Quantifying The Love I Have for Myself for a Reason S31E102

We all do a pretty good job at loving ourselves. The Lord runs with that idea. He wants us to actually use the love we have for ourselves to set a baseline as to how much love we are to have for those around us.  Self-love can be helpful in quantifying non-self-love. 

Join me as we remember some of the treasures that make up the Sermon on the mount.  All of them are worth remembering...if you love yourself. ;-)

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https://youtu.be/WPX-Os4UB5U

Transcript

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Brothers and sisters, today we're going to quantify the love that I have for myself for a reason. We're going to bounce this off of the golden rule, which is based on forthcoming self-interest. Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. That's from Matthew chapter six. And then the kind of a corollary, love your neighbor as yourself. I'm sorry, Matthew 7.12, excuse me. And that's based on self-interest, prior self-interest. How much am I required to love my neighbor? Well, you have to look at how much do you love yourself first, and then you do so to your neighbor. Now, because our love is pretty expansive, the call to love and call to love the neighbor and charge to do this golden rule is relatively large. The parallel passage that I was trying to get at was in Matthew chapter 22. Teacher, which is the great commandment of the law? And he said, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest in the first commandment, and a second is like it. Here it is. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. So these are the love laws. That is the postural attitude of a heart that's inclined toward another. Now it's more than just the heart, it's not just moonbeams and rainbows. Love is righteous actions for the benefit of another. And how do I get good behavior and good actions towards me? Well, you quantify and send out similar actions. So behaviors are how we know people love each other. So they're both head verses, but especially they're hand verses. Hands are doing the action that the head is wishing for and ruminating on. So what I'm expecting regarding others' actions, I should be turning and asking myself, how am I doing in that? So living by the golden rule of love, feeling I mean by that, and activity, which is love and action. So run from anybody who says these words. Well, one of the first steps on the road to destruction is the lie that all roads lead to heaven. In fact, most load roads lead to destruction. Scripture describes it in Matthew as the road is wide, easy, well populated. And if you're on that road, take heed. Such is the description of a life heading towards destruction. The road you're looking for is the one that's narrow, hard, populated by a few, but it doesn't lead to destruction, it leads to life. So there's the structure to embrace and reinforce and throw yourself, hopefully, into the arms of the church. Why? So you're not alone as you are doing uh doing this road. There's a savior to embrace. Why? Because you're going to need some help along the way, both on the first day and every day to follow that on the day of salvation and the day of sanctification. So then in Matthew chapter 7, there's this great men metaphor about wolves, and it's about wolves and sheep clothing. And how can you find wolves and sheep's clothing? Well, you become a fruit inspectors. So you use the fruit of the wolf that's in the sheep's clothing to assess, looking at him. And is he harmless, innocent, pure, requiring no defense, or is he some somebody that that that needs a defense? So wolves leaves leave clues. Uh eventually, wolves do wolvy things. So in chapter 7 of Matthew, it says, Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruit. So be a wolf seer. How do we do that? We do that by wolf assessment. How do we do that? Well, you get this is where we get the mixture of the metaphors. Wolves in sheep's clothing are identified by their fruit. So wolves leave clues. So consider the fruit of your leaders and friends and influencers, and consider the fruit of their life, the fruit of your behaviors and the fruit of your relationships. So not only are we supposed to be externally looking at fruit, we're supposed to be internally looking at fruit. So be a fruit inspector, but also be a fruit bearer. And the Lord wants more than just affirmation and sort of a tip of the hat to all these things he's saying. He wants action. So the Lord wants more than declaration, he wants deeds. Now, let's be careful with our deeds because we can get to the end of our life, and the God can say, I never knew you. It's one of the scariest things in all of Scripture. Yeah. From chapter 7, verse 21 Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, cast out demons in your name, and do many things, many mighty works in your name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. Ah, very sobering. So saying the name of God does not guarantee that you're in an ongoing heavenly relationship with Him. So be careful how you do this. Certainly approach His name with respect and reverence and worship. But then associated with those words is the will of God. Are you doing the will of God, obeying the principles, trusting his word? So there is a relationship to first know the will of God and then to continue in obedience, which means to follow the will of God. So didn't we prophecy in your name? Apparently not. Didn't we cast out demons in your name? Apparently not. And didn't we do mighty works? Apparently not. So the two possibilities for why not is either they were done apart from an individual faith in that they weren't powered by Jesus. But I think the second one is the real one, which is that they're done in sort of this grand we sort of way. Say, yeah, these things happened, but other people had the faith. You were part of a group that you thought it was because of your faith, but you didn't have any faith. And then you're taking undeserved credit for the faith of another. It might be something like today saying, hey, I go to a really popular church, or our missions program is out of this world, or my pastor is on the internet. So all these things you can sort of participate in, but without actually having faith in Jesus. And here's the Lord's assessment towards at least some, which is, I never knew you. So it's not because he didn't want to know us. He does. He's gone to great trouble. Trouble enough to leave the glory aside in heaven and come down in human flesh and finish the rescue mission that's in the 1500 pages of the Bible. So then when you go to heaven, where his will is always done, he won't say to you, I never knew you. He'll say, I know you, and welcome home. Then finish well. So lastly, here today, let's be obedient to the rock. A rock, the rock that he wants us to build on, at least one of them, is obedience. The wise man builds upon this rock. So he wants us to do step one, obey it, and then he's gonna give us step two and obey that, and then he's gonna give us step three. So if step one was not appreciated and valued and obeyed, what chance do you think the Lord would give us to give us multiple steps of obedience? So obedience to the previous steps of God typically tell us the distance that someone comes as they encounter God. Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow.