December 5, 2020 2:00 am
"Now hold on just one minute! There are only TEN commandments, not eleven!" Correct, but listen as Jesus sums up the commandments of the Old Testament with the New Testament directive of "loving one another." As believers under the New Covenant, our study of God's Top Ten would be incomplete without this authoritative addendum by the Lord Jesus Christ.
This teaching is from the series God's Top Ten.
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You are to love your neighbor as you love yourself. And then Jesus said there is no other commandment greater than these. This then is the crown jewel of all commandments. This is the grand canyon of commandments. This is the pinnacle.
This is as high as it gets. And Paul would agree. He wrote that great love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13.
And now abide these three, faith, hope, and love, but the greatest is love. Loving our neighbors can be hard to do. In fact, recent surveys have found that six in 10 people never talk to their neighbors. That may be because we're all busy, but then again, it may be because we just don't like them.
In fact, the same studies found that many folks complained that their neighbors are loud, have overflowing trash bins, block their driveways, and the list of grievances goes on and on. Well, today on Connect with Skip Weekend Edition, Skip Heitzig introduces us to the 11th commandment. That's right, there are actually more than 10, because when Jesus came, He gave us another.
And we'll see that today as Skip begins the final teaching in this series, God's Top 10, with number 11. But first, we want to tell you about our new resource for December, all about prayer. Recent research has found that Google searches for the word prayer have surged worldwide alongside the spread of the novel coronavirus. In fact, Google Trends data shows that the search intensity for prayer doubles for every 8,000 COVID-19 cases. But is there a right way or a more effective way to pray?
Here's best-selling author Kay Arthur. Where the battles raging were to be on the front lines, on the front lines on our knees, on the front line standing in the full armor of God. Kay's book, Lord, Teach Me to Pray in 28 Days offers simple but powerful instruction on how and what to pray and what to expect when you do. And it's our way to say thank you when you give a gift of $25 or more today to help keep this ministry on the air.
Give online securely at connectwithskipp.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888. And now let's join Skip in the Gospel of John, chapter 13, verses 34 and 35. Somebody once said, love may not make the world go round, but it sure makes the trip more enjoyable.
And that little statement expresses the universal sentiment that the sweetest of all human emotions is love. Well, the last 16 weeks we have looked at God's top 10, the 10 commandments. And we have gone through it very slowly, as you know.
This is the 17th installment in that study. And we have taken one week, in some cases two weeks per commandment. And the reason we probed so deeply and looked at every word and every nuance and all of the application is because the 10 commandments the 10 commandments are foundational, foundational in scripture, also foundational for us as a nation. I don't know if you know this, but as you walk up to the Supreme Court building on the east pediment is a relief, statues cut out in stone of all the great lawgivers lined up and all of them are turned inward facing Moses as he stands there with the 10 commandments. Right there on our nation's Supreme Court, the idea that the 10 commandments are foundational for us and our laws as a nation. Well today I've had you turn to John chapter 13. We sort of depart from that but want to put the icing on the cake of the 10 commandments study by looking in the New Testament where Jesus in the upper room in this beautiful display of humility and love washes his disciples feet and then he turns to them and he gives them a message called the upper room discourse. And in the upper room discourse he says now I'm giving you a new commandment. Well let's look at it in verse 34 of John chapter 13 the Lord Jesus speaks a new commandment I give to you that you love one another as I have loved you that you also love one another by this all will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another every generation has sung about love spoken about love written about love and it would seem still doesn't quite know the definition of love what does it mean to love well a group of professionals asked some four to eight year old kids what love was and I always love hearing what children think about anything it's very refreshing and sometimes very profound well one child says this is what love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and they smell each other can't you just picture it another kid says love is when you kiss all the time then when you get tired of kissing you still want to be together and you talk more mommy and daddy are like that and they look gross when they kiss one girl said I let my big sister pick on me because my mom he says she only picks on me because she loves me so I pick on my baby sister because I love her too another child says love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt and then he wears it every day ripe love is what's on valentine's day cards you know the stuff we'd like to say but you'd never be caught dead saying it and finally this child I think has pretty close to the truth when my grandma got arthritis she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore so my grandpa does it for her even when his hands got arthritis too that says this child is love well that certainly is love whoever that child was got it very very close to the biblical standard to the biblical standard of love now we notice something in verse 34 this is a commandment that Jesus gives a commandment to love which doesn't quite sound right to our ears does it okay here's an order love because typically we think well love is voluntary isn't it isn't it an emotion that arises spontaneously yes and no yes it's voluntary meaning it's a choice no it's not necessarily an emotion that rises spontaneously from the heart it is given in command form because it is not optional it is absolutely the summary of all of the commandments given in fact Jesus said in Matthew 22 on these two loving God and loving your neighbor hang all the law and the prophets now just a side note something interesting I like to study how many times words appear the word love appears in the gospel of John from chapters 1 through 12 only 12 times so about an average of one usage per 12 chapters 12 times in chapters 1 through 12 however in the rest of the gospel of John from chapter 13 to 21 guess how many times the word love appears 44 now why is that well number one we're moving toward the end the culmination of Jesus life and the ultimate demonstration of love is going to be on the cross and the core value that Jesus wants to pass on to his men the disciples is that of loving one another so we find its frequency and its intensity employed as we go through it well we're going to look at this commandment that Jesus gives and there are several things I want you to notice about it first of all it's a substantive commandment I mean it's weighty it's weighty because it's given by the Lord himself a new commandment I give to you it's the Lord Jesus himself incarnate love who is speaking the one who said before Abraham was I am the one who appears with Moses the lawgiver on the mount of transfiguration the one who said I did not come to destroy the law I came to fulfill it this is the one who says I give to you a new commandment now some of you who study the scripture and know it well are thinking hey now wait wait wait hey now wait wait wait this isn't new I've read this before in the old testament and you're right you're right because it appears so to speak in Leviticus chapter 19 the 18th verse where it reads never seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone but love your neighbor as yourself for I am the Lord so what does Jesus mean then when he says I'm telling you something new here's a new commandment I'm glad you asked the word new is kinas kinas and it does not mean recent it does not mean new in age or in chronology if Jesus wanted to use that he would have turned to a different word and that is naos that means new in age or recent Jesus uses the word kinas which you could translate it here's a fresh commandment here's a renewed commandment here is something unprecedented it's not new information but it is a new application or a renewed application of the old revelation what Jesus is doing is summing up the last six commandments into one easy to remember commandment you could take all of the last six commandments the second table of the law and sum it up with this it's the irreducible minimum of the last six commandments this Paul writes in Romans 13 love is the fulfillment of the law so here's a renewed fresh unprecedented in its application commandment and what is the commandment what is it that he commands us to do to love and you know the word for love we've talked about it in fact it's probably the first word anybody learns when they become a Christian in the Greek language it's the word agape or agapao which is the love of the will and here's something interesting about the word agape by the way you find it all over the bible and though it's a Greek word it seems to appear nowhere else in any ancient pagan Greek literature you don't find the word agape you find other terms that the Greek language employs but you do not find this word it seems to be a brand new invention to describe a brand new thing a brand new way of loving it is as I mentioned the love of the will it is not a feeling that you can't control it's a choice that you absolutely can control it's not a warm response or a fuzzy feeling toward those who are kind and lovable very very different than that and loving people isn't the same as liking people I just want to let you off the hook here because honestly I don't think you like everyone and you know what I don't think you're supposed to like everyone I don't think God likes everyone I know he loves everyone but when it comes to attitudes and behaviors and actions that are built into a person's character God doesn't like that the fact the bible says God is angry with the wicked every day but at the same time the attitude the choice of God's perfect love is toward all people so William Shakespeare believe it or not came very very close to a perfect definition of agape love in one of his love sonnets in fact it was sonnet 116 where he says love is not love which alters when it alteration finds nor bends with the remover to remove oh no it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempus and is never shaken never shaken that's very close to the idea of what agape love is in the scripture it is the love of the will the love of choice not the love of liking or human emotion so when a husband sits next to a wife with his arms folded across a counseling table and says I don't love her anymore know that it's a choice or a series of choices that he has made so this is a substantive commandment given by the Lord himself it's renewed it's fresh second thing I want you to notice about this commandment it's a superlative commandment that is Jesus said it is the greatest of all of the commandments that are given Jesus sums up not just the second part of the ten commandments but all of the ten commandments in that word love in Mark's gospel chapter 12 there was a man who came up to Jesus and he was a scribe he was a religious leader and probably trying to trap the Lord he said okay what's the first the greatest commandment Jesus quickly answered him your love the Lord your God with all of your heart all of your soul all of your mind all of your strength that is the greatest commandment the first but the second is like it you are to love your neighbor as you love yourself and then Jesus said there is no other commandment greater than these this then is the crown jewel of all commandments this is the grand canyon of commandments this is the pinnacle this is as high as it gets and Paul would agree he wrote that great love chapter in 1st Corinthians 13 and now abide these three faith hope and love but the greatest is love so essentially what Jesus does here is takes all of the Christian life all of Christian responsibility and he summarizes it and prioritizes it saying do this love God love people and you'll have it wired it is Christianity in a nutshell question why is this the greatest commandment why is this the superlative most essential of all the commandments one of the answers is in the way God wired us God wired human beings to be relational and the peak of human relation is real love so that every person craves love in fact I would say you would do almost anything in the world to get love if you knew that you would be unconditionally loved for just who you are and that you would have the capacity to give unconditional love that's what people want that's what people are searching for dr. Carl Menninger who founded the famous Menninger clinic I think in Topeka Kansas before he died decided to do an experiment he had several people come into his clinic and he wanted to find the very core of all of their illnesses so he he embarked on an experiment he told his clinical staff for the next several months this is what I want you to do everybody that comes to the door make sure that they are in a an environment of creative love his words creative love give them large doses of love which means no bad attitudes will be tolerated by you if I see a bad attitude you're out of here I want there to be a pervasive ongoing atmosphere of creative love after the experiment he noted within six months that the average stay of the patients in his clinic was cut in half after that cut in half and he said love cures people both the ones who give it as well as the ones who receive it so what do we have here we have a fresh renewed commandment given by Jesus himself to employ the love of the will to choose to act toward people in a certain way which is the irreducible minimum the summary of all of the commandments that are given the third thing I want you to note is that this is a comparative commandment in other words there's a benchmark there's a standard that Jesus gives so that we can compare our love to that standard to see if we've hit the mark you know love goes beyond what we say it's an act of the will and Skip Heidsek will talk more about this commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves when he concludes this teaching the 11th commandment the teaching you just heard was the final message in the series God's Top Ten have you ever been asked how Ten Commandments given thousands of years ago are relevant to us today as you follow along in this series you'll find out how each of God's instructions applies to daily living be encouraged and inspired as you listen again and share this series with a friend you can do that when you purchase a copy of this entire series for your audio library God's Top Ten get all 17 teachings bundled as an audio CD package for just $39 plus shipping and now let's go in studio to check in with Skip and his wife Lenya today so we're coming to an end of God's Top Ten and you throw us a curveball what what you say there's an 11th commandment and really Jesus reduced things to two and said love your neighbor as yourself that a new commandment I given to you that you love your neighbor as yourself that's right and so sometimes that's the hardest for us to follow because a lot of us don't even know our neighbors except that we do a lot of them by name so do you have some tips that you can give us to begin reaching out and when it talks about neighbor doesn't just mean the people that live next door to you in your neighborhood though that is your neighbor technically your neighbor is anyone other than you anyone other than you that you come into contact with is your is your neighbor so when Jesus said a new commandment I give to you first of all it wasn't new in the sense of it never existed before because that's a quote out of Leviticus 19 comes from the Old Testament so when Jesus used the word new he meant renewed a fresh let's take a fresh look at something is the idea let me let me apply it in renewed in priority or exactly and and certainly to to your point Jesus said that was one of the top two that you love God with all your heart mind soul and strength and you love your neighbor as yourself so key to understanding that is that Jesus said that you will love people like I have loved you so he didn't just say start loving people as you see fit as you feel like you ought to love them but do it as I do it so now we have a model we have something to to trace and and get a good picture of and that is the love of Jesus but that didn't make it any easier did it didn't make it easier but greater love but if you look at him then you get a good idea of what it's like so what was Jesus love like well it was sacrificial right he gave himself he gave his time greater love has no one than this then he lay down his life for his friends so we know his love is sacrificial so our love to some degree has to have sacrifice in it we know his love was unconditional he said father forgive them they don't know what they're doing I mean there were no conditions or stipulations tied onto that statement so it's unconditional sacrificial the third thing is it's non-reciprocal necessary doesn't have to be reciprocated doesn't have to have I'll do this if you do that back so it's unending non-reciprocal love the Bible says in Romans 5 while we were sinners he loved us died for us so we have a good description of though we're not going to love exactly like Jesus because after all he was God in a human body we have a template we have a model with which to love and here's something about God's love he pours it out into us the same book of Romans says that God has shed his love abroad or poured out his love into our hearts that's a relief it makes it possible because for me maybe it's impossible but with God coming in and through me then I have the potential to love as he loved he never calls us to be manufacturers but distributors so he'll pour out the love and he just says don't hold on to it give it away well thanks so much guys and I hope you'll take some time to connect with Skip today you can when you like him on Facebook follow him on Twitter or Instagram and the hub for all that is at connectwithskip.com when it comes to loving our neighbor as ourselves there's one example to follow Jesus and we'll see how we model this for us next time here in Connect with Skip Weekend Edition a presentation of Connection Communications. Connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-01-18 23:38:23 / 2024-01-18 23:46:28 / 8