chapter 12. Mark chapter 12, I'm going to read verses 28 through 34. Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? Jesus answered him, 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 thee. So the scribe said to him, well said, teacher. You have spoken the truth, for there is one God, and there is no other but he. And to love him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, with all the strength, and to love one neighbor One's neighbor as oneself is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, you are not far from the kingdom of God. But after that, no one dared question him. Amen. Father, we bow before your word. We submit our lives to your word. We rejoice in your word. Father, it is a light unto our path. And I pray that you would enable me to handle this word accurately, and faithfully that your spirit would quicken the word to each one of our hearts. Help us to be hearers that understand, doers of your word, and those who rejoice in living it out and spreading it. And we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Well, in this sermon series, we've been looking at some of the things that drive our vision as a church that make us unique and different. You might call them our selling points. Some people maybe wouldn't agree with these points, so I'm not sure that would be a good description. But to me, they're the things that make me excited, enthusiastic about Dominion Covenant Church. And so far, we've looked at how our eschatology drives us, motivates us, makes us excited about the future. We have seen how our view of God's sovereign, conquering grace impacts our lives, God's blueprints for society, our view of apologetics, and then we took two Sundays to look at our view of a family-integrated church, and I deliberately picked a passage that had a family that was not too well put together because we wanted to have something parallel to America, you know, where we've got so many families single-parent families, families that are not following God's blueprints, and yet how do you integrate them? And it gave us a lot, I think, of wisdom of how to integrate such families into a family-integrated church. Today I want to bring up another foundation, and it's the biblical conception of love. And you might think that there wouldn't be a whole lot of difference, and yet there is a huge difference in the Church of Jesus Christ as to how we view the love of God toward us and the love that we have toward others, and that's the part I'm going to focus on today. And I don't care what you call this, I couldn't come up with a real great title, but it's important that we insist that no part of our being is undevoted to God. Okay, no part of our being is undevoted to God. God deserves Every part of us, our emotions, our social side, our bodies, our minds. And I think as we get into the text, I think you're going to see this is very practical. It relates to worship. It relates to our view of family raising, to studies. It relates really to every area of life. Our whole being must be held captive to Jesus. Now, one of the theme statements that we have in our church is 2 Corinthians 10, verse 5, bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. And originally, when I was planning to go through some of the key statements, capturing minds and passionate Christianity, I was thinking of dividing it up into four different sermons. And I thought, well, that's going to draw things out a little bit too much. So I settled on this text that brings all four features together in one short nutshell. But we're going to take two Sundays to look at it, this Sunday and next Sunday. And one of the sermons I was going to do I was titling it, Let My People Think, because I think there is far too little emphasis on glorifying God with our minds, or as this passage says, loving God with our minds. What in the world does that mean? And so we're going to try to finish this off in two weeks, and we're just going to look at this verse 30. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. This is the first What does it mean to love God with your soul? And that's just a vague, nebulous concept to you. It's going to be pretty hard to obey this commandment. What does it mean to love God with your mind? And what is the difference between the heart, the soul, and the mind? In many people's expositions, that's not entirely clear. And I think a great place to start is in the context. And I want you to notice that this commandment does not start with what we're supposed to do. It starts with who God is. Look at verse 29. Jesus answered him. The first of all the commandments is hero Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one. And he goes on to give the rest of the commandment. But notice he includes that phrase in there because God is the model of what we ought to do because God is one because God is not fragmented. He does not want us to be fragmented in the way in which we love because God is consistent in his being. He is a unified Trinity he wants us to be consistent in the way in which we love now our tendency is to focus on one side or another of the square that you have in your handouts and if you don't have the handout We'll put one up here. Maybe Joel if you could Get this thing up here and ready We tend to focus on one side or another of that quadrant of love and We tend to be somewhat fragmented in the way in which we love. Some people, for example, park almost all of the time on loving God with our strength. And you'll find the tendency in these churches is to be activist churches. Their conception of devotion to God, if you look at that outline there, is to be in service and action and achievements and energy and doing. And you know what? We're probably not even going to be able to fit that whole thing on there. And they're focusing so much on that, sometimes it's to the neglect of some of the other quadrants. And I have to confess that when I do air, I tend to air in parking on the left-hand side of that up-and-down line. And I didn't realize it till after I made that chart. But everything to the left of that vertical line tends to be what the left-brain dominant people are comfortable with. And everything to the right of that line tends to be what the right brain dominant people are talking about. So if you want to write those concepts down there, that might help you to understand the chart a little bit better. But God does not give us the excuse that if, for example, your dominant language of love is service, that you really don't have to love God or others with your mind. And you don't have to open your emotions to the Lord or to others. God wants us to serve Him with all of our emotions, our soul, our body, our mind, our whole being. And I hope that I can, in a practical way, kind of open up those four words for you, those four areas of love. Now, first of all, I want to illustrate that this quadrant of love is really unavoidable. It's inescapable. Even in our society, when people have turned love in an idolatrous way, you'll find descriptions of love that fit in all four of those quadrants. And there was, I forget now which crazy member of our congregation sent me the quotes of children, but they were asked their opinions on what love was, and I fitted them into these four quadrants, and I'm not going to read them all, but I thought I'd give you a few representatives. First of all, the emotional quadrant. A 10-year-old Arnold was asked how people in love typically behave, and his immediate response was mushy. Like puppy dogs, except puppy dogs don't wag their tails nearly as much. Bart said lovers will just be staring at each other and their food will get cold. Other people care more about their food. Now that's typical fare for Hollywood, right? That love is an emotion. There are other views out there. Nine-year-old Bobby strongly disagreed with the emotional view. he he thought that was crazy people wouldn't eat their food and His conception of what they would do is he said without hesitation just see if the man picks up the check That's how you can tell if he's in love Okay Christine agreed. She said beauty is skin-deep, but how rich you are can last a long time There's a practical gal Ava added her eight-year-old wisdom by saying, one of you should know how to write a check, because even if you have tons of love, there's still going to be a lot of bills. OK, what about relational love? There were some children who showed real signs of sensitivity in this social arena down here. And Alonzo, age 10, says, don't do things like having smelly green sneakers. You might get attention, but attention ain't the same thing as love. So he's parking on the side of being sensitive, what other people think, OK? And how we relate to them. I'm not going to bore you with the other socially sensitive comments, because I love the kids who are using their heads, OK? That's my quadrant. Right up there on the top left right, OK? Left top. OK. Asked how lovers learn to kiss, seven-year-old Julia says, well, you just have a big rehearsal with your Barbie and Ken doll. Not do any of the spontaneous stuff, OK? You've got to practice. You gotta think it through. It's under control, okay? She's my type of gal. Aaron knows that it doesn't matter how good you are if you're forgetful. So he says, don't forget your wife's name. That will mess up the love. Natalie added, Don't say you love somebody and then change your mind. Love isn't like picking what movie you want to watch. Amen, Natalie. Preach it. And this next youngster was using her head when she says, I look at kissing like this. Kissing is fine if you like it, but it's a free country and nobody should be forced to do it. And then when asked what most people are thinking when somebody says, I love you, nine-year-old Michelle says, the person is thinking, yeah, I really do love him, but I hope he showers at least once a day. Seriously though, we do need to meditate on the four quadrants of love, because I think we tend to have our weaknesses. Every person tends to be strong in one area and weak in another, and we have our areas of comfort zone. But the first thing I want to do is I want to demonstrate that the word heart does mean especially the emotions in this passage. And we'll go later and we'll see it involves more, but there's the feelings, the intuitive side of things, but especially the emotions are being highlighted. And I could quote a number of commentaries to prove this, but you know, I've never been impressed with counting noses of experts. So I want to dig into the text, see if there are any hints that we can draw out. And the first thing I want to point out is that Jesus is quoting the Old Testament. Okay, so that's the first clue. It's Deuteronomy 6, verses 4 through 5. And here's the strategy. Sometimes if the Greek word is not entirely clear, you look at the Hebrew and sometimes that clarifies it. Sometimes it's the reverse. And so if we look at the Hebrew, maybe it will help us to understand what heart here means. Well, the trouble is that the Hebrew can mean three or four different things. And so that does not immediately nail things down. And if you look at the definition at the bottom of the page there, you'll see a number of different definitions for heart. But I want to start right in the middle of the first line under heart. It's a quote from G.K. Beale. He says in the Old Testament, Leib, that is heart, may denote intellectual activity, 204 times, emotional activity, 166 times, volitional activity, that's the will, exercising of your will, 195 times, and personality or character. And so it's not enough to look at the way a word is used in one or two passages and then impose it on all the different passages, because language is fluid. Words can mean different things in different contexts. For example, if you look up in just about any English word in the dictionary, you'll find two, three, sometimes many definitions of that word. And it's the context that determines the meaning. And so looking at the context, can sometimes help. I think there's a tendency among some of us Reformed people to quote Proverbs 23, verse 7, which says, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he, and to conclude that the heart means the mind, period. But linguistic evidence just does not bear that out. And as Beal points out, sometimes it means mind, sometimes emotions, sometimes man's will, sometimes his character. How do you tell? Well, one of the ways that we can tell is the way that Jesus is using it right here in the context. First of all, Jesus contrasts heart with mind. Now think about this. If loving God with all of your heart includes the mind, if mind is a subset of heart, if loving God with all of your heart includes the mind, then it doesn't make sense for Christ to say, and with all your mind. See, he's using mind and heart in two totally different ways here. So, in Jesus' definition in this particular verse, the way he's using the word heart, heart means something different than mind. And so, in the definition, in the bold print, I say, in contexts where the heart is contrasted with the mind, soul, and will as here, it is the emotions that are being highlighted. Now, there's a second reason I say that it's the emotions here. that are being highlighted, Jesus adds an extra Greek word in his translation of Deuteronomy 6, verse 5. If you read Deuteronomy 6, 5, you'll see there's only three words. There's four here. And I think what Jesus was doing is he was trying to avoid a misunderstanding that the Greeks could very easily get into. The Greeks tended to emphasize only the intellect and to put down the area of the emotions. And so what Jesus was doing when he translated the heart, he divided what in the Hebrew had two different contexts that were different than the soul and the strength. Two different contexts. They were the emotions and the mind. And he separated them in his translation into two words so that there would be an avoiding of any misunderstanding by the Greeks. OK. That's what I think that that he was doing. I don't see any any other explanation of how you could get from three words and the heart being broken up into two words. And there are many New Testament passages where heart refers to the emotions. Jesus said sorrow has filled your hearts. He speaks of joy of heart. Paul speaks of sorrow of heart, anguish of heart, joy of heart. And since in this passage, heart is distinguished from mind, strength, and soul, I think really the only definition that's left open is the feelings, the emotions, the intuitive side, the non-discursive side of man. Maybe we'll give you people that are left sphere dominant people, like I am, a little bit of heartburn, because you're not comfortable with that side of the equation. The people who tend to be left brainers, They see the stuff on the right-hand side of that chart as not being as neat and tidy and as in control as everything on the left-hand side is, and it gives them a little bit of emotional angst. But that means that there's some hope for you, right? Because the very fact that we're talking about loving God with your emotions arouses your emotions. So you got emotions. You're not a non-emotional person. It's just that your emotions need to be nudged in the direction of being sanctified and in conformity with the Word of God. Now the word soul let's just work our way around that chart that I've given to you and today's is going to be kind of an Introduction to the whole concept the word soul too can have a range of meanings in both the Hebrew and the Greek But when the other three words are put into contrast with it The definition shows that the word soul relates to the social dimension of man your relationship with God, your relationship with each other, fellowship or breaking of fellowship, hospitality or not hospitality. He says all of those kinds of things need to be devoted to God unconditionally. And you'll see on the arrow that the things to the right of the middle vertical line tend to be things that are non-measurable and and they tend to be unclear, whereas the things to the, and by the way, the things to the right, I don't know if you can read that up there, if you were to study those types of things in the university, they're called usually the social sciences. They're definitely not exact sciences. The things to the left are much more measurable and clear, and even the inward quadrant, which is the top one of the mind, The way the Greeks used that, that's very measurable, that's very concrete, because it's things like logic and mathematics. In fact, you can't get harder science than that. Some of the most absolute of the approaches to science. And so it deals with logic, analysis, deduction, and mathematics, physics. On the bottom left-hand side, you could put any of our You know, most of our jobs that we do, anything that relates to obedience, the action, the achievements, the energies, anything that involves the exercise of our will and the involvement, perhaps, of our body strength includes a spiritual strength. I think the emphasis is on the body there. Now, the last area is loving God with your mind. And the word for mind can mean really anything rational. It can deal with planning, for example. If you were to love your wife with your mind, it might involve planning a birthday party for her or planning her retirement. But in the dictionary by Liddell and Scott, it says it especially focuses on discursive thought. Now, the difference between discursive and non-discursive thought is this. Discursive thought uses analysis and deduction maybe logic and things like that, whereas non-discursive thought tends to be more intuitive. It tends to be off the cuff, okay? It's not analytical. It's something that comes immediately. Now, we saw in our class on emotional leadership that God frequently bypasses the logical processes that a person has and immediately motivates us toward righteousness by impacting us in the emotions or something intuitive. For example, you may have talked to an individual And you came away thinking in your head, it was a great conversation and everything went OK, but your heart feels heavy. You just feel like there was something that was not quite right. And you're analyzing with your brain. You can't figure out anything that you said that would be wrong. But because your emotions are so heavy, you feel bad about it. You go to this person and say, you know, I was just wanting to check if there's anything I've said that may have offended you. And sure enough, there was. It had been a misunderstanding, and you apologized to get it cleared up. There was a case where your mind was in gears working and you didn't see anything wrong, but God enabled you almost intuitively to recognize there was something wrong. OK, that's the type of thing that that we are talking about. Now, let me make one other comment before we move on, John Calvin and several other commentators have pointed out that those four areas of love expression and verse 30 heart, soul, mind and strength encompass absolutely everything that we do in life. It encompasses how we love our children. It encompasses how we love our neighbor. It encompasses everything. We need to do it in a way that demonstrates our love to God. And so they would say that verse 30, says all of our life and our being is offered up to God and verse 31 is not contradicting that it's not an additional subject matter as if it's different than loving God what it's doing is it's clarifying the reason there needs to be a clarification is God is saying we need to give everything that we have to God our whole love needs to go to God and then in verse 31 he says that doesn't mean you can stop loving your neighbor because loving your neighbor is one of the ways in which we love God. And so they say it's not a separate subject, it's clarifying the first subject. And if you want a proof text for that, read the book of First John. First John goes through and it discusses love and it says, if you claim to love God and you don't love your brother, you're a liar. You don't really love God. The two are hinged together. So that's just one of the clarifications. So that means When you're analyzing your love to God, you can also take the same quadrant and apply it to your spouse, to your children, to your neighbor. How do I love her or how do I love him with my heart? How do I love him with my soul, with my strength, with my mind? They're the same subject, but looking at it from a different vantage point. Does that make sense? That's a general overview. What I want to do this week and next week, then, is to go through each of these four areas and exhort you and give you practical examples of how we can devote these things to the Lord. And I'm only going to get through the first part of this quadrant today. First of all, Jesus calls us to love God with all of our hearts. which we've seen, includes especially the emotions. We'll be saying it includes a little bit more than that, but it includes especially the emotions, and that's the only one-word summary I could get, you know, that would sort of cover everything. Six-year-old Jill says, I'm in favor of love so long as it doesn't happen when Dinosaurs is on television. She's the practical sort that the emotions were not, at least at this point, And I suspect that when it comes to love for God, a lot of us get nervous with the emotion. The emotions maybe are an inconvenient thing or maybe even a scary thing. But according to the Bible, it is possible to love God with the whole range of God given emotions, including hate. I may come as a surprise to you, but let me give you a scripture. Psalm 97, verse 10 says, You who love the Lord hate evil. He's saying to the degree that you love God, you're going to hate evil. And the two are going to be core relative and to the degree that you're not sanctifying your emotions so that they hate things like abortion and hate things like the things that hate evil in ourselves. Lord, I hate this. Remember, in Romans seven says the things that I hate, I do. You know, there is going to be because of our love for God, a hatred for evil. So the full range of human emotions is possible. under this thing, loving God with all of our heart. We should be passionate about the things that God is passionate about. We should be indifferent to the things that he is indifferent to. We should hate the things he hates, love the things that he loves. That is having our emotions devoted to God. That's loving God with our heart. In fact, when we fail to devote and sanctify our emotions to God, they are automatically going to be used either by the flesh or by Satan or by something else. creation it is inescapable rush to me talks about several inescapable concepts well this is inescapable that our emotions will be dominated by something by God by the flesh by Satan by what somebody else thinks of us they will be dominated and I want to think about that for a moment our emotions can be manipulated by humans they can be manipulated by the demonic if they are not disciplined for the use of the master In fact, one of the reasons why we Reform people tend to be so distrustful of emotions is we've witnessed leaders who manipulate the emotions of other people. We've witnessed emotions that are not anchored to these other three quadrants on this chart. And when that happens, we have what we call emotionalism, and that's dangerous. We recognize the danger there. What I want to point out today is that if any one of these quadrants is not anchored by the other three, it is dangerous. We've got to have all four in place. As Greg Bonson has pointed out so well, the solution to emotionalism is not neglect of the emotions. No, we're commanded to use our emotions. That book that I sent out on the Bible and emotions, I think, shows that we really cannot claim to be pursuing the Lord if we are not sanctifying and using our emotions in the service of the Lord. James 3 speaks of emotions which he calls earthly, sensual, demonic. You might think, now wait a shake, how could our emotions be demonic? Can demons really affect our emotions? And he says, yes, definitely demons can. He gives an example as bitter envy in our heart. He is saying that because those emotions are not sanctified by what he calls the wisdom that is from above, they will automatically be influenced by something from below. by the sensual, by the world, by the demonic, they're automatically going to be influenced by something else. And so we need to ask ourselves, to what degree has the wisdom of Scripture influenced and governed my emotions? Have I even thought about it? Other poisonous emotions that he lists in the next chapter are desires for fighting, desires for pleasure, lust, murder, anger, coveting, adulterous emotions, aroused by sexual seduction. And his point is that there are two control points for emotions. There is a control point from above, the lordship of God, and there is a control point from below, the lordship of something else in creation. But if our emotions are not deliberately used in the service of King Jesus, they will automatically be used in disservice to King Jesus. There is no neutrality. There's no escaping. the use of that. We cannot just ignore emotions by reacting against emotions run amok in charismatic circles. Now, we've recognized some of the irrational emotionalism that sometimes happens in certain circles. The answer is not to abandon that. That's a sure fire away to have the next generation go to the other extreme, because they say we're not being biblical on that. So the solution to the abuse of emotions or emotionalism is the right use of emotions, and we need to imitate Christ in this. Now, I may be just preaching to the choir on this, but I doubt it. I was brought up far more stoic. I was brought up in a boarding school. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, some of you guys laughed when I read that quote from Watson. that his Bible, I mean, his child rearing expertise where he says, never hug your child, shake hands. And some of you laughed at that, but there was a whole generation that bought into that. That's the way that I was brought up in boarding school. And I closed off my emotions because I had had so many hurts and so much abuse at the school that I just closed them off because I didn't want to get hurt in my emotions any longer. And it wasn't until later years that I began to see the terrible disjunction between my emotions and the way the scripture said that they should be. I refused to cry, and I just would not allow my emotions to escape. And I remember the first time that I finally allowed myself to cry. It was like a dam breaking open, and I couldn't stop. It just kept going and going and going. I was fearful of the emotion, fearful of crying. Well, I've seen whole new areas over the past years where my life has had to be sanctified And this book that I sent out on emotional EQ showed me a whole brand new area related to leadership of how emotions need to be factored in and used in the service of King Jesus. And so I want to grow in that area as well. But I suspect that at least some of you are just as close to emotions as I used to be and find that to be the hardest part of this quadrant. That's why I'm going to be spending far more time on the right-hand side of the quadrant than on the left side. Now, let me give you some examples, concrete examples, of how emotions were used positively in Christ's life. And I'm going to read a couple of scriptures. I want you to think, if you want, you can even think out loud, about whether it's his emotions, his will, his soul side, the relational, which side is being present, or maybe all are present here. Matthew 9, verse 36. But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered like sheep having no shepherd. Now, what is it in this verse that's motivating Jesus? He was moved with compassion, it says. The Greek word for compassion is a cool word. It's one you've got to memorize. You can throw on your friends. It's slanknidzo, and it means gut. That's all it means, intestines. His intestines moved him to action. It's a reference to his feelings of compassion. They were things that were motivated. Now, here's the thing, though. Even though that is highlighted in this verse, was he loving with his strength? Yes, he was, because he went out and he ministered to them. He healed them, right? Was his mind in gear? Yes, he was loving with his mind because he was teaching these people. And it was the very fact that he was seeing what was going on that motivated him. Was his soul, the relational side there? Yes, it was, because it motivated him to work with these people, to relate to them. And so really, I think we need to see that all four of these quadrants have to be working together. We cannot separate them. We cannot isolate them. They they are are closely related. Here's another one. Matthew 14. Verse 14. And when Jesus went out he saw a great multitude and he was moved with compassion for them and healed their sick. So he saw he was moved. He healed. Okay? By seeing, he was filling his mind with information that enabled him to take this action. He's not like some people who just say, oh, I don't even want to think about that. They close their mind off from reading or looking at the television about things that are going on in Sudan or other places. They just don't want to think about it because then they'll feel uncomfortable. Well, that's failing to love with the mind. He saw, he was moved, And he acted, he healed them. Mark 1, 41. Then Jesus moved with compassion, stretched out his hand and touched him and said, I am willing, be cleansed. Mind was in gear. Will was in gear. He says, I am willing. I am willing. But Jesus, if you examine and the book does that for you, examine his life, you see the full range of human emotions. You see anger. You see joy. He even tells wry jokes. if you some of them are as you see in the English some of them are just hilarious in the Greek and my favorite one is where the Herodians come and tell Jesus Herod says get out of here and Jesus says tell that that fly vixen it's the feminine in other words it's not Herod it's Herod's wife that wants him out of there but in the Greek is hilarious when you when you when you read it so he had the full range of human emotions And I do not believe that a Star Trek, Spock type of approach to emotion is at all biblical. And I think we intuitively recognize that, you know, when you see a psychopath who can do all kinds of horrible things without being affected emotionally whatsoever, you know there's something wrong here. You cannot relate to that. And I don't think we should even try to relate. Can you imagine Spock in the Song of Solomon? I can't. It just doesn't seem to fit, does it? It doesn't seem to fit at all. And I think we recognize that when we think about it, that emotions play a much larger part in our thinking and our actions, and a lot of times we're willing to give them credit for. And we need to ask, are my emotions sanctified? Are they devoted to God entirely, or do we just let them happen? Hey, anytime you just let things happen, you're not taking dominion. Something else is taking dominion of you, right? And one other point I should make here is that what you do with your mind affects your emotions. What you put into your mind, your worldview, affects your emotions profoundly. What you do with your action and with your soul affects your emotions. For example, just a simple thing that I discovered. I probably was in my teens when I started kneeling in prayer. And I found that kneeling beside my bed in prayer put me in a different emotional frame of mind than standing up or sitting down or dancing. There have been times where I've been so excited, I've danced before the Lord, I just can't do it in front of you guys, I'm too shy, you know? But all of these postures, our bodies affect our emotions. When you're in the presence of an emotionally intelligent person, and you probably recognize these people, just, they're emotionally perfect, it seems like, even though they're not, nobody's perfect. But many times you can be training your emotions by watching the way. In fact, there's a couple of people that I've been learning from in terms of their emotional behavior, because this is an area I'm retarded in and have been trying to grow in. But all of these things affect the emotion. And so they're integrated. We cannot see them as being apart. Now, the scripture is full of references, how we motivate ourselves, we motivate others, we change the environment around us, we please God with our emotions. For example, Proverbs 17, 22 says a merry heart, a merry heart's a joyful heart, does good like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bone. He says it's emotional medicine, you know, when you're merry in the presence of others. On the other hand, he says there's a time when it's more important to weep than it is to have humor. The scripture commands us, rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who reap. And I believe that God is glorified by the full, robust, yet under control expression of our emotion in worship, our emotion in any other area of our life. For example, if we cannot get angry over the things that Jesus got angry over, we're not showing the same devotion of our emotions to God that Jesus did. Now, it ought not to make us angry people all the time. It's when we're confronted with that abortion and those other sins and sins in ourselves that we ought to get angry. Scripture commands us, be angry but do not sin. It recognizes the dangers even there. Now, on the other hand, fulfillment of the spirit of this commandment does not call for letting it all hang out in a kind of an emotionally Jarring state that leaves other people frayed and I've been in circles where they're always on an emotional high They're always driving and I tell you they will wear themselves out and we ought not to do that Ecclesiastes 3 says there was a time to weep and a time to laugh which implies what? There's a time that's not appropriate to laugh right and not appropriate to weep and if it's There's times that are appropriate and times that are not appropriate. Where do we get the instruction on what is and what isn't? It's from the scripture, which means we've got to study what the Bible says about the emotion. And so I really do recommend that you read that book. By the way, you hear me talking tri-perspectively a lot of times. But if you want to think about this whole subject in terms of motive, goal, and standard, you can see the motive up here, the goal, that's the things that are going out in terms of relationship, the standard is our understanding of the Scriptures and how they apply, and then this is the living out of it. Okay, motive, goal, and standard, and there is the action that results. So, just an extra little tidbit you can add to your outline. Anyway, Ecclesiastes has a time to weep, a time to laugh, a time to mourn, a time to dance, a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to keep silence, and a time to speak, a time to love, and a time to hate, a time of war, and a time of peace. And I think it's only sensitivity to God that enables us to know what those times are. And so we've got to develop that, and we'll look at that maybe next week, because that's the soul aspect. Now, I mentioned earlier that there is a little bit more to this emotion quadrant than just emotions. They're a little bit broader than that, and I want to just give you an example, and then we'll close up. There's a marvelous essay on guidance by John Murray, where he shows how the Spirit moves in our lives in ways, many times, that we don't immediately understand. But he does so through the Word, and he does so in ways that anchor all four of those quadrants together. It's fascinating looking at his essay through the lens of these four quadrants. Let me quote from John Murray. at Westminster Theological Seminary many years ago. He says, it needs also to be recognized that as we are the subjects of this illumination and are responsive to it, and as the Holy Spirit is operative in us to the doing of God's will, we shall have feelings, impressions, convictions, urges, inhibitions, impulses, burdens, and resolutions. Now, I think you'll recognize every one of those terms that he's using there are terms that relate to this quadrant up here. It's in the heart. It's intangible. They're non-really specific. They're non-measurable. They're not totally clear. Anyway, Murray says, We shall have feelings, impressions, convictions, urges, inhibitions, impulses, burdens, resolutions. Illumination and direction by the Spirit through the Word of God will focus themselves in our consciousness in these ways. We are not automata. and we are finite. We must not think, therefore, that a strong or overwhelming feeling or impression or conviction, which we may not be able at a particular time to explain to ourselves or others, is necessarily irrational or fanatically mystical. Since we are human and finite and not always able to view all the factors or considerations and their relations to one another, the sum total of those factors and considerations bearing upon a particular situation may focus themselves in our consciousness in what we may describe as a strong feeling or impression. In many cases, such a feeling or impression is highly rational and is the only way in which our consciousness at a particular junction can take in or react to a complex manifold of thoroughly proper considerations. In certain instances, it may take us a long time to understand the meaning or implications of that impression. And I like the way in which he links it tightly to the Word of God, links it to the other four quadrants. And he points out that if we get these feelings, impressions, all of the list of things that he did there, and we're guided only by that, we get ourselves into serious trouble when they're not anchored to the other three quadrants and are not anchored to the Scripture. In fact, I've been in groups where where they they want you to just pitch logic pitch your brain you know pitch the study of the scripture on the things as well it's it's God God speaking to me other church traditions and when you do that by the way you get into some of the worst of the errors not everything that the different church traditions including our own do is wrong but that's going to get you into real deep trouble other church traditions are so focused on the left two quadrants that they become imbalanced and insensitive to God's leading through the Word. I think the tragedy that has happened in modern Protestantism is that people with discursive gifts, in other words, gifts that require study, deduction, you know, application, things like that, they've tended to go to Presbyterian churches. And people with the non-discursive, more intuitive gifts up in the top right-hand quadrant have tended to go to Charismatic churches. And people with the volitional gifts have tended to go to the Baptist churches, you know, with all the planning and the action. And people with the relational gifts have tended to go to the broadly evangelical churches. And they're all impoverished as a result because they're isolating from what could balance them out. And so you go to some of the charismatic churches that have pitched, you know, the importance of study and doctrine and things like that. And boy, you can find all kinds of heresies and all kinds of problems. Many times, not even understanding what they're experiencing, and instead of seeing these subjective impressions and impulses and burdens as being exactly that, very fallible, they elevate them to the status of Scripture. This is God speaking to me. We need to recognize all four quadrants are under the Scripture, right? They need to be governed by the Scripture. When you interpret a very fallible, subjective impression out of sync with the other three quadrants, out of sync with Scripture, it's a breeding ground for occultic Christianity. But, let's point the finger at ourselves, when you reduce Christianity to the mind, you have a breeding ground for a sterile, legalistic Christianity. And I think we need to watch out for that as well. I think Richard Sibbes, Did you guys get a handout of Richard Sibb's thing there? I think he was a Puritan who had a high level of love in all four of those quadrants. Just a remarkable man. But anyway, he gave a few tidbits. The whole essay is wonderful. He gave a few tidbits there where you can say, OK, we're going to love God with his intuitive side, but how do I avoid error? And he shows how to avoid some of the errors and misinterpretations that could result, and I encourage you to read that. Now, Lord willing, next week we're going to finish up the other three quadrants. And my vision for Dominion is that we be a people who are strong in all four quadrants. Whatever our natural tendency would be to one quadrant or another, that we work at it so that we are strong in all four quadrants, loving Him with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind. Let's pray. Father God, we pray that you would help us to uncomplicate that which many times is complicated in this whole subject we've been looking at. Help us, Lord, to really work on and develop and discipline and sanctify the areas of love that we are weak on. And Father, may we give you the glory for the areas that we are strong on. Father, it is our desire to love you with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. And may you receive all of the glory, the honor, and the praise as we grow in our sanctification in this. In Jesus' name, amen.