Church camp notes

Hey everyone, here are Dr Raymond Wilson's notes for the first sermon at camp. Sherman will post up the other two at some point.

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Sermon 1: What is the Greatest Commandment of All?
Introduction:
The theme of our camp this weekend is "loving the Lord with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself".

In my 3 sermons I will share with you some of what the Scriptures have to say on this theme.

In my sermons I will attempt to answer three questions:
1. What is the greatest commandment of all?
2. How do we love the Lord the way we should?
3. How should our love for the Lord affect us and those around us?

During your group discussions you will look at some of the practical ways you can apply the Scriptures to your own life both as individuals in your daily life and in your life together as a church fellowship.

It is my prayer that thinking and learning about loving the Lord will make a real difference o all of us and we will all grow spiritually and the Lord will be glorified in us and through us.

Reading:
Mark 12:28-33
In our reading, a Jewish religious teacher (a scribe) was genuinely impressed with Jesus' ability to argue and to explain the scriptures. He was concerned about the many laws in the Old Testament, and he had obviously spent a lot of time studying them.

The Jewish religious teachers counted a total 613 individual commandments in the Old Testment Scriptures. There are 365 negative commandments (things not to do) - one for each day of the year! And there are 248 positive commandments (things to do) - one for each of the 248 parts of the human body. The scribes spent a lot of time trying to sort all these rules into some kind of order of importance. However, they used to argue about these rules among themselves instead of actually obeying the commandments and so Jesus called them a bunch of hypocrites.

This particular scribe seems to have been sincere and he came to Jesus with a genuine question: "What is the greatest commandment?" Jesus answered him: "The most important one is this: 'Love the Lord your God will all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'"

Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy chapter 6: Deuteronomy 6:4-5
The scribe only asked for the "greatest" commandment, but Jesus goes on to give him more.
"The second is this: 'Love your neighbour as yourself.'"
This time Jesus is quoting for Leviticus 19:18 where the Israelites were commanded: "... love your neighbour as yourself'"

Jesus told the scribe which were the two greatest commandments, but they are not actually about rules at all. These two commandments are about relationships - how we love God and how we love other people.

So, what does it mean to love the Lord?

We live in a society where most people spend their lives ignoring God and seeking their own pleasure and personal fulfilment. Even in Christian circles we can be very busy serving the Lord but not actually love Him!

God wants out love. We must serve Him as an act of genuine, wholehearted love and devotion, not merely serve Him out of a sense of duty.

Notice the repetition of the word "all" in the first commandment. The Lord wants us to love Him with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength. We should not try to analyse the four things here (heart, soul, mind and strength) too much. In other Scriptures telling us the same thing about loving and serving the Lord we sometimes find just 2 things: heart and soul (Deuteronomy 4:29; Deuteronomy 10:12; Josh 22:5). Sometimes we find three things: heart, soul and strength (Deuteronomy 6:5; Luke 10:27) or heart, soul and mind (Matthew 22:37).

Here in Mark 12 we have four things: heart, soul, mind and strength. What these verses are telling us is that we are to love the Lord with our whole being - everything we have. We are to love the Lord with our thoughts, our attitudes, our wills, our affections, our bodies, and everything we do with our bodies and through our bodies.

The command to love the Lord is repeated several times in the Old Testament.

Deuteronomy 10:12-13

Notice that God's people are to fear Him, obey Him, and serve Him, as well as love Him.

In Proverbs chapter 1 we read that the fear of the Lord is the beginning (first step) to wisdom (Proverbs 1:7).

What does it mean to fear the Lord? It does not mean to be terrified of Him. Christians have no need to be terrified of God. Only those who reject His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, need to be terrified of Him because He will punish them in Hell for their rejection of Christ.

The word translateed "fear" means a reverent awe and respect and submission. It means a reverent carefulness not to displease God and invite His anger or discipline.

These days there is a real lack of fear of God by His people. We need a healthy respect for the Lord. He is not our equal. He is not just an ordinary person. He is the Almighty God. When God gave the law to the Isralites He revealed Himself in a great fire on top of Mt Sinai. The people could not come near. If they did so they would be struck dead.

Hebrews 12:29 tells us that we are to "worship God with reverence and awe because our God is a consuming fire".

God revealed to the Israelites that He is an awesome God and someone to be feared and respected.

Many times in Scripture, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament as well, we are told to fear the Lord. Why?

1. Because He is our creator and our owner. Our life and everthing we have are only because He gave them to us.
2. Because God is infinitely greater than us. Compared to Him we are nothing.
3. Because He is holy and He hates all sin and wickedness, but we are sinful.
4. Because He is our judge and we will answer to Him. He is absolutely just and righteous and He cannot tolerate any form of wickedness.

Because we have accepted Christ as our Lord and Saviour, we are no longer under God's wrath. But, if we rebel against Him, He will discipline us because He loves us for our good and His glory.

The psalmist prays:
Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided (faithful) heart, that I may fear your name. (Psalm 86:11)

So, we are to fear the Lord and ensure that we do not displease Him.

And we are to love the Lord. To love the Lord means to have a desire to honour, serve and please Him. He loves us totally. He loved us enough to send His own Son to die for us. We cannot really understand God's love apart from Calvary. It was at the cross that God displayed the totality of His love.

He has redeemed us and He has also adopted us as His own children. He blesses us every day of our lives, even though we forget to thank Him. He will one day take us to be in the glory of heaven - His own home - forever.

We respond to God's love by loving God back and seeking to please Him in everything we do.

The Hebrew word for love, "aheb", used in Deuteronomy 6 is the equivalent of the Greek word, "agapao", used in the New Testament. Both these words for love refer to an act of the mind and will, that is determined to care for the welfare of something or someone. This love is unselfish, sacrificial service and seeking the good of another person. It is about attitude and action.

We must choose to relate to God in a loving way no matter how we might feel. To love God is not about feelings. It is about a choice to put His glory, His will and His requirements first, whether we feel like it or not. Feeling comes and go; they rise in our hearts and they fade away again.

Sometimes in a church service we can be stirred by the sermon we hear, the songs we sing, and the prayers we offer, but when we go home we do not feel warm and loving at all. Sometimes we can feel frustrated that we do not have great warm feelings about God all the time.

Agape love does not come from our feelings and does not necessarily agree with our feelings! It is something that comes from our will. We must set our will in the direction of loving the Lord.

1 Corinthians chapter 13 is a well-known passage all about love for other people, but it says nothing about how we feel. Instead, it talks about our attitudes and our behaviour.

Now, there is another Greek word "phileo" which means affection as between friends and relatives.

We are not likely to feel warm feelings for an enemy who hates us and does everything he can to make life miserable for us. But we can still think and act lovingly towards that enemy. If we act lovingly towards someone we often find that warm feeling begin to grow in us, but not always.

Paul uses this word phileo in 1 Corinthians 16:22 where he writes: If anyone does not love [phileo] the Lord - a curse be on him. So we are expected to have phileo (affection) for God too.

Why should we love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and will? Because it is our only reasonable response to Who He is and What He has done for us, what He continues to do for us, and what He will do for us in the future even though we do not deserve it.

He has chosen us, saved us and made us His own. And he continues to save us from those things that would destroy us. He blesses us even though we fail Him so often. He will bless us even more in the future and we will spend all eternity with Him in heaven.

Sadly, it is possible to lose our love for the Lord. In Revelation chapters 2 and 3 we read about two churches with this problem:

The church in Ephesus was busy but bored. They were busily serving the Lord out of duty but not love, and the Lord tells them to repent.

The church in Laodicea was lukewarm. They had no enthusiasm and no real love for God. They made the Lord feel sick and He wanted to vomit them out of His mouth.

The Lord is more interested in our attitudes and motives than in our religious activities. Samuel the prophet asked King Saul a question when Saul had disobeyed the Lord: Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? (1 Samuel 15:22-23)

Hosea 6:4-6

It is possible to spend your whole life "serving the Lord" with the wrong motives and see it all go up in smoke at the end when the Lord tests our works by fire? 1 Corinthians 13 tells us that Christian service that is not motivated by love is empty and worthless. That applies equally to our service for God and our service for other people.

We are to love the Lord because He loves us and has poured out His goodness to us. When the Lord gave the Israelites the 10 Commandments He began by reminding them of His goodness to them: "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me..."

The commandment Jesus quoted to the scribe comes from Deut 6. If we go back to Deut 4, we find that Moses reminds the Israelites of all the Lord's goodness to them in loving them. We love the Lord because of what He has done for us in saving us from sin and giving us eternal life and a glorious eternal future. But we must learn to love God for Himself, not just for what He has done for us and certainly not just for what we can "get out of Him". If we love Him only when life is going well for us, we will not be able to love Him when the hard times come and He seems distant from us. He does allow difficulties to come into our lives to refine us and to prove His faithfulness and grace to us. The Lord expects us to continue to love Him and put Him first in everything during the good times and during the hard times.