Great Commandment

You're not going to have time in your ministry to care about and get involved in every little cause that people want you to join.

So focus on the great commandment.

Focus on the great commission.

You know, right before both John Stott died and Billy Graham died, I made personal trips back to see them, flew to London, flew to Charlotte, and I just wanted to see them before they passed away.

We just try to do it better every year.

We stay focused on God's five eternal purposes.

What are God's five eternal purposes? They are the five verbs in the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.

Two verbs in the Great Commission, uh, uh, in-- Two words in the Great Commandment, and three verbs in the Great Commission.

Jesus reports on how he did the five purposes with his disciples in John seventeen, and Paul explains them in Ephesians four.

But they're best summarized, the five purposes of God, in the five verbs of the Great Commandment and the Great Commission of Jesus.

If you don't get anything else, you just get the Great Commandment, Great Commission, you're gonna, you're gonna be a great Christian.

So here's the motto of this brand-new church as we announce it on our very first Sunday: a great commitment to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission will grow a great church.

A great commitment to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission will grow a great church.

I'm gonna unpack that in detail in the weeks and months ahead.

But this church is gonna succeed.

He said people would recognize his people by the way they love one another.

This is the first part of the great commandment, that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

This is a mandate.

for every single believer.

So number one, We were looking for six things.

Number one, we were looking for a purpose-driven pastor who was already familiar with the five purposes of the church, as in the Great Commandment, Great Commission.

We're familiar with our processes, our strategy, our structure that created such a healthy and huge church.

Now, as I mentioned in the video, we had a large pool of purpose-driven pastors to choose from because over 1.1 million pastors around the world have been trained in our strategy.

He's giving people time.

He's giving the church time to share the good news around the world, to finish the task, to take the great commandment and the great commission to every person, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the outermost parts of the world.

1 Peter, excuse me, 2 Peter 3.9 says this.

The Lord is not being slow about his promise to return.

What is the fruit of a Christian? Another Christian.

Now, I don't have time to take you through Acts 2 and show you that these five purposes have been the five purposes from the very start.

Modeled in Acts 2, Jesus prays them in John 17, Paul explains them in Ephesians 4, but they're summarized in the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.

At Saddleback Church, our model for everything we do is the Bible.

One another.

Jesus introduced us to something called the Great Commandment.

And the Great Commandment isn't just one-sided.

You should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And for a lot of us, we stop right there.

It's beautiful.

But yeah, Rach and I are gonna, yeah, just have a, chat about what it looks like um to love god as as rachel said to cultivate that devotion to him and what it looks like to love others because we're really talking about the great commandment here that we are commanded by god to love him before anything else um and then love others and um And I, you know, like you, Rach, certainly for me, I am on a journey in this regard.

And, you know, even as I think about, you know, to love the Lord, your God, you know, before anything else, I just think of all the other things that I love, you know, all the other things that take my attention, all the other things that I serve in place, you of loving God first.

And I think my prayer certainly for myself is that how do I, Lord, I want to serve you only.

We are going through some ingredients for strong and healthy believers, strong and healthy marriages, and strong and healthy local churches.

And we're going to talk today about fulfilling the Great Commission while living the Great Commandment out.

So...

A couple of assumptions right away.

I'm praying that this journey in you will continue and it'll be tough.

You're not going to get there in one day, but I encourage you to be committed like Paul to go the distance to finish your race and to complete the task.

So I'm going to go over this idea quickly of fulfilling the Great Commission while living the Great Commandment out.

And I might talk about each one of those more extensively in subsequent podcasts, but this is just an overview of the idea here in this.

We're gonna be in verse 25.

As I shared this story with others, I've come to realize that many of us, and this was the case for me, have become inoculated to the great commandment.

It's something that we hear over and over and over again, and yet we lose touch with it.

We put it on T-shirts and bumper stickers.