whether it's Miami-Dade, or FSU, UCF, or any other institution of higher learning, that sometimes after all your education, and I know I'm talking about, I spend a great deal of my adult life pursuing theological education, if you sometimes feel like your faith is more spell Bosnia, Herzegovina than it is like God, I want you to understand. I'm with you on them. This message this morning is intended to help help you help us remember the central aspect and what it is to follow Christ. We're looking at Matthew chapter 22 verses 34 through 40. Let me give you some context here. This is set in the middle of a number of challenges presented to Jesus by His opponents, the cynics, the teachers of the law, the Sadducees, with as background verse 34, hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question, teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law. Jesus replied, love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it. Love your neighbors yourself, all the prophets, hang on these two commandments. Let's pray together. Father, I confess that I am one who feels overwhelmed by the challenge of being a Christian in 2010 in Miami. I feel overwhelmed by the challenges of being a Christian man, a husband, a father, a pastor. I need to be reminded as much as anybody else in this place that at the heart of our faith is really pretty simple. Father, that you would impress upon our hearts this morning, this simple and yet radical message of love for you and love for one another is my prayer and Jesus' name. Amen. Our faith is really very simple, but the challenges that present themselves to our faith are overwhelming at times. Jesus's words are very simple. Love God. Love your neighbors yourself. Love God without your heart, soul and mind. Love your neighbors yourself, but applying them to our lives is enormous. Most of you are aware that there are 10 commandments. You can find them in Exodus 20. You can find them repeated in Deuteronomy 5. There are 10 commandments. If I asked you if you could name them all, some of you could do that. Some of you could. I'm not putting it on the spot. Some of you could do that. If I asked you name them in order, that list would narrow down quite a bit. On top of the 10 that we have in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, the Older Testament gives us another 600. I believe it's 613 more. Now, it's hard to remember 10. Imagine trying to hang on to 613 more and then down to the centuries between the giving of the Law of Moses somewhere around 1,400-1,300 BC, somewhere there to the time of Christ. The teachers of the Law, the scribes, the Pharisees, had added thousands more laws that covered everything from down the most minute aspects of their daily existence. It was an overwhelming, an impossibly complicated task to try to live out the Law. I want to say something to you that almost none of you in this room will have any point of reference for. There will be about 5 or 6 of us in this room that will understand immediately what I'm talking about. The rest of you just need to trust me on this. When this service began, you did this. When the service is over, you're going to do this again and you will never even think about it. You will walk into this place, you sat down, you're going to get up on the services over, you're going to turn and walk out of here, and it's automatic with you. You don't think about that anymore than you do breathing. But you need to take it from one who has lost the ability to do that and has tried to learn how to do it again. That is an unbelievably complicated thing you're doing. I'm not a computer expert. I started to say computer geek, but I mean that in the most positive and loving sense. I'm not a computer expert, but I understand that computer codes are written in ones and zeros. If what goes on between your brain and the rest of your body and the act of walking were written as computer code, I am absolutely complicated. That the pages filled with ones and zeros, single spaced, would be miles long. You have no idea how complicated that is. Right at 11 years ago, I lost the ability to do that and in the months and years that followed, I went through, I don't know how many hours or episodes of physical therapy to try to teach me how to do that again. And you must understand that at that point, my brain had to try to communicate to the rest of my body every single line of code because my body wasn't getting any of it. My brain had to say to my toes and my ankles and my knees and my hips and everything else, do this, don't do that. And when I would go through physical therapy and I have been blessed to have had the opportunity to work with some of the greatest, I mean the finest physical therapist, I tell them that the finest physical therapist and captivity, they don't like the sound of that, but they're tremendous therapists, I'm so fortunate to work with them. But they'd walk beside me after I got to the point where I could begin to hall my carcass around with a walk or some of you saw that in the video you smuggled in at my graduation that as I would put the walker in front of me and begin to try to walk again, my therapist would stand beside me and back and they'd say do this, don't do that, do this, don't do that, do this, don't do that. It was overwhelming, I couldn't begin to keep up with having my brain tell my feet and my ankles and my knees and everything else, do this, don't do that. And finally one day, one of my therapists was just a marvelous young lady and I said, you know, I can't do what you're telling me to do, you've got to simplify that. She went home, worked at it and she came up with a three, three command cueing system for me, it was very simple. She said, tuck your right hip in, elevate your left hip, advance your left leg, tuck lift advance, tuck lift advance. I said, I can do that. I can do one, two, three, I can't do these thousands of lines of code but I can do ABC like that and it really helped me begin to try to move my, I still don't do it very well, it's still pretty ugly but I can do it now because she helped simplify it for me. That's what happened when Jesus came. We had these thousands of lines of code and we couldn't do it. We were overwhelmed, we were paralyzed if you will by the demands of the law. Jesus came, he lived a life of perfect obedience to the law. He obeyed perfectly every aspect of the law but the law had given us these commands to follow and they had given us no ability whatsoever to obey and Jesus came along and said, I'm going to do this for you. I'm going to give you the ability to do it and I'm going to simplify it from thousands of lines of code commandments. I'm going to give you two. Love God with all your hearts on mine. Love your neighbors yourself. Can you remember that? Love God with all your hearts on mine. Love your neighbors yourself and in simplifying he said, numb these two commandments, hang all the rest at the law and the prophets. That's Hebrew shorthand for the whole, their Bible, what we call the Old Testament. You do those two things. You got all the rest of it. Now they're simple. They're very simple. That doesn't mean they're easy. They're overwhelming in terms of their grasp. So I'd have you, I'd have you note that this kind of love is all encompassing with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind. Our charismatic brothers and sisters and some of you may be here this morning, we're glad you're here. Our charismatic brothers and sisters love God with a deeply heart-felt passion. Their services are full of warm, fuzzy feelings about God. Their life verse is as the dear pants for the water, so my soul longs after you, O Lord. They love to sing those warm, passionate, contemporary songs like, I love you, Lord. Oh, how he loves you and me, draw me close. They love those things and those are great, but they're not enough. Our fundamentalist brothers and sisters, some of you may be here this morning. I would say, listening on the internet, but fundamentalists don't listen on the internet. I'm just kidding. They probably do. Our fundamentalist brothers and sisters, they love God with great devotion with fervent obedience and their services are full of great instructions and admonitions. They tell you what you ought to do, what you should do, what you must do. Their favorite life verse is, I was obedient to the heavenly vision. They love to sing songs like, trust and obey and take my life and let it be an armor, Christian soldiers. And that's great, but that's not enough. And then the reform, we in the reform camp, we love God with all of our minds. We love to think, lofty, deep thoughts about God. And we read Calvin's institutes for a light bedtime reading and we, and our favorite verses to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. And we, well, most reformed churches have used the only thing about one hymn for service so they could leave more time for the sermon, which I kind of like, but you wouldn't. And that one hymn is usually a mighty fortresses of our God. And that's great, but that's not enough. That's not enough. Somewhere in the intersection of these three things, the heart and the will and the intellect, somewhere in the intersection of those three elements of what it means to be made in the image of God is the kind of love that Jesus is talking about. And he says to love the Lord you got with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, it's an all-encompassing kind of love. His book, Living Proof, Jim Peterson says this. I just want to read these two paragraphs from his book. He says three elements of personality are involved in making a decision to become a Christian or making any significant decision for that matter. They are the emotions, the intellect and the will. For example, a young man meets a young woman. They are immediately attracted to one another. They both say to themselves, now there is someone I'd like to marry. At that point, if the emotions have their way, there would be a wedding. But the intellect intervenes, questioning the impulsive emotional response. Would we be compatible? What is he really like? Can I afford to support her? Can I totally change him? Both conclude, I figured that would hit with some of you. Both conclude it would be better to take some more time and answer a few questions before they proceed. So the two begin spending more time with each other. He eventually concludes that she is as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside. She eventually concludes that he is trainable. Now the intellect has sided with the emotions on the idea of marriage. But the final and heaviest vote remains to be cast. That of the will. It stops the march toward the altar with the questions. Am I willing to give up the lifestyle for this lifestyle for another? What about my freedom? Is it worth the trade? Am I willing to assume the added responsibility? The marriage will occur only when the will finally agrees with the emotions in the intellect. And so it isn't coming to Christ. We make a lot of appeals to people about becoming a Christian. We appeal to their brain, or at least the left brain. We appeal to their emotions, their right brain, and the heart. We appeal to their wills to make these decisions. They're all appropriate. But and if you hear this morning, you've never heard this before. If you're listening to this on the website, and you've not heard this before, first of all, we're so glad you're here. I'm glad you're listening. This is not an accident. This is a divine appointment. The call goes out as it did in Jesus' day, as it does now, to come to Christ with your mind, with your heart, and with your will, and to commit yourself to Him. Intellectually, willfully, emotionally, and to receive Him as Lord, to receive the payment He made on the cross for your sins. That is an objective fact that your brain's got to comprehend it, to come to Him in love and in gratitude for what He's done for you. And that's both an emotional and a willful decision, and then to follow Him through your heart, so on the mind, for the rest of your life. If you're here this morning, you've never made that decision. We would urge you today, make this the day you receive Christ of Lord. Do it with your heart, do it with your mind, and do it with your will. I kind of love it's all encompassing, and anything less than it is unworthy of our loving Heavenly Father, of our atoning sacrifice of the Son of God, of the family bond, of the Holy Spirit. I kind of love it's all encompassing, it's unifying, it's unifying. I'm told that in times of war, if you go to where the battle is raging, if you go behind the front line, say five miles back, you'll find that soldiers there are arguing, gripping, complaining about all kinds of things, they don't like the food, the mail service is slower, today is the email service, they don't like their cots, they're unhappy about the weather. If you go behind the scenes, there's a lot of arguing and complaining, but if you go to the front lines where the battle is hot, there's no arguing, there's no gripping, there's no complaining, they are focused on two things, don't get killed and advance the objectives of your army, don't get killed, kill the other guy, advance your objectives, they don't have time to argue, they don't have time to fuss, they don't have time to complain, and as as Ben Well said, you don't gauge the strength of an army by how many men are sitting in the mess hall and eating, you gauge the strength of an army by how many people has gone on the front lines carrying the battle to the enemy. When we remember that our priority is to love Christ wholeheartedly with all of our hearts so in mind and to advance his kingdom over and against all others, it results in unity in the body of Christ. Those who are most actively involved in love for God and advancing the objectives of the kingdom, they're never the winers and the grippers and the complainers. It's those who are not involved in love for God and love for their fellow men and advancing the objectives of God's kingdom. They're the ones who have the luxury of sitting back and complaining and criticizing and gripping. The more actively you're involved in the front lines the less time you have to complain. There's so many other forces at work in our culture today, folks that would seek to split us and divide us. We had the dividing lines between the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox and the Protestants and the evangelicals. You got Anglos and here my am Anglos Hispanics. Blacks, you have the age gaps of the traditionalists and then the baby boomers and then the Jan Xers and then the Millennials and so forth. You have red states and blue states. We've got social concern, social liberals. We've got all these forces that would seek to divide us if we get together and focus on what we believe, we argue. If we focus on who we believe, there's unity. If we focus on what we believe, there's disunity. When we focus on who we believe, there is unity. Am I saying what we believe is not important? Of course not. It's essential. But we're never going to agree, folks. In the Bible, Christ, we will never agree on every minor and not even all the major doctors. We just won't. The closest will probably ever come is the apostles' creed. Thank God for the creeds of the faith that were handed down to us by our forebears. It's a great cost. If we can agree on those things, that's terrific. But we will never ever agree on all the minor, even all the major doctors of the faith until we get to heaven. And then everybody will be a Presbyterian, amen? I'm sort of tongue in cheek but not completely. Ruth Graham, the late wife of Dr. Billy Graham, Ruth used to love to say that if two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary. We're not going to agree on everything, but we must agree on the Lordship of Christ. And Jesus said, back to verse 39, the second commandment is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. This kind of love, folks, it's unifying. The other things that our culture calls love, their infatuation, manipulation, exploitation, and even much worse than that, but this kind of love, this kind of love unifies. Are you a family of the show survivor? I'm not. That's not really true. I've never seen it. But I'm certainly aware of it. It was a cultural phenomenon. I think it was the first of the reality shows that really went wildly popular. And so I'm a total Philistine when it comes to this show. But what I understand happens is if you've got tribes pitted against one another to each one wants to eliminate the other. And then within the tribes, you've got each contestant gets pitted against the others. And so finally, the last ones get voted off the other and they leave one standing. Somebody says, well, yes, that's just a TV show. No, that's our culture. That's our culture. You're fired, you're hired. We like to get down to the point where there's that last one standing. That's our culture. It's not just a TV show. It's our culture. By contrast, look at the church's response when people are sick in the hospital for time after that. I'm so proud of this church with a godly pride for the way that you all have stepped up and ministered to those who are sick or hospitalized. Those who've been injured, those who've been taken out of the mainstream for however long. And you continue to minister grace and mercy and peace to those who can't be here. And I'm really proud of this church for the way we stepped up again. We don't do everything well. We do that well. When those things happen, there's a sense of urgency. We must minister those needs and that's a good thing. That's a good thing. We need to care that sense of urgency into the advancing of God's kingdom as well.
Soldiers, front line, rear guard echelon, different mentalities. The true soldier fights and, well said, the true soldier fights not because he hates what's in front of him but because he loves what's behind him. The true soldier fights, not because he hates what's in front of him but because he loves what's behind him. That kind of loves all encompassing. It's unifying. It's active. It takes the initiative. It does not wait for the other person to make the first move. Every major faith has some version of the golden rule. What we call doing to others, every major faith on the planet has some version of it except this difference. All the rest of them are in the negative. They all say, don't do to other people what you don't want them to do to you. Don't treat them any way that you wouldn't want to be treated. Okay, don't do that. It's only some people say that Jesus is the one who reworded and made a positive. It goes way before Jesus. Way before Jesus. Back in Leviticus, chapter 19, verse 18, the commandment came down to Moses. Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord your God. This is a biblical worldview. It's not negative, it's proactive. Not only do you not treat somebody else the way you don't want to be treated but you actually treat them the way you want to be treated. Be active about it. Be proactive. Be positive and take initiative. When we read what prompted Jesus to say this in Matthew 22, slightly different version of the same thing happens over Luke chapter 10. They're trying to trap him and one teacher of the law says, well, okay, what do I do? And he says, love your neighbor as yourself. And then this is a loose paraphrase. This teacher of the law says to Jesus, okay, smart guy, who's my neighbor? And then Jesus tells the story that we know and love is the parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus says a certain man was traveling from Jerusalem down to Jericho and on the way. He was set upon by thieves. They grabbed him and beat him and robbed him and stripped him naked and threw him in a ditch. And a priest came by and said, I'm busy. And Levi came by and said, I don't want to be defiled. And then a despised Samaritan came alongside and lifted the man up and tended his wounds and took him to an inn and said, you take care of him until I come back and I'll pay you for him. And Jesus said to the teacher of the law, now you tell me which one of them was a true neighbor. To this man. And the man said, the one who showed him mercy, the one who showed him mercy. Love is active, it's proactive. Love takes the initiative. It doesn't wait. Jesus said, go and do likewise. Look at the different worldviews and fifth graders and others. You know, I love to talk worldviews with you because you're about to be confronted with a bunch of different ones. Look at the different worldviews here. The Eastern man, the law of karma. He looks at that wounded traveler on the road down to Jerusalem, down to Jericho. And he says, well, you must have done something bad. And what goes around comes around. Sorry for you. You'll pay it off in this life. Next life will be better for you. The Darwinist says, well, thank, well, thank something that we've gotten your maladaptive, your genetically recessive wounded and ditch-falling traits out of the gene pool. Now the rest of us will be better as the Darwinist worldview. Social liberal says, my goodness, what happened here? We need to find the people that did this to you and we need to seek to understand the socio-economic psychosocial forces that are conspired against these poor people to make them act in obedience to these violent impulses. Meanwhile, he bleeds to death. The social conservative says, well, search your eye for going out to Jerusalem and not packing your gun with you. The biblical worldview, the biblical worldview, going to tend his wounds regardless of our differences. And you do not find that in any other faith system, in the other worldview on this planet, other than that from the Bible. Think about the applications here. Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself. I told you it's much simpler than the 10 and the thousands, hundreds and thousands of commandments. But boy, it's not a narrow, a simplistic approach. Think about this. If you love God, you won't have any other guys before him. You won't make any idols. You won't take his name in vain. You won't neglect his Sabbath. You come here and you worship. Here are some other house of worship. At least one day and seven. If you love your neighbors yourself beginning with your first neighbors, your parents, you'll honor your father and mother. You won't murder. You won't commit adultery with your neighbors' wife or husband. You won't steal. You won't lie. You won't seek to take that which belongs to your neighbor. You understand that if you love God first and love your neighbors yourself, all the others fall in line, all the law and all the prophets hang on these two commandments. The genius of what Jesus did is summarizing those two into those two commands. Unparalleled. Unparalleled. If we love God and we love our neighbors as ourselves, then we will obey all the rest. I can't remember thousands. I can't remember hundreds and someday as I can't even remember 10. I can remember those two. Let me say this to you folks. I think I'm safe in saying that I have probably spent more years in formal theological education than anybody else in this room, not by a lot, but by a little. And I'm telling you that if I only knew those two, love God first while on my heart's own mind, love my neighbors myself. If I only knew those two, I would spend the rest of my life not living up to what I know. I love all the rest of it. I'm so privileged to have been part of being able to study with some great scholars that if I only knew those two commands, I would spend the rest of my life not measuring up. That's what the gospel of God's grace is all about. None of us measure up. Not one of us. If we were graded on the curb, we all fail. That's what the grace of God is for. So what's our church about? So we have our distinctive. We certainly do. We're reformed. We adhere to the doctrines of the Reformation. I could do the solace for you. Some of you know them for the rest of us for all of them, I would say, what's our church about? We had better be about. Love for God with our hearts, souls and minds. Love for our neighbors as ourselves. And if we're not about those things, then all the rest of it, what was Paul saying for screen 13, just a bunch of noise. If we're not about seeking to love God first, I love our neighbors or others else. If what we do does not advance us down those parallel tracks of love for God and love for our neighbors, if what we do does not advance one or both of those objectives, it's not worthy of this church. It's not worthy of our covenant God. Second century philosopher, Greek philosopher by name of Aristides, not a Christian, wrote a letter to a pagan king. This is what he said about the early Christians. It's slightly paraphrased. This is very close to what he said about the early Christians. He said, they, Christians, they love one another. They do not overlook the widow and they save the orphan. He who has ministers ungrudgingly to him who does not have. When they see strangers, they take him in under their own roof and they rejoice over him as a true brother, for they do not call themselves brothers according to the flesh, but according to the soul, behold how those Christians love one another. Don't listen folks when people come here to candle press and for some of you, this is probably your first time here. I want to say again, we're glad you're here. We hope it won't be your last. When people come here to our church, I hope they save a way. This place looks great. It looks beautiful. We love the aesthetics here. I hope they say that. I hope they love the music. I really hope they love the sermon, at least two out of three. I'll settle for one out of three. I hope you feel that way about what we do here, but more than anything else, more than anything else, I hope that when you leave this place, you say, man, those people love God. I love one another. And they even love me. They even love me. Let's pray together. We're God Almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We don't begin to comprehend the kind of love you poured out on us in creation and giving up the law and making a way of redemption after we had fallen and sending your priests and your prophets to point to the one who would come our Messiah, our Redeemer, your Son Jesus. We will begin to understand the kind of love that would do those kind of things for sinners. But Lord, God Almighty, we believe it, or at least we want to believe it. Lord, I pray for the person who's here today who desperately wants to believe this is true, help that man, that woman, help that young person open up minds and hearts and wills and receive the promises of God. They're all yes in Christ. And for the rest of us, who've experienced your goodness years ago, decades ago, remind us again how good it is, to be brothers and sisters in Christ, to be the people of our Messiah Jesus. And whose name I pray? Amen. I want to ask that you now receive the Lord's Minidiction. Go now in the love of God, the Father, the grace and mercy of God, the Son, the fellowship and companionship of God, the Holy Spirit, and live the life. Amen.