Christian Love in Action: Mark 12:28-31 | True Christian Love

John Wesley's book Thoughts on Christian Perfection explores the concept of Christian perfection.

The first commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

This love should govern everything we say and do, making us one with God.

We should also love our neighbor as ourselves, taking care of them as we would ourselves.

Thank you. The book Walking with Wesley, which is this book here, is really an interesting one. It's a devotional book, and of course Wesley, John Wesley, is the man that is the namesake of our denomination. The Wesleyan denomination is because of John Wesley. Now, interestingly enough, I want to share with you something in the book here before we get started, and that is this. In 1759, John Wesley published his classic work, Thoughts on Christian Perfection. The principles he laid out in this practical work were not simply random thoughts of the great evangelist. Instead, he noted that he had believed and lived by these principles for many, many years previous to their publication. In one part of this book, he asked the question this, what is Christian perfection? And then he wrote, talk to you about love. I want to talk to you about the love of God. I want to talk to you about how we need to have the love of God in our hearts, our minds, our souls, our works, everything that we do. And I want to share with you the great commandment found in Mark chapter 12 and starting in verse 28 when it says these words. And one of the scribes came having hearing them reasoning together and perceiving that he had answered them well and asked, which is the first commandment of all? Now, when we read this, we've got to think that most of the time when scribes and Pharisees came to Jesus, they were coming to trap him into something, right? This was not the case here. This scribe was really, really wanting to know the truth. He was coming with an earnest heart. It was not coming out of trying to trap Jesus, but he was trying to truly understand what his thoughts were. And I love Jesus' response. It says in verse 29, and Jesus answered him, the first of all the commandments is here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. I like that. One. One. The one and only. And more so than being the one and only, in Hebrew it is ikad, meaning to be united together. So literally meaning that we as people should unite with God as one. When we get married to our spouses, that's what happens. We become one. Two become one. It's the same way when we become part of the family of God, when we ask Jesus in our hearts, when we ask God to forgive us of our sins, we should become one with God. If we are not one with God, if we are not living one with God, we need to look at our life and understand why we are not living one with God. Because that's part of the whole point of being a Christ follower. We need to be one. His thoughts are our thoughts. You know, our actions are all governed by His Holy Word. Everything that we do points to Him. That's how our love should be. We should be ikad or one with God. I love that. Verse 30 says, And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment. Now, let's be honest here. If we, as a nation, as a world, lived this, there would be no wars. There would be no hatred. There would be no divisiveness and strife. there would be none of this going on. Because think about it. We must love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength. Literally meaning that God's Word, this book here, governs everything that we say and do now let be honest here who among us could not say that there have been times we and I talking when we became Christians who among us could not say that during their Christian life have not said something they regret? Oh, I've done it. You know, I've said something and then I look back on it and I said, well, that was probably dumb. Oh, I shouldn't have said that, you know? And you have to go to the person that you said it to and you have to say, well, you've got to eat a little crow, you know? You've got to say, well, I shouldn't have said that. I apologize. You know, ask God to forgive me and ask you to forgive me, you know? We say things sometimes that we shouldn't say, you know? We do things that we shouldn't do sometimes. We're not perfect. We are striving to be perfect like Christ was perfect, but let's be honest, none of us are perfect. None of us are perfect. Now, I mean, we're all going to make mistakes. We all are going to make mistakes. None of us are going to live life the moment we kneel at an altar of prayer and we say, Lord, forgive me of my sins. None of us are going to live completely perfect from the day, that point, to the day we die. It's not going to happen. We're going to make a mistake. We're going to not quite hit the mark. We're going to have times where we fail God. It's going to happen. But it's not about our failures Because we've got to think about Where our failures begin Is where His grace begins Isn't that awesome? And that's the point That's the point of this whole thing It's not about us It's about His grace Grace That was poured out to us What is grace? Grace is basically love God loved us so much That he sent his only begotten son to die for us He sent his only begotten son to die for us To forgive us of our sins Because he knew we cannot live perfect lives We're not going to be able to We're going to mess up Probably some of us If we were honest We would probably say hey, I probably miss the mark a little bit every single day. If you don't, then hey, I applaud you. But I mean, you know, there are probably, if I look at my life, there are probably little points in my life every single day where I kind of miss the mark. Does that mean I don't love God? No. Does that mean if you mess up that you don't love God? Absolutely not. The problem where we grieve God is when we sin or we miss the mark and we knew we were going to do it in advance. We sat there with the thought that, you know what, I know this is wrong, but I'm going to do it anyway. Well, that's when God gets upset. That's when God says, well, you know what, you knew what you were doing and you did it. it's when Satan comes in and says something to us and we stumble along the way that's when grace comes in that's when grace comes in and grace is that love we gotta have that kind of love for God and we gotta have that kind of love for God's word you know, this is much more than just a book much more than just a book This is not just a bunch of pages glued together with ink on it It's not what this is This right here is God's road map for our lives It's God's road map for our lives It's God's way to show us what we need to do so that we can make heaven our home Do we love God's word? Do we cherish God's word? I'm going to come back to that in a couple of minutes And I want to delve a little more into that for a second But anyway, I want to go forward just right now in this He says we need to love our Lord, our God With all our heart and soul and mind and strength This is the first commandment And then what does he say in verse 31? He says, and the second is like or like the same. Namely this. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is none other commandment greater than these. Wow. Now, we've got to think about this because this is difficult. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Now, we know we love ourselves. Right? We know we take care of ourselves, man. We make sure we take care of us. We make sure we take care of us. But what about our neighbor? Well, who is my neighbor? Who's my neighbor, Pastor Jake? Who's my neighbor? My neighbor is much more than Ms. Pace. My neighbor is much more than that. My neighbor is my fellow human being. That's what that is. I see somebody that's having trouble that maybe is going through something and I can do something to help them I do it I do it I don't remember this because I was just a baby at the time but I remember my mom and my dad my dad talking about it my mom talking about it And it was Christmas time And we had Money stored aside For Christmas Buying gifts for Mom and dad buying gifts for the kids for us And there came a man to the parsonage and he was struggling He was having difficulties and all, and dad, and he said, I need some money because I'm really destitute, I'm really in bad shape, and I don't know what I'm going to do. Dad took the Christmas money and gave it to the man. and when mom found out about it she said what is wrong with you you gave every bit of our Christmas money to this man now what are we going to do for the kids for Christmas my dad said God will make a way and of course God did you know but dad saw a need and he supplied that need. That's amazing. I mean, I'm not saying that to put my dad on a pedestal because I'm not doing that. I'm just saying that's the kind of example I have as a dad. That's why I look at my dad and I think sometimes, wow, he was so much better than I will ever be in my life because I don't know if I can do that. I'll be honest with you. I don't know. I mean, I hope if the time would ever come that it came to that point that I would be able to do that. But I don't know. I don't know. But, I mean, that's the idea. Our neighbor is not just the person that lives next door to us. Our neighbor is someone that's in need. I'll go a step further today, which was really something interesting. A few, about a year or two ago, So, it was really interesting. Right down here at the end of the street down here, Mom and I were heading out. We had an appointment at the doctor, right? We came to the point where you have to turn. You have to stop and turn. There was a guy standing on the street. Just standing there. Okay, fine. Then all of a sudden he collapsed. We're sitting there and we're going, looking, and we're like, okay. and we sit there and look at one another and look at the guy and we go, what's that about? And we sit there and we go, hmm, maybe we should go out and check on him. And before we even said, even thought that, and we had to be at an appointment in like 15 minutes, but before we even said that, I was literally amazed. Three cars stopped. People got out and all started helping them. I was like, this is unbelievable. And I sat and I looked at this and I thought, you know what, that's showing love. People showing love. This world's not too far gone yet. We still got some good people in this world that will see somebody in trouble and will help them. Unbelievable. and that's why I look at this world and I don't sit there and go oh well this world is just too far gone no because there's still some people that show love and that's what we need to do he says the second is like namely this you should love your neighbor as yourself there is none other commandment greater than these we must love God with all our heart And we must love others like we love ourselves. That's true love. That's real love. And that's the kind of love we need to have. Now I'm coming to swing back because I said we need to love this, God's holy word, right? I want to share something really, really quick. and it's you guys know that I'm a movie fanatic I love my movies I love to check out movies and there's a beautiful movie that I just re-watched again because it's so amazing Pat on the violent side I will say that but it is Denzel Washington and it's a movie called the book of Eli. And in this movie, it's so amazing. The guy named Eli, it's a very, very wicked and terrible world where a war has happened and everything has gone down. People are violent. People are trying to kill one another and people are just trying to survive. But Eli has something in his possession that evil people want. And it's a book. But nobody knows what that book is. That's why so many people want it. And once very, very, very evil man wants the book because he feels the book, with that book lies power. We come to find out that the book that Eli is protecting is God's word. The King James Bible. All the King James Bibles were destroyed. And this was the last one left. And Eli was protecting it until he could get to a certain place where they could mass produce it yet again. he did some very violent things to protect the book and in the end of the film he said something very very interesting he prayed a prayer and he said Lord my journey is at end and he said I thank you for being with me I thank you for protecting me on this journey I thank you and I so sorry for the bad that I have done Forgive me He met a young lady along the way, and she kind of followed along with him, and he said, he said, thank you for the friend you helped me to meet. Protect her on her journeys now. and he said I'm so tired thank you for my rest but before Eli passed he said something interesting to the young girl that he was protecting he said simply this this book is all about one statement and it is this do more for others than you do for yourself. And I like that. Do more for others than you do for yourself. That's basically this. Love others like you love yourself. Take care of others like you take care of yourself. I love that. so the idea today is do we have that heart of love do we have that heart of compassion do we love God's word so much that we would protect it do we love God's word so much that we would cherish it do we love God so much that we put and we have united with him to become one and do we love others as much as we love ourselves These are the things we need to think about. The love of God needs to be in our hearts, our minds, our soul, and in everything we do. But is it? Do you love God's word that you would protect it? Do you love others as much as you show love for yourself? Or as Eli said, do you do more for others than you do for yourself? Maybe you'd be honest to God today and you would say, you know, Lord, maybe sometimes I just don't hit the mark in my love for you. In my love for your word and in my love for others. Father, help me to do better this week and this month and the months and the years to come. Will you help me today, Father, to be a better Christian? Will somebody be honest to God and raise up the hand today? Hands going up. I appreciate that. Hands all over the place. That's beautiful. Appreciate it. I got my hand up too. I want God to help me to be a more loving, caring, and compassionate person. Maybe you're watching the video this morning and you're sitting here saying, you know what, I need to be more compassionate. I want you to raise your hand up there, wherever you're watching this. I don't care if you're sitting amongst a bunch of people It doesn't matter Just raise up your hand and say Lord I need you to make me a better Christian Father God you saw hands going up all over the world today All over the place In our church here today And maybe somebody watching these videos Or listening to the audience Father God I pray for these ones That raise up their hand Father God help our love to increase For your word For you as our savior And our lord Father God for our love for other people May we live it Every single day Father God may we thrive And strive to be more like you In everything that we say and do Father God I pray that right now In Jesus name I pray that you will touch us You will heal us and you will help us To be more like you That is our desire Father God help us to grow In love Now Father as we dismiss our service. Father God, as we bring this video and podcast to an end, Father God, we pray that you will be with your people. You will touch them. You will heal them. You will help them. And Father God, as we leave, Father God, you will not dismiss us, but you will go with us. You will keep us safe. And then, Father God, until next time when we are together again, you will be with us. and we will have the joy of the Lord, which is our strength. Father, for all that you are, for all that you do, we give you the praise and the honor and the glory for everything. In Jesus' mighty and matchless name, we beg these blessings and we say a hearty amen and amen. Thank you. Thank you. you

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