Sermon Tone Analysis
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*LOVE MATTERS MOST \\ (Matthew 22:34-46)*
Good Morning!
Wow!
And Pastor Dick thought his sabbatical went by fast!
You’ll notice in your bulletins an outline this morning.
I told the LBA this when I went through the visitor connection training with them, I should use outlines more often – it gives people hope.
You know – when you get to the last fill in you know I’m almost done!
Hey – Pastor Dick only preached 26 minutes last week so I get to use his roll over minutes this week!
Anyway – those outlines also contain all or most of the Scripture I’ll be covering this morning so just keep that handy.
If you want your life to count - you have to focus it.
You don’t have time for everything.
Everyone agree with that?
You don’t have time for everything.
And not everything is of equal value.
Jesus said there are two things that are more valuable in life than anything else.
He said its love.
Loving God and loving each other.
In our Scripture reading this morning, when asked what matters the most Jesus answers the Pharisee’/s *“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.
‘This is the first and greatest commandment.
The second most important is similar: ‘Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.”*
/
The fact is - we struggle with love and relationships because a lot of what you and I have been taught about love is just flat out wrong.
It’s wrong.
Hopefully, we’re going to learn the reality of love over the six weeks.
Look at verses 37-39 again.
Circle “most important” and “second most important.”
God says these are the two things that matter most in life.
Love for God and love for people.
When God created you, have you ever thought why didn’t he just take you to heaven?
Why did he just put you on earth?
You’re only here for sixty, eighty, maybe at the most a hundred years and then you’re going to live for eternity in heaven or hell.
Why didn’t God just create us and take everybody to heaven?
Why did he put us here on earth for eighty or so years?
The Bible is very clear about it.
That God put you here on earth to do two things: to learn to love God and to learn to love other people.
Life is one giant lesson in love.
Life is not about acquisition – how much I get.
It’s not about accomplishment – how much I do.
It’s not about achievement – how much I earn.
It’s not about all the other things we’re told life’s about.
Because all of that you’re going to leave behind.
You’re not taking your career to heaven.
You’re not taking your car to heaven.
You’re not taking your big screen TV to heaven.
You’re not taking your house to heaven.
But you are taking your character.
You’re taking /you/.
God put you on earth for eighty to a hundred years so you can learn to love.
Jesus says here the two most important things in life are learn to love God with all your heart and learn to love everybody else.
He says if you get that, you’ve got life.
If you don’t get that, (Bzzzz) wrong answer.
You just wasted your life.
We know love’s important but we forget it.
And we get so distracted by other things.
This morning we’re going to look at what I call the three laws of love.
If you’re going to ever be a great lover, if you’re going to learn to really love God and learn to love other people, you’ve got to learn and keep in your mind the three laws of love.
Law number one: *The best use of life is love.*
That’s law number one.
God says you need to make learning how to love - your number one priority, your primary objective, your greatest ambition, your life purpose.
More than anything else he says you need to say, I want to learn how to be a loving person; how to love God and how to love other people.
Why does he say that?
Four reasons; four reasons why love is more important than anything else.
1*.**
Love validates my faith.*
What does that mean?
It’s evidence that I really am in God’s family.
It’s some proof that I really am going to heaven.
It’s some proof that I am saved; that I have been born again; that I’m a part of the family of God; that I’m on the right side, not the wrong side.
He says the proof of that is love.
It validates your faith.
If you ever go to the Motor Vehicle Dept to get a Driver’s License you have to authenticate or validate your identity.
You have to prove you are who you say you are.
They don’t just give you a license.
You have to take some documents and prove or validate who you say you are.
That’s true with a lot of things in life.
You can’t just walk up to an ATM and say “Give me some money.”
You have to validate that that card really belongs to you by putting in a PIN code.
In order for you to get into heaven, you have to validate your identity.
You have to prove that you really are a child of God; that you have trusted Christ; that you know him; that you have a relationship with God.
How do you validate that identity?
The Bible says that God looks at your lifestyle and says, “Do you love? Do you love God with all your heart?
Do you love your neighbor as yourself?”
The Bible says */“Whoever does not love does not know God/*/.
/[That’s pretty clear.]
*/Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”/*/
/
/ /
The reason why God wants you to learn to love on earth is because he wants you to become like him. 1 John 4:20 says, */“If we say we love God, but we hate other, we’re liars.
/*/ /[That’s pretty blunt.]
*/For we cannot love God, whom we have not seen, if we do not love others, whom we have seen.”/*/
/Love validates my faith.
It proves I really am a child of God.
*2.
Love integrates my life.*
In other words it becomes the dominant life principle by which everything else in my life is integrated.
My social life, my financial life, my church life, my work life, my sex life, my friend life.
Every other part of my life becomes integrated by love.
You need to have something at the core of your heart that draws your life together.
Otherwise your life is just fragmented.
You do a little of this, a little of that, a little of this, a little of that… When your life is fragmented, when your life is segmented you lack integrity.
Integrity means your whole life is integrated.
It’s a whole.
It’s one.
Everybody’s got a dominant life principle.
That means everybody builds their life around something.
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