[Message] Pastor Jung Myeong Seok
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’
38 This is the first and greatest commandment.
39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Today’s message is about loving with your life on the line and serving God with your life on the line. Whether you treat people or God, always love with your life on the line.
Among the many stories contained in the bible are the lessons and Words that Jesus taught. In fact, telling us to ‘love God’ is the core of all these messages.
1 Corinthians 13 says that if you do not have love, you are like a clanging symbol. If your love is disconnected from God, no matter how much you preach the gospel, you remain as simply a clanging symbol.
Therefore, Jesus set the example by teaching us the Word예 before he left us.
God loves us, but we are oblivious about the extent of His love for us. However, if we love God, we can experience just how much God loves us. If we deeply realize the love of God through reading the Word and praying, we will know that even if God no longer loves us but we love him from our entire lifetime, we can never repay the love that God has given us until now.
These two commandments are the greatest in all the Law: love Christ and God! Love your brothers!
We can easily love God and Jesus. The Jews loved God with all their heart, will and mind; however, they did not love their brothers and therefore, they couldn’t recognize the Saviour who was sent and dwelled among them. That is why we must open our eyes of love. If we keeping treating everyone with love, we could even experience an incident like Lot, who unknowingly treated angels with love in Sodom.
The people in Sodom loved each other so much, but because they did not also love God, they were judged. On the other hand, the Jews loved God, but because they didn’t love their brothers, they could not recognize the Saviour who was sent and dwelled among them. Therefore, they were not saved. We must completely open our eyes of love in order to love both God and our brothers with a fiery heart.
I bless you to live a life of loving God first, not conceptually, but in a way that feels real and is felt deeply within your bones.
<Pastor Jung Myeong Seok’s revised Wednesday message summary on September 9, 2015>
