Learning To Love

Introduction 38

Good morning and happy early Labor Day! Hopefully you’ve got some plans to grill something or just be outside tomorrow, or maybe even go out in a boat if that’s your style. If this is your first time here with us today, welcome, my name’s Taylor- I’m one of the pastors here and I get the incredible honor of serving alongside the first-class team we have here at Faith.

Today I want to share with you something that I believe the Lord’s been laying on my heart recently. If you have a bible with you this morning, go ahead and turn to Mark 12, if you don’t have one, we’ll have it up on the screens for you to follow along as we read together.

There have been so many times in my life where the Lord has confirmed something through the people around me, through a feeling I have towards something, or just something that He whispers to my heart and today: I know that this a word that He has for you today.

This past Monday night, we hosted a young adult event at our Summerville campus called Together Night. It was so incredible, but as the pastor who was sharing that night began to speak, the Lord began to lead him into sharing a little bit of what I want to share with you today. And I said: Lord- what are doing?

Fast forward to this past Tuesday, I was driving up to Columbia for District Council- that’s an event that happens a couple times a year and it’s where all of the pastors from each of the churches in our state come together and worship, pray, and seek the Lord. During the main message that our Superintendent delivered, the Lord began to speak through him on would you believe the same thing that I want to bring before you today. Again: Lord what are you doing?

So I hope you came ready this morning to receive from Him.

Let’s read Mark 12 together starting with verse 28…

Scripture 35 /35

Mark 12:28-34

Mark 12:28–34 ESV

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.

I want to talk with you for a few moments this morning on a message I’ve titled, Learning to Love. There’s a quote that I heard recently and it’s by John Piper, so you know it’s going to be good. He says: “We can grow a church without God, but we can’t help people love God, without God.”

I want to invite the Lord to help us understand these concepts this morning. Let’s pray over God’s word this morning.

Introduce Tension 33 /34

Have you ever had a moment in your life when it felt like somebody was trying to trap you in an argument? I have to be honest: I am a terrible arguer, but I know I need to win, right! That’s the point of arguing. It’s for sure not to help someone else see your perspective or worse yet- gain some kind of understanding on your end. You gotta go for the jugular. This keeps coming up in my relationship with my wife.

Now, I have to be honest with you: when my wife and I have those conversations- we won’t call them fights, we’re Christians after all, right- we’ll go back and forth like crazy. I’ll say something and she’ll have an irritatingly reasonable response, to which I’ll shoot back something that may not even make sense, remember: I’m just trying to win in that moment, but before I can finish what I was saying, you won’t believe this, but she’s already given her response to that and I can’t stand it! But so many times, I’ll try this strategy: I try to trap her.

What I am not trying to say here is that I’m about to give you the strategy for how to have a Christ-honoring marriage- we’ll save that for another day. But often times, what I find myself doing is wording things in such a way that I basically dictate how she has to respond to what I say. Kind of lead her into the response. My tone of voice can do this, my body language- all of it can be used in my attempts to trap her into responding the way that I want her to- in order to inevitable set me up to win the argument.

Context Of Passage 30 /30

This is exactly where we pick up in our text this morning. If you were with us last Sunday, Pastor Tyler introduced us to the East Gate- the gate in which Jesus rode into the city of Jerusalem through, which later in the end of days when Jesus comes again- Ezekiel 44 prophecies that Jesus will return through that same gate.

But here is where we see the initial entrance occur. In Mark 11, we see Jesus’ entrance into the city to the soundtrack of the shouts of the people. They were shouting hosanna- that means highest praise- and they were acknowledging the messiahship of the Lord.

And after Jesus rode into the city, he not only caught the attention of the masses, but as a jewish man- he caught the attention of the chief priests, scribes, and elders. Here’s the script we see in Mark 11:

Religious leaders: “By what authority are you saying and doing these things?”

Jesus: Let me ask you this: when people were baptized by John was it from heaven or from men?

Religious Leaders: We see what you’re doing here. *turns in a huddle* If we say heaven, he’ll say then why don’t you believe in my authority? But if we say from men, the people will be mad at us since they saw John as a prophet. *turns back to Jesus* We say that we do not know.

Jesus: Ok then. Neither will I tell you the authority I do these things.

By the time we get to Mark 12- which by the way is the same conversation continued, remember, the chapter and verses in our bibles weren’t added until much later- Jesus is talking to the religious leaders again and throughout the next few exchanges they had- it became apparent that the religious leaders were trying to trap him in an argument.

By verse 28, things are getting pretty good. Mark writes that a scribe comes up and he heard them disputing so he proposed a question to Jesus. Scribes are the professional teachers of the law during this time. Now: let me point this out, and I hope I’m not taking too much liberty with this, but when we see this scribe ask a question, we aren’t told his motive. On one hand, he could have been trying to trap Jesus and expose him in front of the crowd, but what if behind what we assume was an ill-intended statement, he was actually trying to honestly ask the Lord what was on his heart?

You know, we all have those people in our lives that are just too much, right? Karen in the cubicle next door? Oh yeah: she’s just the worst. That guy that always throws my two liter down the little conveyer belt at the grocery store and always shakes it up and makes it flat so I can never enjoy and and when I finally open it at the house it just blows up all over the kitchen? Maybe that one’s just me.

But maybe, just for a moment, I can encourage you to slow down and give what we love talking about when it pertains to us- the benefit of the doubt to those around us so that we might be able to be slow to anger and show somebody the love of Jesus? That’s a message for anther day- we gotta keep moving.

So this scribe comes over to where Jesus is talking with the religious leaders and the crowd is around, and he asks this question: Which commandment is the most important one of all? And Jesus responds like this, he says: “The most important is that the Lord is God, and you shall love Him with all of your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength.

But how do we do that? It’s one thing to say that I want to love God with every part of my being, but what does that look like? How can I do this? And what happens when I love him with all that I am? I want to help you answer those questions this morning because I believe it’s so important to your walk with the Lord.

Did you know that we are multidimensional beings? God created us with four distinct parts that each have to freedom in order to love God with all we are.

So today I want to walk us through those four parts and help you gain a little better understanding of them so that we can do that: love God with every part of our being. The first part is…

1. Heart (spirit)

I think it’s crucial that we start here because unless we get things right internally, we can never hope to have things all in alignment on the outside. It’s an internal thing before it’s ever an external thing.

So what are we talking about when we say heart? We’re talking about your spirit. I’m talking about your seat of motivation. In other words, if an idea comes to you, you can dismiss it. On the other hand, if you continue to let that thought hang around, then the figurative heart gets involved and you will act on the thought. Without knowledge of right or wrong the figurative heart- or your spirit- can lead you into acting in a way which is displeasing to God. The Bible says that the heart is deceitful above all things and treacherous.

So how can we love God with all of our heart if it’s treacherous- you ready? We can’t. Nothing that we can do can fix our hearts and tune in so that it can love God. In Genesis chapter 3, we read about the fall of man. This is where Adam and Eve- the first man and woman are in the garden of Eden- sin and eat what God told them not to. The consequences of this brought about something called Original Sin- and you and I, and everybody else walking on planet earth are born into it.

So you say, well that great: what do we do now? If we want to love God with all of our heart or our soul: we have to go to Romans 10. Verse 9 says “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart- or in others words the core seat of your motivations- that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Saved? Saved from what? Romans goes on to tell us that the wages of sin, the paycheck of sin that we rightly earn by living in rebellion to God is death. Often times it’s not like you just drop when you tell a lie, but the longer you allow that sin to remain in your life, things begin to grow and take root and sooner or later- that sin when it is fully grown will lead to death in your relationships, death in your character, and ultimately death in your spiritual life.

But when we stand on the truth of who God is- that he is a loving father who longs to see his children come back into relationship with him: we are able to experience a renewed spirit. One that is back in right relationship with him and free from death and condemnation.

But so many times, we do experience condemnation, don’t we? We live against God’s best for our lives and we feel shame. And we experience this through the second part of our being called the…

2. Soul (will/emotions)

In the bible, the soul refers to the actual person. If you were to ask a pilot how many souls they had on board the plane, they would count the number of people.

So let me challenge your thinking a little bit this morning. When you think about your soul, you’d be safe to think about your will and your emotions. Most of us can really benefit by keeping an eye on our emotions.

There’s scripture that I’m sure many of us know and can almost quote by heart. In fact, if you’re like me, your grandma probably had it embroidered on a pillow sitting somewhere on a couch. It says something like this… “The lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.”

How is it that God restores our souls? In the original Hebrew, the word for restores is “Sheen-vav-bet” which means to turn back or return. So when we read this verse again, it’s literally saying that God leads us beside still waters, and turns our souls back towards Him.

Our emotions cannot be trusted. And we should never make decisions fueled by them. Sometimes I’ll find myself in the heat of an issue, or somethings not going my way and you know what I’ll do? I’ll have a moment where I forget who I am in Christ, and I’ll get back into my old habit and my old ways of reacting to things. My anger will flare up and I’ll mouth off something I shouldn’t or I’ll walk away from a conversation holding hatred in my heart. Our emotions can do some serious damage in our lives, and unless God comes and turns them back to himself: we’re in trouble!

But we have emotions, and I don’t want you to walk out here thinking that God wants you to shelf those and walk around like a robot. Emotions, when they return back to God, are powerful.

Go back to the cross for a second with me. Do you think for one second that Jesus himself would be willing to endure all that he had to for you and I without emotion? I believe that as Jesus hung on that cross, that he was filled will compassion. He was overcome by love and that love for you and I moved him to action. Jesus was fully God and fully man, and He allowed God to turn his emotions back towards to himself and that’s when we saw power in it’s truest form. But it’s only when we allow God to turn our emotions back to Him that we experience that restored soul.

But not only do our souls have to be restored by the Lord. The next area that helps us fully love God is…

3. Mind (intellect)

Look at Romans 12:2…

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:2

I heard a long time ago a quote that has stuck with me for a long time: ‘you may be the only Jesus that somebody ever sees’. Think about it: how many family reunions or dinners have you been to where there is somebody who desperately needs Jesus to grab a hold of their life, but you know they’ll never come anywhere close to the church doors? What if you are the instrument God is trying to use to reach their heart? I’m guilty of this so many times, I’ll find myself mentally preparing for those gatherings, right? Anybody else with me? You know that by the time you finally leave and get in your car at the end of the night, you are just going to be mentally spent.

What if you shifted the way you thought about those gatherings? What if you lived so on mission, that you began to pray, “Lord: you know they need a touch from you. They have been struggling so much to keep their head above water, and they so desperately need the perfect peace that you give that passes all of our understanding. Help me to show them your love tonight.” What kind of difference could that make? But that’s way easier said than done, right?

So how, then can we get to that place in our minds- a place where we’re willing to ask God to change the way we think about those moments. How can we transform our mind and renew it? Look at what Paul writes in Philippians 4:8…

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Philippians 4:8

So back in Romans 12, we read that as we operate with a transformed mind, we are then able to discern what is the will of God and what is good and acceptable and perfect. The word ‘test’ is a noun. It is defined as a procedure intended to establish the quality, performance, or reliability of something, especially before it is taken into widespread use. It can also be a verb. A verb is something that we do, so in that way, a test means we take measures to check the quality, performance, or reliability of something, especially before putting it into widespread use or practice.

Here’s what a renewed mind might look like…

When we experience the thought that says I am unloveable, we can lean on the fact that God SO LOVED us that while we were yet living in our sin, that He sent His only son to die on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins.

When we experience the thought that tries to bring us confusion, we can lean on the fact that we know God is not the author of confusion, and then we’re able to call it out for what it is: a lie from the enemy.

This is a transformed mind that is free to love God with all that it is. So now we know how we can love God with our heart, our soul, and our mind- which leads us to the last area of who we are…

4. Strength (body)

I think we arrive at this part of our being last, because most of the time, it’s the most obvious one. That doesn’t mean it always comes easily, through. I love what Pastor Tyler says: the things most commonly accepted are also those things most commonly neglected.

In many ways, loving God with our strength is the more public of all of the different parts of our being. When I love God with all of my strength: people notice. You say, well how’s that? I like to say it this way, when you have an encounter with a semi-truck: you leave changed. Right? So when we experience the love of God, we’re never the same! And that change get’s noticed by those around us.

You may be sitting in that seat that you’re in right now and notice one Sunday that we’re announcing our next missions trip, and the Lord might prompt you to go with the team. You might begin to shy away from those conversations in your workplace that are seasoned with gossip and negativity. You begin to act differently than you used to.

When we place Jesus on the throne of our lives, and we commit to loving Him with all that we are: we are actually dethroning ourselves. We’re saying God I want you at the lead of my life and not me. I know I’m not good enough, strong enough, smart enough: I need you. So the things we used to do, we don’t do anymore. We can’t do them anymore.

2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us that we are new creations, the old is gone and all things are new. So we don’t operate like we used to- we can’t because we have a new king on the throne. We are made absolutely new in Jesus.

Response Call 8

Back in Mark 12, verse 32 it says “So the scribe said to Him, “Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth, for there is one God, and there is no other but He. And to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” Now when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” But after that no one dared question Him.”

And here’s the encouragement this morning: when we determine to love God with all our being: we find freedom in the Holy Spirit and no one can dare question it. When we surrender our lives to Jesus: he gives us a renewed heart. When we give him our emotions, he gives us a restored soul. When we think on pure things that are pleasing to Him, he gives us a renewed mind. When we give our words and actions over to Him, we give him permission to take us where He wants us to go.

But the only way it can happen- the only way that we’re able to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength is by putting him back on the throne of our hearts. Would you stand with me today?

You’re seated on the throne of our heart

Of our mind

Of our bodies