Sermon Tone Analysis

Love the Lord Your God

Background of this saying

The people of Israel had been delivered from Egypt and were sent into the wilderness.

God guided and provided for them in the wilderness.

God was going to give them His commandments through Moses.

The people became impatient and formed a golden calf to worship.

Because of this that generation was not able to enter the promised land.

Now all that generation had died and they were about to enter the promise land under Joshua’s leadership.

God reminds them that it is their love for Him that will deliver and sustain them in the land.

God has a promised land for everyone of us.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart

And do not lean on your own understanding.

6 In all your ways acknowledge Him,

And He will make your paths straight

The very thing that will deliver us to the promise land that God has for us is our love for Him.

What does it mean to love the Lord Your God?

Love -(Agapeo)to love (care) v. — to have a great affection or care for or loyalty towards.

When I think about the things that I have great affection towards, it is those things that I love dearly.

I have great affection towards my wife, my kids, my mom, and my friends.

It is these that I will do anything for.

I will sacrifice for them.

God desires that we have a stronger affection for Him than we do our own family.

37 “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.38

And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. 39 He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.

The reason we do not have the intimacy we desire with God is, He does not have the proper position of love in our lives.

Many times we love other people or things more than we love Him.

I am not saying that we do not love our families.

We are to love our families deeply.

What I am saying is we are to love God more!

Lord -(kyrios) Master or ruler

Everyone is mastered by something.

The Bible teaches we are to be mastered or ruled by God.

Unfortunately we allow ourselves to be ruled by other things.

Pursuit of our own personal success, Pursuit of wealth, pursuit of our kids success, pursuit of pleasure with our hobbies, pursuit of power or control.

for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved.

What master’s you?

It is that which you are most passionate about.

You can tell what you are most passionate about by the amount of what you invest yourself into.

This can be identified mostly by time and money.

We should be mastered by the Lord.

What does this look like?

Our purpose in life is to bring glory to the Father by abiding in Christ and finding our satisfaction in Him.

John Piper says, “God is most glorified by us when we are most satisfied in Him!” Unfortunately we are not satisfied in Him and try to get satisfied with other things that become our master.

This has to change in order to have intimacy with God.

God - (theos)

This is the one true God!

Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘Hear, O Israel!

The Lord our God is one Lord; Mark 12:29

Love in this verse is a finite verb.

This means it is permanently attached to the subject which is God.

So this reads Have the strongest affection for God who masters you!

Love the Lord Your God with your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Heart.

The heart is where your affection is.

This is where people have meaning to us.

We love our families more than we love acquaintances.

This is because we have a stronger affection for our family than we do our acquaintances.

We are to have a strong affection for the Lord.

This is born in our salvation experience.

Our love for the Lord begins when we accept and understand what He has done for us on Calvary.

Our affection for Him grows stronger the more we recognize him in our lives.

Let’s recognize Him in our lives in the small and big things, in the ordinary and the extraordinary.

When we learn to do this our affection for the Lord will grow and will be able to love the Lord with all our heart.

Soul

The soul is the very core of a person.

It is who you are.

This means that we are to love Christ with our personhood.

It means that we are to die to self and live for Christ.

Paul personifies this when he says , “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. .

A person that loves Christ with all his soul is consumed in Christ and lives constantly for Him.

Mind

Our mind is where our thoughts come from.

We are to allow our thoughts to be bathed in Christ.

Our thoughts must be on him and not on the world.

James teaches that we are not to be “double-minded”.

We must not allow our minds to be consumed with the world, but instead on the things of heaven.

I find that when anxiety and worry control our lives our mind is loving the world more than Christ.

Peace is an attribute of loving God with all our mind.

This is because we know in our mind that Christ is really in control of the things that tend to bring us anxiety.

Let us love Christ with our mind and give him our cares and experience the peace he desires to give.

Strength

Our strength is what we do with our bodies.

It is our service for the Lord.

Are you serving the Lord?

How?

When we serve the Lord more than the world then we are loving God with all our strength.