Love Your Neighbor

Matthew 22, verses 36 to 40. I'll read the text for today's sermon. We are still in the Ten Commandments. I am Yahweh, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. That's still the context.

But in order to examine that scripture to even scratching the surface of its extent, we need to travel all around the scripture at this point. And I know I say this a lot, but we've got a lot of verses to cover today, so we're going to dig right in. I'll go back to 34 to give you context. But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.

Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And he said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. on these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets pray with me father this is your word it's inspired by your holy spirit written down by your holy prophets in the holy scriptures and we are here to receive it we are here to receive its truth we are here to understand it as complete we are here to understand it as sufficient and perfect for all good works, that men of God may be equipped, women of God as well, for everything that you've called us to do.

So help us today to receive your word with gladness. Grant us wisdom as we explore your word. And help us to exalt and magnify the name of Jesus Christ, even in your hearing today. Amen. Amen. Last week I explained to you that part of the first commandment is Worshipping God and not only worshipping God but worshipping him properly And so we discussed the regulative principle of worship This week my focus is not going to be on this entire passage if I was going to preach Matthew 22, 34 to 40, that would probably take six weeks.

What I want to do is talk about some specific things that are going on here. And in order to do that, I want you to read the context here in Mark 12. In Mark 12, 32 to 33, I'd like to hear pages turning. Not everybody has a phone. I think you need to see these verses yourself. If you sit in the pews or whatever we call rows of chairs in 2021, and you listen to me and I tell you to turn to a scripture, and then you just wait and you wait for me to read it, you're not getting the full effect you're supposed to get.

God wants your eyes on the words of his scripture. That's how God's going to communicate to you his truth, not just through hearing me talk about it. So I do expect you to turn there. Same exact story told by Mark. That's why it's called a synoptic gospel, because it reads the same. It's seen the same.

Mark and Matthew and Luke, they write about the same stories multiple times. John is a whole different book. But in Mark, we see a lot of the same stories. And Mark says here in verse 31, the second is this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There's no other commandment greater than these. But then the scribe said to him, so this is one of the guys that was there.

Maybe it's the same lawyer. I didn't dig into this part. But he says, you are right, teacher. but okay there's a whole there's just a joke there right telling Jesus he's right I mean he knows he's right you know but anyway he says you're right teacher you have truly said that he is one and there is no other beside him and to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength this is what I want you to get this wasn't in Matthew and to love one's neighbor as oneself is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.

And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, you are not far from the kingdom of God. And after that, no one dared to ask him any more questions, which is interesting in itself. The mere fact that these guys' entire life was dedicated to trying to find trap questions to ask Jesus so that he could say something wrong so they could then say, well, he's really not who he says he is.

We don't have to follow him. And they couldn't do it. It finally came to the point where he shut their mouths just because he could answer things. Just a side note, you can do the same thing. When people challenge Christianity, when people ask you questions about Christianity or they try to bring up challenges, you can answer them. And you can answer them with such wisdom from God that they really will have nothing back to say except probably cuss words and they'll probably get angry.

But what I wanted to focus on was this idea that we saw in Psalm 51, 16 and 17. If you want to turn there, some of you may remember it. To sacrifice to God is what he prescribed in the Old Testament for people to do in the ceremonial law. but these sacrifices were not worth anything to God apart from the faithful heart of the one bringing the sacrifice.

And so God says, For you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it in Psalm 51 He says you will not be pleased with the burnt offering The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit a broken and contrite heart O God you will not despise. I tell you that to remind you that even the Old Testament was clear. That the sacrifices that people brought to God were not what God was really looking for.

Okay, so if you imagine people coming to God and bringing all these things to God, like, okay, I spent my week in sin. I spent my week committing adulteries, even if only in my mind. I spent my week hating those among me, hating my brother. I spent my week insulting people, stealing, lying, coveting things which are not mine. and then they bring a lamb from the flock and kill it and that's supposed to make everything okay.

No reasonable person ever believed that's the way it worked. The author of Hebrews explains to us that's not what was happening. And we can see that when we come to God, when we worship God and have no other gods before him, there is a way that we are to worship him. And that way is defined outwardly by the exact ways he's told us to and inwardly by the heart attitude of the person who is the worshiper.

And so there are people sitting in this room right now. Some of you are worshipping the one true God and some of you aren't. You're all talking about the same God. You're all singing about the same God. You're all hearing the same scripture read. You're all listening to the same preaching.

But your heart is what God is looking at to decide if you are truly worshipping him. And so we want to break this down a little bit here. But just to look at Jesus' commandments real quick. Turn to Deuteronomy 6, verse 4. Deuteronomy 6, 4 is what Jesus is quoting. He says, Hear, O Israel, Yahweh our God.

Yahweh is one. You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might. what this means is that every fiber of your being everything that you are is to be loving god and worshiping him we'll see in a little bit worshiping god is loving him they're they're synonymous there's no distinction between them you can't worship god without loving him and you can't love him and not worship him so they're not the same exact thing but they're inseparable worship God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength that's Old Testament Jesus in Matthew 22 when he's asked what the greatest commandment is he quotes the Old Testament he doesn't quote the law about a parapet on your roof or ceremonial washings turn to Leviticus 19 should be right in between Exodus in Numbers. Leviticus 19.

Verse 18. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am Yahweh. I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery you shall have no other gods before me don't take vengeance or bear grudge against the sons of your own people you shall love your neighbor as yourself when Jesus is questioned in Matthew 22 he quotes two Old Testament passages to tell people these are the great commandments so those people who come to you and say well, Jesus is the one that told us to love our neighbor.

Well, yeah, he is, but this was written long before the incarnate Christ came and spoke it. The Old Testament has taught these truths since Moses wrote them, at the very least. And so what I want to key in on in Matthew 22 is when Jesus says in verse 39, and a second is like it. So we were looking at Matthew 22. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

So everything about you should love him. There's no reservations. And he says this is the great and first commandment. And a second, he says, is like it. and I find that extremely interesting because there is quite a distinction between loving God and loving somebody else other people aren't to be given our devotion in the same way that God is supposed to receive it so how is this other commandment like the first one is it just in the sense that you're supposed to love people is it in the sense that you should love them I guess at least as much as yourself.

Keep in mind this is not a command to love yourself. It's another misapplication of this verse. Your problem is that you already love yourself. That's actually your biggest problem. You love yourself too much. What it's telling you is try applying all that self-love to other people.

That is what it's commanding you to do. Turn to Isaiah 1. While you're going there, I'm going to tell you I want you to think about loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And I want you to remember that you cannot and will not ever do that while you're in this sinful flesh that you carry. You couldn't do it before you got saved and after you got saved.

You will not be able to do that to the extent that Jesus describes it That is one of the glorious things about the Son of God who became man is he did it and he did it perfectly And so you trust in him that he fulfilled these commandments for you that he loved his neighbor as himself, humbling himself even to the point of death, death on a cross for those that he came to save. So you don't wake up in the morning and think, well, if God's going to be happy with me, I better make sure I'm doing these commandments perfectly. your delight is to try to do those commandments and to work toward them by the grace of God because of what he has done for you I want to remind you of that do not leave this room thinking pastor told me I got to obey the law only, I don't want you to hear that only yes, you should want to obey the law you should want to fulfill these commandments as much as you can you should mourn that you don't And pray that God would forgive you and help you to grow in these areas. That's what we want.

But my focus today is the idea that for you to love God, for you to actually worship God, you have to love your neighbor. We talked about worshiping God already and how important that is. My focus is on the idea that you must understand the horizontal relationships that God has given you with other people are super important in exhibiting your heart's attitude toward God so that when you go to God, He knows if you really love Him or worship Him by the way you're treating other people.

So we don't want to flip it too big. We don't want to say, well, we can completely ignore God and as long as we're loving other people, He'll know we love Him. That's not how it works either. It's kind of a both and. The only way you can love other people is by loving God. The only way you're going to love God is if you love other people.

Loving other people is going to be the evidence that you truly love God. So let's look at Isaiah 1, verse 10. Let me read a few verses. Hear the word of Yahweh, you rulers of Sodom. Give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah. He's not talking to Sodom and Gomorrah here.

He's talking to his people who are acting like Sodom and Gomorrah. I mean, he's being utterly sarcastic here, let's face it. I know that's such a bad word, and there is a lot of wicked sarcasm out there. But he's proving a point here by calling them a name that doesn't exactly identify them literally, but talks about the type of people they've become. the type of people who lived in cities that God utterly destroyed by fire because of their behavior and their disposition toward him.

He says, listen, this is the key verse. What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? So this is the picture. You have this Jewish people and they're living in Israel and they've got the Torah, they've got the law of Moses, they've got Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges. You know, there's a bunch of stuff they've got. They know how to go to the temple and sacrifice the animal they know they're supposed to.

And they're living lives on a daily basis that exhibit that they don't care one iota about God's commands. They don't care about loving one another. They don't care about truly worshiping him from the heart. And in fact, if anything, the sacrifices that they're bringing, even if according to the word, it's like they're bringing a bribe to the judge. well, I can just be a dirty rat all week.

And as long as I kill a little lamb on Saturday, the Old Testament Sabbath, I'm good. And if any of you was raised Roman Catholic, you know exactly what that's like, because that's exactly what I thought. When I was an unregenerate, heathen, pagan human being participating in the Roman Catholic religion, I thought I could do anything I wanted all week long, and if I showed up on Sunday and went through the motions, I was all good with God.

And it was when I realized how unreasonable and sickening that was that I actually fled the Roman Catholic religion long before I ever became a Christian. But so Yahweh says to him, I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts, even your good stuff. I've had enough of it. I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or of goats.

So for those people that want to say, in the Old Testament, people were saved by the religious rituals of the Jews, but in the New, they're saved by Christ, that's silliness. The Old Testament tells us God didn't delight in these things. We know in Psalm 51, He will delight in those things when the hard attitude of the believer is contrite in spirit, and he trembles before God's Word.

So He says, when you come to appear before Me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts? He's pointing out, look, I never told you to do this. The things that you're trying to do, you're not even following the directions that I gave you because it requires faith. Don't blame me for your false religion is what he's saying. Bring no more vain offerings.

Vain means useless or futile. Bring no more of these useless offerings. He says, incense is an abomination to me. Don't remember communion, what we talked about? He doesn't hear their prayers. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations, I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.

He's saying it's almost worse to him that Israel thinks that they're a religious nation than the surrounding nations that just enjoy their wickedness and never even pretend to give them lip service. That sounds pretty intense. And it flies in the face of some of our cultural objectives we have Because a lot of the things that we want to accomplish in the United States some of which are probably some good things, people think it requires that we partner with God-haters who happen to have similar morality than we have.

Similar morality that we have. I couldn't figure out the word. Same morality as us, right? And people think we need to partner with these people so we can accomplish social things that maybe are very good things. And yet God, in some sense, is more displeased with those who fake religion and who pretend that he's their God while inwardly calculating, while inwardly actually not worshiping him, but doing the outward things that they think are right, usually because it brings them prosperity and it brings them some level of peace.

Now, I'm the first guy to say I'd rather live next door to a decent Roman Catholic than a pedophile, okay? But we need to understand that we do not partner. We are not to be unequally yoked with non-believers. That God hates false religion. It's the second commandment for sure. First one also.

Quick side note. Sometimes I think we make the mistake of being more concerned about breaking the last six commandments than the first four. Because the last six have immediate consequences. The last six immediately hurt someone we can see. When we break the first four, well, unless we get struck by lightning instantly, we somehow think, well, we got away with it.

So we prefer our friend that worships idols a little bit over our friend that maybe would murder people. Trust me, I get it. I understand we have to live in this world and there's some things we have to figure out with others. But I don't think we should ever give people any false assurance that somehow they're on the right side just because they vote pro-life or something like that.

God says he cannot endure iniquity in solemn assembly. And you know what? I can pick on Republicans for it. I can pick on Roman Catholics. I can pick on Mormons. but in the end he's talking to his people here and that's us. What he cannot endure is people who carry his name around.

Particularly those who actually are blood-bought. And yet you persist in unrepentant sin. That's what he can't stand. That's what he cannot endure. And it's why people like Ananias and Sapphira went straight to heaven pretty soon in their life. And I would dare say maybe even Nadab and Abihu. maybe they were true believers and God just took them out I'm sure some people would argue otherwise that's fine I'm not going to argue it now but he says your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates nope there's God hating again I know that's unpopular I watched a video today where these former Calvinists were accusing Calvinists of some stuff And what they said is all Calvinists want to talk about is God's wrath and God's hate.

And it's like, well, nobody else talks about it. We may be feeling imbalanced. All right. So we want to make sure that it gets said once in a while. There isn't a person in the United States that doesn't think God loves them. Okay.

You go up to anyone you want tomorrow and you say God loves you. And no one's going to be surprised. okay there might be 75 or so depressed people out there that actually would you know be encouraged by something like that but it's the problem in our society is everybody thinks that God loves them and one of the reasons is most people think they're God at least they function that way God says when you spread out your hands I will hide my eyes from you verse 15 he says even though you make many prayers I will not listen your hands are full of blood. You cannot simultaneously live in sin and then come to God with your prayers.

Like, oh God, help me out. And the way, the picture here is that you're opening your hands to pray to God and your hands are covered with the blood of innocence. Somebody has been murdered. And I think in the United States we can certainly say that we are in a country that systematically murders people. Government-backed, decriminalized murder going on every single day in the United States.

And I'm not one of these people that just thinks, well, you're all huge failures because we haven't done enough about it, but I do think we can all be motivated to try to do more about it. I watched a video the other night. I've got a bookmark that's on YouTube. I'm going to share it with you guys one day. And it was a couple of guys that were just trying to rally a church together to try to contact their senators about abortion.

And, you know, the guy said something that really hit me. He said, most people think they just don't have time to have an impact. And he said, look, I think you can have an impact at only 15 minutes a week. This guy's a former senator. He said, 15 minutes a week of trying to contact your local congressman and stuff like that, it's going to have a bigger impact than you can imagine.

And then imagine if nine people, members of the church, imagine the impact. Imagine if you got your kids who are able to type on a computer to start sending an email once a week as part of their homeschool to a different senator. You could write the email for them, just have them paste it. Maybe we can have an impact as a church where we actually do more than just stand outside the abortion clinic, which I think is a good thing we do, but maybe we can do other things too.

I think we should all be motivated that way. But so Yahweh is talking to him. He says, wash yourselves, make yourselves clean. He says, remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes. Cease to do evil. There's the law.

Quit doing the bad things. Cease the evil. He says, learn to do good. Seek justice. Correct oppression. Bring justice to the fatherless.

Plead the widow's cause. Now this is important. He says, correct oppression. There's a lot of people right now saying we need to correct oppression. And it's certainly biblical. We need to properly define oppression. we need to be very careful that we don't just believe anyone that says they're oppressed and then take whatever solutions they offer they still need to be biblical but here's the point at this point god has given them nothing but law right here quit your bad stuff start doing good stuff and if he stopped right there he'd be a just fine god and he could punish everyone in hell for all eternity if he had wanted to but he's gracious and merciful and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

And so he says, come now, let us reason together, says Yahweh. Reason with me. This isn't a blind leap of faith. This isn't weirdness. This isn't magic. This isn't witchcraft.

He says, reason with me. Though your sins are like scarlet blood, they shall be white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. The promise of the gospel. And if you continue to read Isaiah, you will see continuous promises of a gospel of Jesus Christ, of a Messiah who was going to come. It was never God's intention for the Israelites to wake up and say, oh, we'll just start doing good now.

We're going to remove the evil of our deeds. It was never His intention that they would just do that on their own strength. It was always about believing in His promises that He would forgive their sins no more. And I'll tell you what, we have way more revelation than these people had that Isaiah was writing to. and if we don't repent, we deserve greater judgment.

So he says, if you're willing and obedient, verse 19, you shall eat the good of the land. But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword, for the mouth of Yahweh has spoken. So he gives them some law, but he gives them some gospel. Turn to Micah 6. I want to communicate to you that this idea of coming to God with dirty hands. Micah's before Nahum.

Those of you who haven't turned there for a while. The point is this. I'm not good at points. I'm good at just going verse by verse and shouting things. I'm not good at like summing it sometimes. So I'm trying here, all right?

I'm a street preacher by trade, remember. You cannot come to God and give Him proper worship if your horizontal relationships with others are not correct. And that includes just the last six commandments, basically. You want to know how to obey the first commandment? Obey the last nine. You want to know how to have love, the beginning of the fruit of the Spirit?

Have joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, and avoid the little things that came right before then in Galatians 5, the deeds of the flesh. That's how you have love. some of these things are kind of hard to define you know who knows what love is right but I can tell you a bunch of things that show that you seem to be loving and I can show you some things that say you're not so your goal is to worship God purely Micah 6 this is an interesting passage I read it at the abortion clinic a lot he says with what shall I come before Yahweh verse 6 I'm sorry and bow myself before God on high He says, shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? So here he is.

Burnt offerings. Is this what he wants? It's a straight up question in the Old Testament. Will Yahweh be pleased with thousands of rams? With ten thousands of rivers of oil? I mean, this is expensive stuff.

Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression? Shall I kill my own child, right? or at least his firstborn of his sheep and all that stuff right before he knows he'll have more but then he says the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul could even sacrificing my own child to god would that be pleasing to him right it's one of the reasons i read it at the clinic killing your own child makes no atonement for your sin but he says he has told you oh man what is good so it's implied it's already been told there isn't a person reading Micah who has not already had revelation of this he says what is good what does Yahweh require of you but to do justice to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God it's the same commands as in Isaiah the faithful person is going to try to have that horizontal relationship with others so while you're headed to the sacrifice center to bring your lamb a year old or your calf a year old so that God will forget about your sins and you're walking by the guy laying on the road is all bloody and beaten god's displeased but then you remember the story of the good samaritan then the good samaritan guy walks by you know the priest has business to do right he has to sacrifice to the lord so he walks right by a guy in need but then this good samaritan not even a not even a person of god walks by and helps them. And the evidence is that he actually is a believer.

And that's why Augustine and my friend Luke Walker and I think the Good Samaritan is Jesus. But we can talk about that another time. Turn to Matthew 5. If you ever read a story in the Bible and you think wow that sounds like me and it a heroic story you missing the point of the story Let me put it that way okay If you want to read yourself into the Bible read the passages about sinners needing forgiveness Matthew 5, 23 and 24, Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaking.

So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there at the altar and go first be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift so you can rephrase this a bunch of ways so if you're sitting in the chairs getting ready to eat communion and you remember that you've sinned against someone and you haven't made your repentance you haven't made it known, you haven't asked for forgiveness you haven't reconciled with your brother Those are the kinds of things we're commanded to try to fix before we get here. One of the reasons we have communion every Sunday isn't because my wife bakes fabulous bread. One of the reasons we do it every Sunday is that we believe that a person who's actually preparing to have communion will live a radically transformed life over one that isn't looking forward to it on Sunday.

That on Saturday night when you have a fight with your spouse, you're going to want to fix that before Sunday. that on Friday or Thursday when you snap at your kid, and your kid was wrong, dead wrong, and most of you are most of the time, but when you snap at your kid and you realize, yeah, I didn't have to speak at him that way, I didn't have to be so harsh, I didn't have to be so unkind, I didn't have to be so not gentle, I could have been meeker, you get to repent before Sunday. And if you've never thought of it that way before, think about it now. when you show up to worship on Sunday when you come to this thing that's not an altar but we call it the table and we give you worship God there think about whether or not you need to go and reconcile with a brother before you get there I'm trying to share with you that this is important to God because it was real easy during the pandemic or during the response to the pandemic I like to say it was real easy for people with our theology to say look we're not going to quit going to church because the first four commandments are super important and so we're going to go to church on Sunday because we have to. Because we have a duty before God to do it and we believe that.

And we didn't do it out of hatred for anyone. We did it actually out of love for people. But also sometimes we can slip in both directions. We can be too focused on just our relationship with God and we can forget that actually we evidence that we love God by loving his children and loving people, our neighbors. Turn to Romans 13.10. This is where it gets exciting.

So that was my intro. Now, the purpose of the sermon. Romans 13.10. After quoting the commandments to the people, Paul says in Romans 13.10, Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. I want you to recognize that God is a God of love. And he tells us to love him, but he tells us a second commandment is like this.

And it is to basically love your neighbor as yourself. That your love for God will be visible by how you love others. And this is one of the reasons why a lot of people get mad at some of the Calvinists online because they say they just don't seem loving. And they probably don't, because actually arguing in a text message almost never seems loving. But we have to love people.

That's how you fulfill the law. So if you find yourself struggling to fulfill the law, if you find yourself struggling not to murder, or maybe in our case we're not so bad at the not murder part but find ourselves struggling just to resent people or hate people or have some enmity in our heart toward them. Maybe be jealous of them or envious of them.

Or maybe there's some people, they've done some things we don't like and we're like, well, we just don't like them. Maybe we hope they fall so they'll get what they deserve. I understand the precatory prayers but we're supposed to love people. You find yourself struggling with that. You find yourself struggling to keep your eyes on your own wife. Or you find yourself struggling as a wife to keep your focus on your husband and what you're supposed to be doing with him.

You find it difficult not to covet things that aren't yours. If you find it hard to be rejoicing when somebody else gets a raise and you didn't. You find it hard just to speak the truth. I'm going to hope most people in here don't just flat out lie. But you know the ninth commandment actually talks about telling the truth. It means when you're in public and somebody says something blasphemous about our Lord, maybe you're supposed to speak up.

There's more to the ninth commandment than just not lying. When you find those things difficult, when you find it difficult to Sabbath on Sunday, which I know we're going to go over that one in a few weeks, some of that's a little bit misunderstood. when you find it difficult not to blaspheme the Lord's name even if only in your heart like when you don't want to turn off a TV show or a movie that blasphemes God because well it's entertaining and fun and I like it. It's a good story.

You want to endure hearing your Lord blasphemed When you find it hard not to just trust in the sufficiency of scripture even what you have to come back to is love Your difficulty is that you don love enough and you pray that the Lord would grant you more love for Him and for others. In 1 John 4, 19-21, there's a few more verses I want you to see today. 1 John 4, 19-21.

And then we'll go to 1 John 3. He says, we love because He first loved us. And then He's talking about our love for God and our love for others. John says, if anyone says I love God. So we love doing that. Because that's easy.

I can tell you that I love God. And you cannot open up my heart and tell for sure if I do. You don't know. God knows. You don't know that. But He says, if anyone says I love God and hates his brother.

He's a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. This is a command to love all the children of God. This is a command that you are to love other Christians. That you are to desire fellowship with them. You're to desire communion with them.

And even some of the ones that are harder to love, that we disagree with, we're to still love them. he says this commandment we have from him whoever loves God must also love his brother verse 2 of chapter 5 by this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey his commandments there you have it you want to show that you love God you want to show that you worship God obey his commandments most of the commandments have to do with your relationship to others that's how you show that you love God it's not something you're earning you're exhibiting who you are through your love for the brothers and sisters it's that simple I mean I could yell at you for an hour three hours whatever you want I could tell you to do it if you love people you're going to show it it's like that song if you're happy and you know it your face will surely show it right if you love people from the heart you're going to do loving things and loving things are those which align with God's commandments chapter 3 of 1 John verse 11 to 15 it's an interesting passage for this message that you have heard from the beginning this is the message that you have heard from the beginning that we should love one another and now John uses an example for us to understand love he says we should not be like Cain who was of the evil one and murdered his brother and why did he murder him? because his own deeds were evil and his brothers righteous he says do not be surprised brothers that the world hates you we know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers whoever does not love abides in death everyone who hates his brother is a murderer and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him in Hebrews chapter 11 And the author of Hebrews references Cain and Abel too. And the author of Hebrews, in referencing Cain and Abel, in verse 4 he says, By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. Okay, so we have these people bringing worship to God.

God accepted Cain's or Abel's gifts but not Cain's. And so Cain being jealous of this, of his deeds being evil and his brother's righteous murders him. So go to Genesis 4. For those of you that are worried about the binding of your Bible, we're finishing here. Of course, that's always my plan and then sometimes things change anyway. But Genesis 4, Cain and Abel.

I want to give you one more example of how you are to not take your worship to God until you've reconciled with your brother. You also need to understand you will not have reconciliation horizontally with people, true reconciliation until you have that reconciliation with God. He's the Prince of Peace. You're not going to have peace with others if you don't have peace with him.

It'll be a fake peace. but if you love God and are striving to worship him you will keep in mind your need to pay attention to your brothers and sisters so Genesis 4 verse 3 in the course of time Cain brought to Yahweh an offering of the fruit of the ground so here's Cain he comes to the Lord with an offering from the fruit of the ground he was a gardener He was a worker of the ground. So Cain's out there working and slaving all day. The sun's beating down on him maybe.

Things probably weren't as bad yet in the environment as they are now for people outside. There hadn't been as many thorns and thistles. But he's out there working. And he produces. And from the fruit of his own hands in Genesis 4, he comes to the Lord with an offering. He recognizes his need to do something, to sacrifice to God.

Abel brought of the firstborn of his flock so Abel was a sheep keeper he was a shepherd interesting that Jesus is the good shepherd that Abel brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions and then it says and Yahweh had regard for Abel and his offering but for Cain and his offering he had no regard so Cain was very angry and his face fell he showed his anger on his face right If you angry and you know it your face will surely show it right? And so God lets Cain know, hey, why are you angry? Why has your face fallen?

If you do well, won't you be accepted? God says, you know what to do. You know the kind of sacrifice to bring. And when they were in the field, Cain grows up against his brother Abel and killed him. And why did he murder him? Because his deeds were evil and his brother's righteous.

But we saw in Hebrews 11, it said, By faith, Abel brought an acceptable sacrifice to God. It says more acceptable. And Cain did not. Well, what this means is that God had instructed them as to the type of sacrifices that he would accept. Cain knew. Cain knew that the works of his hands were not sufficient to be pleasing to God and all he had to do was go over to Abel and say give me one of your flock, I'll give you some of the stuff I grew let's go worship God together and then Cain evidences his hatred for God, he evidences the fact that God is not pleased with him because his heart attitude towards God was not one of faith He evidences it by his disdain and hatred for his own brother.

And he murders him. And we have this story forever now of Abel, the righteous man. Not because of any works of his own. Not because he was a good person. Abel was born with the stain of sin, just like every one of us. Abel was a child of Adam.

Not only literally, but in the same way we were. Born under the covenant of works, stained by original sin, unable to do anything pleasing to God. And God granted him faith that he would believe God's commands of how to bring acceptable sacrifices. And he did so. So what I want you to hear today is that you are to worship Yahweh your God and serve him only.

That he is the one true God and Jesus Christ proclaimed this. And one of the key things that Jesus Christ told the people in their hearing, and this was a sting to some of the Pharisee guys, because they were good at tithing mint and cumin, and they were good at following some of the ceremonial laws, and walking around making long prayers, and doing religious type things. One of the keys that Jesus wanted people to understand about how they interact with God, and how they worship God, is that they need to love their brothers.

They need to love the church. They need to love their sisters in the church. That they cannot come to God with bloody hands. They cannot come to God with the stain of unrepentant sin and expect that God's going to be pleased with them. That that is evidence of their apostasy. It's evidence that maybe you're not regenerate.

So the disposition of the Christian. I've heard it said Christians aren't perfect, but they're repentant. A Christian is a person who's constantly repenting. A Christian is a person who sees their own sin as heinous. Who sees their own sin as the problem in the world, as the problem in the church, as the problem in their home, as the problem in their marriage, and seeks Christ that he would not only forgive it because of his atoning work on the cross, but that he would give the power of his spirit to help us to overcome that.

And so I tell you, you can't obey the commandments and you can't do it perfectly, but the spirit of grace enables us to have far more success in this life in obeying God's commands. And I think sometimes we give him credit for. I think sometimes we think we're such great. Well, we're such great sinners. We can never do anything good. Well, Jesus is a better Savior than you are a sinner.

And the Spirit is more holy than you are unholy in some way. I mean, He's able to overpower it is what I mean. And so while you hopefully moan and groan waiting for the redemption of the body, the adoption of sons, the final consummation when you will no longer be able to sin, And you can say with me that we want to be made different by the Lord. And one of the primary ways you will know how you're growing is your treatment of other Christians in particular.

And I think even your non-Christian neighbors. There's a disposition we can have towards people that shows that we are trying to love them. That we truly don't want to sin against them. That we truly desire their best. and that in some way we love them as ourselves, where we would do for them what we would want done for us in the same situation. Father, thank you for your word.

It's perfect. It's inerrant. It's infallible. We thank you that it's sufficient for our needs. And I pray that today you would use your preached word to have an impact on the people who have heard it. I pray that you would affect our lives, Lord, that we might turn from the things that we want to do that are contrary to your law and that we would studiously learn what your law says that we may know how to live a life that is actually pleasing.

We thank you for the perfect model, Jesus Christ, who we can always look to not only for our salvation but as the example of a life lived faithfully. Amen.