you become a Christian first of all by thinking by hearing some Truth by understanding that's why you preach the gospel why you preach the word of God and the word of God then gets into the mind of a person and it begins to interact with what's already there and that thinking process is called perception but perception cannot be Faith just knowing something isn't Faith you have to add to that the second piece of the action which is persuasion the first has to do with your mind the second has to do with your emotion you become
emotionally attached to that truth you begin to think about it it begins to play upon your heart you begin to turn it over in your mind you can have tons of Faith but if the object of your faith is not worthy of your faith your faith is inconsequential it's not about how much Faith you have it's about how much Jesus you know I remember reading a story about a guy who was getting ready to go out of town for the weekend to a formal event and as the went along he got toward the end of
the week and realized that he hadn't gotten his Formal Wear dry clean and it was in a mess and cleaners where he normally went couldn't handle it but he had remembered across town there was a cleaning establishment that had 1 hour cleaner on the front of it so he got in his car took his clothes to this establishment he filled out the claim ticket and he said I'll be back in a couple hours to get my clothes and the guy says no no he said we can't have these for you until Thursday he says well
it says on this establishment one hour cleaner oh he said that's just the name of our business we can't do that and I thought to myself isn't that the way it is for a lot of Christians we have the word Christian plastered over us but it doesn't really mean anything that's just the name we call ourselves and we are not expressing that in what we do well today in this question and answer thing with Jesus and a scribe he's going to help us understand what it means to to really be who we claim to be
what does it mean to truly be a Christian how does that work out what does it look like how do I know if I've really got this disease or not the passage begins in the 28th verse with what we might call the search for the first commandment listen to these words then one of the scribes came and having heard them reasoning together that is Jesus and the others who were questioning him and perceiving that Jesus had answered them well ask Jesus this question which is the first commandment of all Jewish tradition divided the Commandments of
God's law into positive Commandments and negative Commandments according to tradition there are 613 Commandments in the Old Testament You said Dr jeriah I'm depressed I thought there were only 10 and I'm not doing all that hot with the first 10 well there's 613 Commandments in the Old Testament and if you break them down they are like this 248 of these Commandments tell us something we should do and 365 tell us something we shouldn't do these are not just the 10 main Commandments these are all the subub Commandments that you can get if you read every
word of the Old Testament and the Scribe came to Jesus that day and he said Master which of all of those is the most important it's like you're walking into a room and hear all 6113 Commandments laid out on a table and the Scribe says Jesus we want you to go and pick one of them up and say this one is the most important which is the first now most of us wouldn't have been surprised at all if Jesus had answered him by giving him what is the first of the Ten Commandments and you know
what that one is in Exodus 20 I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage you shall have no other gods before me that's the first commandment of the Ten Commandments we might have thought Jesus would have answered him with that but he did not Jesus answers in verses 29 and 30 the first of all the Commandments is here o Israel the Lord Our God the Lord is one 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 so the scribes said to Jesus what is the most important commandment of all the Commandments and Jesus said here it is you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart soul strength and mind what does he mean when he says this he says the most important thing you can do to be who you claim to be is to love the Lord God let's break it down first of all with all of your heart the heart according to the new test
concept is the center of your emotion the center of your feeling the center of your desires it's where you make your plans and where you talk with yourself your heart is the emotional part of your being so when you say to somebody I love you with all my heart why you you don't say to your wife honey you know that pumping station I got in my chest I love you with that no no no you love your wife you love your husband you love them with all of your heart all of your emotion all of
your desire all of your feeling God Almighty doesn't want our passive love he wants our passionate love so he says if you want to know the real commandment here it is love the Lord your God with all your passion with all your heart and I don't know about you when I read that I think Whoa man I'm not sure I'm doing that I I know I should and perhaps there are sometimes when I do but I wonder how do I measure up loving God like that and then it says and not only should you love
him with all your heart you should love him with all of your soul and the soul in this context is kind of like the volitional part of you the will of the desire the thing that you turn the switch on with you love almighty God with your soul and that's how you move forward you make decisions with your soul it is the way you get something started it's how you turn on the ignition it's where you love God with all your energy love God with all your heart your emotion love God with all your energy
and will your soul and the third one is love God with all your mind now how many of you know that if you're going to be a Christian you have to have your mind because that's the only way you can understand the gospel if you're a Christian today you're a Christian first of all because the gospel came through your mind gate into your system God has given us minds and those minds are his and he wants us to equip them and use them and then give them back to him in some way that we can
serve him love God with all of your mind CS Lewis once wrote God is no founder of intellectual Slackers than he is of other Slackers in other words don't be lazy intellectually any more than you should be lazy any other way he said if you're thinking of becoming a Christian I warn you that you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you brains and all love God with all your heart with all your soul love God with all your mind and and then the last one is love God with all
your strength and strength is your physical capacity your physical prowess however you use your body to love God however you use the strength that he's given you to work with others and we'll give you some ideas about that as we go along today so let's just stop for a moment and think about the search for the number one commandment and the statement about the commandment and here's the statement love the Lord God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength now notice the sequel to
the first commandment Mark verse 31 chapter 12 and the second Jesus said is like it you shall love your neighbor as yourself there is no other commandment greater than these now isn't it interesting that the Scribe asked Jesus one question and he gave him two answers Jesus says here's the first commandment love the Lord your God with all your heart soul strength and mind and the second is like it love your neighbor as yourself now you know what that's become don't you that's now called the Golden Rule the golden rule is do unto others as
you would have them do unto you now the Golden Rule has been maligned and misunderstood and misapplied and misused for many years and for many reasons and so I want to take just a few moments and tell you what the golden rule is not before I tell you what it is I know that's not good grammar but but it is good theology notice first of all this command is not conclusive if applied out of context it can backfire and cause personality conflicts you say how can that happen well apart from loving God first and loving
others as you love yourself if you use the Golden Rule as your victim of life you are really going to treat people the way you like to be treated which means you will deal with others from your own perspective and it implies that we're all alike and what I want and need is exactly what you want and need but of course we're not all alike and treating others the way we can means turning off those who have different needs and desires and hopes instead let me suggest you that you take it one step further I
remember a couple years ago a business book came out called the Platinum rule what is the Platinum rule it's kind of interesting the way they put it I'm not saying you replace the Golden Rule with the Platinum rule but here's the Platinum rule the Golden Rule says do unto others as you would like them to do unto you the Platinum rule says do unto others not as you want them to do to you but do unto others as they would like to have done to them in other words don't measure your relationships by what you
want in the person who you love but get to work and find out what's going on in the heart of the person you love and then try to help meet their needs that's what they call the Platinum rule but it's not really any different it's just the golden rule in the context in which it was presented and so the Golden Rule rule first of all is not conclusive you can't just take it and say oh I live by the Golden Rule if you do that out of the context of the New Testament you're going to
make a lot of mistakes and probably a few enemies not only is it not conclusive it's not comprehensive let me just give you the bottom line on it not being comprehensive listen carefully you can't get to heaven on the Golden Rule can't get there you stand before the Lord someday and he says why should I let you into my heaven you say well I kept the Golden Rule not depart from me I never knew you so will you say if the golden rule is not conclusive and it's not comprehensive then what's the use of it
well the purpose of this and the second part of Jesus answer to the question what is the great commandment is to understand that it's important that we who tend to keep all of this stuff in our own sphere and our eyes on ourself if we're to really understand what it means to love God we have to get our eyes off of oursel and get our eyes on to other people and this is very conclusively proven at the end of this message but listen to me if you go through the Bible you will begin to discover
over and over again that this principle jumps to the top in many passages I could put 10 of them on the screen and just go through them one after the other but let me just give you three places where this is presented Philippians 2:4 Let each of you look not only for his own interests but also for the interests of others Romans 15:2 Let each of us please his neighbor for his good leading to edification and 1 Corinthians 10:24 let no one seek his own but each one the others well-being someone has said that if
we love our neighbors as we love ourselves when our neighbor loses his job we feel his loss almost like we have lost our job when our neighbor loses his spouse or her spouse we feel like it's almost happened to us if we love our neighbors as we love ourselves we get past the barriers that separate us and Into the Heart of the one we love and we discover what their need really is and we identify with it as if it were our own need in the culture in which Jesus walked on this Earth and in
which the Bible was written there were a number of words for love one of the most well-known is the word Aeros from which we get our word erotic it is the word for sexual love or or sensual love and then there was another word called steros however you want to pronounce it and that was a word that was for friendships the kind of relationships you have sometimes with your Christian friends your friendships so there was erotic love and there was friendship love but when Jesus came on the scene a new word was born and that
word is the word Agape almost unknown before the presence of Jesus and that's because the word Agape is a god word it's the word that describes God's love for us and the best definition of agape love is this doing something for others without any expectation of anything in turn that's how God loved us you know why he has to love us that way I'm going to tell you right now cuz we got nothing to give him if he didn't love us with agape love he couldn't love us if his love was like the love we
see in our world today we would never be loved but God loved us totally because it was in his heart to love us without any expectation that we could do anything to repay him and the Bible says that's the kind of love we're to express when we love our neighbors love your neighbors and don't be waiting around at the mailbox to see if they sent you a thank you note when you love people with agape love you love them because it's the nature of God in you to help you do it and you don't wait
for any response now notice as we come through to the end of this text there is a superiority of the first commandment in verse 13 Jesus explains in his answer that I've been explaining you today and he gives them the answer that we have studied and now no notice what happens so the scribes said to him well said teacher you have spoken the truth for there is one God and there is no other but he and to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the soul and with all
the strength and to love one's neighbor as oneself is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices now that is a profound statement here is a scribe what is a scribe he's a professional religious person what does he do he lives in the sacrificial and ritual part of the temple he is a leader in the worship of the Jews in the outwardness of their faith and he would evaluate himself without these words from Jesus as to whether he was a good Jew or a bad Jew by what do I keep the sacrifices do I
do the offerings do I do everything that the Jewish law requires of me and he would probably say absolutely but now this scribe listens to Jesus Define the reality of his walk and he says you know what I get it Lord I realize now that loving you with all my heart soul and mind and loving my neighbor as myself is even more important than all the sacrifices and all the rituals and all of the relig ious stuff that I do you have no way to comprehend how profound that was at this moment here is a
man who lives in the professional outward world of Judaism acknowledging that all of the stuff that he does to make himself feel better as a Jew is in second place to loving God with all of his heart and loving his neighbor as himself wow it's the last thing you would expected him to say the downgrading of the sacrificial system is all the more forceful because it is pronounced by a theologian of the religious establishment in the temple where the sacrifices were being offered so how's Jesus going to respond to that that brings us to the
last verse in the text or the last section of it now when Jesus saw he answered wisely he said to him listen to this you are not far from the kingdom of God H he said you are not far from the kingdom of God what you have understood today about the importance of loving God and loving your neighbor you're moving closer to the kingdom of God you're not far and the Bible says and then Jesus didn't answer any more questions end of the period of interrogation I mean I thought about this suppose you're standing before
God and he says why should have let into my heaven and you say well Lord I don't think I'm far think I'm close how many of you know you don't want to be close when you get to heaven you want to be all the way there close you want to be all the way you need to embrace what you've heard except the one about whom we speak accept Jesus Christ as your savior don't be close be all the way now as we kind of look back over our shoulders at this interchange Jesus had with this
man I want to remind you of how this all fits together remember Jesus was asked one question and he gave two answers what is the first commandment Jesus gave him love the Lord God with all your heart soul mind and strength love your neighbors yourself that's not one answer that's two one question two answers but now in his answer he's going to Wed these two things together so really it is one answer how do you love God you love God by loving your neighbor love is not a warm fuzzy feeling around your heart love is
a action word when you love you do something when you love somebody you do something here is an ironclad illustration of that from an interchange Jesus previews in his olette discourse let me just read it to you if you want to follow it'll be on the screen then the king will say to those on his right hand come you blessed of my father inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world for I was hungry and you gave me food I was thirsty and you gave me drink I was a stranger and
you took me in I was naked and you clothed me I was sick and you visited me I was in prison and you came to me and the righteous will answer him saying Lord when did we see you hungry and feed you or or thirsty and give you drink and when did we see you a stranger and take you in or naked and clothe you or when did we see you sick or in prison and come to you and the King will answer and say to them assuredly I say to you in as much as
you did it to one of the least of these my brethren you did it to me Jesus said if you want to love me you need to love others because by loving others you love me you love God by loving others you serve God by serving others and that kind of takes this out of the quote unquote spiritual realm and puts it down in the Practical realm where it belongs so much of our Doctrine never gets outside of our house so much of our belief never gets past the door but the Bible says says you
want to know what it's like to really live according to the sign that's on the front of you you want to live up to what it means to be a Christian here it is so simple and yet so profound love the Lord God with all your heart soul mind and strength what does that mean that means when I'm loving my neighbor I'm to love them with all my heart soul mind and strength and then as I love my neighbor I'm loving God and I'm fulfilling the number one priority that God has for us and now
with one last word for today's program here is Dr Jeremiah accountants use the term bottom line to refer to the most important number on a company's balance sheet likewise we could say that the bottom line of Christianity is loving God with heart soul mind and strength if we love God that way everything else falls into place so how do we love God we start by accepting his offer of forgiveness and salvation through faith in Jesus Christ I hope you've done that and to encourage you on that path please allow me to send you two free
gifts from turning point a booklet called your greatest turning point and our monthly devotional magazine called turning points these resources will encourage you in your walk of faith and we will gladly L send them to you free of charge if you will contact us here at turning point [Music] today next time on turning point if the Rapture came today within 7 years you and I will be in the Millennium reigning on this beautiful new Earth with Christ over a world that you cannot imagine how wonderful it will be for 1,000 years join Dr Jeremiah next
time for his message thy kingom come here on turning point [Music]
