Love God Mark 12:30

Introduction

When we think about the church we know the mission of the church is the great commission.

The Church is God’s mouthpiece in this day to tell the good news of the gospel to a lost and dying world.

I think it is important to define our purpose as a church as well and over the next few weeks we are going to define that purpose by using three phrases.

Tonight we will look at the first one, which is loving God. Out of our love for God comes the next two which are growing together and reaching others.

Loving God properly requires an all out kind of love which holds nothing back!

A personal command

And thou shalt

Thou is a personal pronoun, so when Jesus was giving this answer to the scribe it was a personal command to him, but it is a command to every person.

This is a commandment not a suggestion. It is a commandment not just for pastors or church members, but rather for every living person on the earth.

This wasn’t a new commandment that Jesus made up here, the scribe would have read this same commandment twice daily; once in the morning and once in the evening.

Deuteronomy 6:4–9 “4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: 5 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. 6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: 7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. 8 And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. 9 And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.”

God has given every one of us this commandment individually and to be a thriving member of a New Testament Church we must all take this commandment literally and love him individually.

A Precise command

Love

While we can never love God the way He loves us, we can love him with every fiber of our being

The type of love described here is agape love, the highest form of love.

The Lord

The Lord here shows God as our master.

We are subject to our masters commands and the first commandment can be summed up like this Love the Lord thy God.

Thy God

an important truth to remember is the writers of the New Testament wrote as though we had an understanding of the Old Testament.

When God was mentioned here to the scribe he would think of God as creator, sustainer and ruler of the world.

Because of who God is he deserves our love

Deuteronomy 10:12–13 “12 And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, 13 To keep the commandments of the Lord, and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good?”

Deuteronomy 30:6 “6 And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.”

Notice this command doesn’t leave any grey area in it, we are commanded to love the Lord our God. Out of that love we will love our neighbor, but we will never love our neighbor properly if we do not love God fervently.

An All-encompassing command

With all thy heart

Loving God begins in the heart

The heart can be described as the core of our emotions and desires

When we love God with all our heart all of our desires line up with His desires for our lives

Psalm 27:4 “4 One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.”

With all thy soul

Our soul is our entire being, our essence

Jesus could have stopped there. We should love God with all of our desires and our entire being, but he continued to emphasize the Love that we should have for God

With all our Mind

We should love God with our intellect, thoughts and understanding

Paul put it this way in Philippians

Philippians 2:5–8 “5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: 7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: 8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”

A.W Tozer What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

We should be like the Psalmest and pray that our thoughts are acceptable in the sight of God

Psalm 19:14 “14 Let the words of my mouth, And the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.”

With all our strength

Our Physical energy and actions

This is the first commandment

This commandment sums up the first 4 commandments given in Exodus 20:1-11

Exodus 20:1–11 KJV 1900

1 And God spake all these words, saying, 2 I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: 5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; 6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. 7 Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. 8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: 10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Practical ways we love God

We obey His commandments

1 John 5:2–3 “2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.”

We Spend time in Bible reading and Prayer

We have to be careful that we don’t just do this to check a box, but rather to spend time with God

We give

2 Corinthians 9:6–7 “6 But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. 7 Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.”

We not only give money, but our time and talents as well

We worship

We worship God both privately and corporately

We witness

We show our love for God, by telling of his love to others

Conclusion

Loving God begins in the heart, with a personal relationship with Him. As we gather and participate in Christ-honoring worship services and respond to the preaching of God’s Word, this love flourishes into every other part of our being.