Loving God with All Your Heart

Sermon Delivered September 12, 2010

Deuteronomy 6:4-9; 2 Timothy 3:1-5; Mark 12:28-34

28 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he (Jesus) answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 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.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” 32 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. 33 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.” 34 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.

Love is the governing word in this passage. The Hebrew word for love (ahab) used in the Old Testament passages that Jesus quotes was a general word with meanings as broad and varied, as good, neutral, and bad, as the meanings of our English word love. But, in these particular passages, it seems to me that the meaning of love is governed by the much more specific Hebrew word (hesed) that means steadfast love or covenant love, the kind of costly, involved love God shows for us when he comes as our divine kinsman redeemer and gives of himself to restore us as children and servants of God, members of his covenant community. The New Testament writers could not find a Greek word that adequately conveyed that meaning of love, so they chose a seldom used word for love (agape), which they redefined by the example of God’s self-giving and redeeming love in Jesus Christ, the kind of love that makes us God’s people and servants.

Here is the practical point: when we are talking about how we ought to love God and neighbor, we are not talking about just any old kind of love. We are talking specifically about the kind of love God showed to us, totally loyal love that seeks the best for the loved ones. We are to return that kind of loyal, self-giving love to God, seeking in all we do to glorify him, and we are to pass that kind of loyal, self-giving love along to other human beings.

The most basic text in all Judaism is the Shema, the “Hear, O Israel,” which commands, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus calls it the most important commandment, and he expands its wording just a bit, “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.”

If Jesus says that this is the most important commandment, then we ought to pay close attention and ask ourselves how we are doing on keeping this commandment, on loving God with all we are and all we have.

In both the Old and New Testaments, the terms heart, soul, and might or strength—perhaps even mind--were all broader in meaning than in popular English usage. They overlapped, and their combined effect was to emphatically reinforce that we are to love God with everything in us. Today we will focus on the command, “Love God with all your heart.” We will get to the other ways we are to love God in future sermons.

In the Old Testament, the heart is the center not only of emotion, but also of thought, loyalty, desire, and will. The heart can be refreshed or hardened, rejoicing or grieving, courageous or fearful, pure or corrupt. In short, in Old Testament thought, the heart is where the foundations of our decision-making reside, where our character is formed. So to love God with all your heart is not just with all your feelings, although that is certainly included, but to love God with the core of your being, from that place within you where what makes you who you are is being determined.

What is it the makes you who you are? What is it that makes what comes out of you in your words and actions either good or bad, constructive or destructive, loving or not loving?

Jesus says that it is what you desire. Earlier in Mark’s Gospel, he says that what comes out of our hearts is what defiles us. His list includes: evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. These kinds of thing happen because we think that our worth in life comes from the wrong things and we set our hearts on those wrong things rather than on loving God.

In Matthew’s Gospel, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus suggests that where we invest the things we treasure determines where our hearts end up. How do we use our time, our energy, our resources, our money? Where do we invest these treasures? Toward what end do we direct them? If we aim for the perfect goals of God’s eternal purposes, if that is where we put our treasures, then our hearts will become godly.

Jesus’ brother James says that what comes out of our mouths and what comes out in our relationships comes from what goes into our hearts. If we have placed God first and made God’s wisdom the spring welling up from our hearts, then what comes out will be peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy, and good fruits, impartial and sincere. It will produce a harvest of righteousness. But, if God is not at the center of our hearts, then what comes out will lead to every vile practice, notably jealousy, selfish ambition, disorder, quarreling, murder, war.

Paul warns Timothy to avoid being influenced by people who are lovers of their own pleasure rather than lovers of God. Not loving God above all produces selfishness, greed, pride, arrogance, abusiveness, disobedience, ingratitude, unholiness, heartlessness, continual dissatisfaction, slander, lack of self-control, brutality, inability to love good things, treachery, recklessness, conceit, and so on. When we do not love God first and foremost from the formative place at the center of our lives, then nothing else will go right. If our heart is not right, then nothing else will be. To set things right in our lives, we must love God first.

A week ago Saturday evening, our youth group watched the movie, To Save a Life. The PG-13 rating should be taken seriously; this movie is not for children, but for teens with mature adult guidance. Warning: What I am about to do would be called by some a spoiler for those who have not seen the movie, but my conclusion is that this movie is not about suspense anyway; it is about portraying reality. My summary may call some key moments to your attention when you see them. The lead character was a popular star athlete named Jake. It looked like Jake had everything, but, in fact, he had traded in a better self for the shallow image of success. He had deserted a childhood friend who had saved him from being hit by a car by taking the hit for him, and Jake said nothing as his new friends made fun of his crippled ex-friend. The suicide of this ex-friend started a wake-up process in Jake. Eventually he showed up at a youth worship service led by a youth pastor who had befriended him in troubles that Jake had brought on himself. He observed that the youth at the worship service were not serious about the important message the pastor was laying before them. Jake, in an unpolished manner, confronted the other youth asking them, “If you are not here to change the way you live, why come?” Through a two steps forward, one step backward process, Jake eventually made a commitment to Christ and was baptized. He who had been the most popular kid in school began to make a difference in reaching out to socially excluded kids and to young people contemplating suicide. Then, his world collapsed: his pre-conversion sexual activity with his girlfriend had produced a pregnancy; his father was caught in an affair; his parents were divorcing; his old friends were turning against him; in his focus on his own problems, he had let down one of the socially excluded young men he had befriended. He was not sure that there was anything to this Christian life thing.

He went to the youth pastor to tell him that he was about to give up on faith. I don’t remember the exact words, but my summary of what the pastor said is, “God is not a vending machine. There are no formulas or guarantees that things will be easy in Christian life. But, Jake, you already know that the alternative does not work, that it is empty, shallow, destructive. Why not give God a genuine chance to lead you through this troubled time? God may not make it easy, but he will not desert you if you continue to trust him.”

Jake prayed that God would show him the right way to approach his problems and to give him the courage to make the needed sacrifices to actually do the right things. And that is what happened. The movie did not put a rosy, glowing, “everything is great now” ending on the story, but it showed costly, positive steps toward a better life. In the end, you had the definite sense that Jake was committed to loving God from the center of his being, from the place where he was in the process of being shaped into an ever new and ever better Jake.

That is what I want for myself. That is what I want for every one of you. Are you here to learn how better to love God from the center of your being with everything you have? Are you here to fulfill the most important commandment? Are you here to be transformed into an ever more effective agent of the gospel of Jesus Christ? If not, why are you here?

What might hold you back? The thing that holds more people back than anything else is not being sure that God is real and personal and trustworthy. For many church-goers, God is a name we give to what we think will help us live a socially acceptable life. For many other church-goers God is a name we give to what we think assures us that our sins are forgiven. But for many church-goers, God is not the holy, loving, reigning, intervening God of the Bible who has a definite revealed purpose for our lives, a God who loves us and wants us to enter into a loving, growing relationship with him.

It is hard to love an abstract principle. It is hard to love a formula for success. At least, it is hard to love principles and formulas in the self-giving, costly, absolutely loyal way that the “Hear, O Israel” passage has in mind. When Jesus said that loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength was the most important commandment, he had in mind our loving his and our Abba in heaven. It is a personal relationship. Nothing less will do.

How and where do we discover and experience the real personal nature of God? In obedience to his calling. In daring to serve him. In venturing into the mission field. I am not necessarily talking about going to Africa or China or India or Latin America or to inner city America. God will call a few of us to such locations. But the mission field may be as close to us as our telephone or computer or the house across the street. There is no end of deep need right here in Carroll County. The key is that we seek and respond to God’s calling to serve him in making his love real to somebody who needs to know him. And that is when God will make himself real to us. At least that is how it happened for me.

I won’t repeat the details today. But once God called me to plant a church in western Little Rock. I worked very hard, wore out a lot of shoe leather. The church planting effort did not succeed. But in the mission field, God met me, revealed himself to me, taught me, confronted me, healed me, and empowered me. I entered with an abstract God and came out with a personal and powerful God. I had to go to what I thought was the mission field to find out that I was the mission field. That has made all the difference for me. Since then, even when I am mad at God, I love God from the formative center of my being. Loving the living God is what it is all about. Jesus said so.

Is the living, loving God becoming ever more real in your life? If not, get out and meet God in the mission field, and discover that you too are the mission field. I repeat: Loving the living God is what it is all about. Jesus said so.