It happens to all of us at some point. We can do it in everyday life, or we can plan it meticulously. We can even do it when we walk out of this worship center. What we all do is leave something behind. Many times it’s not on purpose. Today one or more of you might leave a purse, a cell phone, your car keys in your seat. Other times it’s very much on purpose. Many of you have prepared a last will and testament, spelling out in details each and every thing you will leave behind when your life is over. So whether by accident, or by choice, leaving things behind is something all of us may do.

If you are a parent, it does raise this question, “What is the greatest thing that parents can leave their children once they leave this planet?”

• A college education
• A big bank account
• Real Estate
• Jewelry
• 401Ks

God, through His servant, Moses, took the opportunity to tell an entire nation the answer to that question. We are going to go back in time, somewhere between 3500-4000 years ago where a man by the name of Moses, God’s chosen prophet, is standing before a nation called “Israel” God’s chosen people. He is giving them final instructions on what they are to do once they take over the land that God had promised them and how to live in such a way that they will enjoy living there and keep what they gained.

Here is what He says, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9, NIV)

Of all the things that God told Moses to tell his people to do - things like making sure you don’t run up massive deficits, making sure that you take care of the poor and the elderly, making sure you put the right people in office, making sure that you maintain a strong defense, and making sure that you treat all people equally regardless of the color of their skin. Instead He says, “Make sure that you, and your children, and your grandchildren love God with all of their heart.”

You wouldn’t know this today, but had you been standing there thousands of years ago in the culture of the ancient world that would have been an eye-popping, head turning, neck snapping statement. There was no such thing in the ancient world as a love-filled relationship between a God and a man. The ancient world was consumed with appeasing the gods through sacrifice. For the first time in human history we are told that we can have a personal relationship with the God of the universe and that relationship is to be based on love.

We have got to dig deeper into this because there are several things you have to keep in mind to really grasp the import and the impact of this statement. First of all, it is a command. Don’t you think it is kind of odd that God would command us to love Him? I mean, “How do you command somebody to love you?” In a sense if you really could command somebody to love you, I would have been the most popular guy with girls in my high-school. If I could have commanded my wife to love me, I would have married her the next night after our second date. The fact that God commands us to love Him tells us something about the kind of love God is commanding. It is not a feeling, because you can’t command a feeling. It is a surrender; an act of the will.

Another amazing thing is even though at the time Israel didn’t realize it, they had just heard the greatest commandment God would ever give. How do I know that? That is exactly what Jesus told someone. [Turn to Matthew 22]

“Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’” (Matthew 22:34-36, NIV)

In Jesus’ day there were what was known as “experts” in the law; not secular law, but biblical law. This expert also happened to be a Pharisee, who was also considered a religious expert. This was a scholar, of the law, which was the first five books of the Old Testament. Regardless of why he asked the question, it was a great question.

You also need to understand that the Pharisees had come up with 613 different individual commandments that they could locate in the law (248 positive commandments/365 negative commandments). With all of these commandments, rules and regulations the lawyer basically said, “Is there any one at the top?” This expert was actually getting more than he bargained for, because the answer to this question would also automatically reveal the greatest sin. The greatest sin you can commit would be obviously through disobeying the greatest commandment.

The answer was so obvious that after Jesus gave it I am sure most of the people in that crowd, including that expert, felt kind of dumb for asking Him. All Jesus does is basically quote Moses who was just quoting God some 1500 years earlier.

“Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.” (Matthew 22:37-38, NIV)

What Jesus said to that lawyer is what he says to us today. It doesn’t matter how many religious “i’s” you dot or how many ritualistic “t’s” you cross, if you fail to love God with everything you have and you fail to put God first in every area of your life you have broken the greatest commandment of all.

So know we’ve got this new dimension of a relationship with God. The God that created this world and everything that is in it is not just a God that loves us, but He is a God we are to love back. That is the one thing this God wants from us more than anything else – just to love Him. His own son has told us this is head and shoulders, far and away the greatest commandment of all.

There is one other part of this commandment that is crucial to understand. If you go back to Deuteronomy 6 the text plainly says that if you want to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul and all of your strength, the place you begin is in your home and the people you begin with are your children. If you want to love the Lord your God with everything you have, if you want that love to come together in such a way that it makes the greatest impact on life, then you must begin to reproduce that love in the lives of your children. Key Take Away: Loving God begins with the family.

I know lot of you could say, “You can stop the message right there and we can all go home.” Trust me, I wish I could. At least for today, my job would be a lot easier and I wouldn’t have as much to do. In reality, there are two questions still to be answered. First of all, what do we mean by “love?” Have you ever stopped to think about how many different ways the word “love” is used? If you didn’t know any better you would think it is always used to mean the same thing when in reality it is not. Let me give you a few examples in my life and your life.

I love God
I love my wife
I love my children
I love my grandchildren
I love great food
I love my football team!

I used one word to describe something that means something different in practically every situation. I also purposely put “loving God” at the top, because if my heart is right then I love God unlike I love anyone or anything else. My love for anything and everything else must flow out of my love for God.

There is another question and that is “How do we love God? What does it look like? What would be some signs people could see, and more specifically that children could see, in their parents, that they truly do love God with all of their hearts, soul, mind and strength?”

Did you know that the entire mission of the church is built around this commandment? When we are fulfilling the mission of the church to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, it will also strengthen your family. Do you know why? Loving God results in a strong family. Serving others results in a strong marriage. Sharing your faith results on strong parenting. But the question is “How does this work out in reality?” I am going to share with you four ways that you can not only love God and show that you love God, but four ways you can share with your children how they can love God as well.

I. Love God By The Clock

What I mean by that is if you really love someone you want to spend time with that person. The more you love that person the more time you want to spend with that person. In fact, it goes deeper. You don’t enjoy anything more than spending time with the person or the people that you love the most. Practically speaking, one of the greatest things you can do as a parent for your children is to model for them spending time with God and teaching them to do the same.

There are all kinds of terms people use for doing this. Some people call it a “quiet time”. Some people call it “doing devotions.” Some people call it “time alone with God.” Some people call it “spending time with God.” I don’t care what you call it. What I am concerned is that you do it.

It is not that complicated. All you need is:

• Quiet space
• A Bible
• A pad (something in which to take notes)
• Do it all with an iPad!

It is very simple. You simply read the Bible and ask God to speak to you and then you take some time in prayer and you speak to Him. It is a time when you just love on God literally. You just praise Him, thank Him, bring Him your burdens, your heartaches, talk to Him about your family, your friends, your finances and you surrender everything you are to everything He is on a daily basis.

You know in a marriage you cannot really have a strong, solid, stable relationship with your spouse if you don’t spend time with them. You know as a parent the only way to keep the communication lines open with your children and have any meaningful influence on their life is to spend time with them. Just as you need to spend time with your wife or husband and just as you need to spend time with your children, you need to spend time with God and God wants you to spend time with Him where you just simply focus on Him and you love Him.

This means doing family devotions together. [Pastor’s Note: You might suggest an online resource for family devotionals like focusonthefamily.org] Believe it or not, it is not complicated and it doesn’t have to (and shouldn’t be) very long at all. You can do everything from taking a Bible story to one single verse, take a few minutes to teach a central lesson about that verse and then have each family member pray or even have one family member pray. The point is one of the ways we love God is by taking our clock and carving time out for Him where He gets our complete focus, our complete attention, and our unreserved affection.

II. Love God In Your Conversation

Do you remember what Moses said?

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-7, NIV)

Learn how to make God a part of your every day conversation. Why is it so easy to talk to your family about everything except God? We can talk about what is going on in their life at school. We can talk about the up-coming high school game. We can talk about what we are going to do that weekend. We can talk about the latest movie that has come out. If we can talk about those things we can talk about God.

Let me be honest. I don’t think this naturally happens. I think you have to really keep your mind alert on ways you can talk about God. It can be a little thing like telling your little preschooler when you go outside that God made the sun, God made the trees and God made the birds all the way to talking to your teenagers about this marvelous world that God has created.

Do you ever think about how precarious this world is? All this world is simply molten metal covered with a thin hard crust. If you reduce the earth to the size of an apple the solid dirt you walk on would be about as thick as the skin of that apple. Think about it. The thick skin of dirt and cold rock that we walk on is the only thing keeping us from being boiled alive in lava. Above us is this very thin layer of ozone which is the only thing that keeps us from being broiled by ultra-violet radiation. Is that a coincidence?

The next time you see a pond or a lake frozen over, have you ever stopped to think that most liquids freeze at their densest point except water? What does that mean? Frozen water, (that is ice) floats. If ice didn’t float, rivers and streams and oceans would freeze from the bottom up. If that happened, fish life would be completely and totally destroyed. Is that just a scientific anomaly? Is that just a coincidence? No, it is another opportunity to talk about the greatness and the handiwork of God.

That is why one of the ways you love God is simply telling other people about God. Rick Warren said, “Friends of God tell their friends about God.” I would also say that loving parents and loving grandparents talk to their children and grandchildren about that.

III. Love God Through Your Calendar

Some of you may have jumped ahead of me and said, “Okay, this is where the coming to church on Sunday lecture takes place.” Can I just really be honest with you? Sunday morning worshippers are simply not what God is after. Many people have the mentality that they have done all they need to do for God and in fact they have done God a big favor and they ought to be rewarded just for showing up in church. That is about like saying you ought to give a solider the Metal of Honor simply because he shows up for breakfast. I am glad that you come here on Sundays and I want you to come to have your soul and spirit renewed and refreshing and fed. God is not after your attendance, but God is after your affection. God is after your attendance and God is after your allegiance.

To be real honest with you, do you know what I wished Jesus would have said when that lawyer said to Him, “What is the greatest commandment of all?” I wish He would have just said, “Tithe”, but, He didn’t. He said the greatest commandment of all is to have a heart-felt love for God. That means you are to love God 24/7 and 24/7 means your calendar ought to reflect your love for God.

Let’s go back to what Jesus said and give you an example, because there is not only a vertical dimension to loving God, but there is a horizontal dimension.

“And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:39-40)

In and of itself, there nothing at all unique about these two commandments. What is unique is this is the first time anyone ever joined these two together. What Jesus said in effect was one of the ways you love God is by making time for others.

There are two primary ways we bring people together in this church: to learn how to love one another and serve one another. One is obviously through the weekend worship experience, but the other is through what we call “life groups.” One of our driving goals over the next 12-18 months in this church is to ramp up our ministry particularly in homes where we can involve every single person that is willing in a life group where together we learn to love God and together we learn to love each other.

If you love God you will love the things that God loves and God loves the church. I don’t mean the buildings, but I mean the people. Let me close this part with a question, “Do you love attending church or do you love the church you attend?”

IV. Love God With Your Character

I want to go back and answer the question we asked earlier which is, “What does it really mean to love God?” How do you know if you love God or not? The mystery is over. The Bible specifically tells us what it is. 1 John 5:3 says, “This is love for God: to obey his commands.” (1 John 5:3, NIV)

To love God is simply to obey God and do whatever God tells you to do in every area of your life. When you do, your character will reflect that.

By the way, this has great implication for your family also. Have you ever noticed how, when parents have children a sense of accountability comes into their life that they didn’t have before? I will give you an example. I will guarantee you that for many of you in this room when you had a child certain things in your life changed. For example, maybe it was your language. You realized, “I’ve got to clean my language up. I can’t talk like this around my kids.” Perhaps you said something like this, “I won’t have any more alcohol in my home or I am not going to drink in front of my kids while they are young.” I am not saying that is not a good and a noble thing, but my problem is you are not really accountable to your kids; you are accountable to God. If there are certain things you think you shouldn’t do from a character standpoint or you think are questionable it shouldn’t be because of your kids, it ought to be because of your love for God.

If you think about it, God in some ways is just like a parent. There are two things that any parent wants from their children. In fact, it is the only two things any parent wants from their children. You know what they are – 1) love and 2) obedience. Any parent knows that those two go together. A child can obey a parent without loving a parent, but it is impossible to love a parent without obeying a parent. This is the way it works: To love God is to obey God. We obey God, because we love God. This all comes out in character.

I heard about a mother that was putting her little six year old girl in bed and she said, “Darling, why don’t you pray that the Lord would help you love Him more?” The little girl looked up and said, “Mommy, you want me to pray that God would help me to love Him more?” She said, “Yes. Don’t you think that would be good?” The girl answered, “I guess so Mom, but I am just crazy about Him already!”

I don’t think any of us would say that we are as crazy about God as we ought to be. Let me say it really doesn’t make much difference whatever other commandments we keep whether you don’t steal, don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, you don’t bear false witness, or don’t break the Sabbath, if you break the first and the greatest commandment, which is to love God with all of your heart, soul and strength and to pass that love on to your family.