What is the Greatest Commandment? And the second? Find out what it really means to Love God and your neighbor in this touching presentation.

<p>What is the Greatest Commandment? And the second? Find out what it really means to Love God and your neighbor in this touching presentation.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Romney SDA Church

Andrew Foulds

The Greatest Commandment

Loving Father in Heaven, we once again thank you for the Sabbath day in which we can worship together.

I pray now, Lord, this message that you've given me to give not be a message of my own or my own words, but it would benefit each person here in a special way.

And I just pray that you would speak through me, Father, anoint my lips with the Holy Spirit.

Give me guidance, understanding and wisdom to be able to speak these truths and that it may be a message for each 1 of us, bringing us closer and closely knit together in love to you.

I like it to be a little bit interactive.

So we're going to get, I hope you brought your Bibles.

We're going to get into our Bibles today.

Let's matter of fact turn to what our Scripture reading was, Matthew 22.

And here we're going to find out this story of the greatest commandment.

And the Bible says, But when the Pharisees had heard that they had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together.

Then 1 of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him and saying, now first off, let's stop there.

What do you immediately think of when it says that this man was a lawyer?

And you know what the interesting thing about this lawyer here, this wasn't just a lawyer that goes out and defends anybody.

This person was a lawyer of the law, of God.

So in other words, this person is supposed to have known what he's talking about.

We're gonna bring somebody in here that knows the law and we're gonna take him down.

We're gonna trick him Because it says that he asked him a question tempting him.

Rather, 36 says, "'Master, which is the great commandment in the law?' Now it's interesting, he thought he was gonna trip Jesus up here.

He thought he was going to get him to say something contrary to the rest of the things.

Because the interesting thing is, Jesus said before, if you break the least of these in the Sermon on the Mount.

And also we have to realize that the Pharisees, Sadducees, and all of them, they'd been closely monitoring Jesus and what He'd said.

In the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5, He says that, Whosoever shall break the least of these commandments, and teach men so.

So, He's going to try and trip Jesus up and try and get him to say, okay, now which 1 of them is the greatest?

Now Jesus said something very profound here.

In verse 37 it says, Then Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind.

This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

On these 2 commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Now this was kind of hard for the lawyer because what's he going to say to that?

And why is there nothing that he could say to that?

What he said included the whole law and there was nothing that he could say.

Exodus chapter 20, this is where the 10 Commandments are found.

It's also found in Deuteronomy chapter 5 and we will turn to that later.

But Exodus chapter 20, verse 1 says, And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which hath brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

A lot of people when they say the 10 Commandments, what they tend to do is they leave that out.

The reason it's important is because this denotes who God is.

He's claiming, I am the 1 who brought you out of bondage.

Okay, it's also a parallel because he is the 1 who brings us from sin to life.

Okay, so the first commandment is verse number 3.

It says, thou shalt have no other gods before me.

And then, verse 4, thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them, for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.

Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, this is number 3, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

Remember, number 4, the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

6 days shalt thou labor and do all thy works, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.

In it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates.

For in 6 days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day.

Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." Now, those are the first 4 commandments.

And we know those commandments as the relationship of us to God, correct?

And we know the last 6 commandments as the relationship of us to our fellow men, correct?

That's why the greatest commandment, he says, is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul.

This explains it, but before we are supposed to know that we're supposed to love God, let's know why we're supposed to love God.

And this specific verse is my favorite verse in the Bible.

That would probably be my second, but this is my favorite verse.

The reason this is my favorite verse is let's read it and let's see if you can figure out why.

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

So why do you think that's my favorite verse?

Talks about how we got here, that's part of it.

Back to Menu

The Greatest Commandment

Transcript

Description

Sponsor

Recorded

Related

The Divine Solution

1h 33m

Unlock Revelation

7. History’s Greatest Religious Cover-up

56m

Morning Devotional: It's War Time

It’s Wartime - Part 8: Marching Orders

53m

The Heart of God

51m

I Know Something Good

51m

Revelation Made Simple

18. Revelations Spiritual Revolution for a New Millennium

57m

Excellent Service

2h 2m

Knowing God’s Will- Part 1

48m

Prepared For the Last Days: The Savior’s Method

48m

Why Am I a SDA?

1. Does the Truth Really Matter?

35m

Speak it in Love

49m

How Should We Live?

1h 5m

Sound Doctrine