Preaching Our Purpose 

What a Rush We Would See For the Kingdom of God!

Mark 12:28-31 

PSBC 1/9/00

In a nutshell: We would see a rush for the Kingdom of God if we would truly love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbor as our self.

I. Introduction

A. Peanuts cartoons

It was a sad day, this past Monday. Instead of Lucy or Charlie or Linus or Sally, or any of the other favorite "Peanuts" characters doing their normal "stuff", there was just this picture of Snoopy, sitting on his dog house, pounding out this retirement message from Charles Schultz– "Peanuts'" creator for nearly 50 years.

It really was sad to see such a significant icon of modern American humor and culture come to an end. But, over the next years, I'm sure we're going to see many more resurgences of Peanuts. There will be coffee table books, and compilations and paperback books coming out, to remind us of our favorite Peanuts wit and wisdom.

I wish I had a copy to show you of my favorite Peanuts comic strip. But I don't. All I have is my memory. So, you'll have to visualize it through my words. It seems that Charlie Brown was practicing archery in his backyard. Instead of aiming at a target, he would shoot an arrow at his fence, then walk over and draw a target around wherever the arrow stuck. Lucy walked up and said, "Why are you doing this, Charlie Brown?" To which he replied without embarrassment, "This way I never miss!"

B. Transition

And friends, the reason I and a lot of other pastors like that comic strip so much is because it serves as such a good warning of what God's church must never become. We can never become a group of people without a clear target.

Dan Southerland, in his book, Transitioning: Leading Your Church Through Change, which our elders and pastors are studying this year at our meetings, has stated that this kind of clear target only develops when you have three things in place. 1. You discover your unique Biblical purpose and state it simply. 2. You define who in your community you are best equipped to reach. 3. You decide your strategy to reach those individuals.

It's going to take us quite some time, yet to come up with some clear answers to Southerland's #2 and #3 parts of his equation for developing a clear target–who are we best equipped to reach; and what strategies are we going to use to reach them. But I am very pleased that we do have the first part solidly in place–an easily stated purpose that is Biblical and unique to us.

In fact, it's this purpose statement that will serve as our outline during the month of January. Each week, we're going to visit one of the four main phrases; 1. ...view it from God's perspective in His Word, 2. ...make sure we all understand what we're talking about when we say... Palm Springs Baptist Church exists to love, accept, guide and partner to share God's truth and to be His light, 3. ...and maybe even develop a deeper sense of pride, excitement and ownership when we walk under those letters each Sunday that spell out our key verse from Psalm 43:3... "Send forth thy light and thy truth." Because we really know what they mean!

II. Love God, and through Him, Love each person who comes to our Church

The action of the word "love" in the shorten form of our purpose statement, is explained like this in expanded version... Love God, and through Him, Love each person who comes to our Church

The idea for this very important first phrase didn't come from me. It came from Jesus. Turn with me to Mark 12 in your Bibles. We'll start at verse 28...

A. The Question

While you're turning there, in your Bibles, let me set the scene: The scene is the Temple area where the theologians and scholars gathered to discuss the complexities and the requirements of the Jewish faith. The time is the middle of the week just before Jesus was crucified. A crowd had gathered around this rabbi who had come riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, and had just scattered all the money changers and merchants who had lined the temple courtyard. Now he was teaching people and answering their questions. And one of the professional religious teachers heard Jesus teaching and was quite impressed with what he heard. And that is where we pick up the narrative in Mark 12, verse 28...

Mark 12:28 28 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?"

Now, this was not a trick question. It was an honest question that was posed by many of the Jewish teachers. You see, the rabbis counted 613 individual statutes in the law. 365 were negative and 248 were positive. And if you think that food manufacturers today coined the idea of "LITE", you can try again. These 613 laws were also divided into "HEAVY" laws and "LIGHT" laws (25% less guilt!)

So, with all these laws, the teachers of the law honestly wanted to know which one was most important. So that is the question posed to Jesus. Look at his answer...

Mark 12:29-31 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."

B. The three parts are really one commandment

Before we any farther, I want you to notice something that is crucial to understanding Jesus' statement here. I'm referring to the use of plural and singular nouns in verses 29-31. Because, Jesus combined three significant law statements, from three different parts of the OT, and made them into one.

1. The first one was the "Shema"--Shema in Hebrew, means "HEAR" The "Shema" passage speaks of God's oneness. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." The people of Israel commonly repeated these words, to remind them that their worship of God was a monotheistic religion, as contrasted to the many gods of the Canaanites or Romans who lived around them at any given time.

2. Second, is the Mezuzah. The Mezuzah is the little scroll you may have seen nailed to the door post of a Jewish friend's house. It is a quote from Deuteronomy 6:4-9. It is put on the doorposts to remind the follower of God that he or she is to love the Lord with all their heart, soul, mind and strength... in their going out and their coming in--in other words, in all aspects of their life.

3. Finally, Jesus says to, "Love your neighbor as yourself". This is a quote from Leviticus 19:18.

But instead of saying that these were three commandments, therefore making them able to be separated, Jesus said, "There is no commandment (singular) greater than these (plural)." In other words, the three are combined into one, and they cannot be separated. There is no option to follow one part and not the other, because they are all connected.

With that in mind, it's time to look at the parts of our love for God that need to define us as a congregation.

III. Loving God

A. Love with all your heart

The term, "Heart" in scripture generally refers to the will of a person.

What Jesus is saying, is that in order to love God in the way that He expects and deserves FIRST requires an act of your will. A decision. An intellectual exercise.

This takes place when you decide to follow Jesus Christ–God's only way for salvation from sin–as your only way for salvation from your sin. Paul states in...

Romans 10:9 9 That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

You cannot love God without taking this first step of loving Him with all your heart.

Illustration: There was a man who asked a mail-order company to send him plans for a birdhouse. Instead of sending him the plans for a birdhouse, they sent him plans for a model sailboat. He tried to put it together, but it just wouldn't work. He couldn't figure what kind of bird was going to live in this dumb birdhouse. So he wrote a letter and sent the parts back to the company. They wrote a letter of apology and added this post script: "If you think it was difficult for you, you should have seen the man who got your plans, trying to sail a birdhouse."

Friends, a lot of people are trying to love God, and do good things in the name of God, when they aren't even Christians. In essence, they're not following the right plan.

Illustration: When I was sick this past week, I watched a lot of TV. And I saw a number of ads by the Mormon church that spoke some very godly things about family and family values. Now, if you're not aware, the Mormon Church teaches that Jesus is a son of God, not THE SON of GOD. But speaking godly things doesn't mean they are loving God. They are following a different set of plans other than God's plans. They, and just about every other cult group in existence has missed out at this beginning step.

The beginning step to loving God, starts with a heart decision. Has the Savior of the world, become your Savior? You cannot love God and honor God until you take this first step.

B. Soul--the emotions

According to our text, the second part of loving God involves the soul. We could substitute the word "emotions" here, because to the Hebrew mind of Biblical times, the idea was that the soul was the center of the emotions. .

Illustration: When my dad came to visit us in Scottsdale, about a year or so after my mom died, we set him up on a blind date with my secretary at the church, during lunch. The lunch hour became three hours long. And afterwards, when my dad came home, we saw him pacing the floor in our family room, and asking the question, "Do you think she liked me?" "Should I call her?" "Could this work out?" Do you know what was happening? His emotions were kicking in. He was falling in love.

Have you allowed your emotions to kick in, in your love for God? That's what loving God with all your soul means. Look at the front of your bulletin for a statement that Oswald Chambers made a number of years ago that speaks directly to this issue...

"The surest sign that God has done a work of grace in my heart is that I love Jesus Christ best: not weakly and faintly, not intellectually, but passionately, personally and devotedly, overwhelming every other love of my life."

C. With All Your Mind

The third way we love God has to do with our minds.

Illustration: For Christmas, I finally received from Diane, Diane's family and from my folks, what I've always wanted–cash. You see, one of the largest woodworking shows in the country comes to Ontario at the end of this month. You can't find better deals and prices on anything for your shop than at a show like this. I plan on going the first day the doors open on Friday, and I might make it home by Sunday!

But when I got sick when we returned from northern California, I was unable to do any of the projects I wanted to in my shop during the final days of my vacation. So for the rest of my vacation, all I could do was stay in bed. So one of the things I did was to get out all my tool catalogs, count my cash and made lists of things I needed for my shop, or supplies I needed to replenish in my shop.

Do you know what I was doing? I was loving my woodworking hobby with my mind.

Now, let me bring this over to a "God-level", by asking you some questions... -When was the last time you researched and planned out the next devotional book you'd read, so you could get better acquainted with God? -When was the last time you spent time preparing for being a student in your Flock group Bible Study or Sunday School Class by studying the passage ahead of time? -When was the last time I recommended a book or author from the pulpit, and you went out and purchased the book and started to read it? -When was the last time you sat in quiet for 15 minutes and just thought about God, His love for you, and your relationship to Him?

You see, that's loving Him with your mind.

D. With All Your Strength

Finally, after loving God with all our heart, soul and mind–we're commanded to let our strength become part of our love for God, as well. Strength refers to the whole person. In other words, they are your actions. We could get into a lot of things here, but let me give you just two examples:

1. Prayer. When our love for God touches our prayer life, it affects how we pray. When you pray, how do you pray? Is it a long grocery list of what you want from God. If it is, then that's not loving God with all your strength. Loving God with all our strength in your praying means that you pray focusing first on God's power and might, then asking according to His will, not your will.

2. Language. When our love for God touches our language, it means that we don't take God's name in vain--that is, use it uselessly. Using God's name in such a way that it is merely used to punctuate a sentence, and convey a forcefulness in our conversation, doesn't show God very much respect and love. Flippanly using God's name doesn't honor Him. When we really love Him, we look to honor Him, not dishonor Him.

Pick any part of your life. Analyze it from this standpoint...How am I loving God by doing this? If you don't have a good answer, then you have a bad action. Notice the command doesn't say love God with some, or even most of your strength, but with all of your strength. Lose the bad actions or change them into good ones.

IV. Love each person...

A. As a church we do this pretty well

Now, the "love" in our purpose statement doesn't stop with only God–and neither does the Great Commandment, here in Mark 12. Jesus follows the command to love God with the command to love our neighbor...

Mark 12:31 31 The second is this: `Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."

Our purpose statement says we will love God, and through Him, love each person who comes to our church. I'm pleased to say, in general, this church excels in this area. Better than any church I have ever been in, Palm Springs Baptist Church knows how to love people.

I had one visitor write on their response card that I sent them in the mail, "Pastor, I don't know what you did, but when I first visited 5 months ago, not one person greeted me or talked to me. Now, on my second visit, I couldn't get out of my row before a half dozen people surrounded me and invited me to Bible studies, lunch after church and breakfast on Thursday mornings. The thing I liked least is that I am not living in Palm Springs so I could attend often."

Well, I didn't do anything, except maybe give you permission to be who you are naturally as a church in Jesus Christ.

B. Love for others

And that brings up another good point about this command. We are to love our neighbors as we love our selves. Where do we get our love for ourselves? That only comes from one place...

Illustration: Many years ago in small a kingdom in Europe, a king was out with some people hunting. they noticed a lot of people on the river's edge. They saw a man caught in the rapids, and he was headed for the waterfall and certain death. They recognized the man as someone who had been a convicted criminal. The people laughed at the fact that justice was being done.

Much to their surprise, the king ran to the edge of the river bank and dove in and fought the rapids and pushed the man ashore till he could grab hold of a rock. But the king was so overcome by exhaustion after pushing the man and fighting the rapids, that he could not swim anymore and the rapids carried the king over the falls and ended his life.

The people were angry at this criminal who had been saved at the expense of the life of their king. So they said to him, "You'd better be different now, because you are a man the king died for." It did change his life! It turned him around and he became a model citizen. Because everywhere he went the people would say, "You are the one the king died for."

Friend, the one and only thing that will allow you to genuinely love each person who walks into the doors of this church is this, "YOU ARE THE ONE THE KING DIED FOR AND SO ARE THEY?"

V. Conclusion

Let me close with this statement from that great evangelist, Dwight Moody. It sums up the importance of "Love" in our church purpose statement...

"If you can really make a man believe you love him, you have won him; and if we could help people see that God loves them, what a rush we would see for the kingdom of God!"

Amen.