February 24, 2008 Third Sunday of Lent
Sermon Title: “All Your Soul”
Series: Extreme Love: The Greatest Commandment
Text: Mark 12:30
Dr.
Delivered on February 24, 2008
“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.”
Mark 12:30 NRSV
All Your Soul
You all know, after these almost eight years together, that I’m the type person who gets on certain “kicks” and who goes completely overboard. My latest kick is watching Westerns on television. I can’t get enough of them, and luckily we get a cable channel at our house called “Encore Westerns” that shows old Western movies and TV shows 24/7. For the last couple of months, there’s nothing I like better than eating my supper and doing my chores before settling down in front of the TV to watch a good old black and white cowboy movie from the fifties.
The other day I
began to wonder why I like these movies so much. Am I turning into an old man
that sits around and dreams nostalgically of the “old days” and wishes that we
could somehow return to them? Will I soon be snoring in my recliner with the
remote control in my hand like millions of other “fifty-something” men in
Actually, it’s none of these. I like Westerns so much because, for one thing, you can always tell the good guys from the bad guys. It’s often as simple as the good guys wear white hats and the bad guys wear black ones. Or the good guys are the cowboys and the bad guys are the Indians. Or the good guy is wearing a badge and the bad guy isn’t. The line between good and bad, right and wrong, is clearly drawn in Westerns.
I also like
Westerns because they always seem to have clear goals and objectives. Things
like getting a wagon train safely across the Santa Fe Trail to
I also like Westerns because they almost always have happy endings. You know what I’m talking about: the good guy rides off into the sunset with the girl whistling “Happy Trails,” or the bad hombre turns good and saves the whole town from the real bad guys.
I guess what I’m saying is I’m attracted to Westerns because the lines are so clearly drawn in them. It’s actually an amazing metaphor that the best ones are even filmed in black and white. The reality is, of course, that “real life” doesn’t often work that way. Life can be messy, life can be confusing. In a word, life can be ambiguous. Here in the “real world” we often find out things aren’t so “cut and dried.”
It’s like one of my favorite country music artists, Alan Jackson, sings in one of his songs. In the movies, “Cowboys don't cry and heroes don't die. And good always wins again and again…. But here in the real world…the boy don’t always get the girl…and lovers don’t always make it through.”[i]
I say all this because of a struggle many of us have with Jesus’ Great Commandment to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And that struggle is the “all or nothing” condition of the statement as Jesus makes it. In stating it the way He does, clearly Jesus is saying we are to love God with all of who we are and with everything we have – all or nothing. There must be no ambiguity about our love for God. There must be no competition to our love for God. There is nothing we are to love as much as God.
Taken as a whole, there are basically two ways of viewing this commandment as Jesus says it. The first says that in making it Jesus was speaking scientifically, revealing four distinct aspects of our humanity. On the surface this appears to make good sense. “Heart” points to the emotive center of our lives. “Mind” points to our rational selves, our will. “Soul” points to the spiritual aspect of who we are. And “Strength” points to the physical, or material aspect of our being, our body. This, in turn leads to all kinds of discussions about whether we are two-part, three-part, or four-part beings.
Others view the Great Commandment as more of a figure of speech. When they see the words “heart, soul, mind and strength” they see Jesus using these divisions more for emphasis, like saying someone bought something, “lock, stock and barrel,” or “hook, line, and sinker.” They see it as a phrase meaning essentially “everything.” They would argue that it’s not all that helpful to look at the four words “heart, soul, mind, and strength” separately.
Quite honestly, even though I need to get seven sermons out of this text in this series, I tend to fall in the second camp. I think the 4-fold list found in Mark’s version of the Great Commandment and the 3-fold list found in Matthew’s version is actually a refrain, a rhetorical device used for emphasis. I believe what Jesus meant by saying what he said how he said it was that we're to love God with our entire being, with all of who we are. In other words, “all or nothing.”
And so, like I just said, it’s that aspect that is more troubling for me – how to make God the number one love of my life – to love him with all that I ever was, am now, and ever will be. That troubles me a lot more than wondering how to love Him independently with all these, I believe, artificial divisions of who I am as a person.
I’m telling you all this because the “part” Jesus talked about for today’s message is the soul and of all the parts, the soul is the part that most of us think about when we think of the whole person. The soul is that mysterious aspect of our being that doesn’t have a corresponding “physical part” in our bodies that is recognized like the heart or brain as its location. In other words, you can’t separate your soul from the essence of who you are. As our study guide pointed out this week you and I don’t have a soul, we are souls!
Back in ancient days when science and medicine were fledgling arts and people began to make anatomical studies of dead bodies, the scientists actually looked for a “part” that was the soul. They were looking for a gland, or an organ, or something that they could call the “soul.” But one wasn’t found. The search for the soul became a deep philosophical and theological quest. We don’t have time to go into that, so for our purposes, just think of the soul as the essence of who we are. It is what allows us to think, feel, will, and act in uniquely human ways. It’s what makes us alive.
I’m one of those who likes to think of things very simply. One of the best and most theologically correct depictions of how the soul works is shown each year in the animated Christmas special “Frosty the Snowman.” When Professor Hinkle’s discarded hat is carried by the magician’s rabbit Hocus Pocus, and by the wind, and it lands on Frosty’s head the snow man mysteriously comes to life and says, “Happy Birthday!” And then he looks around and says,“Hey, I’m all livin’!” Of course viewers are left to ponder whether it was the hat, or the rabbit, or the wind (Holy Spirit?) that animated Frosty, but there is little doubt that one minute he was simply a pile of snow and the next he was alive. And whatever that “something” was, when it brought him to life it also gave him the ability to think, feel, and act. He was “ensouled.” Right?
Bottom line, we are left to ponder the implications of what it means or looks like when we love God with all our soul. Clearly he’s saying he wants all of you. And if you try to give Him part of you and not the whole, you’ll end up a guilt-addled, suffering, wreck of a human being. In fact, if you try to give him part of you, you’ll end up in worse condition – at least in this life – than you were without him because you’ll have just enough “God” in you to be miserable to really enjoy sinning. Anything less than a full surrender of the soul to God will lead you down a never-ending road of discontent.
So that leaves us with the question, “What does it mean to love God with “all your soul?” I believe the answer to that question is three-fold, all having to do with this “all-or-nothing” surrender to God.
First of all, to love God with all your soul is to make Him the PERMANENT ANCHOR for your soul. He must be the FOUNDATION your soul rests upon. I realize I’m mixing metaphors here a little – anchors and foundations – but they are very related and they give us two critical understandings of what we must do.
As for the anchor, I’ve included a verse from Hebrews there, Hebrews 6:19 which says, “This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast.” You know, the world has made great advances in many areas, especially science, technology and medicine. But our world also has also morphed in some pretty unhealthy ways. For instance, the modern world tends to be restless, rootless, and friendless. To me that explains the fascination with things like Facebook and My Space, people are desperate for connections, for rootedness, because of the ways our world has evolved. That’s a whole other sermon. More to the point, another by-product of our modern, pluralistic age is we’ve created a “sandy bottom” with nothing for us to anchor ourselves to. If it really is true that truth is relevant, as many argue today, then what can we anchor ourselves to? What’s to keep us from drifting into the rocks? Is there anything that provides us with true stability? Is there anything that will allow us to give up our aimless drifting towards the shore? Is there such an anchor to be found? I would say yes there is, and that truth is found in Christ alone. We have this hope, that what God has done for us in Christ, as an anchor for our souls in an increasingly anchorless world.
And we must not only anchor ourselves firmly in Him, we must build upon him as the very foundation of our lives. We studied chapter seven of Matthew last weekend in our Sunday Night Bible study and we read where Jesus concluded the Sermon on the Mount by saying that everyone who builds his life on the firm rock of Christ’s teaching will be able to withstand the storms of life. But those who build on the shifting sands of popular opinion will tumble and fall when the storms come, and great, Jesus said, will be the fall.
It all starts here, with the anchor of our souls firmly planted as an unmovable foundation built on the rock, which is Christ Jesus.
The second thing it means to love God with all your soul as I see it, is to make Him the PASSIONATE PURSUIT of your soul. God must be the FOCUS of your life; not one thing among many, but the most important thing of all.
That’s what it was like for the Apostle Paul. In Phil. 3:13-14 he says, “This one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”
I’ve been reading and studying all about investing recently. What prompted this was a few weeks ago I took a “bath” on a stock that I owned. I bought the stock at $10 a share, it split twice and I bought even more because it was such a good stock. Pretty soon this one stock made up over 80% of my holdings. Then it went up to almost $20 a share and I had more money than I’d ever had at one time in my life. But then the bottom dropped out and I lost practically all of it. I sold all my shares for less than $2 a share, taking over a 50% loss of my original investment.
There are a world of sermons in what happened there, sermons about greed and selfishness and the love of money and what it can do to you. But the lesson I want to draw for us today has to do with what I’ve been reading about lately when it comes to investing, and that’s called diversification. It’s one of the basic tenets of investing. Simply put it means don’t put all your eggs in one basket. “Hedge your bet” so if part of it goes bad you won’t sink the whole ship.
Some people think diversification is the only way to live your entire life. We honor and respect “well-rounded” people. Moderation is lauded. But when it comes to our soul, there can be no such thing as moderation. We must have one passionate pursuit, one consuming passion. Like I’ve already said more than once in this sermon, loving God is an all or nothing proposition. He cannot be one thing among many in our lives.
Making God and His Kingdom the passionate pursuit of your life, the “one thing” provides focus for our lives but it can be difficult because so many other things will be clamoring for your attention and trying to draw your focus away from God.
Wednesday night there was a spectacular lunar eclipse, perhaps some of you saw it. I decided to get out my Minolta SLR camera with a zoom lens on it to get some photos, a camera I haven’t used in a while. I didn’t get any good shots though. I couldn’t get a clear view of the moon without looking at it through tree branches. Every time I was just about to take a picture the camera’s auto-focus feature would detect the branches between the moon and me and the lens would refocus on the branches instead of on the moon itself. That’s how it is with us and God. Many of us will leave here today all fired up to follow Him with all our soul. And then we’ll get out there in the “real world” and other pursuits in our lives like work, play, hobbies, our health, even good things like our family will start vying for our attention and distract from our primary pursuit, God.
Do we have other things we must do? Yes, of course. We’ve got to go to work, we’ve got to spend time with our family, we’ve got to take care of our bodies and our minds through exercise, rest and play. But all along the way we must keep the pursuit of God as our primary passion. A.W. Tozer, once said every believer is called to “an everlasting preoccupation with God.” We must allow nothing in our lives to take His place.
The third and final way we love God with all our soul that I want to mention this morning is we must make Him what I call the POLE STAR of our soul. Do you know what a pole star is? I use that image for a couple of reasons. One is because it starts with a “p” like the other two principles I’ve given. The second, and more important reason, is because of what a pole star is. A pole star is a star that is almost due north or due south of the earth which makes it useful for navigation. Most of the stars in the night sky travel through the sky each night as the earth spins, but a pole star is located almost directly over the poles of the earth and so they remain in the same relative position throughout the course of the night. They are reliable. While all the other stars’ positions change, the pole star’s position does not. That makes them dependable.
I don’t want to
get political this morning, but wouldn’t it be nice if some of our candidates
for office were as dependable as a pole star? I saw a piece on the news the other
night where they showed clips of all three of the remaining potential
candidates for President on a variety of issues and they were all flipping and
flopping around like a bunch of fish on the deck of a ship. They’d say one
thing in front of a room full of auto-workers in
That’s just the
way it is in the world I suppose; remember my fascination with Westerns? But
that’s not the way it is in the
Or consider John 8:31-32, there Jesus says “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” You see, the truth is out there, and it’s not my truth or your truth; it’s God’s truth – it’s “pole star” truth, truth you can bank on, truth as a basket you can put all your eggs in – truth that’s as black and white as the movies I watch practically every night.
The question isn’t whether it’s true or not – it is – the question is have you accepted that truth? And note the entire verse – that truth isn’t constricting, that truth wasn’t given to kill all your fun. That truth was given because that truth alone can set you free.
This morning as I close let me ask you, have you set as the permanent anchor of your soul the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Have you made God and his kingdom the passionate pursuit of your life? Are you, like Paul, running the race so as to win it? And finally, have you made Christ and His teachings the pole star of your navigation system?
When I began this message I mentioned how one of the things I like best about cowboy movies is they usually have happy endings. I wish I could’ve said they all end happily, but they don’t. Perhaps you’re still looking for your happy ending today. Maybe you invested years in a marriage that has now crumbled and you don’t see how it can end happily. Maybe you have a child that you loved and raised the best way you knew how and now they’ve turned on you, and on God, and on everything holy. Or maybe you prayed for your friend, or spouse, or child who had cancer and they still died anyway. Maybe things look bleak for you right now in your job or with your health. Maybe the creditors are circling your house right now like buzzards. You’re wondering how in the world you can have your happy ending. It may even be so bad you feel like I did the other night. I was watching one of my Westerns and the story took a turn and I didn’t like what I thought was about to happen so I just got up and turned off the TV and went to bed before it did. Have you ever felt like that? You couldn’t bear to look?
Hear me this morning. Believers of Christ, people who love Him with all their soul, they have a “happy ending promise” from God. I’ve read the Book. I’ve seen how the story ends. God wins. We win. “All things work for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28). Do you believe that this morning? Do you trust Him? Do you love him with all your soul? If not, make the decision today. Don’t let another day go by without fully surrendering your soul to Him. You won’t regret it, I’ll promise you that. Let’s pray.