Well, turn with me in the Old Testament to the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 6, from verse 1.
Now this is the commandment, the statutes, and the ordinances, which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go over to possess it;
that thou mightest fear the Lord thy God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged.
Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the Lord, the God of thy fathers, hath promised unto thee, in a land flowing with milk and honey.
Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one:
and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thy hand, and they shall be for frontlets between thine eyes.
And thou shalt write them upon the doorposts of thy house, and upon thy gates.
And then, in the New Testament, in the Gospel according to Mark, chapter 12, from verse 28.
And one of the scribes came, and heard them questioning together, and knowing that He had answered them well, asked Him, What commandment is the first of all?
Jesus answered, The first is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God, the Lord is one:
and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.
The second is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
And the scribe said unto Him, Of a truth, Teacher, Thou hast well said that He is one; and there is none other but He:
and to love Him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.
And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, He said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. And no man after that durst ask Him any question.
Shall we just bow together in prayer?
Ah, heavenly Father, we do thank Thee, as we come to Thy Word this evening, that Thou hast said through our Lord Jesus that the Spirit of truth will guide us into all the truth, and that He will take of the things of the Lord Jesus and make them real to us.
And, O Father, we want to tell Thee, speaker and hearer together, that we are dependent upon that ministry of the Holy Spirit. We thank Thee for the provision Thou hast made for us, Lord, and we would together appropriate that provision, that this may not be a misspent time, or in any single part futile.
Let that spirit of quietness come upon us all. And grant, we pray, Lord, that we may hear Thy voice, and that the Word of Christ shall dwell in us richly. We ask it, Lord, in His precious name. Amen.
When I introduced last night the burden that was on my heart for these few times that I have with you, I drew your attention to a sentence in the letter of the Apostle Paul to the church at Philippi, in Philippians 1:9.
I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all discernment;
so that ye may approve the things that are excellent;
that ye may be sincere and void of offence unto the day of Christ.
I want this evening, without any further introduction, to dwell upon the divine command:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
and with all thy soul,
and with all thy mind,
and with all thy strength.
And thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Now, the key to everything is found in the nature of God. One of the simplest and yet, at the same time, most profound statements in the whole Book is contained in 1 John 4:8, and again in verse 16: God is love.
It does not say merely, “God loves.” That is a fact. Every one of us who has been born of God, who has tasted the salvation of God, knows that God loves and that He first loved us. But the statement is fathomless. It is profound. It is absolutely basic. It is all-inclusive. God does not merely love. God is love.
When the Word of God says that God is love, it says far, far more than that He only loves. That would be wonderful enough, but that His nature is love is beyond our comprehension. We taste a little, and it fills us with ecstasy.
Which child of God has ever been touched by the love of God, or filled with the love of God to their measure, and not known some kind of ecstasy, some kind of being carried out of oneself? I feel sorry for Christians who do not believe that there can be, or should be, any such experience.
The more of such experiences, the better—especially if we are moving into days of suffering, pressure, and strain. It is not that we want mere emotion, or mere ecstasy, or mere thrills; but to be touched with the love of God, moved by the love of God, and filled with the love of God—to come to some individual and original experience that God is love—is surely something basic. It must be something transforming.
No wonder the early Methodists spoke about an experience that they called perfect love.
God is love. We must note that there are only two such statements, and they are both found within this letter. The other is very like it: God is light.
You find that in 1 John 1:5:
God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.
Light and love are a seam that runs right through the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. The correlation of light to love and love to light is something you will find in every single book of the Bible.
I cannot spend too much time on that, except I would just like to take the words of the Lord Jesus, when He put it very simply, as recorded in John 14.
If ye love Me, ye will keep My commandments.
And again, in John 14:23:
If a man love Me, he will keep My word: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him.
Or verse 21:
He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me: and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself unto him.
It seems in some Christian quarters that this matter of love is always put over against law, as if law is one thing and love is another; as if the commandments of God are one thing and the love of God is another; as if somehow truth is one thing and grace is another.
And if you taste the love of God, you are free from commandments. You are free from law. You are free from the Word of God. You are free from its restrictions. It is not so.
The Lord Jesus not only said it in these few instances recorded, but again and again and again. And so we find it in many of the letters.
It is not that we have a whole list of regulations and laws to try and keep, as under the old covenant. Rather, the Spirit of God has come within us with the law. Now the dynamic of the whole thing is love.
Because we love God, we shall be found spontaneously keeping His Word. Some people say to me they no longer have to keep the Ten Commandments. But that is nonsense. The Ten Commandments have come within you.
If the Spirit of God has come within you, then the ten commands—the ten words of God—have come within you. You are not all the time thinking of do’s and don’ts, but you are just thinking of Him. And as you walk with Him, you are spontaneously keeping the law of God.
How can anyone love the Lord Jesus Christ and break His commandments? How can anyone love the Lord Jesus Christ and despise His commandments? It is impossible.
If we love Him, we will be sensitively aware of every word that He has said. We shall somehow be conscious of the need to appreciate, to understand, and to obey what He has said—not only in letter, but above all in spirit.
Light and love: they are everywhere.
Do not ever be sidetracked by some of these things that hold out some kind of experience of the love of God that frees you from the commandments of the Lord Jesus.
We are in danger in some charismatic circles of having such “bless-me” little groups. You know, the kind of things where we all just get together to be blessed, and we only think about ourselves, our own edification, and everything else.
It never enters our head that the Lord Jesus said, “Go, and make disciples of all nations.” It never enters our head that He has appointed us to go and bear much fruit. It seems as if the only thing that worries us is just praising the Lord, worshipping the Lord, and getting our own needs sorted out.
We can go in the same way with the whole matter of the church. We can see church truth, but it can turn us inside out and upside down in the wrong way, so that in the end we become so church-truth conscious that everything else goes by the board.
There is no such thing as loving God without being aware of the full spectrum of His commandment.
Let me say it again: it is not that we have to nail up the 618 laws that every good Orthodox Jew must keep and somehow try to keep them rigidly. This would be a terrible bondage and heaviness to us all.
But if the Spirit of God has come within us, then every single commandment in the Old Testament which has a spiritual meaning, if not a literal meaning, still to be understood and held, must come within us. Is it not so?
Jesus said that if anyone teaches men to break one of the least of these commandments, he shall be least in the kingdom of God. He said, “I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil the law.”
Now, if that is how the Lord Jesus came—to fulfil it, not to destroy it, not to throw it out, but to fulfil it—and then by His Spirit come within us to keep it, so that His law is written in our hearts and His Spirit is put within us, this opens a new gate, a new door.
It brings us into a new dimension of joy, of freedom, of glory. It is not a question of compulsion. It is not a question of duty, but it is the love of Christ which constrains us.
For the first time, our dynamic becomes the love of God, because we were first loved by Him.
This love, therefore, let me say straight away, is not what it is often understood as: a kind of slushy thing, a kind of merely sentimental thing. We drool; we are all sort of slushy and doe-eyed. That kind of idea of love, of course, puts most men right off from the start.
It is contrary to their nature. This is not love that God is looking for. Of course there must be sentiment in it. Of course there must be emotion in it. Of course there must be feeling in it. Of course.
But this love is something strong and firm and rock-like. It is enduring. This love is both the most wonderful thing about God and the most fearful thing about God.
It is the most wonderful thing in the whole universe to be loved by God, but it is at the same time the most fearful thing in the whole universe. Some people think it is only wonderful. Let me tell you: it is fearful.
For once the Lord loves a person, He will not let them go. He will relentlessly pursue them until finally He has cornered them, even if it is on their deathbed.
But in the end, He gets from you what He wants from you. He brings you to the place that you ought to have come to perhaps years before.
Once God sets His love upon somebody, there is no escape. That is both our security and our fear.
Why does the writer of Hebrews say, “Every son whom He receiveth, He scourgeth”? It seems rather foreign to modern ears, but what he means is simply this: it is the security of a love which is firm, strong, and cannot be deceived or deluded.
That is the kind of thing that gives a child in any family security. When they have the kind of love that lets them do anything, go anywhere, choose anything, and be anything, they grow up insecure.
But when there is some kind of love which cares for them—cares enough to discipline them, cares enough to chasten them—that brings a security into that child’s life.
So it is with us. Oh, the love of God! How wonderful it is. How fearful it is.
Then I want to say one other thing about this matter, the nature of God. Here is love. That is what lies behind the creation of the universe. That is what lies behind the creation of man. That is what lies behind the redemption of man.
That is what lies behind the goal of God, the end He had in mind when He created the universe and when He created man in His image. It is divine love that is behind all these things.
Sometimes in this fallen world, when we see its contradictions and its depravity and its unhappiness, its anguish and suffering, and when we see the storms coming upon the righteous and the unjust, and the sun shining on the unjust as well as the just, we are tempted to question the love of God.
But, dear child of God, behind the creation of this universe, behind the creation of man and woman—of mankind—and behind that glorious work of redemption which was wrought by our Lord Jesus on the cross, is the love of God.
And behind the goal of God, the aim of God, the strategy of God, lies the love of God. From beginning to end, it is a love story—a divine love story.
Now the heart of the matter is this. I would like to take you for one moment back to the Old Testament, and back to the fifth book of the Old Testament, the book of Deuteronomy, from which we read this evening.
Deuteronomy—or, as old Mr. Sparks used to say, “Deutero, know me”—means simply the repetition of the law.
Now, whenever God says something twice, we need to give serious attention. It is a very interesting thing, and I was greatly tempted in these times that I have with you this year to take the times God says something all over again.
Because each time He goes to the bother of going right back over everything and saying it all again, it is with very deep and great significance.
You see, all that we have in the book of Deuteronomy has already been given to us, except the death of Moses. That is the only new thing that is added. Everything else is there. So why does God waste pages of the Book?
There are all kinds of things we would have loved to have known. Are we going to eat in heaven? Are we going to recognise each other in heaven? What are we going to do in heaven? Is there a millennium, or is there not a millennium? You know, all these things that we all get tied up on.
If only God had used all these chapters to pack in that kind of information, instead of going all over what He had already said anyway. We have Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. Why go over it again?
God does exactly the same thing with the First and Second Books of Chronicles. Some of you probably have got started on Chronicles and got lost in those genealogies. They seem to be endless, do they not?
But they go right back to Adam, and then they trace the whole story from Genesis onward. One will say, “Well, why waste all these chapters in the Book? Why not give us a bit more extra revelation, new revelation? Why go over everything again?”
And then, in particular, it goes over the First and Second Books of Samuel and the First and Second Books of Kings. Why? But there is a reason for it, you see.
When you come to the New Testament, you have three Gospels, all of which tell you the same story from a different angle. But then you have a fourth Gospel which was not written like the other Gospels, but is an interpretation.
It is as if that Gospel sums up everything and says, “This is the heart of the matter.” With those others, you have only part of the truth. You have the history. You have the fact. You have not got the heart of the matter.
Chronicles does exactly the same. It is as it were that God puts His finger on a matter: it is the house of God and Jerusalem. He puts His finger on that and says, “This is the heart of the whole matter. This is the heart of all My persevering with mankind.”
Now, the book of Deuteronomy is just like this.
If you read the book of Deuteronomy very carefully after this evening—maybe you want to get it in a modern version, I do not know—but if you read it, and you have some knowledge of those other books, you will come inescapably to one conclusion.
What is that conclusion? It is simply that it is a matter of love.
Now, it is an interesting fact that love for God, or God’s love for us, is mentioned only once in all those four books, and that is in Exodus 20:6. But when you come to Deuteronomy, every chapter seems to talk about the love of God.
It speaks about God loving us and choosing us because He loved us, and this is why He chose you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth. And then comes the cry: “You must love the Lord.”
Because God is love, only love will satisfy Him. Did you hear that?
Some people are so used to the kind of gospel address that it just goes over them. Because God is love, only love will satisfy Him.
Knowledge will never satisfy Him. Understanding will never satisfy Him. Zeal will never satisfy Him. Your work and energy will never satisfy Him. Your giving of your money will never satisfy Him. The giving even of your body to be burned will not satisfy Him.
Only when you love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, will God finally be satisfied.
He loves you, and He will not be fobbed off with anything else as a substitute for love. But we believers are past masters at substituting work for love.
We put work in the place of love, as if, when we work our fingers to the bone, surely God will understand. If we give our energy, God will understand. If we attend meetings, God will surely look upon us favourably. But God cannot bear it.
When the love is gone, it is obnoxious to God. Only love satisfies God.
Now, you find this everywhere in the book of Deuteronomy. Look at Deuteronomy 7:6-8:
For thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a people for His own possession, above all peoples that are upon the face of the earth.
The Lord did not set His love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all peoples:
but because the Lord loveth you, and because He would keep the oath which He sware unto your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
Now look at Deuteronomy 6:5. We read it earlier:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
Or again, Deuteronomy 10:12-13:
And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul,
to keep the commandments of the Lord, and His statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good?
Or again, Deuteronomy 11:1:
Therefore thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and keep His charge, and His statutes, and His ordinances, and His commandments, alway.
Or again, chapter 13. Am I boring you with all these Scriptures? But, you see, this matter of love is not mentioned only once in those four books. Now, as we go over the whole of these books, we find it again and again.
If there arise in the midst of thee a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and he give thee a sign or a wonder,
and the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them;
thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or unto that dreamer of dreams: for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
Ye shall walk after the Lord your God, and fear Him, and keep His commandments, and obey His voice, and ye shall serve Him, and cleave unto Him.
Or again, lastly, in this book, Deuteronomy 30:6:
And the Lord thy God will circumcise thy heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.
And verse 16:
In that I command thee this day to love the Lord thy God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His ordinances, that thou mayest live and multiply, and that the Lord thy God may bless thee in the land whither thou goest in to possess it.
And again, lastly, verse 20:
To love the Lord thy God, to obey His voice, and to cleave unto Him; for He is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.
I wonder whether any of us have really understood the significance of Deuteronomy. Because what it is really saying is this: there is a divine love story behind your creation. There is a divine love story behind your formation. There is a divine love story behind your redemption.
There is a divine love story behind your transformation. There is a divine love story behind your education and training. God has a plan for you, and the Bible is the revelation of that plan.
Some people believe that salvation is the plan of God. But salvation is only part of that plan, since we are all fallen creatures. Salvation is the means by which God puts us back into His purpose, back into His plan.
And so the Bible is a love story. It begins with a marriage, and it ends with a marriage. It begins with a marriage in the second chapter, and we are told later that this institution of marriage is a mystery.
It is to represent and manifest the eternal desire of God for His own.
When we come to the end of the Bible, we have a marriage. Only the marriage at the end of the Bible is between the bride and the Lord Jesus, the Lamb, and the wife of the Lamb.
Then wherever we look through the Book, it becomes clearer and clearer. Most people look upon the little letter of Ephesians as the high-water mark in the New Testament of revelation. Here, in Ephesians 5, we read these wonderful words, verse 25:
Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself up for it;
that He might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word,
that He might present the church to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.
And then, a little later on, in verse 32:
This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church.
What an amazing Book the Bible is when we begin to see it in these terms—not just the wrath of God, or even the truth of God, but the light of God bringing us into the love of God, and the love of God leading us into the light of God.
Then the Bible becomes the most thrilling Book in the whole world.
It is not for nothing that almost at the heart of the Bible there is a little tiny book that is being called by modern and liberal theologians—and I am not exaggerating—a bawdy love ditty. It is the Song of Songs.
I prefer to believe the Jewish tradition concerning the Song of Songs: that it was a revelation given to Solomon whilst he was praying, of the love between the Lord and Israel, His people.
If that is so, it lifts that little book into the Holy of Holies. It is not just a question of salvation. It is not just a question of sanctification. It is not just a question of service. It is not just a question of work or sacrifice.
Suddenly we discover that God loves us with a consuming love.
And there are three amazing little things in that Song of Solomon. When first she discovers that He loves her so much, she says:
My beloved is mine, and I am His.
That is where most of us begin. We have hymns that say, “Mine, mine, mine; I know Thou art mine.” We have hymns that say that we will be crowned midst plaudits of angels and men, says one old hymn.
Well, there is nothing wrong with it. Thank God, many of us will be crowned midst the plaudits of angels and men. And He is ours. Blessed be God.
But that is where it begins: “My beloved is mine, and I am His.”
Then, when we go on in the revelation, we find that the bridegroom is not going to take it. We find out that in this amazing love story he gets a little tired of her—not tired, it is not that he does not love her—but she begins to treat Him in a kind of indifferent manner.
When He knocks on the door, she sort of says, “I am in bed. I have not got my shoes on. But I will come, dear.” And she takes an awful long time, slowly moving off the couch. But when she gets to the door, He is gone.
Then she is seized with fear. There is a real love in her heart, but it has grown apathetically secure because she thought, “He is mine.” Now He has fled.
Now she goes out and searches. She goes to the streets, saying to everyone, “O daughters of Jerusalem, where is my beloved? Do you know where He is?” And they beat her up.
And so she goes on. I hope I am not ruining the Song of Songs for you, but she goes on looking for her beloved. Then comes the next great thing when she finds Him, and then there is a change. She says:
I am my beloved’s, and He is mine.
A change has come.
But it is not good enough for the bridegroom. There is a further experience she has to go through, and then, when finally they come to the marriage and the consummation of the marriage, she says:
I am my beloved’s.
The “mine” has gone. She has come to the place where she is His, and she is secure in that. She does not have to say, “He is mine, He is mine, He is mine.” It is enough to say, “I am His.”
And then she says, “What shall we do for my little sister? She is immature.”
Now, strangely enough, it was not our beloved brother Watchman Nee, but it was none other than that very respectable evangelical, Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission, who wrote a book called Union and Communion on this very little book.
And he said, “Who can this little sister be?” Because she is obviously related to the bride, but she is immature. The bride says to the bridegroom after they are married, “What shall we do about my little sister? She is immature. She has not come to the place where she can be married.”
And they say together, “We will do this, and we will do that, and we will do the other, till we bring her to the place of maturity.” And Hudson Taylor, no other person, says, “Could it not be that those are the believers who do not go on with the Lord?”
Not every believer will be in the bride, although everyone is potentially the bride. Because who are those blessed ones who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb? They are not the angels; they are already there.
And it cannot be the bride, because it is in her and the Bridegroom’s honour. So who are the ones of whom it says, “Blessed are those that are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb”?
Oh, what a love story lies here. What mysteries there are of love in this whole matter. How you and I need to understand that the God who saved us has not saved us in a mechanical way just to use us, just to manipulate us, just to fill us.
Just that we may be objects, you know—sort of things draped around the mansions of heaven like trophies that they used to have in those old manor houses in England: a hippopotamus head, and an elephant, and a leopard.
Some Christians have got the idea that God has got them now; they are trophies of grace, you know, so that God says, “Look at so-and-so. Ah, yes, I got that one such-and-such a time. I got that one at such-and-such, and that one I got at such-and-such.”
No, no, no. There is something very different. The love of God for you is so consuming that it is like bridegroom’s love for bride. It is like husband’s love for wife.
And that is the story of the Bible. That is why the Bible ends with a marriage feast in Revelation 19:
Let us rejoice and be exceeding glad: for the marriage supper of the Lamb is come.
And why John says in Revelation 21, “I saw, and I beheld the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven, having the glory of God.” He calls her the wife of the Lamb.
Now, to come back. If that is the heart of the matter, listen to the summing-up of the Lord Jesus.
A scribe came to Him and said, “Master, Rabbi, which is the greatest and first commandment?”
Now, it had always filled rabbinic minds as to what really was the greatest law. Only those who understand a little bit about rabbinical studies will know just how complex and analytical those studies can get and be.
When I tell you that the greatest division that rent the synagogues in the Middle Ages was over how many angels could stand on a pinhead, you will understand a little bit about it. It is not a joke; that is true. They argued and argued and argued as to how many angels could actually get on a pinhead.
Now, that may mean very little to you, but there is some value in this analytical and complex approach to law. It has produced a nation of lawyers and scribes.
That is why, when David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, was asked what it was like to be Prime Minister of Israel, he said, “It is like being Prime Minister of 2,500,000 Prime Ministers.”
The scribe came to Jesus and said, “Which is the first and greatest commandment?” And Jesus replied, in the age-old way of the Jewish people, by reciting what we call the Shema:
Hear, O Israel:
the Lord thy God, the Lord is one.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul,
with all thy mind,
and with all thy strength.
And the second is like unto it:
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
In the Matthew account He said, “Upon these two hang the whole law and the prophets.”
It was as if Jesus condensed the whole Bible into one command: Thou shalt love.
As if He said, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength, is to love your neighbour as yourself.
Consider the tremendous scope of His statement. He said the whole Bible is condensed in this. He said the whole Bible hangs on this. He said as if the whole Bible springs out of this.
It was as if He were saying, “Do you want to keep the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation? Then keep these two laws.”
Note the simplicity. A child could understand this:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your mind,
and with all your strength;
and you shall love your neighbour as you love yourself.
What simplicity! I wonder whether we believers have ever given the amount of reflection and meditation to this basic statement of the Messiah.
You see, will you notice He says, “You shall love the Lord your God,” not, “You shall love teachings,” or doctrine, although we are to have sound doctrine and pure doctrine.
Not, “You shall love the concept of God.” There are some Christians who love the concept of God. They do not love Him; they love the concept.
Not, “You shall love the work of service,” or the things. But, “You shall love the Lord your God.”
Listen again: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Not many things, not many purposes, not many lords: one Lord. Everything is focused on Him.
What simplicity! When a person is focused on the Lord their God, they cannot go wrong. When, with all their heart, all their soul, all their mind, and all their strength, they love the Lord, the Spirit of God will keep them in the way, keep them in the will of God, and keep them within the work of God.
You cannot go wrong. Oh, no wonder Jesus said, “Because iniquity shall abound, the love of the many shall wax cold.”
If we are going to love things in place of the Lord, if we are going to centre on organisation, or service, or the system of things, or teaching, or concepts, or truths instead of Him, we are in danger.
The whole of church history has the evidence of this. People are going to stray because they have loved things or truths rather than Him.
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy strength.” Then I want you to notice the totality of it. It is hard, is it not, really, when you think about it? Because all of us—I above all—come so short, fall so far short in this matter.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
and with all thy soul,
and with all thy mind,
and with all thy strength.
The totality of it. Heart. Now, in Hebrew things, heart corresponds to spirit.
Heart—with all your heart—that is where it begins. That is where it begins. Not with the emotion, not with the soul, but with the heart. That is where it must begin: with all your heart.
If you love Him only with all your soul, you can go wrong. But if you love Him with all your heart, you will be kept in the way.
And with all your soul. There are many believers who are frightened to death of the soul. It is certainly true that there has to be a division between spirit and soul, that the human personality is the human personality.
And the Lord Jesus gave this basic word to us all: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul.” Do not be afraid of your emotions. Do not be afraid of your sentiment. Do not be afraid of your feelings. With all your soul.
With your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. Some people cannot love the Lord with their mind. They say, “Ah, well, I can love God with my emotion, but not my mind.” Oh, yes, you can.
You can love the Lord with your mind. Your mind can come right under subjection to God. And then your mind is released.
There is nothing so petty, so small, as great intelligence without God. I have heard the most incredible things said about the Book by very intelligent people, theologians.
I remember years ago being told how Elijah—perhaps I have told you some of this before—when that fire fell down out of heaven on Mount Carmel, it was, as he said to us all in a room filled with men, “Of course, we all know there is benzene on Mount Carmel.”
And he said the trench that Elijah dug and filled with water—well, it looked like water, but it was not water. That is why, when the fire came, it licked it up. “You have never seen fire lick up water,” he said, “have you? If it was benzene, of course.”
I was amazed by this explanation. And I remember in question time asking him, “Where did the fire come from?” And he was very surprised. And I said, “Maybe it was Elijah’s cigarette.”
No, the point of the matter is this: here is great intelligence which comes up with an explanation of a biblical miracle which is non-intelligent.
It is like the same man who said, also to the same people, when questioned, “Well, Jesus never walked on the water. As we all know, there are parts of the Lake of Galilee which are very shallow. He walked on the seabed.”
But this was an even greater miracle, because, as I asked him later, “How did Peter sink?”
Quite honestly, it is best to leave the biblical stories as the biblical stories, to be either accepted as they are written through faith. But once you try to explain them and explain them away, what happens?
You end up with intelligent people giving a very non-intelligent explanation.
So it happens when the mind is supreme, when the mind dominates, when our brain is the thing and even determines everything about God. No, we must love the Lord our God not only with all our heart and with all our soul, but with all our minds.
For then God can give us revelation. God can give us illumination, which is a wisdom far beyond this world has access to and which is in itself totally intelligent.
And with all your strength.
Well, we must begin, I think, to finish. In this summing-up of the Lord Jesus, of this whole matter, this divine command—note it, it is a command—God never commands us to do anything that through faith and grace we cannot do.
If God says, “Go and make disciples of all nations,” we can do it by His grace and through the obedience of faith. If God says that we are to go and possess something, then we can possess it through grace, by His power, through the obedience of faith.
And so it is here, in this matter:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart,
with all thy soul,
with all thy mind,
and with all thy strength.
Beloved people of God, we are entering into years of shaking, of change, of strain, of darkness, of strife, such as the world has not seen.
Only the love of God will keep us.
And that love of God will not be satisfied with anything less or other than that we love Him with all our heart, all our soul, all our minds, and all our strength.
Now Jesus said, “And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
Some people feel, “Well, I can love the Lord with all my heart, but to love my neighbour as myself…” It is interesting that the Lord did not say, in His wonderfully gracious way, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.”
He said one marvellously simple thing:
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Some Christians, I am quite sure, feel it is quite wrong to love yourself, but God takes it for granted. Everyone loves themselves. The deepest instinct in us is self-preservation because we love ourselves.
Sometimes it is inverted. The people who suffer from a terrible inferiority complex only do so because they love themselves even more than normal. That is true. They feel that somehow or other they should be more.
God takes this for granted. If only you would love your neighbour as you love yourself. If only you would care for your neighbour as you care for yourself. If only you would think about your neighbour as you think about yourself.
If only you would think about the welfare of your neighbour as you think about your own welfare. If you would only think about the satisfaction of your neighbour as you think about your satisfaction. What a world it would be.
Do you not think that we believers have fallen very, very far short in this matter of loving our neighbours as ourselves?
My word, we sometimes look upon our neighbours as just sort of heads to be counted. We do not often think of them as human beings that God loves and Jesus died for.
We almost sometimes think of them as kind of fodder that can be brought into the church. God does not look at it like that.
Thou shalt love not the multitude, but thy neighbour, as thyself.
And if we are to love our neighbour as ourselves, what about our brother and sister? There is so much in the Book about this. Let me just turn you to one or two in closing.
In Galatians 5:13-15:
For ye, brethren, were called for freedom; only use not your freedom for an occasion to the flesh, but through love be servants one to another.
For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.
This is what happens, does it not? Again and again, in the fellowships of God’s people, they bite and devour one another, and in the end they themselves are consumed. The whole thing is swallowed up in backbiting, gossip, and faction.
Through love, be servants one of another—not through love, be masters one of another; not through love, be teachers one of another; not through love, be correctors one of another; not through love, be leaders of one another. But through love, be servants of one another.
Look again in the same letter, Galatians 6:2:
Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.
So the Apostle was quite clear about this statement of the Lord Jesus. He called it the law of the Messiah: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
And it is interesting that the Apostle takes the second part and says that is the whole law being fulfilled, as if he takes it for granted that you are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength.
The outcome and consequence of that will be seen in your loving your neighbour as yourself.
Many will ask the question that the scribe asked Jesus: “Who, Lord, is my neighbour?” And Jesus told a story.
He said there was a certain man who went on a journey down to Jericho through the wilderness. Now, the journey down to Jericho from Jerusalem is a four-thousand-foot descent through wild and wilderness country. In those days it was filled with brigands and robbers.
And on his way down, this one was robbed and left half dead by the way. And there came, evidently on his way up to Jerusalem, a priest.
He knew the law of God. He kept the covenant of God. He was a teacher of the Word of God. And he saw the man half dead. Maybe he remembered the law that if he touched a dead body, he would be unclean. And he passed by on the other side.
And then there came a Levite, one who was supposed to look after the things of God, care for the work of God, a guardian of the worship of God. He saw the man half dead, and he passed by on the other side.
I wonder how many fellowships here are passing by on the other side. I wonder how many groups here—there are people half dead in our communities, and we pass by on the other side.
We are priests of God. We are God’s Levites. We do not want to get involved with the half dead. We do not want to get involved with those that are mangled, half murdered, with their problems and difficulties.
It will be a whirlpool, we feel, that will suck us into it and take us away from the real objective of God. We pass by on the other side.
And there came a Samaritan. When he saw him, he had compassion on him, and dismounted, and poured in wine and oil, and bandaged him up, and set him on his own animal.
As far as we know, he turned round and went back to the inn—and there was only one inn between Jerusalem and Jericho in the old days—and said to the innkeeper, “Keep him at my expense until I come again.”
And Jesus said, “Who was the good neighbour?”
Sometimes it is better to be a Samaritan in love with God than a priest who is lukewarm. Sometimes it is better to be a Samaritan, mixed up, than a Levite who is separate from the world.
If the love of God is not in our heart, and love for our neighbour as for ourselves is not being fulfilled, it is our condemnation.
So, dear friends, I must finish. Well, I want to finish with just a few words. What should our response be?
Jesus said:
Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
with all thy soul,
with all thy mind,
and with all thy strength.
And thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
What can be our response? Do we not all come short, both as companies of God’s people and as individual believers? Do we not all fall short in this matter?
And is it not time for us to take heed, lest we move into these days with a delusion that we are right with God, that we are safe and secure, when perhaps our love has grown cold?
I think we can only take the words of the bride to the Bridegroom in Song of Solomon 8:6:
Set me as a seal upon thy heart,
as a seal upon thine arm:
for love is strong as death;
jealousy is cruel as Sheol;
the flashes thereof are flashes of fire,
a very flame of the Lord.
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it:
if a man would give all the substance of his house for love,
he would utterly be condemned.
May God really speak to each one of us. May this divine command be fulfilled, be heeded. May we obey Him, cleave to Him, serve Him, and above all, love Him with all our heart.
Shall we pray?
Lord, we pray together that Thou wilt take these poor words of mine and make them by Thy Spirit like a sword in our hearts, dividing between soul and spirit, discerning the very thoughts and intents of our hearts, the very motivating forces of our lives.
O Lord, since Thou hast said that the whole Book is summed up in these two simple but profound commandments, O Lord, find us out, and give us grace, Lord, that we may keep them and fulfil them.
And we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.