Matthew 22:34-40
Ephesians 5:18-6:4
Matthew 28:18-20
Focus
At my house, we have a landing at the top of the stairs overlooking our living room. From the landing, you can see the TV. I often head upstairs only to get distracted by the TV. By the time I’m ready to get back to what I was doing, I think, “Was I going upstairs or was I going downstairs?”
Focus is the key to remembering why you headed upstairs.
I’ll encourage you to focus on five things. To help you remember, we will state them as commands.
Loving God
Matthew 22:34-40: The Great Commandment
When the Pharisees asked Jesus what the greatest commandment was, Jesus answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the first and great commandment. “And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.
The first command is to LOVE GOD. That is the great commandment.
The Jewish young men and women, as they grew up, learned from Deuteronomy 6:4-5 that they were to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.
The focus was on loving God.
In the Old Testament, the nation did well when they had a good king who loved God. But when they had a king who did not love God, the nation did not fare as well. Eventually, the kingdom split into two nations: the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah.
During this time was King Hezekiah. Scripture says he was a good king. He focused on that first commandment to LOVE GOD, and modeled that to his nation.
When Hezekiah died, his son Manasseh did not follow in his father’s footsteps. Instead, he set up idols throughout the land where pagan and ungodly worship of false gods took place. One of those false gods was called Molech. They had a large statue that they would heat until it turned red from the fire, and they would sacrifice their children by laying them on that statue. These practices were promoted by evil kings, causing the nation to decline. Judgment was coming.
Babylon captured Manasseh, put him in chains, and carried him away. While he was in captivity, he came to his senses. He realized, “I have not been worshiping God. I have not focused on loving God, the true God, the God of my father.”
He cried out to God. He sincerely repented of his sin. God heard his prayers. He was restored as king of Judah and lived the rest of his life with God’s blessing because he returned his focus to God.
So, our first command is to LOVE GOD.
Loving Others
The commandment second to the greatest one is to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus quoted that, and someone asked Him, “Who is my neighbor?” He was looking for a way to avoid loving everybody, perhaps because some people are hard to love.
Jesus answered by telling the story of a man who was attacked by robbers. They robbed him, beat him so badly that he could not move himself, and left him without the means to care for himself. As he lay there, people came by. Some stayed on the other side of the road, some crossed to the opposite side to avoid him. One was a priest, another a Levite.
One was a Samaritan.
The Jews despised the Samaritans, yet Jesus said the Samaritan had compassion on the wounded man. He went to him, cared for his wounds, took him to an inn, and said, “Take care of him, and when I come back, I will settle up with you.”
Then Jesus asked, “Which one was a neighbor to the man who was robbed?”
It was the despised Samaritan.
These are your commands:
- LOVE GOD
- LOVE OTHERS
Loving the Church
Ephesians 5:18-6:4 teaches us what it looks like to live under the influence of the Spirit. Paul explains the importance of submitting to one another, loving our families, and living according to God’s design. He reminds husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her.
Think of how Jesus demonstrated that love in John 17 when He prayed for the church. He prayed for His disciples, and He prayed for those who would come after them. He was praying for you and me as well.
A man named Brian said, “When my love for the church mirrors Christ’s love for the church, things will go well.”
Brian said Jesus was optimistic because He looked at these disciples and believed these flaky men would change the world. When Jesus was crucified, they all ran away and hid. Yet after He was gone, Jesus was depending on those same disciples to establish the church and care for it. He knew they would.
Remain committed to the gospel. This is the good news of Jesus!
A seminar I attended mentioned that each one of us should be doing whatever we can to share Christ. We were challenged to come up with a fifteen-second testimony. I want to extend this challenge to you.
If you’re saved, think of what your life was like before Christ and what it is like after. Try to find a way to tell those two things in 15 seconds.
My 15-second testimony would be: Before I came to Christ, I didn’t think anybody could know for sure they would go to heaven. They couldn’t know it until they died. After I met Christ, I found out you can be sure and I’m on my way to heaven. In fact, the Bible tells us over and over that we can be sure.
Do you have a story like that? As you go through life, there will be opportunities to take the conversation in a spiritual direction. Sometimes all it takes is asking someone, “Could I tell you a short story about my own life?”
Remember, their salvation doesn’t depend on you. You simply share the good news that Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay the penalty for sin.
That’s the gospel.
Whenever my love for the church mirrors Christ’s love for the church, I actively pursue peace and unity. When my love for the church mirrors Christ’s love for the church, I seek God’s glory and not my own.
These are your commands:
- LOVE GOD
- LOVE OTHERS
- LOVE YOUR CHURCH
Loving Your Family
I know a family that was a great example to others. The husband was a pastor, with a faithful wife, and they were raising their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Both sons eventually accepted the call to preach. To the shock of his family and those who had sat under his ministry, the pastor became involved with another woman, and the marriage ended in divorce.
If you identify with the husband in this story and have come to Christ in repentance, you have been forgiven. You can focus on your family where you are right now.
This story reminds us why we must focus on our families. Our choices do not only affect us. They can have far-reaching effects on those we love and those who look to us for guidance.
These are your commandments:
- LOVE GOD
- LOVE OTHERS
- LOVE YOUR CHURCH
- LOVE YOUR FAMILY
Fulfilling Your Mission
Matthew 28:18-20
And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.
This is The Great Commission.
As we live out our lives, we are to announce the gospel to every people group in the world.
Some of us cannot physically go out to do that. We can support others who do, however. Our church supports several missionaries on a regular basis. They usually let us know how we can support them.
Sometimes we focus on “going into all the world” as a command to go somewhere, but as we are going through life, we share the gospel with others in our everyday lives.
This is accomplished in these commands:
- LOVE GOD
- LOVE OTHERS
- LOVE YOUR CHURCH
- LOVE YOUR FAMIL
- FULFILL YOUR MISSION
Keep thinking about that 15-second testimony and share it with someone this week.