Father, I ask now that in this room, you would put all of us on to the blood-bought

path that leads to eternal life, the path of love. The path where we move

toward need, not comfort.

And I pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

Suppose I write you a letter maybe five pages long and in it I respond to a rumor about me say that there was a behavior last week that I did it's true.

He's getting all kinds of bad press say and in the letter I explain my motives, I explain the situation, I talk about the results,

I talk about the way it related to my faith and the Lord Jesus and the death of Jesus and you read the letter.

And when you're done reading it, you take that paragraph where I named the behavior and you ignore everything I said about the motivations,

everything I said about the situation, everything I said about the outcome, everything I said about the way it relates to Jesus,

and you put it on the internet and say, that's the way he is.

Now my question is, what would you be doing if you did that? What would you be doing?

Here's one answer to that question. You would be disobeying this text.

Vers 27, the lawyer at the end of verse 27.

The lawyer at the end of verse 27 said that not only should we love God, but that we should love our neighbor as ourselves.

And Jesus in verse 28 said, that's right.

You've answered correctly. So one of the teachings of Jesus through the mouth of the lawyer is that we should love our neighbor as ourselves, which is just

about as radical a thing as you can say. Love your neighbor as yourself is not about self-esteem. It's about the fact that every one of us, no exceptions in this room, does what you think

will make you most happy all things considered.

We don't walk out in front of trucks.

We don't drink poison. We don't jump off of buildings.

We put a roof over our head.

We clothe ourselves warmly in the Minnesota winters. We get enough sleep and exercise to function. We want good

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