How
to Love God
Mark
12: 28-34 November 1, 2009
If you could meet Jesus
face to face and ask him one question, what would you ask him? If you only had one question, what would it
be? I thought about that this week and
I’m still not sure what I would ask Jesus…
In our scripture this
morning we have the story of a Jewish Scribe, a teacher of the law that gets
his chance to ask Jesus a question…
The Bible says that he
arrives on the scene and finds Jesus debating with the Jewish leaders and he
was impressed how well Jesus was answering their questions… And he may have said to himself, “You know, I
have a theological question of my own.
I’m not here to trap Jesus like these other guys. I’m not here to cause any problems. I’m not part of a grand conspiracy. I’m really interested in what Jesus has to
say!” So he asks Jesus, “Of
all the commandments in the Bible, which is the most important?”
Jesus could have answered,
“What do you mean which is the most important?
They are ALL important… That’s
why they are in the Bible!” But instead,
Jesus answered the main point blank… He
said, “the most important one is this: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the
Lord is One.” Those
are the words that God gave to Moses to give to the Israelites during the
Exodus… And almost every Jewish person
in the history of the world knows that Bible verse which is Deut. 6: 4… And they are supposed to say it three times a
day. They say it once in the morning so
that the one true God will be on their mind when they get up… They say it again at lunch as a reminder
that the one true God is Lord over their daytime activities… And then they say it at night so that the one
true God will be the last person on their mind as they go to sleep….
The idea behind this
commandment is to remember that the Lord is our God every moment of our
lives! But sometimes we forget that
because we get so busy and so self absorbed…
We wake up, grab a cup of coffee, go to work, pick up the kids, come
home, make dinner, go to bed, and then get up the next day and do it all
again…
Sometimes the days of our
lives move at such a hectic pace that before you know it, the day is over and
we haven’t spent any time with God… and
before you know it the week is over and we haven’t spent any time with God…
Now if someone were to ask
us point blank if Jesus was the Lord of our lives, we would probably say “yes”
because it’s the Christian thing to say…
But would you have any proof?
Could you prove your answer by the way you live?
Friends, it not enough
just to say that we believe in the one true God… Jesus says that we are to love the one true
God…
How are we supposed to
love God? Jesus tells us! Look at verse 30, Jesus said, “You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and
with all your mind, and with all your strength…”
In the Bible, the heart is
the seat of our emotions and feelings… so when Jesus says to love God WITH ALL OF YOUR HEART,
he’s saying, “I want you to love Him with all of your affection, all of your
devotion, all of your emotions, and all your feelings…” In other words, we are to love God with a
passion…
Illus: I was watching a worship service on TV the
other night and the people were standing up and praising the Lord… Others had
their hands in the air with tears coming down their cheeks… And maybe you’re thinking, “Well, I hope our
church never gets to be like THAT! Those people are just too emotional.”
Where in the Bible does it
say that it’s a sin to get emotional? I
don’t think the people were too emotional, I think they were pouring their
hearts out to God… they were loving God with all of their hearts and as a result their
hearts were being moved by the Holy Spirit…
Illus: I’ve always found it interesting that the
same people who are so reserved and quite in church will go home and watch a
football game and start screaming, “Let’s go team, get um team, touch down!” If you
can get so passionate over a game that has no lasting eternal value, then
what’s wrong with getting passionate about your personal relationship with
God? What’s wrong with pouring out all
of your heart and all of your feelings to the Lord? What’s wrong with telling God how much you
love Him? What’s wrong with shedding a
few tears? We need to learn how to love
God with all of our heart, our emotions, our feelings…
But notice that Jesus said
that we are to love God with ALL
OF OUR SOUL… The word “soul” in Greek is “psu-che” (sy-key), it’s where we get our word “psychology.” It refers to the inner life of man, his
powers of choice and will and reason. So
loving God with all of your soul means making a deep down conscious commitment
to love the Lord with all that it within you…
To love God with all of
your soul is even a deeper love than loving God with all of your heart… Our heart love is our feelings, emotions, and
passion but our soul love is a love that is grounded in a deeply personal
decision that allows us to love God and to keep that relationship no matter
what your feelings are telling you to do…
Do you understand what I’m
saying? It’s not enough just to have
some emotional feelings about God… There
needs to be an inner resolve to keep loving the Lord and being faithful to Him
even when we don’t feel the passion…
I think that helps to
explain why some Christians fall away from the faith… They may have come to the Lord with all of
their heartfelt emotions, but underneath all those emotions, the one thing that
was missing was a deep down, soulful commitment to God… So when their feelings for God dissipated,
their love for God disappeared… They
thought they loved God but their thoughts changed when their feelings
changed…
And
that leads us to the next kind of love…
For Jesus said that you are to love God with ALL OF YOUR MIND… Now, we have to think about this one… that’s using your
mind…
How
do we love the Lord with all of our mind? We place God in our thoughts… We meditate on God… We think about God… We think Godly thoughts…
Illus: You know, that’s not
real easy… In the days of the circuit riders, a minister was out riding one
afternoon and came upon a man out working in his field…
The
minister called out, “Isn’t it a fine day?”
The man replied, “Its fine for you if all you have to do is ride around
on that horse thinking about God all day.”
“On
the contrary”, the minister answered, “thinking about God is one of the most
difficult things you can do…” And to
prove my point, I’ll give you this horse if you can think about God and nothing
else for one minute…”
The
ole farmer said, “You’re on,” and immediately he sat down and bowed his head in
silence… Thirty seconds later, he looked
up at the minister, and said, “Does that include the saddle?”
As
your pastor, you pay me to be the administrator of the church… I pray for the sick, I visit those who are in
the hospital, I plan programs, I deal with finances, I meet with various
committees, I even preach on Sunday mornings…
But perhaps, the most important thing you pay to do is to study…
We
are called to love God intelligently and intellectually… That is the business of theology… Theology is the theory of something… and we all have
theology because we all have thoughts and theories…
As
Christians we should all be studying God’s Word and shaping our theology about
God… Because our theology, our theories
become what we believe and what we stand for…
You've seen the commercials… "A mind is a terrible thing to
waste…" Jesus tells us to
love God with all our mind… A mind committed to Christ is a powerful
thing…
I believe that a mind
committed to God will become a mind into which God will pour His wisdom and
knowledge…
Do you want to "get
smart…"
Commit your mind to Christ…
Scientist say that we only use about 10% of our brain… Perhaps the other 90% is reserved and can
only be activated by God… when we learn to love Him with all
our mind…
And
lastly, Jesus said that we should love the Lord with ALL
OF OUR STRENGTH…
I
believe it’s not enough to love the Lord your God with all your heart – your
passion, and with all your soul – your psyche, and with all your mind – your
brains… but we
have to love Him with all of our strength – our muscles…
We
misunderstand love if we reduce it to a sentiment of the heart, a word for the
breath, or a thought from the mind… Love
is also something that we do… It’s a
word that causes us to flex our muscles and use our energy…
Illus: There is a young man who didn’t know this
when he first got married… He had to
learn it the hard way, he had to be taught how to
love…
He
always told his wife how much he loved her…
He felt it and he believed it, but he didn’t do anything about it… He left dirty clothes lying on the floor, but
when they would go to bed, he would kiss her and say, “Honey, I love you.” He never cooked a meal or helped his wife with
the dishes, but he would always say, Honey, I love you…” He never went grocery shopping or took his
wife out to dinner, but he would always say, “Honey, I love you.”
One
day his wife said, “You’ve got to stop saying that you love me…” He said, “But honey, I do love you, I feel
it, I say it, and I think it…” She said,
“No, if you loved me, you would do something about it… You would keep your part
of the relationship…” She was right,
because she knows the full shape of love…
Friends,
to love God with all your strength is to keep your part of the
relationship that God established…
We
are called to do the work of the kingdom that God has called us to do… Each day we face some task for God’s sake… and it takes our
strength and energy to perform the tasks…
And if we love God with all of our strength, the work that we do will be
a part of God’s work…
and as we work, we will delight in His ways and walk in His
love…
Christianity is not just
an inside thing… it
can't just be in the heart and in the head…
It has to be alive… It must be
lived out… This is what makes it the
most powerful force in the world… It has
to be released…
James tells us that we
ought to be "doers of the word…"
Loving God is not just an inside thing…
It's an outside thing as well…
It's to be taken into this
dark world and shared with everyone we meet…
Illus:
A story is told of an easterner that
walked into a western saloon… He was
amazed to find a dog sitting at a table playing cards
with three men… He asked the men, “Can
that dog really play cards?” One of the
men answered, “Yeah, but he ain’t much of a player. Whenever he gets a good hand he wags his
tail…”
When
it comes to our love for God, we need to let our tails wag a bit more
freely…
Eugene
Peterson in the Message paraphrased the greatest commandment by saying, “Love
the Lord your God with all your passion, your prayers, your intelligence, and
your energy…” Those are good words to
put on our lips… With those words, we
announce that our lives will be directed, not wasted…
Rather
than stumbling around each day and ending up nowhere, the Great Commandment
calls us to aim our hearts and our souls, our minds and our strength towards God…
May
we aim ourselves towards loving the God who first loved us… In doing so, we too will not be far from the
kingdom of God…