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· 7 viewsAn introduction to a series about how our relationship with God affects each aspect of our life; heart, soul, mind, and strength, and how, when we put aside the idols in our lives, our lives can then be centered on Christ and used to the fullest for His glory.
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Happy New Year
Last week, we saw a glimpse of the new chapter that God is unfolding for us as a church. This week, we take our first steps of that journey.
And the first thing that we need to understand is that this is a journey that makes disciples who make disciples. This is the reason that Christians are still on earth. To share the Gospel, and to help new believers become mature disciples of Jesus Christ.
But what is a disciple?
And what is discipleship?
Well, the definition of a disciple has become muddied over time. Some Christians have emphasized the knowledge part of discipleship, i.e., theology, doctrine, Scripture, history, and so on. Others have emphasized the following aspect of discipleship, that is, serving, missions, and the like.
And when it comes to discipleship, its even less clear.
Can anyone here define discipleship as something more than the teaching aspect or the serving aspect?
I suppose we might say that discipleship is modeling spiritual maturity for others, and that is a part of discipleship, but its not the whole thing.
Jesus very clearly articulate what a disciple is, and what it looks like to be discipled, and this is where we start our journey. If we are going to effectively and faithfully and obediently reach the people of Bristol in Jesus’ name, we’ve got to make sure that the main thing stays the main thing. Because the last thing we should want is to bring a false or counterfeit gospel, or an errant caricature of Jesus to a lost city that needs the real thing.
Pray
28 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?” 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.
The scribes who approached Jesus and asked him this question were sincere. If you read the previous verses, you’ll see that Jesus had just answered another question about the resurrection, and, being impressed with that answer, this scribe posits a question of his own.
Now, at the time, rabbis of the day numbered 613 individual statutes in the law. 613 rules to follow to the letter. 365 were negative, and 248 were positive. Many attempts were made to determine which laws were more important than others, and here the inquisitive scribe wants to settle the debate.
Jesus answers him that the Greatest Commandment is to 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 this is the Greatest Commandment, then this is the one thing Jesus wants His followers to make sure they obey, over everything else. Why? Because everything else flows out of this.
Jesus says as much when He says that the second greatest commandment is like it, “love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus is teaching that loving each other is a result of loving God.
A disciple is a Christian who loves God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength in increasing measure over the course of their lives.
Discipleship, then, is believers helping other believers to grow in those four areas:
Heart, Soul, Mind, & Strength
Simple.
Discipleship includes knowledge, but it also includes our passion and will, our spiritual maturity, and our physical manifestations of our spiritual health (i.e. strength).
Think of a disciple like a physical body, and that physical body has 4 organs, and each organ does its part to complete the whole person:
(need body picture for screen)
Heart - Passion, Will, Volition - Surrendered to Jesus
Soul - Our true identity, who we really are - In Jesus
Mind - Knowledge of God - About Jesus
Strength - Service, Sacrifice - Empowered by Jesus
As we disciple each other, we need to have this at the top of our minds so that we can best know how to help each other grow as a disciple.
If discipleship and what it means to be a disciple is clear, why does it seem like we are lacking in this way?
Why are so many Christians stuck in spiritual infancy and biblical illiteracy?
I want to suggest to you today that the problem is that
we have confused the concepts and practices of priority and primacy.
Priority and Primacy
There is a difference
Webster’s dictionary:
Priority: Something given or meriting attention before competing alternatives
Primacy: To be supreme, dominant, paramount; transcending
The difference is subtle, but significant.
Concerning priority, there are possible, competing alternatives
Concerning primacy, nothing can compete or overtake
Priority is in a class among others
Primacy is a class all by itself
When something has primacy, its will must be satisfied, and there is no other acceptable solution.
When you are merging onto the freeway, the act that has primacy in that moment is increasing your speed to that of freeway traffic.
And those drivers who take their sweet time put the rest of us in danger, and we are always kind enough to let them know how we feel about them, aren’t we?
When we are merging onto the freeway, everything we do is subject to what has primacy at that time. There are not a bunch of competing speeds that might work, we need to reach the speed of traffic.
The scribe in Mark is asking Jesus to tell him what commandment has primacy, what is the most important of all, under which everything else has its place.
And Jesus responds by telling him that loving God with everything is the commandment that has primacy over and above else. In other words, the commandment of primacy (the greatest commandment) is a command to give God primacy in your life.
The problem is that we often make God a priority in our lives, but He does not get the place of primacy in our lives.
This is why we stay immature in our faith, illiterate concerning Scripture, and often times stuck holding onto pain and frustration that we might overcome if we truly gave it to God, but instead, for whatever reason, we give ourselves primacy, and God gets priority.
Table illustration
Personal passions
Talents, Gifts
Ministry Efforts (missions, evangelism, discipleship)
Family
Money
Its easy to confuse what we are personally passionate about with what is actually
This is the reason that we say we “don’t have time” to read the Bible everyday. God is a priority, but He doesn’t have primacy.
This is why our prayer lives suffer. God is a priority in our lives, He doesn’t have primacy over our lives.
You see, the difference between priority and primacy is really the difference between horizontal and vertical.
When the table, using our example, is like this, it is horizontal, and all the powers of life are beside each other. No one power is over another, including God.
One of the things we’ve gotten used to in this horizontal priority scenario, is taking God and putting Him here on the end. Granted, a place of visibility in our lives, but again, not a place of primacy. And what we do is we take a few things from our lives and put them in our “God-space.”
And then we feel better because we gave that over to God. But, when something in our lives shifts, we can be tempted to take one or more of these things back because, all-of-a-sudden, God isn’t doing it right.
And isn’t like we are on this never ending roller coaster of spiritual life, highs and lows, peaks and valleys, and while trying to manage those, we are overwhelmed as we try to “make time” for God in the midst of all the tyrannical chaos that is our life.
But this is the horizontal, priority-driven way of trying to be a disciple.
What if we tried vertical disciple-living?
What if, instead of juggling priorities, we put everything under the primacy, the Bible would describe it as, Lordship, of Christ?
What if we surrendered to Jesus in such a way that He was no longer one power among many competing powers, but rather, He was THE Power over all of our lives?
It would look like this (put everything under table)
Now, of course, this does not mean that we no longer are tempted, sin still affects us and can influence us in this life. What it does mean is that we will put everything under Jesus’ control, including our sin.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
13 As a father shows compassion to his children,
so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.
And
When Jesus is one priority among many, we don’t always go to Him with our sin, do we? We go to Christian counselors, our friends, or maybe a vice or habit that we cling to emotionally. There’s nothing wrong with Christian counselors, or counselors in general, they do a lot of good. But they can’t defeat sin in your life. Neither can your friends. And your vices and habits certainly can’t, as some of those might be sinful as it is.
But when Jesus has the place of primacy in our lives, He can not only defeat sin our lives, but He will free us from its power over us, removing it from us as far as the east is from the west.
This is why Jesus told the scribe that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with everything you are, because everything else in life flows out of that.
Its easy to confuse what we’re personally passionate about what with is actually the most important thing in the life of a Christian. And when we are confused, that’s when we say things like, “How can you be a Christian and __________” In that sentence we are revealing our passion. And that passion might be good and even a righteous one, but it needs to be in its proper place under the sovereignty and primacy of the Lord.
We may have Christ-like passions, maybe missions, prayer for healing, evangelism, serving the poor. Mine is for broken families and for the fatherless generation. But none of those things should be in the place of primacy in our lives. That is a seat that can only be truly filled by Jesus.
My love for my passion should not exceed my love for my Savior and my God.
When I love the Lord my God with everything I am, the other passions should and will flow naturally out of my love for God, and His love for me.
It doesn’t work the other way around.
Consider the Pharisees in Matthew.
25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.
In Matthew’s account of this exchange, Jesus warns against how the Pharisees were not treating the Greatest Commandment as the commandment of primacy.
They were not loving God with all that they are, heart, soul, mind, and strength.
They were loving God with their beautiful buildings, the beautiful clothes, their status among the people, and their reputations.
And Jesus is telling them that they could still enjoy those things, but that they would take care of themselves, if only they would obey the Greatest Commandment.
But they didn’t. And this is what Jesus says is hypocritical.
A Christian hypocrite is one who treats God as a priority, instead of giving Him the seat of primacy (Lordship) over their lives.
Jesus called their beautiful buildings “whitewashed tombs.”
Explain a whitewashed tomb.
(they’re dead in their tombs, and every body is warned to avoid them)
Becoming a Christian and being a disciple means placing every aspect of your life under the primacy of Jesus so that He can transform you from the inside out.
And growing as a disciple means that we love the Lord our God with everything that we are, and then, the transforming that God is doing inside of us will overflow from us.
Its all or nothing.
Too many Christians act like they are landlords of their faith. Renting a room or two to God, but keeping the whole building of their lives to themselves.
We rent God our Sunday mornings (but we reserve the right to take them back if we need extra time)
We rent God our finances (but we reserve the right to hold out)
We rent God our passions (until we don’t get the results we want)
We rent God our families (until we fall out of love with them)
We rent God our service (until we’re tired or something better to do comes along)
We rent God our intellect (until we can’t understand Him, then of course, He must not have said what He really meant)
God is not a renter of your life, He is the owner of it.
Do you live as though God is the owner of your life and everything in it?
That’s the Greatest Commandment.
Its so much more than just a Christian phrase that looks good on a Facebook meme or a Twitter post.
The Greatest Commandment is not just a mark of maturity that God wants us to someday aspire to, its something God wants us to demonstrate fully right now.
And God is the only who has the right to ask for your everything, because He paid for you with His everything, and He gives you His everything so that you can grow, mature, heal, and live a righteous life.
Ushers up here
You know, Jesus isn’t commanding us to do anything that He did not do Himself.
Do you know why He went through with His death and resurrection?
Certainly, His love for us. His mercy and compassion. His Lordship over sin.
But also, because Jesus, too, love God the Father with all His heart, soul, mind, and strength,
And He surrendered to the Father’s will when He said in the Garden of Gethsemane, “not my will, but yours be done.”
Isn’t it interesting how two garden scenes in Scripture are contrasted?
One has Adam and Eve who were tempted, but treated God as a priority. One power among competing powers.
And the other has the second Adam, as the apostle Paul calls Him in Romans, Jesus, wanting to accomplish salvation in some other way, yet ultimately submitting to the primacy of God.
As we prepare to take communion together, we are going to take just a minute or two in silent prayer.
I encourage you to engage with Jesus, examine yourselves, repent if the Holy Spirit has convicted you of renting part of yourself to God instead of surrendering all of yourself to Him, and commit right where you sit before God to giving God the place of primacy over your life from this day forward.
We will take a minute or two to pray in silence, and then I will lead us as we take the elements together
Take Communion
Bring Uly back up
As we close, let’s take away a few points of application together.
If we are going to accomplish God’s purpose for putting Valley Bristol in the city of Bristol, we have to take seriously the Greatest Commandment.
We talk alot about the Great Commission, which is to make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey God, and baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
But before Christ gave us the Great Commission, He gave us the Greatest Commandment, from which everything else flows and finds its place, purpose, and meaning.
How to Apply the Greatest Commandment in Your Life
Stop “making time” for God, and recognize that all time belongs to God
We don’t make time. God, actually, is the One who made time, He invented time. And we need to treat time as it really is, a gift that God has entrusted to us, but that nonetheless belongs to Him. Instead of giving God time and telling Him what He can do with it, maybe we should try asking God right when we wake up, “God, thank you for inviting me into this new day. What do you want me to do with the time you are giving me today?” And start from there. See how your day goes.
2. Read and pray through , and ask God to show you the areas in your life where you are renting rooms to God, instead of allowing Him to be the owner of your life that He is.
3. Some of you may be in great spot with the Lord right now, and maybe you are actively seeking a way to overflow His love to others. If you’re looking for some ways for God’s love to overflow through you, consider this:
In addition to the opportunities of service and evangelism that are upcoming and will be promoted here at Valley Bristol, we have a couple of Valley-wide short-term mission opportunities that you might be interested in.
January 13, 2019 – France Mission Trip Interest Meetings
January 27, 2019 – Family Mission Trip Interest Meetings
You can find more information at the Welcome Desk, or at www.valleycommunity.cc. And if you have questions you can email
Lindsay Cooper, Missions Asst at LCooper@valleycommunity.cc
4. If you feel defeated in obeying the Greatest Commandment, remember
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
13 As a father shows compassion to his children,
so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.
Remember that God has a steadfast love for you that reaches as a high as the heavens
God has removed your sin as far as east is from west
And you are His child, and toward you He shows compassion
Move to guitar and guitar mic
Loving God with our everything is a love that comes from the inside out, and its a love that is given wholly to God.
Let’s stand and sing together as we close