Marked by Love: The Greatest Commandment & Overcoming Hypocrisy

This morning we’re going to wrap up our series branded. Whose brand are you wearing? And so the series has really been, I haven’t talked a lot about cowboys, right? But it’s been all about that theme that back in the 1800s, you know, when cowboys were riding for the brand. It was the brand that made their life meaningful and significant. It wasn’t just, I mean, there were lots of cowboys, but if you rode for the certain brand, you know, you were maybe a cut above because you were from that one ranch, you know? And so I’ve taken that theme and applied it to the gospel of Mark. And we’ve gone through the gospel of Mark, looking at different stories and asking the question, what marked Jesus? What made Jesus unique and different? And if we’re followers of Jesus, shouldn’t we be marked by Jesus? And so we’ve talked about being marked by Jesus, being marked by service and being marked by the spirit. We had a sermon on being marked by prayer. If you’re a follower of Jesus, you should be a person of prayer. We should spend time in prayer, amen? And, and, and communing with God and abiding in him and allowing the Holy Spirit to speak into our lives. And so this morning we’re going to wrap up this series and the title of the message is marked by love. And if you’ll stand with me, we’re going to turn to Mark chapter 12, verse 28. And I’m going to read down through verse 31, Mark chapter 12, verse 28. One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating, noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer. He asked him of all the commandments, which is the most important? The most important one answer Jesus is this hero Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these. Wow. Lord Jesus, I pray today that this great commandment and the second that is like it would just fill our hearts. Lord, as Christians, we long to follow you. We long to be more like you. Help us to be marked by love. Forgive us, O Lord, when we fall short. I pray that you would do your work, Holy Spirit, in each life. Help us to be able to receive the love of God, for that’s where it all starts. And then help us to be able to show love. And to be the love of God in other people’s lives, to be the love of God in our world today. We give you all the thanks in Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen. You may be seated this morning. Well, believe it or not, I’m going to start this morning talking about the dangers of hypocrisy. I was surprised myself at how my sermon notes took this direction because I thought, wow, this is going to be such a fun loving sermon to preach because I get to talk about God is love. When I was a kid, I remember in Sunday school, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God. And knoweth God, he that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. Beloved, let us love one another, 1 John 4, 7 and 8. You know, so it’s amazing the Bible verses we learn when we’re kids in Sunday school, and man, music really helps you remember things, right? That’s 1 John 4, 7 and 8, and somebody taught me that when I was a kid at church in Sunday school class, and I’ve never forgotten it. So as I began to prepare this message, I thought, wow, Lord, this is going to be such a great message to preach. God is love, and God wants your life to be filled with love, and he wants you to receive the love of God, and he wants you to be loving to everybody around you. Ooh, there I preached it, and it’s all true. It’s all true. The Bible tells us that God is love. Now in Mark’s gospel, you don’t have statements like God is love. That comes from 1 John 4, like verse 16, but what you have in Mark’s gospel is you have Jesus showing us the love of God in action, because he came to be a servant, not for others to serve him. And so in Mark’s gospel, the love of God is shown through the action of Jesus as he says, hey, I’m Lord of the Sabbath. The Sabbath, it was meant to help people, not so that we would be restricted. So Jesus comes and says people are more important than religious rules. Jesus comes and helps those who are hurting, people who are paralyzed. They’re possessed of demonic spirits that are hurting them, and Jesus comes with the love of God, and in action, he sets people free. He shows people the love of God by helping them in their suffering. So I thought, wow, this is going to be such an easy message to preach. And then as I began to pray and write my notes, the Lord began to just drop into my heart the danger of hypocrisy. And I thought, Lord, why do you want me to talk about hypocrites? And then I began to think about our culture today, how we are so good at facades. We are so good. You go over to the university, oh, everything looks so wonderful. I mean, we can fill stadiums with people who are so excited and life is so good and everything’s so wonderful, but it really is a facade. We’re living in a culture of facades, of hypocrisy, of showing people one thing in public, but then at home, we are fighting like cats and dogs with our family members, our spouses, the ones we say we love. We can’t even stay together long because there’s so much strife and so many problems, so much brokenness and problems. But then we go out into public, oh, I’m doing good. Everything’s great. You’re going to the football game tonight? Yeah. And oh, by the way, I’m a Christian. I don’t believe anything in the Bible, but I’m a Christian. Come on. That’s the culture we live in, where people are saying, oh, it’s like popular now to say, yeah, I’m a Christian. But oh, no, I don’t believe that and I don’t believe that. I don’t live like that. But yeah, I want everybody to know I’m a Christian. And so we’re living in a day when there is such great danger in being hypocritical. There’s two types of hypocrisy. One is living a double life. That’s believing or claiming one thing, but living in another way. The other is judging the faults of others and ignoring our own sins, ignoring our own problems, ignoring our own faults. A hypocrite is someone who says one thing and does another, someone who wears a mask. In fact, the Greek term for hypocrite in the New Testament means a stage actor or pretender who performs outwardly good religious deeds with the wrong internal motivation to gain human praise rather than to honor God. There’s a lot of pretenders in our culture today. There’s a lot of people pretending to be one thing when they’re really another thing. Let me just attack the financial part of that. Growing up, when I’m raising my kids, I would often drive by people and go, man, look at that truck. That’s the nicest truck I’ve ever seen. Man, that’s a nice truck. And then I’d say, you know, I bet they got the biggest payment you could ever imagine. I’m so glad I don’t have that truck. But here’s the reality. We like to point at the federal government for the huge deficit our government has, and we like to project blame on others. But the reality is, if God bared everything this morning just in this church or just in the Christian community in Columbia, Missouri, there would be a lot of people very surprised at your finances. Because we often project one thing. Wow, look at that nice car that guy drives. But what’s really going on? Come on, church. I didn’t want to preach this. The Lord wanted me to. I just wanted to talk about love. See, I begin the message today focused on hypocrisy because I think as human beings, we’re really good. Human beings, that’s you and me. We’re really good at self-justifying. We tend towards pointing fingers at the sins and the problems and transgressions of others only to justify our own thinking, our own attitudes, our own behaviors. And Jesus knew this. Turn with me to Matthew chapter 7. Matthew chapter 7, verse 3 and 5. Jesus says, why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when all the time there was a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite. First take the plank out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. A number of times in the gospel of Mark, Jesus warns us about hypocrisy. In Mark 7, verse 1 through 13, he warns against the example of the Pharisees who choose human tradition and religious rules, their own made-up religious rules over God’s command. You got to read Mark 7 because it’s a very interesting passage of Scripture where God’s Word said, honor your mother and father. And the Jewish religious leaders had come up with this concept of what was called Korban, C-O-R-B-A and Korban. And Korban was if you dedicated something to the temple or dedicated something to God, then you could get out of helping your parents. Wow. And Jesus attacks that and says, you have made your own commands more important than the commands of God. In Mark 8, verse 15, he says, watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod. Well, what is the yeast of the Pharisees? It’s their teaching and it’s how they couldn’t even live up to their own teaching. Yeast is anything that corrupts, right? You know, yeast and a little bit of, if you’re trying to make some bread, you put some yeast in there and it affects the whole dough. And Jesus said, watch out for the yeast. He’s talking about the hypocrisy of the Pharisees in Mark 12, 13 through 17. Some Pharisees and Herodians are trying to trap Jesus, but we read Jesus knew their hypocrisy. Chapter 12, verse 15. You see, it is, it’s sad how often we focus on the wrong things, believing that structures, systems, human rules, that will fix the problem, or maybe that is the problem. How often we’ve heard, if we just had better programs, better organizations, better universities, better school systems, then things would get better. But that’s not where Jesus looked. Jesus always pointed to the human heart as the central problem. And so it’s not the school system. It’s not whether you go to a big church or a large church. It’s not even what denomination church you go to. It’s God wants to change your heart. He wants your heart. This last Wednesday at the Legacy Service, I was working my way through James, and we were in James chapter 4, and we came to James chapter 4, verse 7 through 10, which really talks about personal revival, even church, even as we many times talk about revival. Like, Lord, we need revival. And we’re thinking, God, do something in someone else’s life. Touch the pastor, Lord, so that we’ll have revival in our church. Well, when James uses revival or renewal language, he’s talking about your heart. So you, as an individual, having personal renewal. Look at James 4, 7. Submit yourselves then to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. These words are revival words. They’re words of renewal. How do you experience a revival in your relationship with the Lord? How do you come alive to God? It begins with repentance. It begins with a work of the Spirit and a work of God’s Word in your heart. Repentance is the only cure for human hypocrisy. Without the work of the Spirit and the work of repentance in our lives, we will go on pointing fingers at everyone else saying, the reason we’re having trouble as America is this, that, that person, this structure, that system. Couldn’t have anything to do with me and how I’m living or how I’m behaving or how I’m treating other people. You see, for Jesus, loving God and loving people was the highest priority. That’s what we read. The greatest commandment is to love God, and the second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself. Here’s the truth of Scripture. True love sets your heart free. And so as we think about hypocrisy, but also repentance. Repentance is what invites God’s presence into the human heart. You see, Jesus came into this world bringing the kingdom of God into human hearts. He didn’t bring the kingdom as a political system or as a governing system. He brought the kingdom of God into this world, into your heart, into my heart. He came to set your heart free. In the Old Testament prophets, they saw this. Prophets like Isaiah, in Isaiah 61, verse 1 and 2, and Jesus quotes that in Luke 4, 18 and 19, where he says, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to preach the gospel and bring liberty to the captive and set the blind eyes open and set people free. Jesus was quoting from Isaiah. Isaiah saw the day when the Messiah would come, when a special messenger from God would come. His name is Jesus. And he would set people free. Jeremiah, Ezekiel, they saw the day when God would send the Messiah. And in Jeremiah 31, there’s going to be a new covenant, a new relationship with God. Ezekiel 36, 26 saw the day when the Messiah would come and God would write his laws on your heart and in your mind. Jesus came to set us free, to set your heart free from sinful desires. I just want to pause right there and say, I am so thankful for the way the Word of God and the Holy Spirit works in my life over the days, months, years, and decades of my life. He is setting me free from sinful desires. The man I would have become without Jesus and the Holy Spirit in my life, you wouldn’t like. But the Word of God, just continually going back to the Word of God and letting the Holy Spirit saying, Lord, here I am again. I need help. I need help. My flesh wants to do this, but your Spirit in me wants me to live a different way and think different thoughts and have different attitudes and different behaviors. And I am so thankful that Jesus and His Word and the Spirit of God has set my heart free from sinful desires. And He set me free from the guilt and shame of sin and also the regulation and the rules of the law. You see, I don’t have to just like check a box and say, you know, okay, I did that and I did that. I don’t really want to do that, but I did that. I did that. No. Jesus sets your heart free. He transforms your heart so that you have new desires. You’re free of guilt and shame. You’re not just trying to live up to the rule book, but you have a relationship with God. And that that living God is changing who you are from the inside out. You see, if we’re truly to love God, and this is now where we’re going to get into our text. We’re going to get there. Mark chapter 12. If you’re going to truly love God, you’ve got to recognize the deceitfulness of your own heart. You’ve got to recognize that we’ve got to stop looking to other places for the solution, but the solution is right here in our own heart. And through repentance and inviting the presence of God into our heart, into our mind, we can begin to change. We can begin to experience an inner transformation where our heart is set free. That’s how we’ll love God completely and love neighbor fully. So Jesus came to set your heart free. And I’m here again in this pulpit this morning to say to every young person, to every adult, man, woman, boy, and girl, it is not only possible, it is probable if you keep diving into Jesus and keep diving into his word and keep inviting the spirit into your life, that you will change. You will experience a metamorphosis. You will see your thoughts and your heart and your behaviors different than they would have been outside of Christ. And so though you may be struggling this morning, you may be saying, I want to love God, but my flesh sure doesn’t. I want to love God, but I want to go spend my finances on myself. I don’t want to be generous. I don’t want to be a giver. You may be struggling this morning. We’re all struggling, right, with something, some area of spiritual growth. But again, I’m here to say it is likely, it is highly probable that if you’ll keep inviting the Holy Spirit to change your life, you will change. You will be transformed. You will once again in your life walk in joy and walk in freedom and walk in deliverance from whatever has been battling you in your spiritual life. Let’s dig in now to just a few truths from Mark chapter 12, starting there in verse 28. Number one, God is calling us to love him completely, to love him completely. It’s the greatest commandment. Look with me there at verse 29 and 30. Jesus answered, the most important is, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. When we read, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, we’re reminded of what the Hebrews would declare one to another. They still do it today. It’s the it’s the Shema that comes from Deuteronomy chapter 6, 4-9. That’s what Jesus is quoting. And it declares that there’s only one true God, creator of heaven and earth. There’s no other gods, no matter how many gods we try to create. And if you think about Israel going into Canaan land back there in ancient Israel, all of the pagans, they had all kinds of other gods. They had a God for everything, a God for sexual fertility, a God for so that the harvest would be plentiful. They had a God for everything. You could pray to a different God, small g, for every need that you had. And here the Hebrews came into the land declaring that no, there’s only one God. He’s the God of heaven and earth. He’s the creator of the universe. He is Yahweh. He is the God that is self existing. He’s not been created. He is. He is the great I am. He’s the one who’s always existed. That’s Yahweh. I was thinking about the word we use often when we’re praising the Lord, we say Hallelujah. And I was reminded just as I was worshiping this morning, even that word, that Hebrew word Hallel is, is means praise, right? Hallel is just in Hebrew praise. And then Hallelujah, JH is just short for Yahweh. So when you’re saying Hallelujah, you’re saying praise Yahweh. You’re saying praise God. That that’s all that Hallelujah means. It’s kind of more fun to say Hallelujah. That’s a pretty good, pretty fun word. But God wants us to love him completely. How can I do that? Well, to back up to my introduction, we’ve got to recognize the deceitfulness and the brokenness of our hearts. And we’ve got to come to God in humility and contrition and, and repentance and say, God, I need your love. I need your love. Because the truth is I can’t love God completely all by myself. And I certainly can’t love my neighbor without the love of God at work in my life. I need something supernatural happening in me. I can love people who I like, right? I can love people who treat me nice. I, I, I’m really good at that. But boy, disrespect me and another something comes out, right? And that’s why I need God. I need God’s love to be poured into my heart so that I can love God completely. These verses here say, you shall love. It’s a command. You shall love. And it’s, it’s the New Testament word for love, the agape love. It’s that God sized kind of love, that selfless love, that divine kind of love. You shall love God. But then we read here how we’re to love God with our heart and with our soul and with our mind and with all of our strength. So what is Jesus saying? Jesus is saying we should love God with all of us, all parts of us. We don’t just love God with one part of us. We don’t just love God on Sunday and the rest of the week. We do whatever, right? But we love God with everything we are. We love God with everything we have, every relationship, every, every resource, everything we have. We love God. So first it’s, we love God with all of our heart. Well, what’s the heart? Well, the heart is the place of desire and passion and affection. So it’s, it’s our emotions. So we love God passionately. I love, I love scriptures like Psalms 37.4, delight yourself in the Lord and He’ll give you the desires of your heart. What happens when you delight yourself in the Lord? When you put your emotions on the Lord, He changes your desires. That’s why you end up getting your desires. Because when you begin to delight yourself in the Lord, God begins to change you. He begins to change even what you’re desiring. And in the end, you get the desires of your heart and they are now desires that honor God and please God and also bless your life. Because the deer pants for the water. So my soul longs for you, oh God. My soul thirsts for the living God. That’s Psalms 42, 1 and 2. That’s, that’s a psalm of desire. That’s, we love God with all of our heart. Now, just think about the, a romantic relationship. You know, if someone, if you’re, if you’re in a relationship like Jenny and I, we’ve been in a relationship for a while. And if I just tell her every once in a while, well, I love you, you know I love you. But I don’t have any passion. I don’t have any, I don’t even notice her when she comes in the room. I mean, I don’t even, it’s like, see you next week. And there’s no desire, there’s no emotion. Well, eventually, she’s going to start questioning, does this guy who I’m married to, does he even care that I exist? Right? And it’s the same with God. God loves us with a passion. When John wrote in John 3, 16, for God so loved the world that He gave. You see, God loves the world with a passion. He loves the world emotionally. He, God loves with His whole heart. And if He loves the world that much, He takes action. Right? His, His, His heart level love affects even His behavior. So we love God with our whole heart. We also love God with our soul, with our soul. Now, that’s the Greek word that we would just call psyche. So it’s, it’s like it goes for, in English, psychology. And so when I think of loving God with my whole soul, I’m thinking of that unique inner self, like my personality that makes me different from you. You know how they say, well, every snowflake is different. And I guess that’s true. I’ve not looked at a lot of them, but you can try that some. But we do know every human being, we have different fingerprints, right? Human beings, we have a lot in common, but we are unique. You are a unique creation of God. You have your own personality. You have your own mannerisms. Some of those you get from your parents or your upbringing, but you are a unique creation of God. And so when, when Jesus here is teaching us to love God with all of our heart and all of our soul, He’s saying, you have uniqueness. You have uniqueness to your personality, your mannerisms, who you are as a creation of God. So whatever it is that makes you unique, love God with that. Like if you’re really good in school, then man, love God in school. If you’re really good with people, like you’re really relational, then love God with that. There are things that make you unique, and you want to offer those to God. You want to love God with your soul. 1 Peter 4, verse 10, each of, each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. The New Testament is great on this, right? Paul talks about we’re, even as the church, we’re, we’re the body of Christ, and we have many different parts. You see, we’re all unique. We’re not all the hand. We’re not all the eye. We’re unique. And God wants us to love Him with all of our soul. Jesus goes on and says, love God with all of your mind. And of course, the mind is the seat of the intellect. It’s, it’s where we, our thoughts and, and, and, and our decision making, our volition. So with your mind, you make decisions. And the Bible has a lot to say about how the gospel transforms our thoughts. Romans chapter 12, verse 2, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. 2 Corinthians 10, 5. I love this one. We demolish arguments and every pretension that’s sets itself up against the knowledge of God. And we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. See, let me just go back to the introduction for a moment. It’s not just our heart that is deceitful. It’s not just our heart that tends towards hypocrisy, but our mind also, the unregenerate mind, the human mind without the word of God, without the spirit of God. Woo. Do you ever go through a day sometimes and go, where does that thought come from? I, whoa, that’s who Jesus set me free. Have you had ever had maybe? Okay. Just your pastor. Don’t sit there like that. Come on. For a minute. I thought it was just me, but you know, you’re going through your day and it’s like, I don’t have a bad feeling towards that person. Why am I so upset with that person? And, and so sometimes even in our mind, the way we’re thinking is working against what God is wanting to accomplish in our lives. What the word of God, the spirit of God wants to accomplish in our lives. And I will also say, I believe in a spiritual world. I believe in a supernatural world. I believe in angels and demons. I believe that the enemy is actually at work. Jesus said in John 10, 10, the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy. That’s right. And sometimes the enemy of your spiritual life, the enemy of your human soul will come and start speaking into your spiritual ear and impact your thoughts. And that’s why we’ve got to practice second Corinthians chapter 10, verse five, where we’ve got to take every thought captive. We’ve got to place even our human thoughts under the word of God and say, line up with what the truth is. I’m going to stop thinking that way about myself. I’m going to stop thinking that way about other people. And I’m going to think in accordance and in alignment with your word. Oh, Lord, I’m going to love you with all my mind. I’m going to love you with all my mind. I think for our generation today, that is probably one of the most important takeaways or biblical messages that this generation needs to hear. We are too quick to to just remain in anxiety, fear, negative self-talk about ourselves. We need to step up and be the children of God that God’s called us to be. And that happens many times in our mind, in what we’re thinking about ourselves. Jesus goes on that and says, and love God with all your strength, your strength. That’s your human energy. That’s your power. That’s your might. That’s the days God gives you on this earth. Love God with all your strength. You see, God wants to give you a new heart. He wants to transform your mind. And he transforms even our personality. I believe that don’t don’t get into the idea that because you were born a certain way that that’s where you’re going to be forever. I’ve been changing for like decades now walking with Jesus. Yes, I’ve got some kind of tendencies. I’ve got some personality tendencies. But I’ll tell you, I’m not the man I was 10 years ago. I’m not the man I was 20 years ago. I’m continuing to change. I’m continuing to grow. I’m continuing to become what God wants me to be. And so he can even impact our personality. God wants to change our heart. He wants to change our mind. He wants to impact our soul. But sooner or later, we have to love God with all of our strength. We have to say, Lord, with whatever strength you’ve given me, I’m going to love you in my work and in my recreation and my relationships with every ounce of energy you’ve given me, I’m going to love you. So what is Jesus really saying here when he says the greatest commandment, verse 30, is to love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. What he’s saying is you’ve got to love God completely. You can’t love God halfway. You can’t love him on Sunday and disown him on Monday. You can’t love him when you’re getting benefits from walking with God. And then when life gets tough, say, well, God, I don’t know about this. You’ve got to love God completely. You’ve got to love God with all that you are. And as you repent and come to God with a contrite and a humble heart that invites the presence of God into your life, he will he will begin to transform your heart. He’ll begin to transform your mind. He’ll begin to change your soul and work in your personality. And you will become more like Jesus, able to both receive the love of God and to offer love back to God. And that’s all God really wants from us. Amen. It’s that simple. It’s that simple. Jesus says there at the end of verse 31, there is no commandment greater than these. I think it’s the Apostle Paul in the book of Romans who even says that that the love of God fulfills all the commandments. So, Lord, if I could just love you with all that I am. Then I could be the person that you want me to be. I could cause you to smile on my life. And the second truth is that I can love my neighbor fully. I believe that that until we really love God completely, we can’t love our neighbor fully and God’s still working in me. I’m still learning how to love my neighbor. I’m still learning how to love that one that’s close by. Learn learning how to love that one that is next door. Maybe they’re not like me. They don’t share my religion. They don’t share my habits or my core values. But I’m learning to love them and I’m empowered to love them as God’s love is poured into me and I’m able to respond to him with a complete love. Verse 31. The second is this love your neighbor as yourself. There was no commandment greater than these. It is interesting that Jesus says the second is this. There is a bit of a priority here. Right. And I just mentioned it. We’ve got to learn how to receive the love of God and love God fully so that we can love our neighbor fully. And I love this second part to love your neighbor. It’s love your neighbor as yourself. I think Jesus is being so real here. We all know how to love ourselves. Or at least we should. We were kind of wired for it. Like we want to take care of ourselves. We want to protect ourselves. We want to we want ourselves to be happy and fulfilled and experience a meaningful life and a meaningful life. And so Jesus simply says, if you want to know how to love your neighbor, it’s kind of the golden rule thing. Right. Matthew 7 12. You do unto them as you would have others do unto you. You you love them in a way that you would love yourself or love someone that that you’re close to and that you care about. And it’s the same word here. It’s the same agape, God sized kind of love. It’s that selfless love that serves people. And if we look into the gospel of Mark and ask ourselves that question, well, what does a life of love look like in the gospel of Mark? Well, it looks like Jesus. It looks like Jesus coming and saying, I have not come to be served, but I’ve come to serve and to give my life as a ransom for many. I’ve come to be spirit led and to depend on the father. I’ve I’ve come to reveal the goodness of God to other people. Jesus was on mission and he found fulfillment in being on mission with his father. And so what does love look like? Love looks like Jesus and becoming more like Jesus, being more spirit led, more focused on service. And I think that if there’s a theme in Mark’s gospel, that’s it, that Jesus was a servant. And if I really want to love my neighbor. I’ve got to serve. And I actually find that. I think I’m going to say easier than initially loving people I don’t like. I mean, I think there’s something spiritual that happens when I can say, well, there’s nothing that’s naturally causing me to want to love this person, but I’ll serve them. And then you start taking that active behavior, OK, I’m going to serve this person or I’m going to serve this family or I’m going to serve in my community or my church. And before long, God starts filling your heart with love for people that you never thought you could love. Because you took that step of being more like Jesus and being a servant. Loving God completely and loving your neighbor fully fulfills the law of God. It’s not easy. But it’s certainly not complicated. Aren’t you glad the Christian faith is not a faith that’s complicated? Jesus teachings are clear. They’re easy to understand. They’re easy to follow. We need God’s help to do it. We need the Holy Spirit and the word of God to help us. Two more points as we as we wrap up this morning. The third is we need to love God without hypocrisy. And here’s where I turn back to what I began with. In Mark chapter seven, verse six and eight, Jesus quotes from Isaiah twenty nine, verse thirteen. He replied, Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites, as it is written. And wasn’t Jesus always just so nice and he just never said anything to hurt anybody’s feelings? Not exactly. These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain. Their teachings are merely human rules. You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions or to human traditions. See, God wants us to love him with a pure heart for the right motives. He doesn’t want us to love him because we get some advantage out of it. Now, I praise God. There’s so many advantages. I could preach a series of messages on the advantages of walking with God, the advantages of loving God. But God wants to deal with our motives this morning. He doesn’t want us loving him because we get something out of it or it advances our finances or it advances our social status. No, he just wants us to love him for who he is. He’s a holy God who’s a good creator. And he wants us just to love him without hypocrisy. And fourth, and I’m going to wrap up with the story of the rich young ruler in Mark chapter 10. God wants us to love him more. Now, in this story, Jesus pinpoints this young ruling man. I think it’s Luke that tells us he was a ruler. He had the status of being in charge of things. But Jesus, in this story, pinpoints this man’s heart. But I want to broaden it for all of us this morning. I want to ask you, what would cause you to stop loving God? What is it that, what trial, what temptation, what difficulty in life would cause you to say, okay, I’m done, God? I’ve heard so many stories over the years. Good stories, good testimonies about people sharing their story about when this happened or that happened. In my own heart, I talked with God and I said, okay, God, this is either I’m either going to love you or I’m going to hate you. I don’t want to steal Jenny’s story, but I’ve heard her say it many, many times when she was just a teenager. Her beloved dad died. I never met him. We got dating and stuff after Joe passed. But she had a great relationship with her dad. He was a great dad. And it would, for all of your siblings and for Mary, so easy to say, why him? Why, you know, so easy to get bitter and angry at God. Like, God, why would you take a good dad who came home and loved his kids? And I’ve heard, Jenny, you tell your story about there was a moment for you with just you and God. It’s like, okay, God, I’m either going to be upset with you for the rest of my life, or I’m going to love you even more. And I’m thankful that you chose to love God even more. For the rich young ruler, yeah, praise God. It’s made a difference in my life, I can tell you that. For the rich young ruler, let me just read this story. I mean, I think you know the story, but this comes out of Mark chapter 10, verse 17. Mark 10, verse 17, as Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. Good teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Why do you call me good? Jesus answered, no one is good except God alone. You know the commandments, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your mother and father. Now, it’s interesting, all the commandments that Jesus lists, he doesn’t list all 10, all that he lists have to do with how you treat other people. And it seems this young man was very focused on his goodness before God. He was very focused on appearing good. But I think Jesus kind of goes after him in his love for other people and how he treats other people. Verse 20, teacher declared, all these I’ve kept since I was a boy. In other words, I’m a really good guy. I’m a moral guy. You would like me. Jesus looked at him and loved him. You see, Jesus liked him. Jesus, the Bible says, verse 21, Jesus looked at him and loved him. I don’t think that’s sarcastic. I think Jesus is looking at this young man and go, wow, you have a lot going for you. Maybe he was very, very sincere. And because Jesus loved him, he then pointed out what was missing in his heart. Jesus says, one thing you lack, go sell everything you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me. And so it’s interesting here that Jesus, though he sees that he’s a good man, that he’s kept many of the commandments, he pinpoints in this young man’s heart that something is lacking. And so Jesus tells him to sell everything he has and give it to the poor. I’m one of those pastors who doesn’t believe that this is what Jesus tells everyone. For some of you out there as businessmen and women today, God’s telling you to go make all the money you can so that you can support the church, so that you can bless the community, so that you can employ people. We just had a Christian business expo this last week. We had about 12 people come and share cards and first annual. We’ll keep doing it. But that was kind of our message is that God wants to use you as a business person. I don’t know what would happen if we all went and sold everything we had and gave it to the poor. I think we might become dependent on the government to keep the air conditioning on. What I believe is that Jesus knew what was going on in this young man’s heart. And I also believe that Jesus knows what’s going on in your heart and in my heart. And so he might not be coming to you today and saying, I want you to sell everything you have and give it to the poor. But he might be pinpointing another area of your heart where God wants you to let go of that so that you can love him completely and love your neighbor fully. God wants you to love him more. And I’m praying that the Holy Spirit will put the than in your day. God wants me to love him more than you fill in the blank. You fill in the blank. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you. So God wants us to love him completely. He wants us to love our neighbor fully. He wants us to love him without hypocrisy. But most importantly, God, like the rich young ruler, God wants you to love him more than you love sports. You know, sometimes I laugh and chuckle at us, us being all of us, us being all of them out there, too. I am shocked at times how we can fill stadiums. And I love football. I love watching football. I don’t have all the jerseys. I just, every time I think about buying one, it’s like that’s a little too expensive for me. But it’s okay if you’ve got the jerseys and have a favorite team, that’s great. But sometimes when I see that in our culture, how crazy in love we can get with baseball or football or whatever it is, it reminds me that God is calling us to love him more. As a parent, I’ve got to love God more than I love my kids. That’s not always been easy, because I love my kids. I love my kids. I want to see my kids be successful. I want to see my kids do well. But you go through life, you’ve got to love God more than you love your kids. You’ve got to love God more than you love your job. You’ve got to love God more. And so let the Lord speak to you today. He wants us to be people of love. He wants us to walk in love. He wants us to receive his love. And I’m so thankful that our God is a God of love. And his love can change your life. Will you stand with me this morning? And we’re going to wrap up with a word of prayer. And I want to just invite us to respond to the love of God. I’m so thankful that I started, I don’t think I’m going to sing it again, but I never know for sure. But 1 John 4, 7 and 8. Beloved, let us love one another for love is of God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. I’m so thankful that our God, the God of the Bible, he’s a God of love. He’s not a God of hate. He’s not a God of fear. He’s a God of love. He loves you. He wants you to walk in his love. We have to be open. We have to be humble. We have to be willing to receive that love into our lives so that we can love God completely and love others fully. Lord Jesus, we come to you this morning and we thank you that you are a God of love. You’re a God of loving kindness. You’re a God of steadfast love. You love the whole world and you have a special love for your children. Lord, we pray today that our hearts would be open to receiving the love of God. Lord Jesus, thank you for coming and bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth. Thank you for giving us the new covenant that we can have a relationship with you, that we can be called children of God. Lord, I pray that you would empower us by your spirit today to receive your love into our lives because it’s your love that will empower us to love others, to love you without hypocrisy, to love you more fully. Thank you, Lord. I want to ask every person here today to begin to pray that the love of God would just flow in our church, the love of God would flow in our families, the love of God would flow in our relationships. It looks like a lot of things. It looks like grace. It looks like mutual understanding, unity. We’re going to sing a chorus, but as we’re doing that, would you just begin to pray that we would be filled with the love of God and be able to love God more than anything else we love?