Sermon Tone Analysis

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A Time to Love And a Time to Hate

The two greatest forces in the universe are love and hate.

When wrongly diverted they can desecrate life, but when rightly directed they can consecrate life.

It is imperative that we interpret these two qualities of love and hate in the light of our Lord's teaching, in order that we would love as He would love and hate as He would hate.

The first thing that we shall discover is that when we truly love we fulfill:

!! Life's Total Obligation

When a lawyer asked our Lord what commandment was the greatest in the law of God, Jesus quoted the Old Testament (Deut.

6:4; Lev.

19:18) and declared:

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The first of all the commandments is: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength."

This is the first commandment.

And the second, like it, is this: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

There is no other commandment greater than these.

(Mark 12:29-31)

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According to rabbinical teaching, there were 613 precepts in the Law.

Of this considerable number all could not be observed.

For this reason some of the religious leaders taught that if a man rightly selected some great precept to obey, he might safely disregard the rest of the Law.

This is the kind of doctrine against which James expostulated when he wrote, "Whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all" (James 2:10).

So we see both the importance and significance of the Master's reply to the lawyer's question.

He not only gave the answer to life's greatest question, but also spelled out life's total obligation.

In a word, it is love to God and love to man.

First, then, */love to God/*—"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength" (Mark 12:30).

A. W. Tozer rightly reminds us that:

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God being who He is must always be sought for Himself, never as a means toward something else.

Whoever seeks other objects and not God is on his own; he may obtain those objects if he is able, but he will never have God.

God is never found accidentally.

"Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart" [Jer.

29:13] ... The teaching of the Bible is that God is Himself the end for which man was created.

"Whom have I in heaven but thee [Ps.

73:25]."

The first and greatest commandment is to love God with every power of our entire being.

Where love like that exists there can be no place for a second object.

If we love God as much as we should, surely we cannot dream of a loved object beyond Him that He might help us to obtain.

(1962)

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Bernard of Clairvaux begins his radiant little treatise on the love of God with a question and an answer.

The question, Why should we love God?

The answer, Because He is God.

He develops the idea farther, but for the enlightened heart little more need be said.

We should love God because He is God.

Beyond this the angels cannot think.

With this in mind, we need to examine the words our Savior used to describe the measure of our love.

He said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength" (Mark 12:30).

While it is difficult to define with any finality the significance of each of these terms used, it is still important to emphasize that God intends us to love Him with every part of our being.

St. Bernard says, "The measure of our love to God is to love Him without measure; for the immense goodness of God deserves all the love that we can possibly give to Him" (Spence and Exell 1975, 16:157).

For practical purposes, this means */we must love God with a real love/*—"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart" (Mark 12:30).

Among the Hebrews, the heart was considered to be the seat of the understanding, the home of the affections, and the center of the will.

This describes the intellectual, emotional, and volitional outgoing of love to God.

Such response is reflective of reality.

In this day of play acting we need to challenge ourselves as to whether we really love God.

It was to religious people that Jesus said, "This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me" (Mark 7:6).

Has it ever occurred to you that more lies are said, or sung, during the hours of worship on a Sunday than possibly any other time of the week?

We stand up and sing, "Take my life, and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee," and quite frankly, it's a lie; for, if we really meant it, our Christian behavior and service would be different.

During the Napoleonic Wars the emperors of Prussia, Austria, and Russia were discussing the unquestioning obedience of their soldiers.

They agreed that each would call in his sentinel and command him to leap out of a second-story window.

First, the Prussian monarch gave the drastic order.

"Your majesty, it would kill me," his bodyguard complained.

He was dismissed, and the Austrian soldier was subjected to the same test.

"I'll do it," he said, "if you really mean what you say."

Then the Czar gave his man the same order, and the officer immediately started to obey.

But he was stopped as he put one leg over the window ledge.

Were these sovereigns really plotting murder?

No, /their purpose was not to sacrifice their soldiers, but to test their obedience!/

Are we so loyal to Christ that to obey His will is our chief delight?

Do we love Him with all our heart?

(Bosch 1976).

*/We must love God with an intense love/—*"You shall love the Lord your God with all your ... soul" (Mark 12:30).

This means all the living powers of our personality.

This intensity of love can be illustrated at many levels.

Just watch "the way of a man with a virgin" (Prov.

30:19).

Look at the facial expressions of an audience viewing a human-interest movie.

Sit with a crowd during an exciting game of football, or tennis, and so on.

Quite honestly it makes me mad when I hear the critics deride the passion with which I preach or share my faith, and yet see these same individuals express similar intensity of emotion in relational situations of lesser importance.

I do not believe that anyone can love God with all his or her soul without showing it and sharing it.

I agree with A. T. Pierson who once said, "A light that does not shine, a germ that does not grow, a spring that does not flow, is no more of an anomaly than a Christian who does not witness."

*/We must love God with a discerning love/—*"You shall love the Lord your God with all your ... mind" (Mark 12:30).

The emphasis here is more on the intellectual powers.

The Bible is so balanced in its presentation of truth.

While our love to God must be emotional—to be love at all—it also must be intellectual.

This thought is undoubtedly implied when the apostle Paul writes, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your /reasonable service/ [or intellectual service]" (Rom.

12:1).

W. E. Vine aptly explains this verse by stating, "The sacrifice is to be intelligent, in contrast to those offered by ritual and compulsion; the presentation is to be in accordance with the spiritual intelligence of those who are new creatures in Christ and are mindful of 'the mercies of God'" (1961, 3:253).

Nobody can study the Scriptures with any perceptiveness without concluding that in the reckoning of God /the mind/ matters.

In the divine purpose and instructions, the burnt offering was to be laid on the altar, piece by piece, with thoughtfulness and deliberation.

Our whole mental processes are to be involved when we surrender our lives to Christ.

General Charles G. Gordon was an outstanding man of God.

When the British government sought to reward him for his brilliant service in China, he declined all money and titles but accepted a gold medal inscribed with the record of his thirty-three engagements.

It was his most prized possession.

But after his death the medal could not be found.

Eventually it was learned that he had sent it to Manchester during a severe famine, directing that it should be melted down and used to buy bread for the poor.

Under the date of its sending, these words were found written in his diary, "The last earthly thing I had in this world that I valued I have given to the Lord Jesus Christ" (Naismith 1962, 80[457]).

His love for the Savior had constrained him to relinquish his one treasured possession for the relief of the destitute.

He would not cling to earthly honor, but casting its last vestige aside, he sought only to serve the Master for the gospel's sake.

Here was a man whose consecration to Christ was an evidence of loving thought.

*/We must love God with an active love/—*"You shall love the Lord your God with all your ... strength" (Mark 12:30).

Quite obviously, the physical powers are implied here.

This means the deliberate involvement and employment of all our faculties.

The response of our love can never be complete unless we can look into the face of our Lord and Master and say, "Think through my mind, speak through my lips, work through my hands, walk through my feet, and radiate through my personality."

I have always been impressed with the range of teaching that we find in the New Testament on the physical body.

Indeed, it is a subject all its own.

Suffice it to say, however, Paul, in particular, teaches that the body is to be surrendered (Rom.

12:1-2), exercised (1 Tim.

4:8), disciplined (1 Cor.