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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.
Full-Orbed Love, Part 1
Series Foundations
| Sermon ID | 124181211572 |
| Duration | 45:34 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Mark 12:30 |
| Language | English |
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