Morning, brothers and sisters. You know, this is nice—everybody is up close. When I teach, I never let anybody sit in the back row, even though, when I come to a meeting, that is usually where I sit. But I want everybody up close.
Let us read a few verses, all from the New Testament. We will begin in Ephesians 4, where I have been speaking for the past two weeks.
Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called,
with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love,
endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.—Ephesians 4:1-3
And then Ephesians 4:11:
And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers,
for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry,
for the edifying of the body of Christ,
till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God,
to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;
that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine,
by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting,
but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—
from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies,
according to the effective working by which every part does its share,
causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.—Ephesians 4:11-16
Then let us turn to Matthew 22, beginning with verse 34. This is after Jesus had been tested by the Pharisees and Sadducees—whether to pay taxes to Caesar, and whose wife a woman would be in the resurrection after having married seven brothers.
But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.
Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying,
“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.