WEBVTT 00:00:06.480 --> 00:00:07.440 Hello everyone. 00:00:07.440 --> 00:00:08.960 This is Pastor Benjamin. 00:00:08.960 --> 00:00:12.000 You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, Orlando. 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:15.439 At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer. 00:00:15.439 --> 00:00:20.079 For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com. 00:00:22.800 --> 00:00:25.519 Join with me in the prayer of illumination. 00:00:25.519 --> 00:00:34.399 Heavenly Father, may your word be a lamp to our feet and a light to our path through Jesus Christ our Lord. 00:00:34.399 --> 00:00:35.359 Amen. 00:00:35.359 --> 00:00:41.039 Today we're going to be reading in Deuteronomy 6, verse 4 and 5. 00:00:41.039 --> 00:00:46.000 Hear, O Israel. 00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:49.759 The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 00:00:49.759 --> 00:00:56.880 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. 00:00:56.880 --> 00:00:58.799 This is the reading of God's word. 00:00:59.600 --> 00:01:01.439 Jordan or LeBron? 00:01:01.439 --> 00:01:05.680 Messi or Ronaldo? 00:01:05.680 --> 00:01:09.439 Hendricks or Van Halen? 00:01:09.439 --> 00:01:17.519 You know, Jason talked a little bit ago about how we we value Christian unity here, and I think I just messed that up. 00:01:17.519 --> 00:01:24.480 So but what is it about us that uh we want to know, we want to debate who is first and who is great. 00:01:24.480 --> 00:01:26.079 What is that in us? 00:01:26.079 --> 00:01:30.879 And it's not just a modern proclivity, it's actually an ancient experience as well. 00:01:30.879 --> 00:01:40.400 In fact, in the around the first century AD, there was a lively debate about what God expects of humanity. 00:01:40.400 --> 00:01:47.519 Now, I mean, everybody, if you believe that there's a God, you would assume that that God probably has some expectations for us as human creatures. 00:01:47.519 --> 00:01:58.480 But the Jewish people had uh a pretty big book, what we call our Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, and in there there were 613 laws, commands. 00:01:58.480 --> 00:02:07.680 And so this debate, this conversation was between teachers of this book about which is the one rule to rule them all, if you will. 00:02:07.680 --> 00:02:14.319 And in the course of that conversation, there's one uh story that I think kind of heightens this debate. 00:02:14.319 --> 00:02:31.520 You see, there was a rabbi named Shemai, and Rabbi Shemmai was approached by a Gentile who is a non-Jew, and the Gentile came to him and said, Listen, I will convert to your Jewish faith if you can summarize the Torah, that is the commands, the teachings of Scripture. 00:02:31.520 --> 00:02:35.599 If you can summarize the Torah while I stand on one foot. 00:02:35.599 --> 00:02:39.840 And Shemmai responded by hitting him with a stick, apparently. 00:02:39.840 --> 00:02:41.680 I mean, this is what the history says. 00:02:41.680 --> 00:02:43.280 Uh, he was not having it. 00:02:43.280 --> 00:02:51.520 I think his heart didn't like the reductionism, this attempt to minimize all that God requires to something so simple. 00:02:51.520 --> 00:03:00.800 Now, there was a maybe a kinder rabbi named Rabbi Hallel, and this same Gentile went to Rabbi Hallel, he's brave, courageous, apparently Gentile. 00:03:00.800 --> 00:03:03.360 He goes to Hillel, he says the same thing. 00:03:03.360 --> 00:03:07.439 I will convert to your Jewish faith if you can teach me the Torah while I stand on one foot. 00:03:07.439 --> 00:03:15.360 To which Hallel replies, whoever, what whatever you find hateful, do not do that to someone else. 00:03:15.360 --> 00:03:18.000 That is the entirety of the Torah. 00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:20.159 Everything else is commentary. 00:03:20.159 --> 00:03:21.439 That's what he said. 00:03:21.439 --> 00:03:28.719 Now you can notice Hillel defined the great, the first and great commandment horizontally, how we relate to one another. 00:03:28.719 --> 00:03:29.599 That's important. 00:03:29.599 --> 00:03:37.680 But then about a generation, into the ring steps the heavy hitter, Rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth. 00:03:37.680 --> 00:03:48.639 And in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus is asked this question Teacher or Rabbi, which is the first and great command in the law? 00:03:48.639 --> 00:03:54.000 To which Jesus replies, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 00:03:54.000 --> 00:04:02.400 You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind, and with all of your strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. 00:04:02.400 --> 00:04:04.800 And he adds some comments to it too. 00:04:04.800 --> 00:04:09.120 He says in Matthew's gospel, This is the first and great commandment. 00:04:09.120 --> 00:04:12.879 Upon it depends all of the law and the prophets. 00:04:12.879 --> 00:04:16.160 Now we think it's lost on us what happened in that moment. 00:04:16.160 --> 00:04:20.399 Jesus changed human history forever with that phrase. 00:04:20.399 --> 00:04:29.199 He finally defined for us what is first and what is great in the heart of God for humanity. 00:04:29.199 --> 00:04:33.360 It's to love God with all of yourself and to love your neighbor as yourself. 00:04:33.360 --> 00:04:36.160 This is a brilliant moment in human history. 00:04:36.160 --> 00:04:41.519 Jesus tells us what is the goat, the greatest of all texts, in the Bible. 00:04:41.519 --> 00:04:44.800 It's Deuteronomy 6, it's Leviticus 19. 00:04:44.800 --> 00:04:53.839 He brings those together and he says, This is the entirety, the summary of what God calls humans to live into. 00:04:53.839 --> 00:05:01.680 And so today we we actually begin a series through the book of Deuteronomy, starting today, going all the way through until Advent. 00:05:01.680 --> 00:05:11.680 But we're going to spend these three weeks lingering on Deuteronomy chapter six because of the importance of this chapter in all the Bible. 00:05:11.680 --> 00:05:16.079 So if you have a Bible or a device, go ahead and get Deuteronomy chapter six in front of you. 00:05:16.079 --> 00:05:19.279 We're going to only look at verses four and five today. 00:05:19.279 --> 00:05:23.600 The following weeks we'll take up more of the text together. 00:05:23.600 --> 00:05:38.079 But before we get there, um there's something I have to do before we start, which is I have to define a question that's been been asked for a long time, but at least since 1993, when the great Trinidadian singer Hathaway asked the question, What is love? 00:05:38.079 --> 00:05:40.399 Baby, don't hurt me. 00:05:40.399 --> 00:05:42.480 What is love? 00:05:42.480 --> 00:05:48.800 Romantic poets and philosophers have been meditating on this question for a long time. 00:05:48.800 --> 00:05:50.079 What is love? 00:05:50.079 --> 00:05:54.480 Well, I want to submit to you a definition that I don't have time to defend, but you can bear with me. 00:05:54.480 --> 00:06:04.399 The definition of love, I think, from scripture is love is self-giving in allegiance, action, and affection for the good of the beloved. 00:06:04.399 --> 00:06:10.560 Love is self-giving in allegiance, action, and affection for the good of the beloved. 00:06:10.560 --> 00:06:16.480 And so when we take up the text and we look at this call to loving God, this is what the call is to do. 00:06:16.480 --> 00:06:18.079 So look with me at the text. 00:06:18.079 --> 00:06:20.399 We're gonna go verse by verse through this passage. 00:06:20.399 --> 00:06:21.839 Look at verse 4. 00:06:21.839 --> 00:06:26.560 It says this, Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 00:06:26.560 --> 00:06:28.560 I'm gonna pause there for a moment. 00:06:28.560 --> 00:06:35.759 Because something is happening in this text, and people debate what does it mean that the Lord is one? 00:06:35.759 --> 00:06:46.480 And there's really only two options, and I actually think both are not only equally true, but I think both are on the heart of God and in the mind of Moses when he inspires this passage. 00:06:46.480 --> 00:06:52.639 The first way in which the Lord is one is that the Lord is alone. 00:06:52.639 --> 00:06:56.480 The Lord is unrivaled, you could say. 00:06:56.480 --> 00:07:03.600 And you know that this is true because the first of the Ten Commandments is, you shall have no other gods before me. 00:07:03.600 --> 00:07:06.879 What does it mean for our God to be one? 00:07:06.879 --> 00:07:14.000 It's that our God is alone and unrivaled in our affections and in our allegiance and in our action. 00:07:14.000 --> 00:07:23.759 But there's a second possible meaning here, which is the Lord is one in that the Lord is not only unrivaled but undivided. 00:07:23.759 --> 00:07:29.439 God is not duplicitous in any way, shape, or form. 00:07:29.439 --> 00:07:32.720 All of God does, all that God does. 00:07:32.720 --> 00:07:36.800 The reason why that's good news is you just watch the Odyssey, for instance. 00:07:36.800 --> 00:07:41.920 You've got the Greek gods are constantly baiting and switching human beings. 00:07:41.920 --> 00:07:47.360 You have them feigning that this is what they're after when really behind the scenes they're after that over there. 00:07:47.360 --> 00:07:52.720 The God, the true and living God revealed to us in Scripture, is nothing like those gods. 00:07:52.720 --> 00:07:54.399 This God is undivided. 00:07:54.399 --> 00:07:57.600 Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 00:07:57.600 --> 00:08:00.480 There is a unity to the person of God. 00:08:00.480 --> 00:08:05.759 There is a unity to the heart, the soul, and the strength of God. 00:08:05.759 --> 00:08:13.040 That is so important for us if we're going to have any kind of a unity in our devotion to that God. 00:08:13.040 --> 00:08:15.120 Let me say that differently. 00:08:15.120 --> 00:08:22.800 Because the Lord is one, that's why you're called to be one in your love for that Lord. 00:08:22.800 --> 00:08:39.279 All this language of all your heart, all your soul, all your strength comes from the fact that there is a oneness in God, a unity in God, a wholeness, an integrity in God, and it evokes, it calls forth a wholeness and an integrity in you. 00:08:39.279 --> 00:08:45.360 Let me just make that plain real quick before we jump into these four capacities to love. 00:08:45.360 --> 00:08:51.279 Some of you are exhausted today because you are a divided person. 00:08:51.279 --> 00:09:01.279 There are parts of you that have been given in loyalty, in love to something over here and something over here simultaneously. 00:09:01.279 --> 00:09:07.360 And so you feel attention internally because you are a divided person. 00:09:07.360 --> 00:09:11.039 This text in Deuteronomy 6, it's called the Shema. 00:09:11.039 --> 00:09:14.799 The Shema is after healing your whole person. 00:09:14.799 --> 00:09:23.200 Healing your whole person as you recenter, realign your very being in the love of God and God alone. 00:09:23.200 --> 00:09:30.000 So, with that, I want to talk about first the four capacities of love that we see in our text here. 00:09:30.000 --> 00:09:34.240 The four capacities of love, the first one is the heart. 00:09:34.240 --> 00:09:37.840 The heart is our loyalty. 00:09:37.840 --> 00:09:40.080 That's what I'm kind of shorthanding that. 00:09:40.080 --> 00:09:44.960 But but in scripture, the heart is the CEO of the self. 00:09:44.960 --> 00:09:49.919 You see, a CEO has some decisions they have to make for their business, for their company. 00:09:49.919 --> 00:09:53.919 And one of the ways they make those decisions is they have ordered priorities, right? 00:09:53.919 --> 00:09:57.279 Priority number one is going to shape decisions more than anything else. 00:09:57.279 --> 00:09:58.320 That's what happens. 00:09:58.320 --> 00:10:07.039 If your love, if your loyalty is from the heart for God, your love of God will be the highest priority in your existence. 00:10:07.039 --> 00:10:13.679 Decisions, actions, choices will flow from this ultimate and highest loyalty. 00:10:13.679 --> 00:10:22.399 Now, another way to say this is you have uh a solar system within you of sorts. 00:10:22.399 --> 00:10:34.159 And in our solar system, the sun is the center of the solar system, and it is 99.86% of the mass of our entire solar system is found in the sun. 00:10:34.159 --> 00:10:41.440 All the other planets, all the other moons, all the other asteroids are whatever the remainder of 99.86 is. 00:10:41.440 --> 00:10:42.799 I'm not good at math. 00:10:42.799 --> 00:10:45.360 What do I mean by that? 00:10:45.360 --> 00:10:53.360 Until the Lord, the true and living God, is the center of your solar system, your life will be exorbitant. 00:10:53.360 --> 00:10:58.000 Nothing will orbit around the center in the way that it is meant to. 00:10:58.000 --> 00:11:08.480 Things will not be held in harmony like you were designed for until your loyalties, your heart, is given to the true and living God first and foremost. 00:11:08.480 --> 00:11:17.679 And so another way to say this is what God wants of you is the opposite of what Henry Ford wanted from his workers on his assembly line. 00:11:17.679 --> 00:11:23.919 He is quoted in saying, Why do I keep getting whole persons when all I want is some hands? 00:11:23.919 --> 00:11:25.840 What does he mean by that? 00:11:25.840 --> 00:11:34.080 Henry Ford was frustrated that he had to care for the whole person of his worker when really all he wanted was somebody who could pull a lever on an assembly line. 00:11:34.080 --> 00:11:38.159 What Yahweh wants is the exact opposite from you. 00:11:38.159 --> 00:11:42.720 If he has your hands but not your heart, it's worthless to him. 00:11:42.720 --> 00:11:50.480 If he has your lips but not your heart, later prophets say, these people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. 00:11:50.480 --> 00:11:54.639 And it is, it just it drives God crazy if I could say that. 00:11:54.639 --> 00:12:02.240 Because he wants you and he wants all of you, starting with the center of you, which is your heart. 00:12:02.240 --> 00:12:05.440 This is your place of loyalty. 00:12:05.440 --> 00:12:15.519 Now, you may not experience this uh as acutely as I'm about to describe it, but you and I are in a war. 00:12:15.519 --> 00:12:24.320 But the war is fought on the battlefield for the allegiance of the human heart. 00:12:24.320 --> 00:12:32.159 Every day and in every way, there is a battle between good and evil, vying for your highest allegiance. 00:12:32.159 --> 00:12:39.360 And that tension between good and evil, that that pole, it actually runs through each and every one of us. 00:12:39.360 --> 00:12:41.279 But it runs directly through the human heart. 00:12:41.279 --> 00:12:47.039 Alexander Soljanitsyn, who spent time in a Soviet Union gulag, said it like this. 00:12:47.039 --> 00:12:56.879 The line separating good and evil passes not through states nor classes nor political parties, but right through every human heart. 00:12:56.879 --> 00:12:59.279 And through all human hearts. 00:12:59.279 --> 00:13:00.639 This line shifts. 00:13:00.639 --> 00:13:08.320 Inside us, it oscillates with the years, and even within hearts that are overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. 00:13:08.320 --> 00:13:15.120 And even in the best of all hearts, there remains an unupprooted small corner of evil. 00:13:15.120 --> 00:13:16.000 End quote. 00:13:16.000 --> 00:13:25.440 Starting with the allegiance of the human heart. 00:13:25.440 --> 00:13:31.840 This is where good and evil are at war with one another. 00:13:31.840 --> 00:13:34.720 Now the Bible has a really robust psychology of the heart. 00:13:34.720 --> 00:13:35.840 Listen to this briefly. 00:13:35.840 --> 00:13:40.639 This is a few of the ways the heart can present itself in Scripture. 00:13:40.639 --> 00:13:56.240 The heart can be broken, grieved, discouraged, obstinate, proud, wicked, tremble, double, subtle, perverse, sorrowful, troubled, foolish, darkened, envious, jealous, impenitent, evil, unfaithful, deceitful, hard, scheming, diabolical, covetous, and many more things. 00:13:56.240 --> 00:14:06.960 I'll read you that list because as the Proverbs say in Proverbs 4, guard your heart with all vigilance, for from it flows the springs of life. 00:14:06.960 --> 00:14:09.440 Heart's really important. 00:14:09.440 --> 00:14:11.519 And it's why we begin here. 00:14:11.519 --> 00:14:17.679 Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, but also all of your soul. 00:14:17.679 --> 00:14:19.120 All of your soul. 00:14:19.120 --> 00:14:21.039 That's the second capacity here. 00:14:21.039 --> 00:14:25.440 And the way I would describe your soul is it is your life. 00:14:25.440 --> 00:14:34.960 Psalm 103.1 says it like this Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. 00:14:34.960 --> 00:14:40.960 Hebrew parallelism means that soul is equated with all that is within me. 00:14:40.960 --> 00:14:42.879 So that's the best definition of a soul. 00:14:42.879 --> 00:14:46.480 And that's important because we live in an interesting cultural moment. 00:14:46.480 --> 00:14:55.279 We as Christians live between some kind of Platonic views of body and soul and some secular views of there's maybe no such thing as a soul. 00:14:55.279 --> 00:14:58.879 And so let me just say this: you are not a soul with a body. 00:14:58.879 --> 00:15:00.080 That's not true of you. 00:15:00.080 --> 00:15:01.440 That's what Plato would say. 00:15:01.440 --> 00:15:03.759 But you're also not a body that might have a soul. 00:15:03.759 --> 00:15:05.840 That's what your fitness influencer would say. 00:15:05.840 --> 00:15:09.759 You are an embodied soul and an insoled body. 00:15:09.759 --> 00:15:14.159 Both matter, and they're you can't really disentangle them. 00:15:14.159 --> 00:15:20.960 Another way to say that is your soul and your body are the perspectives on the whole person from different vantage points. 00:15:20.960 --> 00:15:23.919 The soul from the inside out, the body from the outside in. 00:15:23.919 --> 00:15:26.639 Why does all this matter? 00:15:26.639 --> 00:15:40.960 Well, it matters because the soul is besides, let me say it this way: your soul is the most vast and profound creature in all of God's cosmos. 00:15:40.960 --> 00:15:46.879 You look at the stars and you wonder at the universe, and and that is not nearly as deep as the human soul. 00:15:46.879 --> 00:15:48.080 I believe that. 00:15:48.080 --> 00:15:52.639 There is a profundity and a depth to you as a human being. 00:15:52.639 --> 00:15:58.480 And what the scriptures say in Deuteronomy 6 is love the Lord your God with all of that soul. 00:15:58.480 --> 00:16:00.559 Leave nothing on the shelf. 00:16:00.559 --> 00:16:08.799 Don't leave a basement door unopened and locked, where God has no access to in your soul. 00:16:08.799 --> 00:16:10.320 Don't let that happen. 00:16:10.320 --> 00:16:13.440 Instead, love him with all of your soul. 00:16:13.440 --> 00:16:18.159 There's a writer named Henry Scougel, and he says it like this, and I wonder how you would fill in the blank here. 00:16:18.159 --> 00:16:24.559 He says this the worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by. 00:16:24.559 --> 00:16:26.720 Fill in the blank. 00:16:26.720 --> 00:16:31.039 How would you measure the worth and excellency of a soul? 00:16:31.039 --> 00:16:33.120 By its achievements, maybe? 00:16:33.120 --> 00:16:35.759 By what other people say about that soul? 00:16:35.759 --> 00:16:38.320 This is how Henry Scougal finishes it. 00:16:38.320 --> 00:16:43.519 The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love. 00:16:43.519 --> 00:16:52.879 A soul that is flourishing and fully alive is going to be one that has the object of its love as the true and living God. 00:16:52.879 --> 00:17:09.200 And we all know people who have de-humanized themselves, who become a shell of themselves because they have loved something lesser than, something without the worth and excellency that the object of that soul's love deserves. 00:17:09.200 --> 00:17:13.119 And so we are called to love the Lord our God with all of our soul. 00:17:13.119 --> 00:17:18.480 And the third capacity is we love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, and mind. 00:17:18.480 --> 00:17:24.160 Some of you, astute Bible readers, you're like, mind isn't in the text, dude. 00:17:24.160 --> 00:17:25.359 It's not, you're right. 00:17:25.359 --> 00:17:31.519 But interestingly, all three times Jesus quotes this passage, he uses the word mind. 00:17:31.519 --> 00:17:35.359 Heart, soul, mind, and strength. 00:17:35.359 --> 00:17:36.640 Why does he do that? 00:17:36.640 --> 00:17:40.319 Well, I think because Jesus is, he loves his Greek neighbors. 00:17:40.319 --> 00:17:47.039 Jesus is a Jewish rabbi in a Greek context, and Greeks really like to analyze things and pull them apart. 00:17:47.039 --> 00:17:49.519 Hebraic thinking is a little bit more holistic. 00:17:49.519 --> 00:17:52.480 Greek thinking is a little bit more, we we like analyze things. 00:17:52.480 --> 00:17:55.440 I'm saying we because we're Western heirs of the Greek tradition. 00:17:55.440 --> 00:17:58.319 Uh, if that was too nerdy for you, just track back with me again. 00:17:58.319 --> 00:17:59.680 I'm gonna go from here. 00:17:59.680 --> 00:18:08.079 When Jesus says, love the Lord your God with all of your mind, he's making explicit something that was implicit in the Hebrew imagination. 00:18:08.079 --> 00:18:17.119 Because in the Hebrew Bible, you think with your heart, you imagine with your heart, you have dreams with your heart. 00:18:17.119 --> 00:18:24.799 And so Jesus is saying your entire intellectual life is unto the love of God. 00:18:24.799 --> 00:18:46.079 All of your thoughts, all of your cognitions, all of the images that fill your mind, all of the opinions you have, even that chatter that kind of rambles on, that little inner critic that won't shut up in the back of your head, the entirety of your mind is unto the love of God. 00:18:46.079 --> 00:18:51.359 This is why Paul says to take every thought captive, to serve Christ. 00:18:51.359 --> 00:18:56.160 Because even your mind, your mental life is unto the love of God. 00:18:56.160 --> 00:19:07.680 There is no domain in human psychology that is exempt from the entire total devoted commitment to the love of God. 00:19:07.680 --> 00:19:14.400 But now when we get to the fourth capacity, we move from the inside of a person to the outside of a person, if you if you will. 00:19:14.400 --> 00:19:19.359 The fourth capacity here is we love the Lord our God with all of our strength. 00:19:19.359 --> 00:19:22.720 And I'm using the word labor to summarize that. 00:19:22.720 --> 00:19:26.240 And what strength is, this this word in Hebrew is ma'od. 00:19:26.240 --> 00:19:29.519 And it's actually a weird word to use here because it means muchness. 00:19:29.519 --> 00:19:35.359 And if I just said, hey, love the Lord with all of your muchness or your variness. 00:19:35.359 --> 00:19:38.160 I don't know if you if that would really make sense. 00:19:38.160 --> 00:19:54.000 And really what the Hebrew text is getting at is it's saying, love the Lord your God with all of your effects on the world, all of your influence, all of the ways in which you have agency to shape and influence and form the people in the world around you. 00:19:54.000 --> 00:19:56.160 That's what it means to love the Lord with all of your strength. 00:19:56.160 --> 00:19:58.559 I'm saying your labor, your work. 00:19:58.559 --> 00:20:16.480 But this would also include your possessions, your transactions, your investments, your house and home, your family, like everything that you have stewardship over is to be dedicated to the whole strength, love of God. 00:20:16.480 --> 00:20:20.240 You can see how this would easily flow into culture making. 00:20:20.240 --> 00:20:38.000 Now he doesn't say just Christians that love God with all of those things. 00:20:38.000 --> 00:20:43.200 He says everybody is gonna love something with their heart, soul, mind, and strength, and that's gonna influence culture. 00:20:43.200 --> 00:20:51.039 And so the invitation of Deuteronomy 6 is not that you have just these like disparate components. 00:20:51.039 --> 00:20:53.759 It's actually a way of totalizing the whole person. 00:20:53.759 --> 00:20:59.759 You could think of this like almost like Russian nesting dolls, like your heart is within your soul, is it within your strength? 00:20:59.759 --> 00:21:06.240 Or differently, you could think of this as what's been called the fifth voice in a barbershop quartet. 00:21:06.240 --> 00:21:15.119 You got four people in a quartet by definition, and people will say there's almost this fifth voice that emerges from those four in perfect harmony. 00:21:15.119 --> 00:21:17.359 That's Deuteronomy 6. 00:21:17.359 --> 00:21:25.279 Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and something emerges from that, out of the totality of who you are. 00:21:25.279 --> 00:21:30.720 Where things, everything in your life is meant to be aligned and in harmony with one another. 00:21:30.720 --> 00:21:36.799 And this almost this fifth thing emerges where the uh the whole person is in love with God. 00:21:36.799 --> 00:21:39.759 That's the point of Deuteronomy 6. 00:21:39.759 --> 00:21:45.519 So, how do we become whole person lovers of the Lord? 00:21:45.519 --> 00:21:53.920 Well, that's the second thing I want to look at, which is there are four stages of love, four capacities of love, four stages of love. 00:21:53.920 --> 00:21:59.359 And I get these from uh a monk named Bernard of Clairvaux, he lived in like 1000s. 00:21:59.359 --> 00:22:00.799 A D. 00:22:00.799 --> 00:22:04.960 And he started a monastery in Clairvaux, France. 00:22:04.960 --> 00:22:08.079 And he was a hero of people like Martin Luther and John Calvin. 00:22:08.079 --> 00:22:10.000 Luther said he was the best monk that ever lived. 00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:15.519 I don't really know who I would have like up against him, who the goat monk is, but apparently it's Bernard of Clairvaux. 00:22:15.519 --> 00:22:20.319 And so Bernard of Clairvaux, uh, he wrote a book called On Loving God. 00:22:20.319 --> 00:22:21.599 You could read it this afternoon. 00:22:21.599 --> 00:22:22.799 It's great. 00:22:22.799 --> 00:22:27.839 And in there he says this love is the fountain of life. 00:22:27.839 --> 00:22:32.640 And the soul which does not drink from it cannot be called alive. 00:22:32.640 --> 00:22:38.400 So the question is, how do we live fully alive in the love of God? 00:22:38.400 --> 00:22:39.599 How do we do that? 00:22:39.599 --> 00:22:41.200 Well, he's got these four stages. 00:22:41.200 --> 00:22:46.640 Stage one is to love self for self's sake. 00:22:46.640 --> 00:22:49.039 Now, this is kind of how you're born. 00:22:49.039 --> 00:22:51.119 You could call this selfish love. 00:22:51.119 --> 00:22:51.920 It is. 00:22:51.920 --> 00:22:55.440 But it's not entirely wrong, provided you don't stay there. 00:22:55.440 --> 00:22:56.720 A lot of people stay there. 00:22:56.720 --> 00:22:59.200 They're really hard to be in a relationship with. 00:22:59.200 --> 00:23:02.960 Because to love self for self-safe is everything is self-referential. 00:23:02.960 --> 00:23:07.440 Everything is referenced back to my own interests, my own wants, my own desires. 00:23:07.440 --> 00:23:12.079 And we kind of live here for a little while until we have enough of ourselves. 00:23:12.079 --> 00:23:13.839 Anybody ever have enough of themselves? 00:23:13.839 --> 00:23:14.960 I know I have. 00:23:14.960 --> 00:23:42.319 And as we feel pain, we begin to look outside of ourselves because God in his severe mercy is puncturing our sense of self-sufficiency. 00:23:42.319 --> 00:23:49.680 And so what happens is we look outside ourselves to God and we begin to love God for self's sake. 00:23:49.680 --> 00:23:51.680 You could call this dependent love. 00:23:51.680 --> 00:23:54.720 This isn't wrong, but it is immature. 00:23:54.720 --> 00:23:57.279 There's a childishness to this kind of love. 00:23:57.279 --> 00:24:02.480 My children will often say to my wife or I, Mommy, I love you, Daddy, I love you. 00:24:02.480 --> 00:24:05.359 And it usually is on the back end of getting a candy. 00:24:05.359 --> 00:24:07.519 What's happening in that moment? 00:24:07.519 --> 00:24:09.920 They love me for their own sake. 00:24:09.920 --> 00:24:13.200 They love the gifts that I give to them. 00:24:13.200 --> 00:24:17.519 And a lot of us stall out here in our Christian maturity. 00:24:17.519 --> 00:24:20.400 We love God for what God gives us. 00:24:20.400 --> 00:24:26.400 If my life's going well, I'm like a wholehearted worshiper of God. 00:24:26.400 --> 00:24:27.680 Love Him. 00:24:27.680 --> 00:24:30.160 But here's the diagnostic. 00:24:30.160 --> 00:24:33.279 What happens when life doesn't go the way you want it to? 00:24:33.279 --> 00:24:37.119 What do you do when God isn't giving you what you want from God? 00:24:37.119 --> 00:24:45.359 Do you experience that deep disappointment that God is not coming through for you in the way you want Him to or expect Him to? 00:24:45.359 --> 00:24:56.960 Do you have a bitterness, a resentment, an offense in your heart towards God that's beginning to show up that actually is revealing that you relate to God more like a genie or a vending machine? 00:24:56.960 --> 00:25:07.200 This is what's dangerous about getting stalled out on stage two Christianity is you love God for what God can give you rather than loving God for God's sake. 00:25:07.200 --> 00:25:09.039 That's stage three. 00:25:09.039 --> 00:25:24.799 And the way that we love God for God's sake, Thomas Aquinas says it like this the heart and the soul and the mind and the strength, it says, love is born of an earnest consideration of the object love. 00:25:24.799 --> 00:25:32.079 In other words, you begin to love God for God's sake as you begin to know God and experience God as God is. 00:25:32.079 --> 00:25:37.759 The psalmist says it like this great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. 00:25:37.759 --> 00:25:39.359 Why are you praising the Lord right then? 00:25:39.359 --> 00:25:42.319 Because He's great, not because He's given you anything great. 00:25:42.319 --> 00:25:45.839 Or praise the Lord, O my soul. 00:25:45.839 --> 00:25:49.680 And it'll it will also say, Because the Lord is good. 00:25:49.680 --> 00:25:51.839 Why do we praise the Lord? 00:25:51.839 --> 00:25:54.960 Because of his goodness, not because He's given me good. 00:25:54.960 --> 00:26:05.440 Do you see this way in which loving God for God's sake actually weans us off of our circumstances as a measure of our love for God? 00:26:05.440 --> 00:26:11.440 One of the things that naturally flows in stage three love for God is obedience. 00:26:11.440 --> 00:26:17.920 John, the beloved disciple in 1 John chapter 5 says it like this, for this is the love of God. 00:26:17.920 --> 00:26:18.880 What does it mean to love God? 00:26:18.880 --> 00:26:23.279 He says this, for this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. 00:26:23.279 --> 00:26:28.079 And then he goes on and he says, and his commandments are not burdensome? 00:26:28.079 --> 00:26:31.279 Does anybody else read that and go, oh, really? 00:26:31.279 --> 00:26:31.920 John? 00:26:31.920 --> 00:26:33.680 Must have been nice. 00:26:33.680 --> 00:26:37.599 Getting a vision of revelation of Jesus, maybe that's why they're not burdensome to you. 00:26:37.599 --> 00:26:39.119 They're kind of hard for me. 00:26:39.119 --> 00:26:41.920 That's because we're not in stage three love. 00:26:41.920 --> 00:26:44.240 We don't love God for God's sake. 00:26:44.240 --> 00:26:45.279 We love him for our sake. 00:26:45.279 --> 00:26:48.640 And so when his commandments cross our will, we say, I don't think so. 00:26:48.640 --> 00:26:51.759 Or maybe we say, maybe this time, but not next time. 00:26:51.759 --> 00:26:56.799 Listen, just to be honest, I think many of us don't get beyond stage two love. 00:26:56.799 --> 00:26:58.880 I don't think many of us get to stage three. 00:26:58.880 --> 00:27:01.119 I feel like I've touched stage three sometimes. 00:27:01.119 --> 00:27:02.400 And it's great. 00:27:02.400 --> 00:27:07.440 I find myself praying things like, Lord, take whatever you want from me, just give me yourself, it'll be enough. 00:27:07.440 --> 00:27:13.599 And it's there's a there's a taste of heaven in your soul in those moments, but then I slip back into a selfish love for God. 00:27:13.599 --> 00:27:20.079 And Bernard of Clairvaux said, actually, few people get from stage three to stage four. 00:27:20.079 --> 00:27:22.160 Now, some of you are like, What's stage four? 00:27:22.160 --> 00:27:25.039 What could be more than loving God for God's sake? 00:27:25.039 --> 00:27:33.200 You know, in a strange turn of events, Bernard of Clairvaux said stage four love is to love self for God's sake. 00:27:33.200 --> 00:27:38.480 And he he stretches to this point that only poetry can take us. 00:27:38.480 --> 00:27:41.440 Rational discourse doesn't make as much sense here anymore. 00:27:41.440 --> 00:27:56.160 And so you need the poetic language of things like your love for God is so great that you love self for God's sake because you are like a piece of iron in a fire that begins to glow so brightly that you can't discern where the iron stops and the fire begins. 00:27:56.160 --> 00:27:58.880 That's what it means to love self for God's sake. 00:27:58.880 --> 00:28:19.759 Or said differently, you become like a piece of stained glass through which the love of God, the light of God, shines so brightly, and as it passes through you, your unique personality and disposition and all the ways God made you, the love of God shines through you and begins to shape the color and the patterns that are refracted through you that could only go through you. 00:28:19.759 --> 00:28:22.319 That's the love of self for God's sake. 00:28:22.319 --> 00:28:25.839 Tim Keller calls it the freedom of self-forgetfulness. 00:28:25.839 --> 00:28:29.599 Isn't the self suffocating? 00:28:29.599 --> 00:28:34.480 Just constant self-concern, constant self-obsession, it's suffocating. 00:28:34.480 --> 00:28:37.839 Imagine the freedom of self-forgetfulness. 00:28:37.839 --> 00:28:41.519 Leanne Payne calls it the virtue of self-acceptance. 00:28:41.519 --> 00:28:52.400 Where we love self because we realize we are so lost in wonder, love, and praise of God that we begin to love what God loves, starting with our very selves. 00:28:52.400 --> 00:28:55.759 We delight in what He delights in, which is you. 00:28:55.759 --> 00:29:00.240 And we just are okay with our faults and our foibles, kind of. 00:29:00.240 --> 00:29:02.559 You've been around people like this, I promise you. 00:29:02.559 --> 00:29:06.400 They're so jovial and just light. 00:29:06.400 --> 00:29:15.440 And they don't walk around with a dour look on their face all the time because everything's hard, and they just have this sense of like, I'm loved in the love of God. 00:29:15.440 --> 00:29:16.880 What else do I need? 00:29:16.880 --> 00:29:23.519 Now, Bernard of Clairbeau says most people don't reach this time, this side of heaven, but everybody gets there that side of heaven. 00:29:23.519 --> 00:29:25.200 That's hopeful to me, truly. 00:29:25.200 --> 00:29:31.119 I'm reaching for the love of self for God's sake, but I might not get there until I drop dead, to be honest. 00:29:31.119 --> 00:29:36.319 So, how do we begin to walk through these stages of love? 00:29:36.319 --> 00:29:38.799 What motivates us through these stages of love? 00:29:38.799 --> 00:29:44.319 Bernard of Clairvaux uses this beautiful language, he calls it our double debt. 00:29:44.319 --> 00:29:47.759 We owe a double debt of God to God. 00:29:47.759 --> 00:29:53.039 The first debt is we owe him our very selves, our entire existence, because he created us. 00:29:53.039 --> 00:29:58.000 He's our author, our maker, and the maker has rights over what he's made. 00:29:58.000 --> 00:29:59.519 So God owns you already. 00:29:59.519 --> 00:30:00.480 Full stop. 00:30:00.480 --> 00:30:05.519 But if you belong to Jesus, you owe him a double debt of love. 00:30:05.519 --> 00:30:09.039 Because not only is he your creator, he's your redeemer. 00:30:09.039 --> 00:30:16.000 He's purchased you out of sin and death and the devil for himself in love. 00:30:16.000 --> 00:30:18.799 Now you owe him a double debt of yourself. 00:30:18.799 --> 00:30:30.079 But the way that we begin to receive this love of God for us and respond is with the very important word that I purposely skipped over. 00:30:30.079 --> 00:30:32.319 Look with me again at verse 4. 00:30:32.319 --> 00:30:41.039 Verse 4 says this Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 00:30:41.039 --> 00:30:45.519 This is called the Shema, which is the Hebrew word for hear. 00:30:45.519 --> 00:30:53.519 In other words, all of your love for God must start by hearing of God's love for you first. 00:30:53.519 --> 00:30:57.119 Faith comes by hearing. 00:30:57.119 --> 00:30:59.119 And nothing matters, Paul says. 00:30:59.119 --> 00:31:05.279 Nothing matters in all of the world except for this one thing: faith working itself out through love. 00:31:05.279 --> 00:31:08.799 And so God maintains the initiative. 00:31:08.799 --> 00:31:12.079 God is always the first lover. 00:31:12.079 --> 00:31:22.079 And so all of our response of love is simply receiving first from him that God is a lover of you, first and foremost. 00:31:22.079 --> 00:31:26.160 If you don't believe me, John the beloved disciple is his name. 00:31:26.160 --> 00:31:31.359 In 1 John chapter 4 says this in this is love, new city. 00:31:31.359 --> 00:31:33.839 Not that we have loved God. 00:31:33.839 --> 00:31:36.880 Your love for God really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. 00:31:36.880 --> 00:31:38.000 That's what John's saying. 00:31:38.000 --> 00:31:40.160 Let's just relativize it for a moment. 00:31:40.160 --> 00:31:50.559 In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. 00:31:50.559 --> 00:31:52.240 What does that even mean? 00:31:52.240 --> 00:32:02.480 It means before we can respond with all that we are and all that we do in love of God, we have to receive all that God is and all that God has done for us. 00:32:02.480 --> 00:32:06.559 Love is responsive, not initiative. 00:32:06.559 --> 00:32:11.680 That's why the Shema begins with, Hero, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 00:32:11.680 --> 00:32:13.599 Look first at who your God is. 00:32:13.599 --> 00:32:17.759 Then and only then can you love God with all that you are? 00:32:17.759 --> 00:32:21.920 Now, what is this first love of God? 00:32:21.920 --> 00:32:28.400 We we see the love of God made manifest most clearly in the person of Jesus Christ. 00:32:28.400 --> 00:32:37.519 You see, Jesus came and died, and a question that you can ask yourself is Did Jesus die for you or for God? 00:32:37.519 --> 00:32:40.559 The answer is yes. 00:32:40.559 --> 00:32:47.759 Because Jesus obeyed the Shema, he loved God with all of himself, and he loved his neighbor as himself. 00:32:47.759 --> 00:32:53.440 Jesus was being obedient to his father out of love when he went to the cross. 00:32:53.440 --> 00:33:04.400 And Jesus went to the cross to love you, to make manifest the love of God for sinners like you and me, for people who don't love very well like you and me. 00:33:04.400 --> 00:33:10.160 A poet says it like this love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be. 00:33:10.160 --> 00:33:15.920 God creates the loveliness in you that he wants from you. 00:33:15.920 --> 00:33:17.599 No other way. 00:33:17.599 --> 00:33:20.000 And so we see Jesus. 00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:23.759 We see his heart of love for God and for you. 00:33:23.759 --> 00:33:32.640 They take a spear and stab it into his side, and outflows blood and water, and medical professionals show that that is actually the result of a ruptured heart. 00:33:32.640 --> 00:33:37.920 Jesus' heart on the cross was ruptured with love for you and me. 00:33:37.920 --> 00:33:40.400 But it's not just his heart, it's his soul. 00:33:40.400 --> 00:33:48.079 In John 13, he's about to go to the cross, and the weightiness of it is settling in, and he says to his disciples, Now is my soul troubled. 00:33:48.079 --> 00:34:01.759 Jesus' mind was so saturated with scripture that as he's on the cross in the brokest region of his brain that's responsible for language is going offline because of the trauma that he's enduring, he can still recite Psalm 22. 00:34:01.759 --> 00:34:03.839 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? 00:34:03.839 --> 00:34:06.960 Psalm 31, into your hands I commit my spirit. 00:34:06.960 --> 00:34:11.920 His mind was devoted, all of it, to the love of God and to you. 00:34:11.920 --> 00:34:17.039 And finally, was it Jesus' strength that enabled him to endure? 00:34:17.039 --> 00:34:18.239 No. 00:34:18.239 --> 00:34:34.239 What kept Jesus on that cross was not his, was not those nails, it was his love, his devotion to the Father and His devotion to those whom the Father loves, which is his children, the sons and daughters in this room and around the globe. 00:34:34.239 --> 00:34:39.119