April 20, 2008

Lesson: Mark 12.30a

Sermon Title: Heart

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Origins (1)

A little girl asked her father, "How did the human race come about?"

The father answered, "God made Adam and Eve and they had children and so all mankind was made."

Two days later she asks her mother the same question.

The mother answered, "Many years ago there were monkeys, and we developed from them."

The confused girl returns to her father and says: "Dad, how is it possible that you told me that the human race was created by God and Mom says we developed from monkeys?"

The Father answers, "That's simple, honey. I told you about the origin of my side of the family, and your mother told you about her side."

INTRODUCTION:

  1. That's confusing, but so is our understanding of love.
  2. I read a review of Brian McLaren's book, "Everything Must Change: Jesus Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope."
    1. The reviewer, Todd Friesen, wrote:

Brian McLaren may not eat locusts or wear clothing made of camel's hair. But in Everything Must Change, this modern-day prophet issues a piercing critique of a U.S. church which, he says, too often serves as a force of "domestication, resignation, pacification, and distraction" rather than "liberation and transformation." All the while, a perfect storm of global crises gathers ominously on the horizon. But like the prophets of old, McLaren balances his warnings of impending doom with a compelling invitation "to defect" from the world's "suicide system" and to join Jesus' nonviolent insurgency of peace, generosity and sustainable living.

    1. What is not mentioned is love.

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MAIN BODY

  1. In answering the question of the scribe, Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy 6.4-5.

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

    1. Jesus adds one word that expands the concept of love for God.
    2. That word is strength.
  1. The first phrase is an imperative.
    1. We use imperatives for different reasons, such as telling people what to do, giving instructions and advice, making recommendations and suggestions, and for making offers.
    2. The imperative here is shall.
      1. There is no escaping this command.
      2. You shall!
      3. You can run from it or you can embrace it, there is no middle ground.
  2. You shall love.
    1. Love is a principle of relationship.
    2. I am indebted to M. Scott Peck for this definition:

"Love is the willingness to extend one's self for the nurture of one's own or another's spiritual growth."

      1. Love wills the other's good whether we like that person or not.
      2. Love is intentional
      3. The opposite of love is not hate.
      4. The opposite of love is apathy.
      5. Love is acting for the good of another rather than reacting to a set of sometimes unpleasant circumstances.
    1. What is the meaning of love towards God?
      1. What may we do for God?
      2. We, in a way, cannot extend ourselves for the spiritual growth of God.
      3. We do extend ourselves for our own spiritual growth in love.
      4. This allows other people to see and understand what it means to be loved by God and to love God.
    2. Twelfth century Cistercian mystic Bernard of Clairvaux chronicled love and its failings with a sensitivity surprising for a celibate monk.
      1. Describing how human love becomes holy love, he discovered traces of grace all along the way.
        1. He began by presenting love as the bottom feeder it so often is, a thinly veiled excuse for self-interest: "I love you because of what you can do for me."
        2. Gradually love alters: "I love you because you're good to me."
        3. As the Spirit keeps blowing: "I love you because you're good."
        4. Finally the embers catch fire: "I love you because you're You."

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  1. You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart.
    1. As Adam Clark in his Commentary on the New Testament puts it:
      1. This sometimes means "the whole inner man" (as Proverbs 4:23); but that cannot be meant here; for then the other three particulars would be superfluous.
      2. Very often it means "our emotional nature"--the seat of feeling as distinguished from our intellectual nature or the seat of thought, commonly called the "mind" (as in Phil. 4:7).
      3. But neither can this be the sense of it here; for here the heart is distinguished both from the "mind" and the "soul."
      4. The "heart," then, must here mean the sincerity of both the thoughts and the feelings; in other words, uprightness or true-heartedness, as opposed to a hypocritical or divided affection.
    2. The heart describes two characteristics loyalty and fidelity, faithfulness.
      1. Fidelity (2) is a notion that at its most abstract level implies a truthful connection to a source or sources.
        1. Its original meaning dealt with loyalty and attentiveness to one's duty to a lord or a king, in a broader sense than the related concept of fealty.
        2. Both derive from the Latin word fidelitas, meaning "faithfulness."
        3. An example of faithfulness is found in a story told by Tim Riter (3)

"A lovely villa rests on the shores of beautiful Lake Como in the Italian Alps. Some tourists complimented the trusted old gardener who had maintained the grounds for years.

'The owner must come here frequently,' one said.

'No,' he replied. 'He has been here only once in 15 years, and then I did not see him.'

'But how do you get your orders?'

'From the owner's agent, who lives in Milan.'

'Then he must come here often?'

'No, not often. Perhaps once a year or so.'

The tourist was amazed. 'You have no one to supervise your work, and the grounds are as neat as if you expected the owner to come back tomorrow!'

The old gardener firmly replied, 'Today, sir! Not tomorrow, but today.'

That gardener was faithful to his trust."

      1. Our love, our principle of relationship, with God is faithful to God.
        1. We are to be reliable.
          1. In the words of an anonymous Zimbabwean pastor

    I am a disciple of Christ. I will not let up, look back or slow down.

    My past is redeemed, my future is secure. I am done with low living, small planning, smooth knees, mundane talking, chintzy giving and dwarfed goals. I no longer need pre-eminence, prosperity, position, promotion or popularity. I don't have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised or rewarded.

    My face is set; my goal is sure. My road is narrow; my way is rough, my companions few. My God is reliable; my mission is clear.

    I cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, delayed or deluded. I will not flinch in the face of adversity, not negotiate at the table of the enemy, or meander in the maze of mediocrity.

    I am a disciple of Christ. I must go until he comes, speak of all I know of him and work until he stops me. And when he comes for his own, by the grace of God, he will have no problem recognizing me, because my colors are clear.

          1. God can depend on this pastor.
        1. God can depend on us.
        2. There is to be no adulterous relationship with anything that is not God.
        3. This is probably why the conclusions of Brian McLaren are accurate.

    "...he says, too often serves as a force of 'domestication, resignation, pacification, and distraction' rather than 'liberation and transformation.'"

        1. What is missing is fidelity, faithfulness.

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CONCLUSION:

  1. Our love for God is a loyal love without compromise

    2. Compromise (4)

    An Eastern guru had a disciple and was so pleased with the man's spiritual progress that he left him on his own. The man lived in a little mud hut. He lived simply, begging for his food. Each morning, after his devotions, the disciple washed his loincloth and hung it out to dry.

    One day, he came back to discover his loincloth had been torn and eaten by rats. He begged the villagers for another, and they gave it to him. But the rats ate that one, too. So he got himself a cat. That took care of the rats, but now when he begged for his food he had to beg for milk for his cat as well.

    "This won't do," he thought. "I'll get a cow." So he got a cow and found he had to beg now for feed for the cow. So he decided to till and plant the ground around his hut.

    But soon he found no time for spiritual practices, so he hired servants to tend his farm. But overseeing the labors became a chore, so he got married to have a wife to help him.

    After a while, the disciple became the wealthiest man in the village.

    His teacher was traveling by there one day and was shocked to see that where there used to be a simple mud hut there now loomed a palace surrounded by a vast estate, worked by many servants. "What is the meaning of this?" he asked his disciple.

    "You won't believe this, sir," the man replied. "But there was really no other way I could keep my loincloth."

    1. That kind of rationalization is destructive of love with all one's heart.
    2. It's a challenge, but one that we can face and enjoy fulfilling.

    Amen!

    1. [forwarded by JR] Mikey's Funnies [funnies-owner@lists.MikeysFunnies.com]

    2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidelity

    3. (This story is told by Tim Riter, Deep Down [1995], 134.)

    4. --Thanks to Russ Noland for this story.

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