on loving God

DO YOU LOVE GOD?

Do you love God?
This is a simple but profound question. It is often that way; the simple questions can be the most profound. At once we answer “Of course I do.” But then it makes you think, “Do I?” And when the question is asked by someone like me, a pastor or a teacher, you begin to think of what’s behind the question. What is he looking for? If I say “yes” is he going to tell me how much I fall short of the answer? Am I going to feel guilty when he tells me what it means to love God? Not such a simple question anymore is it?
Do you love God?
What does loving God look like? How does it feel? How do you gauge something like that? Is it obvious to others that I love God?
Jesus answered the question “What is the greatest commandment?” with these words: Love God with everything and love everybody too. Jesus turned the question on its head by revealing that we are to live by relationships not by rules. This, Jesus said, is the sum total of all the laws and commandments: Love God and love people.
This morning we want to look at what it means to love God. I don’t want you to feel that I am pronouncing judgment on you. Let the word of God challenge you on this question; reflect on this great commandment; probe the depth of this question for yourself…do you love God?

1. The Debate

Let’s set the stage for this conversation between Jesus and the teacher of the law. The context is very important for understanding why this question was significant. Go back to the beginning of Mark 12:
a) The Parable of the Tenants – Jesus told a story that didn’t sit well with the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem. In that story were a vineyard owner, farmers, trusted servants and the owner’s son. The farmers beat the servants, kill the son, and try to take over the vineyard for themselves. Jesus simply concludes by saying that the owner would certainly kill the farmers and give the vineyard to some other farmers.
Unlike other parables where people are left wondering what Jesus was trying to say, the Jews knew he was talking about them and were greatly offended. After this story they looked for a way to trap and arrest Jesus.
b) Should we pay taxes? – In v. 13 the Pharisees and the Herodians get together and come up with a question to trap Jesus in his words. This is interesting because the Pharisees and the Herodians don’t like each other. The Herodians were collaborating with Rome while the Pharisees were opposed to Roman rule as they awaited the Messiah. But here they were in alliance against Jesus. The question is appropriate for this alliance. They ask, “Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” (14).
Here is the trick: If Jesus answers “yes” to paying taxes the Herodians will be appeased because they are for Rome; if Jesus answers “no” the Pharisees will say he is no friend of the Jews who were very patriotic to Zion. How does Jesus answer? Caesar’s picture is on the money so it must be his. Give it to Caesar and give God what is God’s.
c) Whose wife is she? – The Sadducees give it a try next in verses 18-27. Seven brothers marry the same women after each of them mysteriously die in this hypothetical dilemma. Whose wife will she be at the resurrection? Tell us, Jesus. It is a very bizarre question coming from those who don’t even believe in the resurrection. But Jesus answers saying they don’t even know scripture or the power of God to raise the dead. There is no marriage at the resurrection.
The questions put to Jesus this day were designed to have only two possible answers, either of which were meant to bring Jesus down in credibility and popularity. A modern day example of these questions might be, “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” If you say “yes”, then you have admitted to doing so; if you say “no” you confess to still doing it. Either way you are trapped by your words.

2. The Question

Into the midst of this debate comes a man who has been listening and forms a question of his own. It is quite a sincere question and it does not look as though the man, a teacher of the law, a lawyer or scribe, was trying to trap Jesus at all. He saw that Jesus possessed wisdom and could give a reasonable answer.
So he asks, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” (28). Now we must understand the gravity of this question. There are 613 laws given to the Jews in the five books of Moses (Gen, Ex, Lev, Num, & Deut). Of the 613, 248 are positive (do this) and 365 are negative (do not do this). The Pharisees and scribes often debated which of the 613 was the most important, so this was not an unusual question to ask. In fact, for the teacher of the law to ask Jesus this question was to recognize his status as a great teacher.

3. The Answer

Here again is what Jesus replied, “The most important one is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God will all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these” (29-31).
What Jesus answers with is called the ‘Shema’ which comes from Deuteronomy 6:4-9. These words were used by the faithful Jew as a prayer of confession every morning and evening. In fact, a devout Jew will still recited these words as part of his or her prayer today. The word ‘Shema’ actually means ‘to hear’ with the intention of obeying as well. To the Shema, Jesus adds a fourth element, ‘the mind’, which is not normally there. But it gives a sense of supertotality, or the whole person. Look at what this could mean for us:
“All your heart” – the heart represented not the emotions but sincerity and genuineness. We then ask: Do we love God passionately? Do we love him more than anything else in the world? Do we devote our lives to knowing him better? Do we give our whole self to him in everything we do and say? Do we live with the knowledge of his presence?
“All your soul” – the soul represented the emotions. We ask: Does the thought of God excite us? Do we tingle at the praise of his name? Do we go gladly to worship with others who believe as we do? Does his truth freshen our beings?
“All your mind” – the mind is our intellect, so the questions we ask are: Do we fill our mind with the truth of God? Do we consider, meditate, reflect on and digest who God is? Have we investigated his promises and found them to have substance?
“All your strength” – Do we love him with every energy, every ability, every talent, every gift and every strength in our mortal being? Do we beat our bodies, as Paul says, to make them obedient to Christ?
What Jesus answers with is not a commandment per se but a statement of faith. He began not with our actions in response to God but with the very character of God himself. ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one’ is a profession of someone who understands that God is the lover of humanity and is the covenant God who faithfully stands by his commitment to love us.
Out of an understanding of the enormity of God’s love comes our response loving the Lord with our entire being. Moses impressed the people that this profession and acceptance of God’s love came with this challenge: “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates” (Dt 6:6-9).
Here is what loving God requires of us: the totality of our being bent towards him and a holy obsession with God. Are you obsessed with God? Do you talk about him all the time? Do your children know what you think of God?
A. W. Tozer wrote in Love’s Final Test, “If we would turn from fine-spun theological speculations about grace and faith, and humbly read the NT with a mind to obey what we see there, we would easily find ourselves, and know for certain the answer to the question that troubled our fathers and should trouble us: ‘Do we love the Lord or no?’”
If we could answer that one question before dealing with the next…but Jesus throws another into the mix. He said in addition to loving God, we must love our neighbor. Why does Jesus add this to the question of loving God?
The Apostle John in his first letter has asked this question: How can you claim to love God who you can’t see if you can’t be bothered loving people you can see? Another person said, “You love God as much as the person you love the least.” So we see that Jesus has intricately linked loving God with loving people. If you love God you will love the other people he has created as much as you love yourself.
Now ask yourself, do you love God?

4. The Response

a) The Teacher of the Law – the teacher of the law liked Jesus’ answer and patted him on the back. “Well said, teacher. You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices” (32-33).
Here is how we know that the teacher of the law was sincere in asking Jesus this question. This was no trap but an honest discussion between scholars, as it were. This man practically quotes Samuel who said, “Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice…” (1 Sam 15:22).
This was a significant breakthrough in the discussion. It was so appropriate a response that Jesus tells this man something he never told anyone before or after in the gospels. Jesus said, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
However, we need to understand the implications of this statement. Jesus was speaking a nice guy. Jesus was speaking to a religious guy. He was speaking to a guy that did good and was good to people. Jesus was speaking to a guy who lived a cleaner life than most of us. But consider this:
- it is possible for a person to have a religious upbringing and still be lost.
- it is possible to know the truth and still be lost.
- it is possible to have heard the gospel preached to you all your life and still rest on the idea that you are a good person and have done good works (and be lost).
‘Not far from the kingdom…’ is not close enough. He was on the way but the man needed to acknowledge Christ as His Savior and Lord. Then he could begin to love the Lord…
b) The interrogators – the Pharisees, Herodians and Sadducees, after hearing this, did not dare ask him anymore questions. Why do you think that was?
In their collective conscience they knew that they had not loved God the way Jesus explained it. This was obvious in the entrapment questions they posed to Jesus. The Pharisees and Herodians revealed their hypocrisy of soul when Jesus asked for a coin. If a Pharisee produced a coin for Jesus to look at, what does that say about the question? And the Sadducees did not care enough about Scripture to formulate a better question to ask Jesus. To love God with the whole mind is to study the Word itself with a view to knowing God.
They didn’t ask Jesus any more questions because they had trouble answering the question: do you love God? Their heart, soul, mind and strength were divided…
c) Yours and Mine – These past few weeks have been a challenge for many of us who have observed Lent. Whether you gave up TV, or chocolate, or other sweets, it has been difficult and we may ask ‘why do it?’ I have become convicted that the reason we do it, I do it, is it is one way of saying to the Lord, “Lord, I love you more.”
Fasting for some seems like a way of manipulating God. We hope we will change the world if we go without food and pray. This smacks of divine arm twisting in truth. I believe it is first and foremost a way of saying, ‘Lord, I love you more.’ More than TV, more than chocolate, more than whatever vice or habit you may have given up.
John Piper wrote in Hungry for God, “The weakness of our hunger for God is not because he is unsavory, but because we keep ourselves stuffed with other things…If you don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled for so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things and there is no room for the great. God did not create you for this. There is an appetite for God. And it can be awakened. I invited you to turn from the dulling effects of food and the dangers of idolatry and to say with some simple fast ‘This much O God I want you.’
If you have seen the movie Fireproof you may recall a scene where the fireman struggles with pornography much to the disgust of his wife. At one point he grabs the computer off of its desk and throws it outside in the trash. He then leaves a rose and a card in the spot where the computer sat which said, “I love you more.”
Sometimes we have to give things up to say I love you. Other times we take up the challenge to do something we have never done before to say the same thing. When it comes to loving God he wants everything we have to give – he wants all of us.
Augustine, an early Christian theologian said of God, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.”
Allow me to ask you one more time: Do you love God?