New Years 2024 Saying Yes to God: A Year of Wholehearted Love and Devotion
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Intro
Intro
I want to end this year and as we look forward to the next asking a question.
What does God want from you in the year to come?
What does he desire from each of us?
What does he expect?
The reality is that what God wants from us is our love and devotion.
He wants us to spend time with Him.
He wants us to live our lives with eternity in mind, not only for ourselves, but for those around us.
To live like every moment matters.
We can look around us and see all sorts of waste in our world today.
If you work a government job, you certainly know this.
Some of us have talked about it.
Instead of being fiscally responsible there is a use it or loose it mentality and if you don’t use it likely won’t be there next year when you actually need it.
Waste is generally not something we enjoy.
When it comes to food, we think there are truly hungry people that could use that.
Who has heard the - there are starving children in Africa bit?
But what about our lives?
The most precious thing we have is life.
We waste our lives by wasting our time, because how we spend our time is how we spend our lives.
What if you had $1,440 in the bank that you had to spend every day?
None of it could be carried over to the next day.
You could easily spend that money frivolously.
It would not be easy to use that money every single day wisely!
The fact is, each of us does have 1,440 minutes every day to use for some purpose.
Over the next year, assuming each of us lives a full year, we will have 8760 hours to use.
If you sleep 7 hours per day that takes off 2555. 6205
Take off another 1000 for making and eating meals. 5205
Within that 5205 hours there is also work and commuting.
Of course you can serve the Lord through your work, you really ought to be after all God is the one who has placed you there.
If you figure an 8 hour work day, that leaves 2285 hours.
Outside of all of that, you have 2285 hours or less over the next year to use.
How will you use those hours that God has entrusted to you?
Will you use them with eternity in mind?
I am not saying you can’t have hobbies or do fun things.
Can those things also have a kingdom impact?
It matters because we only have so much time, and it continues to get shorter with each year we live.
My grandmother has been talking recently about death and her funeral, not that she is imminently dying, but that she wants to be prepared.
Realistically it is something that each of us should think about, especially as we increase in age.
But none of us knows the time or place.
Perhaps you heard the motto -
“Only one life, ’twill soon be past; only what’s done for Christ will last.”
That is not to say that every waking minute must be used for “spiritual” purposes.
The Lord knows that we all have to go shopping, fix meals, clean house, mow lawns, maintain cars, and pay bills.
We all need a certain amount of “down” time.
Even in those tasks though we can be open to the Lord’s leading.
All that aside, we need to consider using our time in ways that further God’s purposes.
Since Jesus gave Himself on the cross to redeem us from this evil world, it would be an utter tragedy to waste our lives.
The help us not waste our time in the new year and see what God truly wants of each of us in the new year I want to turn to a story in the book of Mark.
And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And 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.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.
This is likely a familiar passage for many of us.
In the context of this chapter, we see Jesus being questioned by some different groups of people.
He was asked about paying taxes to Caesar, then asked about the resurrection.
Now the question comes about which commandment is the greatest commandment.
Mark The Greatest Commandment (12:28–34)
The question assumes a distinction among the various commands found in God’s law. Later rabbinic tradition gave the total number of commandments as 613, of which 248 were positive commands and 365 prohibitions. Some were considered to be lighter (smaller) and some weightier (greater).
The religious leaders debated which of these 613 commandments was most important.
Which one was the core?
Is it more important not to steal?
Or is it more important not to murder?
Which commandment, if you get it right, means that you have pretty much everything else right—
that you're living in the will of God and doing what pleases him?
Mark The Greatest Commandment (12:28–34)
“What is the fundamental premise of the law on which all the individual commands depend?”
Jesus reply comes from what is known as the Shema.
Shema is the Hebrew imperative “to hear.”
The Shema is found
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
The Lexham Bible Dictionary The New Testament
The Shema summarizes the heart of God’s covenant with His people. Yahweh alone is Lord, and covenantal faithfulness to Him involves every part of one’s being: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength”
Jesus answers him immediately: "The most important command is this: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength."
The Lexham Bible Dictionary “With All Your Mind”
Jesus adds the phrase “and with all your mind” to the list of how one should love God
This adds clarification to the original intention that God is to be loved with all of one’s being.
We all understand that:
The most important command is to love God with everything you've got.
Don't hold anything back.
Your entire life should be a gift of love to God.
The Lexham Bible Dictionary “With All Your Mind”
believers should not hold anything back from devotion to the Lord God as ruler of their lives.
Then, Jesus says there's a second most important command.
It's closely related to the first: "Love your neighbor as yourself."
This statement is also found in the OT.
You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.
Some suggest that these two commands are in essence a summary of the 10 commandments and in essence they are.
If you keep these two, you will keep the 10.
With this background and information I want to circle back
Do you know what God wants from you?
Do you want to know what God wants from you—
what he wants more than anything else?
Love.
These statements made can be summed up for us today as simply love God, and love others.
It all comes down to love.
That's what God cares about.
That's what he thinks is central.
That's what he commands us to do.
That is what is central to God sending His son.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
God loves His children with a love greater than we can ever understand.
His desire then is for us to reciprocate that love and pass it on to others.
The two most important commands go together, like your right hand and your left hand.
When you love God and love other people, you've just offered up the one sacrifice that God finds pleasing.
What God really wants from each of us is to truly love Him and love others.
That's good news and bad news.
The good news is, what God asks of us is equal opportunity.
It's something anyone can do, no matter how much education you have,
no matter how much money you have,
no matter what you look like, or what you've gone through.
We can all please God, because we can all love him and love other people.
The bad news is though, we often don’t do it.
That is a major reason why we have have strife in our relationships.
We most often love ourselves far more than we love God and those around us.
God commands us to love Him and love others, and Jesus calls us to do it,
but we know within ourselves to begin with that we don't really love God with all our heart.
Instead, we love him with some of our heart and a little bit of our soul and a fraction of our mind and a portion of our strength.
The rest we keep for ourselves.
The reality is, we have these pockets of rebellion in our hearts where we resist God and do not surrender to him in love.
We love him to some extent, but we keep him out of those certain areas.
Maybe for you, it's your kids.
God can have every part of you, but if anything happens to your kids,
God has stepped over a line, and you're not sure you can keep following him.
Consider money.
That's been a hard one for me.
Maybe you can relate to this cartoon.
It’s hard to love God with all my wallet.
The Lord has always been faithful to provide for my needs though.
Key word there being needs, not wants.
It can still be a struggle though.
I hate that in me.
Why do I find it so hard to do what Jesus said and love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength in all areas of my life?
Every week, it's only simple honesty for you and me to confess to God, "We have not loved you with our whole hearts."
But I want to love God with my whole heart.
Don't you?
The question is, "How?"
How do I increase my devotion to God from, say, 45 percent of my heart to 65 percent?
To 95 percent?
What if you said yes to God, instead of, I can’t do that, or maybe later.
What if over the course of the year to come, you made it point to say yes to God.
I know it will be difficult.
Because to begin with we must each learn “what am I saying yes to?”
To begin with, you have to take the time to learn and know what God is asking.
To hear that still small voice directing you.
To know the answer to that question, you have to listen to God.
That doesn't come easy for us, because each of us is so busy.
So distracted, and so fatigued that each of us find it nearly impossible to hear God.
You end up with nothing to say "yes" to.
We must schedule the time to slow down and really listen to God.
A lot of the time when we do this though, the first thing we begin to hear is not God, but our own thoughts.
Often condemnation at first.
Thinking of how we have screwed up, made mistakes.
Those are just our own thoughts though playing inside our heads.
Maybe that's what you heard from your parents or what you tell yourself, but that's not God.
What God really has to say to you though is I love you.
I care for you.
I want to be with you.
When God talks to you, he talks to you in love.
Even when he corrects you—which he will—he does it in love.
With your will, open up and say,
"Yes, God, I hear you and I receive that, and I accept that. I choose not to give in to my natural self-hatred or my self-absorption."
When you say "yes" to God's love for you, you'll find it a lot easier to give that love back to Him, and to do the second commandment,
"Love your neighbor as yourself."
What you've been experiencing from God, you start to pass on to others.
God fills us with his Spirit and his love, and we surprise ourselves, because we find ourselves loving people in a way we couldn't before.
God's forgiven your junk, so you can forgive someone else's.
God's been patient when you've been slow to grow up,
so you can be patient with that person in your family or your church or your job who's immature and "stuck."
When you say yes to God, He works in you, and you end up loving your neighbor also.
Let's make this personal.
What is God saying to you?
Especially in relation to loving others.
What is he asking of you?
For some of you, your pulse is pounding right now.
You know exactly what God has been asking of you,
and you don't know if you can say "yes."
Tell him, "Yes."
Love him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Give him everything you've got, because when you say "yes" to God, you grow in love for him, and you grow in love for neighbor.
For some, you may feel complacent.
Thinking, I say yes to God all the time.
But are you really?
Are you trying to justify yourself like the lawyer in the parable of the good Samaritan asking the question
Who is my neighbor?
Are you holding your wallet out of the water.
God you can have every part of my life but ________ you fill in the blank.
Jesus response to the scribe in Mark 12 showed that this man was on the right track, but not quite there yet.
And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.
Mark The Greatest Commandment (12:28–34)
Love is our inner commitment to God that is expressed in all our conduct and relationships. Those who do not show love to others can hardly claim to love God
We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
Mark (The Greatest Commandment (12:28–34))
The statement that no other command is greater than these two can mean that the other commands simply spell out different ways in which to apply these two primary ones.
Or it may be more radical: These are the only two commands that matter.
Our love for God is a response to God’s love for us.
It is impossible to love some inanimate thing with all our heart.
We can however give our whole life to a personal God who has first loved us in such dramatic fashion as to send His beloved son to give his life for us.
God does not love only certain portions of you.
He loves your whole person.
So we are to love God with our whole selves.
Those who present to God a few moments worship in church once a week
while ignoring God in the rest of life—at work, at home, at play—
will suffer from a religious schizophrenia.
Those who try to straddle the fence by allotting God only token love
while maintaining a close friendship with the world are doomed to be frustrated in this world
and doomed in the world to come.
With God, it is all or nothing.
Love cannot be tithed like money.
Few can honestly sing “All to Jesus I Surrender,” but God requires nothing less.
Again I ask each of this year, will you say yes to God?
None of us will do it perfectly.
There was only one perfect man who did.
But will you make the effort to try?