Sermon Tone Analysis

Last week, we wrapped up our series through 1 John.

We were trying to answer the question, “Are You Sure?”, helping you see from God’s Word what it takes to have a relationship with Christ.

We said, though, that last week was also a turning point for us, because we took time to define what love looks like.

As we defined it from 1 John 4, we found out several important things:

First, that our love is based off God’s love for us.

We didn’t love first, he did.

However, we see that we should live out the same kind of love he shows us; a love that sends, sacrifices, and secures.

That understanding of love is going to drive us as we take a closer look at what we mean when we use our phrase here: “Our Goal Is Love”.

That phrase comes from 1 Timothy 1:5, which helps us as a church figure out who God has called us to be.

Based off what we see in this verse, we say that our goal is love, that we would love God and others in our family, church, community, and world.

Last week, we took the time to define love.

We said that love is a sacrificial response to and concern for another.

It isn’t simply romantic love, nor is it a spineless love that won’t confront.

Instead, it is based off the love God showed us on the cross, intentionally, actively giving His Son as a sacrifice for us.

This morning, we are beginning to apply that to specific areas.

Over the next few weeks, we will explain what we believe the Bible teaches us about living out that kind of sacrificial, intentional, active love.

We believe that as we live out this love in these five areas, we will grow into disciples of Christ; people who look like and act like Jesus, which is what God is calling us to become.

Last week, we said that our love is only a reflection of how God has loved us.

We don’t conjure or drum up love on our own; we respond back to Him and others the love that God has shown us.

If He is the source, and He has loved us first, then it only makes sense that our highest priority is to love Him in return.

Jesus articulates this in Mark 12:28-30.

Go ahead and open your Bibles to that passage, because it is the basis of what we are looking at today.

For those of you who are asking, “Wait, didn’t we just talk about this,” you are correct.

We did cover this passage back in February as we worked through Mark.

When we did, though, we only took a quick look at the two commands and didn’t take time to really dig deep into what God is asking of us.

By way of reminder, this is in the middle of a section where various Jewish leaders are asking Jesus questions to try to trip Him up.

They want Him to say something that they can use to get Him killed or to discredit Him in any way.

In the midst of that, another man asks a question, but his motivation is different.

Read it with me...

In Jesus’ response, He tells us that the first and greatest commandment, the one of highest importance, is to love God.

We will tackle this first commandment this morning and then spend the next five weeks covering the next.

Let’s not move too quickly through this, though, because there is a dangerous trap we can fall into.

If we aren’t careful, we are can assume that loving others is how we love God.

It is certainly a part of it, but notice that there are two distinct commands here.

You can fulfill the command to love God, even if you are stranded alone on a desert island with nothing but a volleyball to keep you company.

In the same way, it is possible to give your life in service for others without having a genuine love relationship with God.

That’s why we have spent so much time recently making sure you know that you are genuinely right with God based off his sacrifice for us, not off our good works.

Back to the command, Jesus tells us clearly to love God.

He is quoting from Deuteronomy 6:4-5, and every Jew would have been familiar with these words.

If you have been in church for any length of time, you have heard them yourself.

He begins by reminding us that there is only one true God.

The one true God is worthy of our complete and total love.

In fact, Jesus uses 4 different terms to describe how we should love God.

All these combine to give us this truth: Loving God takes everything we are and everything we have.

If you walk out with nothing else today, I want you to hear that truth: loving God takes everything we are and everything we have.

Read verse 30 again.

Jesus commanded us to love God with our hearts, our souls, our minds, and our strength.

How much of each of those are we supposed to use in loving God? “With all…with all…with all…with all…”

In case it wasn’t clear, God repeats it with each different part He mentions!

So how much of us are we supposed to employ in loving God?

All of us!

Dr. Paul Fink, one of the professors at Liberty to whom I am most indebted, used to say, “’All’ means ‘all’ and that’s all ‘all’ means.”

I must engage everything I have and everything I am in loving God!

Can you say that?

Can you say that your every desire this week was God-honoring; that at every chance, you communed with God; that you continually turned your thoughts toward Him, all your plans honored Him, every thought you entertained was pleasing to Him; and that everything you poured yourself into this week showed a love for Him?

No? Me either, yet that is the aim of our goal—to reflect back to God that same sacrificial, active, intentional love that He demonstrated towards us.

Let’s try to put a finer point on it.

As we do this, I want to make one note: Jesus’ emphasis here was that our love involves every part of our being.

He was not specifically highlighting that we were made up of three parts (body, soul, spirit) or four parts or anything of the sort.

In fact, Mark and Luke give us four different parts where Matthew and the original passage in Deuteronomy only give us three.

The emphasis of this passage is not on how we describe the different aspects of our being, but rather on using all of who we are to sacrificially, actively, and intentionally love God.

With that said, though, it may be helpful for us to use these four terms as a framework to help us highlight specific ways in which we love God with everything we have.

In our Core Values, we have spelled these out in somewhat greater detail, so let’s talk about how we see each of these aspects playing into loving God.

First, we love God with:

1) Our Hearts

Jesus first commands us to love God with all our hearts.

The heart is a little confusing for us, because for those of us in 21st century America, we look at the heart as the seat of the emotions.

That’s why we say that we have a broken heart after a failed relationship.

For Jews, the heart was actually something even more central than that.

The heart was the central core of who you are.

That’s why the writer of Proverbs would write:

The heart is your most central, core, part of your being.

The heart is where everything begins, including your desires and affections.

Because the heart is so foundational, we believe that loving God with our heart means something like this:

We desire God more than anything and are developing a greater dependence on Him.

To love God with all our heart is to have Him first and foremost in our every desire and design.

Loving God is growing to desire Him more than anything on earth, all the while recognizing our deep need for Him.

Let me ask you, genuinely, sincerely this morning: What is the most important thing in your life?

Don’t immediately give me a church answer; use the following questions to help you really think about what is most important.

They come from a book called Gospel by J.D. Greear to help you think through this:

What one thing do you hope most is in your future?

What is the one thing you most worry about losing?

If you could change one thing about yourself right now, what would it be?

What thing have you sacrificed most for?

Who is there in your life that you feel like you can’t forgive, and why?

When do you feel the most significant?

What triggers depression in you?

Where do you turn for comfort when things aren’t going well?

If you can’t say that God is what you desire more than anything else, that your relationship with Him is more important than anything, then you cannot say you love God with your whole heart.

As the old infomercials say, “But wait!

There’s more…”

Not only do we love God with all our heart, but we must also love Him with all…

2) Our Souls.

We love God also with all our souls.

Again, it is hard to make a clear distinction, but we often think of our souls as the immaterial part of us that communes with God.

You could, for the sake of our discussion today, understand your soul as the spiritual hub of your being.

We are called to love God with all our soul.

For our core values, we chose to describe loving God with our soul as:

We communicate with God regularly through prayer.

There is more to loving God with our soul than this, but at the very least, loving God with our spiritual self means that I will want to talk to Him!