Sermon Tone Analysis

Following on from last week where there was a form of entrapment about taxes that Jesus escaped by saying: render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.

After that, the Sadducees who only used the Torah, the first five books of the bible as their Scripture, thought there was no resurrection nor angels and tried to come up with a convoluted way to prove their point of view.

Except Jesus showed that what happens in the here and now will not be true in the future kingdom of God, that is, there will be no marriage in Heaven for we shall be like the angels.

Makes you wonder whether marriage is made in Heaven, but that’s by and by.

And then Jesus used the very Torah they loved and thought had nothing to say about resurrection to show that it did when God said He is the God of Abraham, of Isaac and Jacob.

God is the God of the living not the dead.

This amazed and silenced them.

Understandably, for He had removed the foundation of all their beliefs at a stroke and left them foundering on the sand.

Oh how we can give our lives to things that in the end are not of God - these too will be washed away as being of no consequence when we die.

Better to discover that now than then.

Straight after this a Scribe asked Jesus a question to test Him.

But this was no entrapment but a genuine desire to see whether Jesus could answer it.

We know that this man’s heart was stirred and had wondered about Jesus for in Marks gospel Jesus, at the conclusion, said to him in Mark 12:34 “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

The question asked was an interesting question.

If I was to ask how many commands there are I suspect that the majority answer would be “10”.

But that would be the wrong answer for there are 613.

And neither the 10 nor any of the 603 others did Jesus mention.

And by the way - to keep the law you do not need to obey the ten commands but the 613.

So, the lawyer’s question is, which of these 613 is the one that takes top priority?

Jesus answers with a combination of two passages that no rabbi had done before:

[Depending on which book and chapter of the Bible you are reading you will read that we should love the Lord your God with all of your heart and all of your soul as in Deut.

10:12 or we should love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your strength as in Deut.

6:5 and Mark’s version he also adds with all your mind or here in Matt.

22:37 with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.]

What is meant by heart, soul, mind and strength?

Very often these are separated into the heart which is about true allegiance, the soul being the seat of the emotions and will, the mind being our intellect and loyalty, and strength thought of being our physical being.

But for the Hebrew each of these terms of heart, soul, mind and strength are all interchangeable and mean the same thing for these are where all decisions are made, emotions felt, secrets hidden, desires come from and thinking was done.

Essentially it is WHO we are.

In other words, we are to love God with all that we’ve got.

It means total commitment.

It means total obedience to God.

We are to love God with our everything.

The Holy Spirit should be allowed into every nook and cranny of our lives so that everything that we are will love God more perfectly.

Anything that would demand or divide our affection towards Him are to be rejected.

But note that this is no ‘try if you can’ or some request – this is a command.

This is easily forgotten in the melee of our lives.

We can easily be distracted and centred upon ourselves and our needs and wants.

The life we have was given to us by God.

God needs no excuse to demand from us everything; after all we were created by Him.

[We know that many professing Christians do not believe in an instant creation but evolution.

What is interesting is the downward spiral once we reject that God is our creator.

The issue is that if God did not create us and we evolved from other animals then we are not worth anything more than them.

We are just animals and it is survival of the fittest.

And animal rights activists are right that if we are not wiling to be killed why kill animals?

And if God did not create us then there is no moral compass, right or wrong except what is beneficial for our future existence.

And how then do you love God?]

Part of that creation is that He implanted us a conscience.

A video went round on the internet a few years ago where tens of thousands watched an abortion take place where the woman was claiming that there was no moral harm and to quote her: “I feel super-great about having an abortion”.

Of course, she would say that when she is an abortion counsellor who found herself pregnant.

She said that men and women should not feel guilty.

But actually she admitted that ‘everyone feels guilty’ when going through this process.

Her conscience was at work despite all her denials.

God gave this woman her conscience.

God gave us our conscience.

It is not always a true indicator of all that is right and wrong but it does give us parameters for the lives we live.

It is God who has given us a conscience – and it is activated very much when we sin.

Our sin is an abomination to God.

It goes against God and against ourselves.

The only place to have peace is in the will of God.

Our consciences should drive us back to God who alone can save us from guilt.

Only God can save us in Jesus and His sacrifice in our place who took our sin, became sin, took our guilt, and suffered the consequences of our sin in death who then cried out: “it is finished!”.

No more do we have to carry about the burden of sin or its guilt or punishment.

Because Jesus paid in full.

God as creator has the right to demand loyalty from His creation.

God as our Saviour invites us to be loyal.

Either way to love God with all that we are is the overarching command and way to live.

[What does 1 Cor 13 say?

Without love we are but a clanging cymbal.

Well, a clanging cymbal is very annoying except when played in its right time with the orchestra – and there it can be very effective.

That means we have to let God be the conductor and we play our part in the right way in His time and then we will not be a distraction from the music.

But play a clanging cymbal on its own just draws attention to you and not in a good way at all – playing the cymbal in time at the right time will instead people to the music and the conductor.]

We need to be those drawing attention to God not to ourselves.

We need to be doing our part at the right time as and when we are conducted to do it.

A professor of theological ethics opened his class for the semester by reading a letter from a parent to an MP.

The parent complained that his son, who had received a good education, gone to all the right schools, and was headed for a good job as a lawyer, had gotten involved with a weird religious sect.

The father continued that the members of this sect controlled his every move, told him whom to date and whom not to date and had taken all of his money.

The parent pleaded with the MP to do something about this strange religious group.

Then the professor asked the students, "Who is this letter describing?"

There was quite a debate, with the class discussing some off the wall group cults, and many were suggested from UFO cults to Satanic Ritualistic types.

After about a 15 minutes of discussion the Professor revealed that the letter was from a third century Roman parent concerned about a group of people called....Christians.

[So, what was it about this son that caused so much concern that the father had to write a letter?

The son was plainly someone who had allowed God to permeate every corner of his life.

He could only date another Christian, could only use his money for good.

It is good to count the cost of following Jesus, of what it may mean for us to love God with all our hearts, mind, soul and strength.

This guy’s family thought he had lost his marbles.

Even Jesus’ family thought he was mad at one time.]

Sometimes it comes down to choice.

The family of God or our biological family.

It is also possible that God will lead us away from home comforts:

We are in a relationship with our Father.

We are in the greatest love story ever told.

We were without hope but then we were adopted into God’s family.

And now what is required is that we love God.

And when we think on the cross and the forgiveness given we should love Him even more for He truly, really loves us.

And then it will follow that we can do the second command which is to love our neighbour as ourselves.

It should be second nature that we look out for the needs of others.

The problem is that there are problems.

The problem is that we have problems.

The problem is that my problems take priority over yours.

However, we have to carry one another’s burdens as well as carry our own.