...with all your mind...

That song could really be the theme song for this three-week series we're starting today.

We're doing a series Head, Heart, and Hands is kind of the shorthand, what I'm calling it.

The big words for this series would be orthodoxy or right doctrine, right thought, orthodoxy, orthopathy, the right feeling, and orthopraxy, the right practice or the right action.

So you could say orthodoxy, orthopathy, orthopraxy, but it's a lot easier to say head, heart, hands.

And I think it gets the same point.

So there's a big question that I'm going to be asking us to wrestle with during this series.

How to be a whole person?

What does it look like to be a complete human being?

Someone who is more like Jesus, who is more integrated in the different aspects of what it means to be human.

And so to begin this series, this is really kind of the theme text for the three-week series from Mark 12.

So I'm going to read this and then I'm going to ask you three questions that we'll try to unpack.

So reading from Mark 12, starting in verse 28.

One of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that Jesus answered them well, asked him, Which commandment is the most important of all?

Jesus answered, The most important is, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

The second is this you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

There is no other commandment greater than these.

And the scribe said to him, You are right, teacher, you have truly said that he is one, and there is no other beside him.

And to love him with all the heart and all the understanding and all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself is much more than all 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.

And after that no one dared ask him any more questions.

Jesus, would you help us understand what this interaction with this expert in the law meant and what it means for us?

Holy Spirit, would you help our minds and our hearts be open to what you want to communicate to each of us in our own journey and our own story?

And Father, would you be good to respond as we seek to live out whatever the Spirit shows us and whatever Jesus models for us today, that you might be glorified in all we think and feel and do.

Amen.

So the three questions I'm gonna ask you today is what's most important?

What's most important?

Secondly, what does Jesus mean to you?

And third, what's on your mind?

So, what's most important?

There's a debate going on in this text.

We're in the middle of a very contentious day with lots of debate going on.

You can see that the scribe, a scribe is someone who's an expert in the law.

They began by just copying God's law down, but they became experts and teachers of that law.

And you can see that this scribe was listening and approves of how Jesus answered a previous question.

He's in debate on this day, just days before he's crucified.

He's in debate with a number of people about God's law and about the source of authority.

In Mark 11, the chapter before this one, Jesus is flipping tables at the temple.

He's clearing out these people who exchange money and sell animals there.

And after that, he is confronted by some Jewish leaders.

One of the groups is the scribes or experts in the law.

The other groups are the chief priests, the Sadducees, and the Pharisees.

And I don't have time to unpack who they all are, but suffice to say, they all took God's law very seriously.

They expected everyone around them to take it seriously, but they had some differences in viewpoints, just as you will find today among Christians.

And so when Jesus starts flipping tables and starts forgiving people for their sins and hanging out with questionable people around town, some of these religious leaders have questions for him.

They said in Mark 11, 28, By what authority are you doing these things?

In Mark 12, 13, they sent to Jesus some of the Pharisees to trap him in his talk.

And they said to him, Teacher, is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?

They wanted to have a theological debate.

Then in Mark 12, 18, the Sadducees come to him next, another one of the groups.

The Sadducees came to him who say there is no resurrection.

And they asked him a question.

So these guys wanted to engage in an internal debate that the Sadducees and Pharisees had about whether there's a resurrection or not, whether there's an afterlife or not.

And they want to see whose side Jesus is going to take.

So all of these theological arguments continue as you read through the Gospel of Mark.

They continue in chapter 11 and 12 until we get to Mark 14, where it says the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest Jesus and kill him.

And in Mark 15, he is crucified.

Why do theological debates lead to murder?

I mean, maybe if these Pharisees and Sadducees and chief priests all just had a coexist bumper sticker on the back of their donkey, they wouldn't be so fired up about these different viewpoints.

Maybe they would have been a little more tolerant of those who thought differently about the resurrection.

I mean, who can really know for sure anyway?

But you see, these weren't just academic debates.

These were life and death questions that they were discussing.

The deepest questions, the questions that every person in every nation, in every period of history have been wrestling with.

The questions, what is most important in life?

Who is God?

How can I know him?

And what should I do in my life in response?

In other words, the deepest question we can ask is, what theology should I have in my head?

And what should that do in my heart?

And then in response, what should I do with my hands?

The word theology means God knowledge.

God knowledge.

And atheists and agnostics deny having a theology, but they do, because even saying there is no God is asserting something about the knowledge of God.

When you deny that God exists, you are still attempting to explain reality.

You are espousing a doctrine, and what that doctrine says about morality, about government, about human relationships, about life and death.

And although there are many religions in the world and many subsets of different religious denominations, the dominant theology in the world, I think, is really secular humanism.

Because even if you are a professing member of a religion, even if you're a true follower of Christ, you are not immune to the worldview of secular humanism.

And neither are your friends, and neither are your children.

This is what is entering our minds all the time, whether we know it or not.

Secular humanism is the theology of every Disney movie.

It is woven throughout popular culture, and so it influences all of us.

Secular humanism is naturalistic, just a few things about it.

It's naturalistic, it does not believe in the supernatural, believes that the natural world is all that exists, and so even if there is something supernatural, it doesn't really make much difference in our day-to-day lives.

We were not created, we were not designed by any higher intelligence, we evolved by random chance.

Secular humanism believes morality is man-made, that it is relative, so that there is no universal moral code, but that ethics should be adjusted to each situation, to each culture, to each time.

The guiding principle is just follow your heart.

As long as you don't hurt anybody else, then just follow your heart.

Secular humanism focuses on the here and now.

That life happens just by random chance.

There is no afterlife, so make the best of today.

And like I said, even if we believe in the afterlife, even if we believe in heaven and hell, many of us unintentionally live as if this life is all that matters.

But this is why it's crucial.

If there is no life after death, if life itself has no real meaning because it just happened by accident, then the only question I really need to answer is: how do I make the most of this life as long as I have it?

How do I enjoy myself as long as I'm alive?

You know, the bumper sticker that says, he who dies with the most toys wins.

A lot of us live that way.

That's the aim in life, is to enjoy as much as possible.

It's a good philosophy if secular humanism is your theology.

But here's the underlying problem, and why I'm spending time on this, is if I am not made in God's image, if I am not made with inherent dignity and value, then neither are you.

My only purpose, if my only purpose on earth is to enjoy life as much as I can, then you better not get in my way.

Because you weren't made in God's image either, and if you become an obstacle to my happiness, I'm going to prioritize my pleasure, my power, my pursuits over yours.

So to love your neighbor as yourself, as Jesus commands us, if we're to love our neighbor as ourself, we have to begin by understanding the basic story of life itself.

We have to understand the meaning of life before we can love anyone.

The meaning of life is a story with four great chapters: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.

In this story, the true story of your meaning and your existence is we were all made.

Every human being, whatever they believe, whatever they look like, every human being was made in God's image with dignity and rights.

But we all sin against him.

And so we all fall away, and therefore we need to be rescued.

Rescued and redeemed by the atoning work of Jesus.

And then if we know Jesus as the Lord of this life, then we will enjoy life with him forever in a newly restored creation, a new heaven and a new earth.

And the beautiful thing is, even while we're still here on this earth, when we love God and love others, we get a foretaste of that redeemed creation.

We get to get glimpses of heaven here on earth.

So, looking back at our text, at these life and death questions, this law expert is really testing Jesus on his theology.

He's testing him on his orthodoxy.

He wants to know how will Jesus summarize all of God's commands.

And so Jesus goes back to the Shema, which we heard read earlier from Deuteronomy 6.4.

The word Shema comes from the opening words, hear, O Israel.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might.

And then Jesus adds a second commandment from Leviticus 19, 18.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

It's interesting because he says there is one commandment.

But in verse 31, Jesus says, there is singular, no commandment singular greater than these.

You see, the love of God and the love of neighbor, what you think and what you feel and what you do, they are all inseparable.

That's why secular humanism leads inevitably to abortion and euthanasia.

Because if the first part of the most important commandment, to love God, if that's rejected, then the second part to love your neighbor is also lost and has no meaning.

It has no foundation.

They're so closely related that Paul says in Galatians 5.14, the whole law is fulfilled in one word.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Paul is saying that the only way you can really love your neighbor, the only way you can really love sacrificially and selflessly, if love for God is changing you from the inside out.

Because we are by nature, I am by nature, selfish and self-absorbed and self-consumed.

So if I am to stop worshipping my selfish desires, I have to learn to worship God instead.

So these two commands are like two halves of a hinge on a doorframe.

They fit together, they work together, and Jesus is the hinge pin that holds them together.

So my second question, what does Jesus mean to you?

Dallas Willard once wrote, Because I make my living as a university professor and philosopher, I am frequently asked, why do you follow Jesus Christ?

My answer is always the same.

Who else did you have in mind?

Who else is worth following?

Or as Peter said, where else would we go?

He said that in John chapter 6, and the minds of some of the people were so troubled and confused by some of the things Jesus was teaching that some of them, including some of his early disciples, they walked away.

John 6 · chapter mention

Just this week, a pretty well-known pastor and author announced that he is no longer a Christian.

Joshua Harris, who was pastor of a sovereign grace church in Maryland and wrote a book called I Kiss Dating Goodbye, and he's since dismissed most of what he's written and announced this week that he no longer follows Jesus.

He has changed his mind about who Jesus is.

After teaching people for decades who Jesus is.

And I pray that he comes back.

That he realizes, as Peter did, where else would we go?

There is no other theology, there is no other philosophy for your mind that can bring the peace to your heart and tell your hands what to do.

Jesus has the only peace for the restless heart.

Jesus has the only answers for the doubting mind.

The word theology means God knowledge, and the Nicene Creed, which we recited earlier, is a good summary of what we know and what we believe about God.

But it has to be more than head knowledge.

What does it mean to really know God the way you know your friend and people you love?

How can we comprehend in our limited minds a being who has existed for all time, who was not made, but makes all things that are, that exist, who knows everything, who can do anything.

If our minds are going to understand the infinite and almighty God, there is one place to look.

John 1.18 says, No one has ever seen God, but Jesus has made him known.

In John 5.39, Jesus tells some more of these skeptical law experts.

He says, You diligently study the scriptures, because you think by them you have eternal life.

These are the scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

And he said in Matthew 11, 27, no one knows the Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal the Father.

And so the invisible, the Almighty, the Infinite God becomes visible and knowable in Jesus of Nazareth.

Fully human, but also fully God.

Through him all things were made and have their being.

And so if our minds want to know God, we must know Jesus.

He is the bridge to the Father.

He is the door.

And so if we want to know the Father, if we want to know God, we must ask Jesus.

You must ask Jesus to be your shepherd, to be your teacher, to be your Lord.

You will be lost and incomplete without hope in the world.

Unless you know Jesus.

Knowing him is the first step towards being a whole person.

A person whose head and heart and hands are all engaged in the right way, in right proportion.

And we see this lived out in Jesus' life.

I love Paul Miller's book, Love Walked Among Us.

Paul highlights the way that Jesus would see and feel and act.

Paul calls these the three movements of love in his book.

You would see Jesus interact with people who were hurting, and over and over he would see them in their pain.

And he was moved with compassion, and then he would act.

Mind, emotions, actions, all engaged in right proportion.

For me, maybe for some of you, I'm often good at the seeing and thinking part.

And I'm pretty good at the doing part.

But I often miss the heart.

I'm more often like ready, fire, aim.

Think and act.

Miss the heart.

But Jesus was a complete human being.

Jesus loved the Lord with all of his heart and with all of his mind and with all of his strength.

And I want to be more like him.

I want to follow my shepherd and become a complete human being.

One day last year, my wife Naomi was really upset about a difficult situation in her family.

And I remember clearly holding my wife in my arms as she is weeping and sobbing.

And I was thinking, oh crap, what do I do?

What do I say?

Or what do I not say?

Okay, I'm smart enough to know what not to say.

I'm not going to try to fix it.

I'm not going to tell her that, you know, it's all going to be better.

I'm not going to try to explain away her feelings with logic.

That's not good.

So I thought, okay, do some reflective listening.

Yeah, yeah.

Validate her feelings.

Those are good techniques.

I'll try some of that.

And I did.

And I listened and I tried some validation.

She told me later that I seemed really distant in that moment.

And I thought, how could I have been distant?

Like you were literally in my arms.

Like I wasn't distant.

And I was thinking so hard.

I was trying so hard to say the right things and not say the wrong things.

But what she meant was that my heart seemed far away.

And it was because my heart was clueless.

I didn't know how to empathize.

I didn't know how to enter into her pain and share it with her without trying to think and do and fix.

And so I'm learning that my heart has a lot of growing to do.

Just as a different example, my title here at your church is Pastor of Mercy.

But I've realized that there are many times that I would rather think about mercy.

I would rather teach about mercy than do the hard work of mercy.

Than to feel merciful.

I'd rather talk about it.

It's a lot easier.

But I want my thoughts and my emotions and my actions to be interconnected and interrelated.

To see, feel, and act like Jesus did.

How about you?

Which of those three is a weak area for you?

Head, heart, hands?

Which is the one that makes you a little uncomfortable?

When Naomi was pouring out her heart, I just didn't know how to respond.

I felt I felt like a stranger in a strange land.

You know when you're in another country and you don't speak the language?

And so you just speak louder in English, thinking they'll understand you?

You just use what comes comfortably.

We default to what comes comfortable instead of learning the language of the land that we're in.

And so I'm trying to learn the language of my heart.

And I've even started sitting down with some of my friends over a cup of coffee or a bucket of buffalo wings and answering two simple questions.

What am I feeling and why?

And I've got this cool wheel with all these different words of emotions on it.

Because sometimes we can't even put words to it.

And so it helps to look at a paper and like, huh, yeah, I feel disappointed.

Why do I feel disappointed?

I'm learning the language of my heart.

So we're going to be thinking in this three-week series, not only about our heart, but our head, our hands.

What does it mean?

What does it look like for them all to be engaged and all growing more and more like Christ?

So today we're starting with the mind.

So my third question to you what's on your mind?

Spanish philosopher José Ortega Gacet said, tell me what you pay attention to, and I will tell you who you are.

In other words, pay attention to what you pay attention to.

You see, what your attention, the things you pay attention to with your head, with your eyes, your attention changes your affection and directs your action.

So what do you pay attention to?

Jesus said the eyes are the lamp of the body.

And Shakespeare paraphrased him by saying, the eyes are the window of the soul.

The magazines you read, the websites you visit, whatever you look at, whatever you read, is pouring information into your mind that then flows to your heart and changes your behavior.

For example, if I read cars about magazines about cars all the time, looking at all the cool cars that I'd love to own, I'll probably become less satisfied with my old minivan, right?

My discontented heart will lead my hands to open my wallet and buy that Mustang that I really want but can't afford.

But I can't stop thinking about it.

Because that's what I'm reading.

It's not bad to read car magazines or to read about home decorating or read about vacations or cooking or dozens of other things.

It's not that these are bad in themselves, but the question I'm asking you to think about is what do these images, these pictures, these stories, as they enter your mind, what happens in your heart?

How will the things that you pay attention to affect your affections and influence your actions?

Paul tells us in Romans 12, too, do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

So, is the world changing how you think?

Or is your thinking changed by God's word?

What's on your mind?

I really do want you to answer that question.

I want you to think about that question, and I want you to tell someone the answer.

I'm going to challenge you to do that this week.

Tell someone that you trust, someone you feel safe with.

And if you don't have someone like that, I would love to help you address that.

There are men and women in this church who would love to sit with you and hear your answer to that question.

What's on your mind?

What do you think about in your idle moments?

When you're sitting in traffic, when you're standing in the shower, when you're waiting in front of the coffee machine or the toaster, when you're laying in bed and you cannot sleep.

What's on your mind?

Where does your mind drift?

In your idle moments, idol spelled I-D-L-E.

Because the place that your mind drifts in your idle moments will often be your idols.

I D O L.

Where does your mind drift?

The things that you worry about, the things that you fantasize about, the things that you obsess about.

Is that one of your idols?

It might be because that's why it shows up on replay in your mind over and over.

And it's often the reason why you find it hard.

The reason why you find it hard to pray and to read God's Word.

Because your mind is already full of something else.

Full of something else that does not want to die.

Your idols will fight tooth and nail to survive.

And so they will try to fill your mind and fill your heart and fill your time with promises of quick relief, of escape, of comfort, of fun.

And so then when you try to meditate on what is good and what is true, you feel this resistance inside.

You know?

That's why it's essential to name the idol, to name this thing that your mind drifts to, and to have a friend help you process that.

To hear from him or her what it is that their mind drifts to, what it is that is influencing their heart and their hands.

That's why we can't just focus on behavior.

Have you ever tried to break a bad habit?

Do you find it helpful to just say to yourself, don't do that?

To just stop it, to make a New Year's resolution.

I'm gonna stop drinking, or eating, or gossiping, or coveting, or swearing, or looking at stuff on the internet.

I'm just gonna stop.

It doesn't work because our actions don't really change until we ask a deeper question.

Why do I do that?

Why do I think that way?

Do these things?

Look at these things.

What does my heart think it will get when I do that?

Your behavior won't change until you know why your heart is driving you to that behavior.

And it might be connected to what you're looking at and thinking about.

See, to grow as human beings, to be whole, we need to see that what we see and feel and do are all interconnected.

To know and understand the Lord so that our heartbeat becomes synchronized with his heartbeat.

And then our actions are gonna flow out of that heartbeat and be pleasing to him.

And we can be pleasing to him.

We can have confidence that what we do will be pleasing to him because it's not based upon our performance.

You will never love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength.

Thank God that's not the standard for being a child of God.

Our status is not based upon how much we understand, or how strong our faith is, or what we do for God.

So to wrap that up, I'm gonna close with this story.

A story by the theologian D.A.

Carson.

Carson imagines two Jews, two neighbors in Egypt, the night before Passover.

So Smith and Brown are these two neighbors, and the angel of death is coming that night.

You remember the angel of death which is going to move over Egypt and is going to kill every firstborn animal and son.

And so Smith says to his neighbor, hey, I'm getting really nervous about tonight.

Aren't you nervous?

And Brown says, No, why are you nervous?

You know, God told us through his servant Moses that we should kill a lamb without blemish and put the blood on the doorposts, and then we should celebrate the Passover.

Haven't you done these things?

And Smith says, yeah, you know, I spread the blood, and yeah, we're gonna have Passover.

I mean, I'm not stupid.

I did all that, but I mean, the stuff that's been going on around here is pretty scary.

Like the river turned into blood?

What was that about?

And frogs everywhere and the flies?

I mean, aren't you kind of nervous about tonight?

And Brown says, I'm not worried, I trust in the promises of God.

So that night the angel of death sweeps through the land.

And so which man lost his son?

Neither of them.

Neither of them.

Because death doesn't pass over them because of the strength of their faith, because of the depth of their understanding, because of the quality or intensity of their beliefs.

The angel of death passes over because of the blood of the Lamb, which shelters the children of God.

I need no earlier argument.

I have no other plea.

It is enough that Jesus died and that he died for me.

Simple words.

It's all you need to believe.

You are not saved by how much you know God in your head.

You are not saved by how much you love God in your heart, and you are not saved by what you do for God with your hands.

It is not the intensity of your faith that saves.

It is Jesus who saves you.

And so put your faith in Him, not in your faith.

Put your faith in what Jesus has done on the cross, which you could not do, and was done on your behalf.

You know what faith is?

Faith is a weak heart holding on to strength.

Faith is feeble hands that move by the power of God.

Faith is a confused mind that trusts in the one who knows all things.

The one who teaches us all that our minds need to know.

The one who changes the affections of our hearts, and the one who leads us and teaches us to do with our hands what is pleasing to Him.

So let's pray.

Jesus, thank you that we are not saved and we are not changed by the power or quality or depth or sophistication of our faith, by the number of scripture verses we've memorized, by the language we speak, by our failures to obey, by our rebellious, sinful behavior that or all the good works that we've done.

None of these things can keep us from you, and none of these things can make you love us more.

It is just the blood of Jesus, the blood of the Lamb poured out to wash us and cover us, and then to change us from the inside out, that our hearts and our minds and our hands might be pleasing to you in response to what you have done for us.

Jesus, help us believe this.

Help us love you with all of our heart, strength, and mind, and love our neighbors as ourselves for your glory alone.

Amen.