Download Transcript - Downey Seventh

With All Your Heart
Praise God. We're here, we're in his presence, we are heading into our fourth week of our
small group. I kind of did a little recap. We talked about – 1 Corinthians 13 – nothing is greater
than love, which is our motive of the way we live our lives. We can do all these wonderful
things, but without love it's meaningless. Then the second week we talked about the character of
God, that God is love. We understand why nothing is greater than love because it is who God is.
He loves us. Everything about him is love and to know God is to know love. To know love is to
know God, which is a beautiful thought. Week three our small groups got deep. We were
talking about underserving. That God loves us no matter what. He died for the ungodly, the
sinner. The deepest, darkest corner that no one here knows about, that is where he comes. Jesus
came on this earth to love that part of who you are, to die for you. It shows his incredible love.
It also shows his motive for us and what he wants for us.
We talked about justification. We're made right with God through his love. We also
talked about reconciliation. That his purpose for us is to bring back a relationship with him. Sin
has caused a chasm, a separation. We can't see him, but through God the relationship is restored.
And ultimately, what is this all about? What is his focus? His desire is for us to come back to
him, to restore our relationship with him. This week we kind of got into what is our response to
that love. We know God loves us so how do we respond to that?
Let us pray.
Father, Lord, thank you so much for this day, this Sabbath. Thank you for all who are
here. I pray Lord, that you just allow us to open our hearts to you and allow your Holy
Spirit to enter and to work in our loves and the words that spoken Father, that we hear the
message from you right now Lord. Touch us, move us Lord, guide us. We pray all these
things in the precious name of Jesus. Amen
The title is With All Your Heart, but before we get into the actual verses that talk about
with all your heart, John 14:15 says: If you love me keep my commands. We hear this in
Deuteronomy where it says: If you love me keep my commands. And so we see this as the kind
of factor in all of this. Okay, God loves us unconditionally, but then he says if you love me keep
my commands. Today we're gonna impact that – what does that mean, keep my commandments.
We have a teacher of the law – Jesus says what is the greatest commandment? 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 most important? You have the ten,
the checklist there. And Jesus answered the question. The most important one, answered Jesus,
is this. Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. So the greatest, Jesus is
saying, is to love God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, with all your
strength.
There's a lot of truth to that. Sometimes we kind of breeze through this. Just love God
with all our heart, but it shows a lot, how to love God. He lists these things. One, love him with
all our heart, with all your soul, your being, your emotions, just to love him with everything you
have. Love him with all your mind. How does your mind work? What is your focus in life and
what do you do with your mind.
When we had the Taste of Health Seminar, we had this doctor who came up and talked
about this heart attack that he had. And he was talking about Lipitor and how this causes some
kind of brain damage and he's like, I can't have that. This guy was a CalTech graduate, he owns
a software company, he honored and cherished his mind. He was incredibly intelligent and
anything that would affect his mind, he'd rather die than to use it.
You know what you think about, what intellectually stimulates you and Jesus is saying
love God with all your mind. The concept of Godly things is something that is your deepest
desires and interest as you reflect, as you think as you use your brain. Then it says love God
with all your strength. You strength is our body and you can do things with strength. When I
was a freshman in high school, I did weight training. I was the smallest kid in this school, I think
at that time, and the football players in the weight training group were benching 240 pounds, I'm
trying to get the bar up. [laughter] I didn't think that was that funny. But with whatever strength
I had I was trying. By the end I was getting the fives up, real progress. But strength is the
physical action of what we do in life. It takes strength to get up to brush your teeth. It takes
strength to get up and eat. It takes strength to go out and work. Whatever you're going to do, it
takes your body, your muscles, your bones to work. Jesus is saying love God with all your
strength, with your actions of live, love God with all of your strength – the most important
commandment.
Then he says here: The second is this, love your neighbor as yourself. There is no
commandment greater than these. We like to do theology talk, cute little things, but if you're
going to love God with all our heart, you're gonna keep the first four commandments. You're
gonna keep the Sabbath, you're not gonna have any idols and you're not gonna do all these things
which is true. And if you're going to love your neighbor as yourself, you're not gonna murder
that person, you're not gonna lie to that person, you're not gonna commit adultery, you're not
going to do all these different things, so we kind of categorize the ten commandments in what
Jesus is saying here. In a way it's true, but I cannot not murder you and still not love you. You
know what I'm saying. I can still not lie to you and still not love you. Love creates the
relationship with each other and with God. Love God with all your heart is that love, is the
relationship – you're going to love God with all your heart. You're going to do everything God
tells you to do. It's love – the relationship.
Loving your neighbor is just not making sure you don't get in their pathway and create
negative responses for them. Loving your neighbor is having relationships with that neighbor.
It's more than not killing them and lying to them. We see what it means to love God with all
your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.
Mark 12:32 is the response that the teacher had: Well said teacher, the man replied. You
are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. The teacher was kind of being
clever here in saying you're right, God is one. We know what Jesus declared himself as. But the
truth is the truth and this is that God is one, there's no other but him. There is the aspect that we
love God, we don't love God with all our heart, and we can't love God with all our hearts because
we do not have other gods – small "g's" – that we love with all strength by the way we live our
lives. That we love with all our minds by what we focus on. By the love with all our emotions
and our soul, by the things of this world that we put in front of God.
When we're going through these last three weeks, we see the incredible, amazing
awesomeness about who God is and his love for us. It says he loves us so much, he sent his son
to die for us. The cost of his love for us was so great and it seems like what he's asking of us is
awfully a lot. Don't have any other gods before me. Love God with all your heart. Love your
neighbors as yourself. This is a stretch. How many of you have gotten this down? How many
of you love your neighbors with all their hearts? How about the one whose dog poops on your
lawn? Do you love that neighbor with all your heart, or as yourself? This is simple, but it's hard,
what God is asking of us. And for a lot of us, I just give up. I'm gonna deal with it, God's gotta
deal with it too. He loves the mess, he loves everything about you, but we're just like, I have too
many addictions, temptations. I have too much bitterness and anger towards other people, this is
just what it is. This is who I am. What God is saying here is deep and what I want you to do is
love me with all your heart and I want you to love your neighbor.
Does it take much of us of what Jesus is asking us when we realize what Jesus did for us?
Imagine someone is asking you to marry him and that person just loves you, does everything for
you and is devoted fully to you, completely embraces you and gives you everything you want
and you're just like, I love you but I love others as well. God has got on his knees for you. I'm
willing to do everything for you; I've done everything for you. I have sent my son to die for you.
I will love but with this part of my heart, but with all of my heart, that's a little hard, that's a little
difficult.
First of all, we have to come with this basis alone. Is God worthy for us to love with all
our hearts? Can you acknowledge that? because that's the first part, that he is worthy. We
sometimes by our actions show that he's not worthy of loving us with all our hearts. We start
with that basis but then we also realize what he's asking us to do is really impossible anyway.
On our own we cannot love God with all our hearts and we cannot love our neighbors as
ourselves. What he's asking us is impossible, so let's all go home, closing prayer, we'll end it
right now.
Of course his bringing this up is something that still needs to happen in our lives, to love
God with all our hearts and love our neighbors, but we cannot attain it for ourselves here. One of
the things here in John 14:16-17, this is the verse right after the one that says "If you love me
keep my commands" – that where I started the sermon from. So I should just say if you love me
keep my commands. Then he says this: And I will ask the father and he will give you another
advocate to help you and be with you forever. The spirit of truth says the world cannot accept
him because it neither sees him nor knows him but you know him for he lives with you and he
will be in you. If you love me keep my commands. Love God with all your heart and love your
neighbor as yourself. But if you love me and you desire me, he will give you the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit will be our advocate, our comforter, he will work in our behalf. He will give us
power. He will give us gifts. He will give us the fruit of the spirit, like patience. How many of
you need patience, longsuffering? He'll give us love, he'll give us peace. You see what's going
on here.
We started off – there's nothing greater than God's love. Everything we should be
seeking for we need to seek for God's love. How you deal with our spiritual life – you can try to
do everything right, but you need to focus on God's love because there's nothing greater and
because his character his love. That is who he is, that's how you relate to this person, to God. It
is his character. You want to get straight to my heart, you talk to me about Wyans football or
something like that and I'll start talking to you. You want to get straight to God's heart? You
start focusing on his love. May that be the focus in your walk with God and his love.
Then we talked about how he loves us even though we were sinners. And all he desires
for us is to restore our relationship with him. At the end where do we go from there? What do
we do now? We just bask in God's love? This is where we take the cross and we walk forward
from the cross by asking the Holy Spirit into our hearts and whilst he does that he compels us,
love God with all our hearts and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Do you see this? The
ultimately thing we can do is to pray and ask for the Holy Spirit into our hearts and every day we
should be asking the Holy Spirit into our hearts and let him be the guide in how we live our lives.
Because the Holy Spirit's in me I am not going to murder you, or as Jesus' definition of murder,
have anger toward you. Because of the Holy Spirit I am not going to lie or to covet. Because of
the Holy Spirit, I am willing to give up all these things that keep me away. All these harmful
behaviors, because the Holy Spirit is in my life.
I don't know about you, but there's a lot of freedom in that, because for a long time, there
were times in my life where I've been trying to make my life right with God, really on my own
by trying to do all the right things. And hopefully in a way God will be happy and pleased with
me as I'm doing all the right things. Can anybody relate to this? Where all we need to do is to
put the pressure on him (God), he asked for it. Give me your burdens. Don't put the pressure on
yourself to be perfect, put the pressure on him to make you perfect.
Let's look at the two different scenarios. We are God's people who are on our own. Keep
everything and do everything right and because we do everything right and we want to make sure
we stay right, we close the doors so nothing imperfect comes into us. What kind of power is in
that? There is none. Or you are of the other camp. We are God's people who ask for the Holy
Spirit into our hearts and we allow his power to be used through us and we see the power of the
Holy Spirit, we see the Pentecost, we see the miracles being made. Nothing that we've done is
because of ourselves, but only because we allow God to do it through us. Which scenario do you
like better? That one, right?
I have no shame in my hope, in my faith in Jesus. I have no shame in my hope and my
faith in the Downey Seventh Day Adventist church and the people here, because I believe we are
going to be people being used, or we are people being used by the Holy Spirit. And we're
looking at God in a total different way. We don't look at him as, oh man, he's God the restrictor
that keeps me from doing the things I really want to do, but he tells me I shouldn't do, so I make
sure I go to heaven. To be the power who works in my life, he's active in my life and he's
running my life and I live in freedom, because he's ultimately responsible for the results and the
direction in which we live our lives.
How many of you like to control every situations of your life? You want to make sure
everything is planned? You're going on a road trip. Okay, I'm gonna stop at this place and do
this and do this and you've got everything perfectly aligned. That's what happens when we try to
take control of our lives, but when we have the Holy Spirit, we wait for the miracles to happen.
We live as our eyes are opened and we see God working all around us and we see the love and
we're experiencing the love of God. Doesn't that sound like a better way of living, experiencing
the love of God instead of living in our bitterness? It is right here for us to be set free from all
the things that chain us. All we do is to ask him and we shall receive. Think about this. It's like
we say well the Holy Spirit can do wonderful things, but it's all based on his love for us. He does
the best for us. All we have to do is ask him, is my prayer for you.
Let us pray.