LOVE IN ACTION
OUR LOVE FOR GOD
DR. JIM DIXON
DEUTERONOMY 6:4-5
APRIL 11, 2010
Our Scripture today is called the Shema and I think many of you know that for the Jewish people there is no creed more sacred than the Shema. In the world of Judaism, in the past, in the time of Jesus as well as today, the Shema is said every morning when you rise. This is in obedience to the Torah and to the Mishnah. The Shema is recited every evening before going to bed. This is in obedience to the Torah and to the Mishnah. The Shema is bound to the body in phylacteries placed on the left arm, close to the heart with the Shema and phylacteries placed on the forehead covering the mind with the Shema. The Shema is placed at the door of the house and at the gate of the house. The Shema is sung. The Shema is recited. The Shema is taught to your children and to your children’s children. Nothing is more important than the Shema. The word Shema means, “hear.” “Hear, Oh Israel, the Lord your God is one God. You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. Some of you have heard the singing of the Shema.
The Shema is not only at the heart of the Old Testament and Judaism but also at the heart of the New Testament and at the heart of Christianity. Jesus quoted the Shema as recorded in Matthew, as recorded in Mark and Luke. He recited the Shema again and again and he told us that the Shema represented the first and the greatest commandments. So today, we will look at what it means to love God. What it means to love God with all of your heart, with all of your soul and with all of your strength. We’ll look at the Shema piece meal beginning with the heart.
So, what does it mean to love God with all of your heart? The Hebrew word is lebab, for heart. The Greek word for heart is Kardia, from which we get the word cardiology, the study of the heart, cardiac arrest. Obviously, the word Kardia we have in many English words. The Hebrew Lebab and the Greek Kardia, both of these words refer quite literally to the heart but there is a complexity of meaning. In fact, I must say, as we begin the study of these three concepts, heart, soul, strength, that with regard to all of these words in the Hebrew and in the Greek, there is a scope of meaning. What we’ll seek to do today is to come to an understanding of the primary meaning of each word, the force of each word, so we know more of what it means to love God. So, as we look at heart in the Bible, sometimes the heart actually refers to the thoughts. Sometimes the heart actually refers to the mind. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” But most of the time in the Bible, the word heart does not connote the mind or the thoughts, but most of the time it represents the feelings and the emotions. It represents passion. So, as we look at heart, we’re going to say the meaning of this is love God with all of your feelings. Love God with all of your emotions. Love God with all of your passion.
Now we, as people, are emotionally very complex, so in the world of psychology there is a great deal of time devoted to studying the emotional complexity of man and of course, we’re all broken, we’re all sinners, we’re all flawed and our emotions are in all their complexity broken. In the world of psychology there are many personality disorders and of course, in the world of psychology there is an effort to label. I majored in psychology in college. I did a little post-graduate work in psychology. I worked at a mental hospital and did practicum in a mental hospital. I worked in the schizophrenic ward. I worked with children who were suffering from paranoia and I know in the world of psychology there is an effort to label everything we can, so we label people as schizophrenic. We label people as bipolar. We label people as manic-depressive. We label people as having borderline personality disorder. We label people as suffering from paranoia or paranoid-schizophrenia.
We have all these labels and there’s this illusion, there’s this illusion in our world that if we can label something, somehow, we have dominion over it. If we can label something, somehow, we have we have some control over it. If we can label something, somehow, we’ve solved it because we’ve labeled it. But that’s an illusion. Mankind is so complex and all psychologists know that, though we label things, we have not and we cannot solve them. We are all damaged goods and what God is expecting of us in the midst of our brokenness is that we would love him as best we can with all we are. So, we are to love him in the midst of our emotional brokenness with all our emotions and all of our feelings. With all the passion we can generate that we need this love for God.
How are you doing? Do I love God with all my emotions and with all my feelings? Is my passion supremely for him? And how about you? Do you love God with all of your emotions and your feelings even in the midst of the hardness of life and the brokenness that is ours?
I want to tell you a story about a dog. Before I do that. Now, as I tell this dog story, it’s set in Edinburgh, a special city for me. The Dixon family is a Scottish family and the Dixons were of the clan Keith and the Dixon family came from a region just south of Edinburgh, Scotland. I have a picture at home of my great-great-grandpa in kilts. Very proud of his Scottish heritage and of course, Barb and I have been to Edinburgh many times and I think it is truly one of the most beautiful cities in the world. On the top of the hill is the great castle, Edinburgh Castle, and it’s majestic. Within that castle, within the walls there’s St. Margaret’s Chapel: a thousand years old and oh so beautiful.
You can walk Princess Street. It’s an amazingly wonderful experience. You can walk the Royal Mile from the castle all the way down to Holyrood House. Along the way you’ll see the home of John Knox, the historical home of John Knox, who founded Scottish Presbyterianism and was one of the Protestant Reformers: a great man. You walk past St. Giles Cathedral and it is majestic and you stand in awe. It’s a beautiful, beautiful city, Edinburgh, Scotland, at night when the castle is lit on the hill, oh so beautiful.
The food is great because in Scotland they weren’t influenced by the English. The food is great because the Scottish were influenced by the French. I think most of us, if we could choose between a French chef and an English one, would probably choose the French.
But you see, if you walk around Edinburgh, as some of us have done, you’ll come to a church as you’re walking around, Greyfriars’s Church. And at Greyfriars’s Church there is a monument there and a fountain and a plaque and it’s dedicated to a dog named Bobby, a dog named Bob, and they’ll tell you the story when you’re there and it’s an amazing story. Really, this little dog was a Skye Terrier and the year was 1858 when John Grey died and John Grey’s dog was little Bobby, this Skye Terrier, and they had lived together for four years. They lived in the same house, they slept in the same bed, they ate at the same table, and they took a lot of long walks and they were such good friends and they loved each other, John Grey and this little Sky Terrier. But after those four years John Grey died and he was buried in the Greyfriars’s Churchyard and so many graves are there. You can see that if you go to Edinburgh. They had a memorial service for John Grey and his friends and family were gathered around and they had a service for him in the name of Jesus Christ and the dog was there. Little Bobby was there and was just sitting by the gravesite.
When the service was over, people began to leave. They began to depart, and as they walked away, they noticed that the dog stayed. When everyone had gone, little Bobby stayed right by the grave of his former master. Just lay down on the ground there. Everybody thought, Oh, how cute. Isn’t that cute? That’s touching. Well, they noticed the next day to their amazement the dog was still there. It spent the whole night, stayed by the grave. The dog was still there and they began to worry. His dog can’t just stay by the graveside. So some people began to try to adopt little Bobby and a number of families tried, but they all failed because Bobby would leave their home and go and sit on the gravesite by the grave of his former master, John Grey.
So, the people of Edinburgh kind of accepted that and they began to bring water every day. The Sextant at Greyfriars’s Church gave special permission for Bobby to be there and for provisions to be brought for Bobby. They brought food every day for this little dog and one of the butchers in town provided left over food from the leftovers for Bobby every day. In the wintertime they brought blankets. The people of Edinburgh took care of Bobby, but they allowed Bobby to stay right there by the side of his former master. The days passed, and the weeks passed, and the years passed. Fourteen years Bobby stayed by the grave of John Grey and he died there in 1872, 14 years later, 18 years old. The Sky Terrier was 18 years old and had spent 14 years living by the grave of the man the dog had so loved.
I’m just repeating the story to you that they tell when you’re there. I find it hard to believe that we have dogs and dogs are loving, dogs are affectionate, dogs have hearts and dogs can be broken hearted, but most dogs, when their master dies, within a matter of weeks are almost fully attached to a new master. But there is great capacity for love and affection in a dog, very much so. In fact, I’ve heard people say that the love of a dog is most like the love of God. After all dog is only God spelled backward. I’ve heard people say stuff like that. I don’t buy it. I don’t think the love of dogs is even as great as the love of people, and I hope you understand that.
You are the crown of God’s creation. You are created with the Imago Dei – the image of God. Your capacity for love, your emotions run so deep, nothing on the earth is like you. There is no animal in this world like you. You have an amazing capacity for love and a great depth of emotion as God made you like that. And here’s the deal, God wants us, in the midst of all of that emotion, in all those feelings and all those passions, to have supreme love for him. That’s his desire that we love him most of all and, of course, we have a master who has not died. Or I should say we have a master who has died and rose again. We have a master who has conquered death. We have a master who lives forever and ever and ever and reigns forever and ever and he wants us to love him with all of our feelings, with all of our emotions, with all of our passions in our midst of our brokenness and the long to be by him as we journey through this life. Love him with all your heart.
Well secondly, we’re to love him with all of our soul. And this word soul in the Hebrew and the Greek is actually even more complex. The Hebrew word for soul is nephesh and this Hebrew normally referred to the inward person as opposed to the Hebrew sim, which referred to the outer person. So nephesh referred to the real you and sim refers to the way people see you, the way you appear to others, but the real you is nephesh, soul. Now the Greek word for soul is the word psyche from which we get the word psychology. Psyche is sometimes distinguished from soma in the Greek language, body and soul, and soul refers to the part of you that transcends or survives death. However, both of these words have complexity. They can refer to the emotional side of you, which we’ve already identified as the primary meaning of heart. More often the soul refers to the mind. It refers to your thoughts. It refers to your will. So, the word psyche and even the word nephesh, both of which literally mean to breathe are used contextually most frequently in the sense of mind or will and so the meaning here is love God, love the Lord God with all of your thoughts. Love the Lord your God with all of your mind. Love the Lord your God with all of your will.
Now, I want us take a moment to look at Mark 12 because Jesus quotes the Shema in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. I want to take a look at an occasion in Mark 12 where Jesus quotes the Shema. Now there’s three guys who come up to Jesus in Mark 12. The first guy is a Herodian. You know who the Herodians were? The Herodians were those who were loyal to Herod Antipas and to his cause. And they believed in the Hellenization of the Jews. So, the Herodians wanted the Jews to reject their Jewish traditions much of their Jewish culture, much of their Jewish ritual, just let it go and embrace Hellenism, embrace the Greek culture, the Greek world, and Greek ideas. So, these were the Herodians. And a Herodian came up to Jesus, and it was a bogus question designed to ensnare him. It was a question about taxes and taxation and of course you know Jesus gave his famous answer, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, render to God the things that are God’s” and Jesus just brilliantly dodged the snare of the question.
Now the second man that came up to Jesus was a Sadducee and the Sadducees were in bed with the Romans. The Sadducees were Jews who were enamored with the Roman power and the Roman culture and who wanted all the blessings that Rome could give them. The Sadducees were also liberal theologically. They did not even believe in the resurrection, so the Sadducee came to Jesus. He had a bogus question designed to ensnare him and it was a question about a woman who was married to a man and the man died but this man had many brothers, so another one of the brothers married the woman and then he died and then another brother married the woman, none of them fathered children, but from brother to brother to brother this woman married all these brothers and when she dies, whose wife is she in heaven? And I’m sure Jesus was laughing at the ridiculous nature of the question. But Jesus, again, made his famous response that in heaven we are neither married nor given in marriage, but we are like the angels.
Now the third man that came to Jesus was a scribe, a teacher of the law, a man with a brilliant mind. And the Bible makes it clear that when this guy comes to Jesus, he’s not coming to ensnare Jesus and his question is not bogus. He’s listened to how Jesus handled these other questions and he’s amazingly impressed and so, with his heart touched, he comes to Jesus and he asks Jesus this question. “What is the first and the greatest commandment?” And at this point Jesus quotes the Shema. “Hear, Oh Israel. The Lord your God is one God, and you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind and with all of your strength,” so that Jesus changes the Shema just a little bit, adding the word mind, the Greek word nous, so Jesus says, “You love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.”
Why did he so this? Why did he change the Shema just a little bit? Why did he add the word mind? Most scholars agree that the cause of the mind is built into the meaning of Shema and built into the meaning of soul. Might even be built a little into the meaning of heart, but Jesus wanted this scribe, this teacher of the law, with his brilliant mind, to understand that he needed to love the Lord his God with all of his mind. Not just his heart, with all of his mind. So, this is what Jesus wants us to understand, we must love him with all of our mind.
Now you’ve all heard of Albert Einstein, most famous for developing the theory of relativity, which revolutionized the scientific world. He did that when he was only 26 years old. And his famous equation, e=mc2, energy equals mass times the velocity of light squared, became foundational for the development of nuclear power and the unleashing of atomic power. Albert Einstein was brilliant, one of the greatest minds the world has ever seen, ever experienced: a brilliant, brilliant man. He was Jewish by blood. He was not Jewish by faith, nor was he Christian, but he was monotheistic and he was a theist. He believed in God and all that he knew of God he said he had discovered with his mind. He felt like he could see the mind of God by looking at the creation.
So, Albert Einstein looked at the macrocosm and he looked at the microcosm. He looked at everything from the galactic systems to the world of the atom and he saw the mind of God and with his mind he studied God all the days of his life. As he confessed towards the end of his life, he felt like he saw God through the studying of the universe. Now it’s unfortunate, in a sense, that Albert Einstein never found Jesus Christ. Never examined Jesus Christ or the claims of Christ because the Bible tells us that we really find the mind of God, not through the creation, somewhat through the creation, but supremely through Jesus himself. Jesus reveals the mind of God. So, you come to the Gospel of John I, and you see Jesus given a title The Logos. “In the beginning was the logos and the logos was with God and the logos was God. The logos was in the beginning with God. All things were made by the logos and without the logos was not anything made that was made.
And the logos became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth and we beheld his glory.” The logos. Now, the Greek word logos means word, but it also means mind. And, in fact, we get the English word logic from this Greek word logos and understand the Greek philosophers, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, what was their name for God? What did they call God? They called God the logos. They called him the mind. So here comes Jesus, John 1:1 and he’s given this title, the Mind of God. The Logos. I hope you understand, you look at Jesus and you see the mind of God. You want to know moral truth, you look at Jesus, you want to know theological truth, you look at Jesus. You might say, “I don’t like theology.” Well, if you don’t like theology, you really can’t like Jesus. I mean he’s all about theology.
Of course, a lot of people really like theology, they just don’t know it and the truth is if you want to know about soteriology, you look at Jesus because he tells us how we can be saved. He said, “I am the way, the Truth and the Life… ego eimi he hodos kai he aletheia kai he zoe.” I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to God, no one comes to the Father, no one comes to heaven but by me. No other name under heaven given amongst men, whereby we may be saved.” Soteriology.
It’s Jesus who shows us ecclesiology. “I will build my church. The powers of death will not prevail against it.” If you want to understand the purpose and the meaning of the church, you look at Jesus.
It’s Jesus who gives us eschatology. It’s Jesus who tells us about the last things and the signs of the times and the final stage of history. He does this in many parables and he does this in the Olivet Discourse and he talks about all the signs of the end times and, of course, the final judgment and the life beyond. Jesus gives us this beautiful theology of eschatology.
He gives us the theology of pneumatology. If you want to know about the Holy Spirit, you look at the words of Jesus who promised he would send the Spirit and then he explains the mission and purpose of the Holy Spirit in our lives. I mean it’s all Jesus. You look at Jesus and you see the beauty of God’s mind and thought and so you come to Mary and Martha. I love Luke 10. Jesus journeys into Bethany not too far from Jerusalem and he goes to the home of his friends, Mary and Martha and he’s there with Mary and Martha and Martha heads into the kitchen to make some food because Jesus is there as a guest and Martha does that, but Mary comes and sits down with Jesus, actually sits at his feet, and listens to him teach as he begins to speak the Word of God to her. Martha gets upset. She’s working in the kitchen and Mary’s sitting around listening to Jesus and Martha comes in and says, you know, to Jesus, ‘Tm doing all the work. Tell Mary to get off her duff and come in the kitchen.” You know. And Jesus says, “Martha, Martha, you’re so anxious and worried about so many things. You’re always trying to please. So busy. One thing is necessary and Mary has discovered it. Mary has chosen the better portion – the better role. She wants to love me with her mind. She’s sitting at my feet listening to my teaching.” That’s just beautiful, but is it you? Are you like that? Do you love him with your mind? Do you want to love him with all your mind or is this just a feeling thing?
I’ve had some experience in Pentecostalism and been to many Pentecostal churches and charismatic meetings and I believe in all of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I’ve seen worship experiences where everybody is moving, it’s a sea of movement, and arms are ascending and bodies are dancing and people are speaking in other tongues and it’s a sea of emotion. A sea of emotion and there’s some people who just want to love God with their emotions and leave it at that. And they love to sing because it touches the heart and the emotions and they just want to sing, sing, sing because I can love him with my emotions and my feelings.
But you see, there’s another side of love. Do you want to love him with your mind? I worry for the church of Jesus Christ in the time in which we find ourselves as I believe we’re approaching the consummation and apostasy is growing and many people are falling away from Christ and the church. The Bible prophesies that people in the last days will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons. The Bible prophesies that people will no longer endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, and will accumulate teachers to suit their own liking and wander away from the truth and their myths.
I worry for the church of Jesus Christ, and I worry that we’re intellectually lazy. We really don’t want to love God with our minds. I worry that we are maybe mentally too lazy to offer an apologetic to the world, an apologia: a defense from logic. We’re not able to articulate what we believe, why we believe it. We’re not able to defend it and a lot of it is mental sloth. So, love him with your mind.
We have a wonderful Midpoint service every Wednesday night. You can come and have a meal and hear some wonderful teaching and enjoy singing. You can have your heart touched but also your mind as Blake LaMunyon and his team kind of lead that service. We have Tuesday morning Men’s Bible study. We have Wednesday morning women’s Bible study. We have Bible studies all week long. We have small groups in the church that have study times, but learn to love God with your mind. This is the desire of God for us.
Well finally, love God with all your strength. Love him with all your strength. Now the Greek word here is ischus. Many Greek words for strength: kratos, dunamis. It’s ischus in the Shema in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for strength is Me’od. It could be Hi’el, which is another Hebrew word for strength. You put these words together in the Shema and they refer to abilities in action. I mean that’s kind of a force of these Greek and Hebrew words. Love God with all of your abilities and action. So don’t just love him with your heart, don’t just love him with your mind, but love him in everything you do. Love him with your abilities and put those abilities into action out of love. So, this is the Shema.
So, I want to tell you a story. Last week at Easter, both at the amphitheater and here, we gave out free copies of my book Vice and Virtue. We had thousands of copies of that book in boxes in the basement and we couldn’t give them away, so we gave them away. Now, I have another book that’s coming out in January on the end times, the last things, and it’s being published by a national publisher and it will be marketed in bookstores all over the country and it won’t be free, but that book, Vice and Virtue, is free and if we have more copies, they’re free. But there’s a story in there. There’s a story in there about King Henry III. In the history of Europe, there were a lot of Kings named Henry, a lot of English kings named Henry, and a lot of French Kings named Henry and a lot of German kings named Henry. King Henry III of Germany is who I’m referencing and he was one of the greatest kings in German history and, as Christians, we should know one of the greatest Christian kings the world has ever seen.
King Henry III loved Jesus Christ. He came to the throne in 1038, almost a thousand years ago. That very year, his wife died. And he loved his wife so much and she was gone and he grew weary as the months passed, weary of court life, weary of the throne. Yet he still loved Jesus and so he resolved that he would abdicate the throne of Germany and he would go to a monastery where he would devote his life to loving God. So, he went to a monastery and the chief priest, the head priest, in that monastery was a man called Richard. Historians tell us that because of his vow of poverty, some people called him Poor Richard, but no relationship to Poor Richard’s Almanac and Benjamin Franklin.
So, Henry III goes to the monastery and Richard, who has taken a vow of poverty, sees him. Richard knows of King Henry III, respects him, loves him, and wants him to serve on the throne, but here comes King Henry III and he explains that he would like to live in the monastery and just learn to love God with all of his heart and mind and strength. And Richard said to him, “Well, you don’t understand. If you come to this monastery, you’re going to have to take a vow of obedience to me so that everything that I tell you to do, you have to do because you’ve taken this vow.” And Henry III said, ”I’ll do it. I will take vow of obedience to you as you serve Christ.” And so, Richard said, “Okay Henry, let’s take the vow,” and Henry III took the vow and then Richard said, “Here’s my first command. Go back to the throne and rule Germany and do so as a servant of Jesus Christ.”
So that’s what King Henry III did. He went back to the throne and he served Germany as under Christ and he built churches, he provided for the poor, he ran a just government. He was a beloved and awesome and great king. In the year 1046 he ascended to the seat of highest power and became emperor of the Holy Roman Empire: the most powerful man in Europe in 1046. And then 10 years later, 1056, he died. And you can see his grave today and you can see the inscription on his tomb and it says, “He learned to rule by obedience to God.”
Now this was a man who, we know from history, was obedient to Christ in his morality and obedient to Christ in his ministry. Everything he did, he sought to please Christ. In a world of politics, Henry III was in the world of politics and in the world of politics it is very hard to remain morally faithful. Few do it. In the world of professional sports, it is very hard to remain morally faithful. Very few do it. In the world of Hollywood and entertainment, it is very hard to remain morally faithful. Very few do it, but love God with all your strength. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” That’s what Henry III understood and he also understood that if he loved God with all his strength, it wasn’t just morality. Ministry. So, he poured his life, his resources, even the power of the throne into ministry.
So, here we are today and there’s no kings among us, no queens, no royalty, although, as believers in Christ, we are children of God and destined to reign with him in the new heavens and the new earth, but in this life, we are servants and most of us have humble lives. Most of us have humble careers. But do you love God with all of your strength? Do you seek to obey him morally and do you seek to put all of your abilities into action for the sake of pleasing him in ministry?
I know many of you have heard of William Booth. William Booth was born in Nottingham, England. Nottingham is famous for the whole Robin Hood deal. He grew up there. Born there, grew up there and then as a young man, William Booth moved to London and he was shocked when he saw the east end of London and the poverty. He didn’t know that people could live in such filth. He didn’t know that people could live without food, that people could live without clothes. He didn’t know that people could live in such alcoholism and violence and what he saw just broke his heart and he wept. He loved Jesus Christ, so William Booth decided to establish a ministry in the east end of London where he would share the Gospel because he cared about their souls. And he would clothe them and feed them and he would minister to them and serve them.
And, of course, today, that ministry still exists. Founded in 1865 in the east end of London, it still exists. And what’s it called? It’s called the Salvation Army. You can go up Colorado Boulevard towards Arapahoe Road and you’ll see a Salvation Army Church. Know that it’s only 1 of 14,000 churches and community buildings built in 75 nations of the world with 25,000 offices. It’s called the Salvation Army. But here’s the cool thing, at least to me. In 1865, when William Booth thought, “What am I going to name this ministry?” He didn’t call it the Salvation Army. That came 13 years later, in 1878. But in 1865, when the ministry was founded, he called it the “Christian Ministry.” Not very creative. The “Christian Ministry” and I love that because for William Booth, this was what it means to be a Christian, that you share the Gospel, you love people, you care for them, you help the poor, you help the oppressed, you pour your life out as a servant. The “Christian Ministry” and with all of its strength, with all of his ability in action, he served Christ.
So, that’s what God wants of us. That we would love him with all of our heart, with all of our feelings, that we would love Him with all of our soul, with all of our mind. We’d love him with all of our strength. I want, as we close, to tell a little personal story about Barb and me. Our home where we live is about 13 years old. We bought the house 13 years ago. I thought when we bought the house, that new houses, when you buy a new house, it’d last a really long time. I thought, you know, it should look the same 10 years from now, 20 years from now as it looked the day we bought it. That’s kind of what I thought. Thirteen years have gone by and things are beginning to fall apart. Just 13 years. I don’t know whether it has to do with the quality of the construction or the abuse of the homeowners. I don’t know, but things are starting to fall apart.
So, our carpet is beginning to get threadbare in places, matted down in places, even torn apart in places and we’re thinking, “Wow, what a mess!” Of course, Barb never really liked the carpet anyway. Our back deck, the wooden deck in back, is beginning to rot. Walking out there on the deck last week, I almost stepped through a hole, and the wood has started to splinter and rot. We have it treated every two years (obviously not very well, I guess), but it’s starting to rot. Inside the house we’re starting to see cracks: cracks in the walls and in some of the ceilings. Of course, outside the house, because of Bentonite and soil expansion, we’re seeing our driveway crack and heave a little bit and split. And inside the garage the whole slab is starting to heave up and Barb and I are thinking, “Oh man, we’re going to have to do something. We’re going to have to do something about this. And some of this we can live with, but some of it we’re going to have to do something about it.” Now we want to love God supremely, we want to love our neighbor, we want to love our neighbor as ourselves, but we do want to love ourselves. If you think God doesn’t want you to love yourself, you don’t understand God and you don’t understand the Gospel.
I’m going to tell you the reason we’re going to do something at our house is partly about love. We do love ourselves. We don’t want to live in a dump. We really not only love each other, we love ourselves and we’d like to fix some of this stuff because love does that. Love makes you want to do something to serve who you love. This is true not only of yourself, it’s true of others as you love them, and it should be supremely true of God as you love him. As you love him you want, you’ve got to do something.