Untitled Sermon
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
On knowing God: Let’s say you were contacted by a reporter tomorrow. She heard about you and says, “Hey I’m going to do a human interest story on you this week. It’s going to be on the front page and it’ll be all about you and who you are.
After reeling from the shock, what question might you ask her next? What are you going to write? When is our interview? Her reply is something like, “Oh I know you – I read your social media posts, and a few people told me things about you, I heard a few others around your school. I’ve got enough.” How are you feeling right now? A little uneasy right?
How could she possibly do a story on you and not even take the time to get to know you. To interview you. To talk to you? Now your pride turns to dread. Because she doesn’t know you and now she’s gonna tell everyone things that probably aren’t accurate.
How many of you have heard bad things about a person, then you get to meet them and realize they’re awesome. You wonder how someone had such a negative opinion.
In a way, this is what the scribes and the pharisees were really known for. They read all about God from His word, and other people’s writings about God, and heard messages from priests on their thoughts of God. But they didn’t know God. There was no relationship there.
Here’s the setup. This is passion week - the week before Christ is betrayed and crucified. The pharisees and priests are doing their best to catch Jesus in something they can jail and punish him for. Anything. In the previous verses (you can read them on your own) they’ve tried to get Jesus with some pretty wild stuff about seven brothers for one bride, and paying taxes to Caesar. Jesus confounds them each time leaving them silent.
Here comes a scribe. A pharisee of pharisees you might say, who was well educated beyond that of even normal pharisees. He was an expert in the law and so he brings this final question to the Lord Jesus. It says, “One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
This is an interesting question. The Jews had a habit of revering the laws of God so highly that they created their own laws to keep them from getting close to breaking God’s laws. So it’s like multiple layers of fences. So this scribe is asking which one is most critical.
These men loved to debate this question. Was it not stealing, or lying, or murder maybe? The heart of the debate is really one of struggle. God’s law is anything but easy and with the additional laws they burdened themselves with, they were inwardly aware of how far they fell short. Maybe if they could just discover the most important one, then they could keep that law. The goal? Earning God’s favor. But we know that God’s favor is His gift to us, not by good works, so that no one can be proud of deserving it.
What’s also interesting is that this is one of only three times where Jesus actually answers a question that is posed to him. Only three times does Jesus directly answer a question without asking another one in follow up. So we need to pay attention to his answer.
29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 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: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
Love God With Your Mind
Love God With Your Mind
The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), .
The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), .
The Lord is One. Jesus reminds us before he gets any further, that there is only one God, and no other. This was in contrast to the Hellenistic cultures which worshipped a multitude of gods. Zeus, Hermes, Artimis, etc… Today our culture tempts us with a multitude of gods as well, like sports, politics, YouTube, fame, etc…
A right understanding of who God is will direct our attention to the right things. And so Jesus adds the mind to this familiar Old Testament quotation, the Shema, which didn’t include it originally. Love the Lord Your God with ALL your mind.
What I want you to understand is that if your mind does not lead you TO God, it will lead you FROM God. If your mind does not lead you TO God, it will lead you away FROM God.
The Lord gave us a mind as the seat of our ability to reason, to will or make choices, and our knowledge repository. All that we know, whether experiential, or from studying, is housed in our mind. So it’s not surprising that everything else flows from a person’s mind; and why Jesus tells us here that we are to love God with all of it.
As Western thinkers we see Jesus’ command to love in these ways, and immediately turn them into little silos. Compartments that we open to engage in all the loving. But in reality they are like a spaghetti bowl that are all intermingled. The heart, mind, soul, strength are all interconnected and overlapping with one another.
But bringing these up is a way of highlighting aspects of our being that should be under self-control for the glory of God.
Knowing About...
Knowing About...
You’ve heard Jeff talk about how knowing about God is not the same as knowing God. He’s absolutely right. In the same light, you cannot know someone until you know about them either.
This is where we must begin our journey. Because if our minds do not lead us TO God, they will lead us away FROM God. If what we learn about God is false, or we only seek information that we’ve already decided is best, then we will naturally end up with a god of our own making. People do this all the time.
President XXX was partly famous for using a blade to cut out the portions of Scripture that he didn’t agree with. So his Bible became a sort of Swiss cheese block of quotes that he personally liked. But in doing so he no longer was learning about God, he was creating a god of his own making.
We are easily distracted correct? So if you need to study for an important test and you have your cell phone or a show playing, how well are you focusing your attention on that material? Like, not at all right? You’re constantly getting texts, alerts, or having your eyes drift to whatever is going on elsewhere. This is how our minds are when it comes to knowing about God. The word secular means: non-religious. In our case it means non-Christian.
Most of you go to secular schools, you watch secular shows, read secular books, have friends that are outsiders to the church, see secular advertisements, listen to secular music, play secular games, and all of these things are significant influences in how you think, what you think, and the knowledge you think with. This is not a dig on your, it’s just the world we live in.
If you consider your mind like a bucket, you’ve got all of these things pouring influence into it (experiment with water, 80%water/20%iodine(10% something?), 80%water/20% bleach) renewing mind) it doesn’t take much but our mind becomes clouded with worldly things. Pretty soon we have great difficulty seeing through the fog. Everything is affected by what our mind takes in. Our attitude, our demeanor, our speech, our thinking, our emotions, etc...
So how can we love God with our mind, when our thinking is so clouded in darkness? Remember, if your mind doesn’t lead you TO God, it will lead you FROM God. A mind that is clouded like this is not going to lead you to God. This is was our mind was like all the time before God saved us and gave us renewal.
Remain
Remain
Jesus knew that this was our problem. He knew that our tendency was to drift and sometimes rapidly. So he gave his disciples an analogy to understand in .
Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.