The Great Commandment
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Intro
Intro
In Eastern Europe and parts of Asia there is a colorful bird in the magpie family that is known as the Pica Bird. Like most magpies, Pica’s are incredibly attracted to shiny objects, but what sets them apart from other birds is their voracious and indiscriminate appetite. The Pica is the opposite of picky, they eat anything and everything, and have often been observed trying to eat things of no nutritional value.
When humans suffer from significant mineral deficiencies, they occasionally will crave weird and even gross things with little to no nutritional value, such as dirt. Scientists and physicians call this phenomena “Pica Syndrome.” Now don’t get me wrong, dirt has its attractions as a food—it is cheaper then even rice and beans, and I have it on good authority that it has a rich earthy flavor—but few of us would find dirt desirable. Scientist have labeled Pica as an eating disorder.
When it comes to the desires of our hearts, we live in a sin cursed world of disordered affections, which is to say we live in a land of idols and idolatry. We delight in many unworthy things of insignificant worth and care little for Him that is the light of the cosmos. To quote C.S. Lewis, we are “like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
This morning I am convinced that we love a great many superficial things deeply, and we love the One great thing superficially. In Deuteronomy chapter 6 we find the great discourse known as the Shema, whose opening words would be memorized by every Israelite child and that serve as the call to worship at orthodox Jewish services to this day.
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
Deuteronomy 6:
In Mark chapter 12, Jesus establishes this command to love God with our whole being as the great and foremost commandment of the law. It is the truth worth orienting of the whole of our lives around. May we study it this morning, convicted of the idols of our hearts, and encouraged and determined to love God with our whole being.
Context:
Context:
Religious leaders have been endeavoring to trick Jesus—they wanted to kill him, but were afraid of the people
So they try to trick Jesus in regard to taxes (vs. 15)
Then the Sadducees try to stump Jesus regarding the resurrection (vs. 18)
Now finally a scribe (almost certainly a Pharisee) comes to ask Jesus
but his question and his response to Jesus seems to reveal he is perhaps more interested in the truth then his companions.
His question is one that seemed to be a hot-button topic among the religious leaders, according to much of the rabbinic writing: what is the foremost commandment?
Jesus’s reply beautifully ties together and , to describe the foundation of all the law and the prophets
This morning we will focus on the foremost commandment, or the “Great Commandment”
this is due to the constraint of time
and we should note that if one loves God with your whole being, one will unfailing love those in the image of God
in fact, in his first epistle the Apostle John makes loving ones brother or neighbor the litmus test for the sincerity of one’s love for God.
With All Thy Heart
With All Thy Heart
In Scripture the heart serves to describe the seat of our affections and desires.
Our motivations, actions, our intentions are shaped in the heart
Here’s the problem: as fallen, sinful people, God’s design for our lives is not reflected in the desires of our hearts!
Our hearts are desperately wicked!
“The heart is deceitful above all things,
And desperately wicked;
Who can know it?
James 1:13:
Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.
as sinners we are a people of deadly desires! our hearts are full of soul-destroying passions!
Yet we live in a “Jack Sparrow” culture
Doctor of Psychology Nikki Martinez wrote a story for the Huffington Post, entitled: 10 Reasons to Follow Your Heart. Here a few reasons she gave
Reasons to follow our heart:
“When you follow your heart, you cease having regrets.”
How untrue this is—David described his guilt over his sin with Bathsheba as like the process of wasting away, groaning int he summers withering heat.
“Ensure that you are on the right and true path for yourself.”
“Learn to love yourself.”
Note that this is the exact opposite of what Jesus is saying
“Listen to your heart—it knows your true desires”
Well that is exactly the problem, isn’t it?
But just suppose that your heart and my heart don’t desire the same thing...
What happens in a society that embraces relativism, when the desires of our now morally autonomous hearts oppose one another?
What happens when we are told to just follow our hearts, but the desires of my heart conflict or are obstructed by the desires of your heart?
You end up living in a world!
For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another.
The sinful desires of our heart brings forth death, as James says, destroying firstly our relationship with our Creator, and consequently with our brother man made in God’s image.
the story of Cain and Abel is the story of sin saturated hearts played out in our world for thousands of years!
Consider the prescient lyrics from the 1960’s era band, King Crimson
“Knowledge is a deadly friend
When no one sets the rules.
The fate of all mankind I see
Is in the hands of fools.
The wall on which the prophets wrote
Is cracking at its seam.
Upon the instruments of death
The sunlight brightly gleams.
Who will lay the laurel wreath
As the silence drowns the screams?”
How then do we go from those whose hearts are filled with malice and envy, who are hateful and hate one another to the sort of people who can love God with all their heart?
God has transformed our hearts—from hearts of stone to hearts of flesh (Ez. 36:26)
this love is a responsive love—it is a responsive love because...
> because of His love for us
-the incomparable mystery that God set his affection on us!
-his love animates us to find our joy and delight in him!
> because of His saving us
-”All praise to Him whose love is seen in Christ the Son, the servant King, who left behind His glorious throne to pay the ransom for His own. All praise to Him who humbly came to bear our sorrow, sin, and shame, who lived to die, who died to rise, the all-sufficient sacrifice.”
> because of His glorious person
-consider that there is no person so profoundly glorious, so absolutely worthy of our love and devotion simply for the awesomeness of their Being
—>We therefore have new-God-oriented desires animated by our love for Him that replaces the selfish and sinful passions of our hearts— “the expulsive power of a new affection.” (Scottish preacher Thomas Chalmers)
we therefore seek to love God with all our hearts.
there is no cold, disinterested religiosity here
to speak of the affections of the heart is to speak of the realm of desires and delights
Delight yourself also in the Lord,
And He shall give you the desires of your heart.
Application:
The Danger of Apathy
Only 32% of protestants regularly read their bible daily
Evangelical church attendance is on a startling decline
the program of the church is increasingly secular, her aims are increasingly humanitarian, her gospel increasingly social. Correspondingly her activity is less and less evangelistic, her priority less and less discipleship, her delight less and less the savoring and proclaiming the glory of God.
And we speak of the ills of the church, but the church is comprised of her members, so we must also ask ourselves how it is that we delight so little in God, how little we love to do His will, to read His Word, to be with His people, to sing His praise!
Do we come into His house of worship with singing and praise flowing out of joyful hearts, or do our lips move but our minds wander? Is our love of God evinced in a love of neighbor amongst our coworkers. When we read the bible, if we read the bible, do our thoughts linger on the beauty of God we discovered there throughout our day? Do we spend time in communion with God in prayer, and is that time precious and protected against the assault of our business? Or are we merely going motions as a result of thoughtless, heartless, conditioned practice?
We ask where our cultural morality has gone—shouldn’t we instead be asking where is the fire in our witness, the passion in our worship, the fervency in our prayers?
Apathy is a deadly malady for the Christian whose heart is to be consumed with the love and white-hot worship of God. Our fire is at the risk of going out, the flame of our affection grows dim and weak.
We are in danger of being like the church of Laodicea—lukewarm. God must be our delight and treasure!
“Riches I head not, nor man’s empty praise; thou mine inheritance, now and always; Thou and Thou only, first in my heart; O king of heaven, my treasure thou art.”
“Riches I head not, nor man’s empty praise; thou mine inheritance, now and always; Thou and Thou only, first in my heart; O king of heaven, my treasure thou art.”
The Danger of Emotionalism
Our passionate love for God must be accompanied with a knowledge of God
we are to love God not only in passionate spirit, but also in truth
A love and a worship of God other than who He is is nothing but simple idolatry
Moreover, God desired to be approached and worshiped in a certain way
See Nadab and Abihu
So we are to love God with our hearts.
And with how much of our hearts are we to love God?
With All Thy Soul
With All Thy Soul
Mankind is differentiated from the rest of creation in several ways
imago dei, rationality, will, conscience, etc
one of the great distinctions is that man is a spiritual being, he has a soul!
The soul of man is designed by God to recognize the glory of God and respond in worship
in much the way the angels of God cry in worship “Holy Holy Holy!”
Many in the history of mankind have remarked on a deep, unfulfilled, unsatisfied longing that goes beyond the superficial desires of the heart and the activity of the mind.
Theories in psychology and psychiatry have developed to attempt to find the source of that longing, but failed because they allow only a naturalistic framework, they do not allow for a spiritual reality.
Our unreconciled longing in this world reveals our need to see, savor, and magnify our Creator!
As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So pants my soul for You, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?
“Inconsolable human longing is the evidence that we were made for God’s glory.” -John Piper
consider the rise of “atheist churches” known as Sunday Assemblies
more than 55 worldwide
“So where do these atheist churches belong in this spectrum? Obviously they appeal to people whose worldviews reject the supernatural. But in their own way they are (as they themselves say) doing what all religious communities do, but simply without gods and the supernatural.” -The Economist, May 2018
when asked if these atheist churches could be described as a form of religion, the founder of the Seattle branch firmly answered “yes.”
Or consider Buddhism, a region with nearly 488 million adherence, but one without an actual deity!
I have often remarked that Buddhism is a religious experience for spiritually minded atheists
and so it is of little surprise that as America and the West grow increasingly secular and godless, that there has been a corresponding explosion of popularity of this godless religion, Buddhism, here in the West!
We are designed to be loved by God and to love God in return, and that need exists at the level of the soul!
Application
We must stop placing our love on unworthy objects.
C.S. Lewis quote (“The books and the music…”)
O God, You are my God;
Early will I seek You;
My soul thirsts for You;
My flesh longs for You
In a dry and thirsty land
Where there is no water.
So I have looked for You in the sanctuary,
To see Your power and Your glory.
Because Your lovingkindness is better than life,
My lips shall praise You.
Thus I will bless You while I live;
I will lift up my hands in Your name.
My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness,
And my mouth shall praise You with joyful lips.
-Can we truly sing “all that thrills my soul is Jesus”
And with how much of our soul are we to love God?
With All Thy Mind
With All Thy Mind
“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
“It is impossible to keep our moral practices sound and our inward attitudes right while our idea of God is erroneous or inadequate. If we would bring back spiritual power to our our lives, we must begin to think of God more nearly as He is.” A.W. Tozer
impossible to keep our moral practices sound and our inward attitudes right while our idea of
God is erroneous or inadequate. If we would bring back spiritual power to our our lives, we must
Our view of God is far, far too small!
begin to think of God more nearly as He is.”
Why is it that God has given us such wonderful abilities of the mind? Powers of thought and reason, gifts of wisdom and discernment, abilities to analyze and make moral choices?
Why is it that God has declared Himself specially through the self-disclosure, the self-revelation of His Word?
is it not because God desires to be known and loved by us in a way that necessitates the use of our minds?
in fact Paul lays out in that the proof of God’s eternal power and divine nature has been both seen and understood by all of mankind, so that there is no excuse for unbelief.
and so God’s revelation of Himself to us, our knowledge of God, or love for God, our worship of God, depends upon the right use of our minds.
this, by the way, is part of the danger that is represented in movements like that of contemplative prayer, that endeavors to “clear the mind” in order to enter into purer communion with God
church, we don’t commune with God apart from knowing Him, and we don’t know him without the exercise of the minds he has given us.
Our hearts and souls do not function apart from the operation of our minds any more than the inverse is true.
When we detach our believing from our thinking, whether it be in worship, in our workplace, in our homes, in the arts, in the sciences, in the marketplace of ideas, that does not bring honor to God.
“The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” -Mark Noll, evangelical, Prof. and church historian
It seems the question ought to be obvious: how do we love God with all our minds if we don’t use them, and use them for His glory?
Application
How do we love God with our minds?
We seek to know Him truly, and delight in Him
“Even if we cannot know God fully, we must strive to know him truly.” -Kevin DeYoung
Blessed is the man
Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stands in the path of sinners,
Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
“Thou my best thought, by day or by night; Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.”
Here is the glory
2. We seek to be transformed in our minds
the gospel is a gospel of transformative power
do you realize the constraining effects of sin upon the operation of your mind before the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit’s rebirth in your life?
our bondage to sin was not limited to the desires of our hearts but also permeated fully into the scope of our minds.
and so our earthly “wisdom” prevented us from knowing God and glorying in him.
But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
1 Corinthians
However, by God’s grace He has called us out of the darkness of our futile minds into the radiant light of His glory in the person of Jesus Christ
For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
2 Corithians 4:6
and what is the impact of this revelation? That we, through the use of our spiritual minds in the viewing of Christ in the scriptures are being transformed into that same image, from one degree of glory to another! And so the gospel is a gospel of transformative power.
Therefore, if we would love God with all our minds, we will take particular care to heed Paul’s warning to avoid falling back into our old ways of thinking, and be continually “transformed by the renewing of our minds.”
A Danger: Over-Intellectualism
-loving God with our minds means that we will love him with our hearts
-anything less, and we love the idea of God but not God himself.
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
And with how much of our mind are we to love God?
With All Thy Strength
With All Thy Strength
-It is easy to profess a love for God when we are living a comfortable life, when His blessing is most evident to us, when His presence is most felt
-But what happens when the trial comes, when our lives are thrown into chaos or the depths of sorrow?
-It is of little good to claim we love God with our whole being if that love is nothing but a transient affection that is true when the sun is shining but dissipates when the storm rolls in.
-It was easy for the Israelites to love God when their firstborns were spared, when the Egyptians released them and gave them their prized possessions, when they marched forth from Egypt in freedom, following the pillar of fire.
-But the tenacity of their love was tested, when Pharoah hardened his heart and sent his army after them, and when their was no food in the wilderness, when the water supply ran out, when Moses had been gone up that mountain quite a long time, when the spies reported their were giants in the land of promise.
The purity, the veracity, the integrity of love is demonstrated under strain, under tension
this is true of human relationships
you find out who your friends are when your world caves in
you discover the commitment of love in your marriage not on the honeymoon but in the crises
A “love” that does not inspire the devotion of our whole being, and that does not remain steadfast is not worthy to be called love, and it is profoundly unworthy of God.
And with how much of our strength are we to love God?
>Let us not deceive ourselves into believing that our religious activity can replace a zealous and consuming love for God. Even the scribe recognized that was not possible.
When we begin to understand the depth of God’s great love for us, when we consider the awful sacrifice by which He saves us, when we see and savor the glory of God—then we can truly proclaim “High King of Heaven, my treasure thou art.
>Let us not hold tightly onto the idols of our hearts, nor deceive ourselves into believing we may tolerate competitors with God in our affections. In the OT God compares his relationship with His covenant people Israel like that of a marriage, and in the NT the relationship between Christ and his church is depicted as that of a bride and bridegroom. In that context idolatry is often figuratively portrayed as adultery in Scripture.
And so even as in marriage we pledge to love our spouse while forsaking all others, so also God must have the comprehensive right to the whole of our affections in the whole of our being. And if you are going through a season in which you feel the discipline of the Lord or you have been convicted by His Word this morning, do not resent it. For the discipline of the Lord is His destruction of our idols, the correction of the unfaithfulness of those He loves.
“When all thy mercies, O my God, my rising soul surveys, transported with the view, I’m lost, in wonder, love, and praise.”