Bethlehem Baptist Church
Sunday Morning 02/08/26

      • Deuteronomy 6:1ESV

      • Deuteronomy 6:2ESV

      • Deuteronomy 6:3-4ESV

      • Deuteronomy 6:5-7ESV

      • Deuteronomy 6:8-10ESV

      • Deuteronomy 6:11-12ESV

      • Deuteronomy 6:13-15ESV

  • Trust And Obey
  • The Love of God
  • His Mercy Is More
  • Behold Him

  • Introduction

    What is the hardest commandment for you to obey that the Lord has given?
    Don’t lie
    Don’t steal (that includes things like downloading stuff for free that you didn’t pay for or mooching off the wifi of your neighbor)
    Don’t commit adultery (or better yet, don’t lust)
    Don’t dishonor father and mother
    Don’t kill (some of you have some real self-restraint, don’t you)
    What about towards God?
    Be devoted to Him only
    Honor and worship Him
    Don’t take God’s name in vain (all of you OMGers out there?
    Maybe I didn’t name your commandment that’s hard to obey. Whatever it is, there can seem like a lot of dos and don’ts.
    Sometimes that’s what man makes religion into, isn’t it? We make it about how to behave correctly.
    Well, this morning, we are going to take a look at the great commandments. There are actually two that sum up all of the others.
    Matthew 22:34–40 ESV
    34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
    Pray

    Background:

    Illustration: HOA guy
    Do any of you have that guy in your neighborhood that goes around measuring people’s grass or trying to find any violation possible of the HOA covenant?
    This would have been kind of like the Pharisees.
    MacArthur notes that the rabbis had calculated that there were around 613 commandments in the first five books of the Bible called the Pentateuch. They had determined that there was one for each letter of the 10 Commandments.
    248 were postive
    365 were negative - do nots
    Debate among the Pharisees over which commands were the greatest
    Among ancient Jewish legal experts, there was an ongoing attempt to prioritize the commandments. Their debates considered which laws were “light” and which were “weighty.” (FSB)

    1. Love God: The Great Commandment

    Matthew 22:37–38 ESV
    37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment.
    The Shema
    Said several times a day
    Saying something isn’t the same as meaning it

    Illustration:

    How many of you have ever told someone you love them that you barely know?
    We might have different levels of love, but the truth is that we must know someone to go to the deepest levels of love.
    Think about this for a moment. Is there anyone who knows you better than God and yet still loves you enough to send Jesus to die on the cross for your sins?

    Application

    How can we love God?
    Worship
    Fellowship
    Service
    Obedience
    How do we cultivate this love? (Joel Beeke and Alan Carr)
    Three concrete practices cultivate this love.
    First, regularly internalize Scripture by repeating biblical truths to yourself until they stir your affections toward God—treating God’s words as spiritual protection against the competing claims of worldly values. (Beeke)
    Second, teach Scripture to your family through daily Bible reading and discussion, allowing the Word to penetrate beyond surface-level engagement into lived application throughout your day. (Beeke)
    Third, recognize that loving God with all your heart—the core of your being—naturally extends to loving Him in every other dimension of life. (Carr)

    2. Love Others: The Second Great Commandment

    Matthew 22:39–40 ESV
    39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
    Jesus goes one step further and tells them the answer to the second greatest commandment.
    Love for God must come first before love for man is going to be possible.
    If we love God with all of our heart, we will love our fellow man. If we do not love our fellow man, we do not love God.
    God loves people, that is why we should love them too.

    What does loving people look like?

    Serve them
    Put them first
    Share the Gospel with them
    Show kindness to them
    Love them

    Conclusion

    Jesus said that all of the law and prophets hand on these two commandments. The truth is that we cannot keep either of them.
    That is why we needed Jesus to come.
    He came into a context where people were not loving God and they were not loving their neighbors.
    The Pharisees got upset because Jesus healed a man on the sabbath. They cared more about their rules than about people.
    God gave His commands as a protection for us. He gave them to keep us from harm not to limit our freedom.
    On these two commands hang the two tables of the Law. The first half deal with our love for God. The second half deal with loving others.
    A lawyer came to Jesus seeking to justify himself and Jesus used the law to reveal to him his failure to be holy as God is holy.
    What about you? If you are trying to be good enough to get to heaven by keeping the Law, you will never make it.
    You have to trust in Jesus who kept the Law for you.

      • Matthew 22:34–40ESV

      • Matthew 22:37–38ESV

      • Matthew 22:39–40ESV

  • Only Trust Him
Bethlehem Baptist Church
info@bbced.org
478-272-7827
https://www.bbced.org
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