Loving God with All Your Mind | Mark 12:28-31 | Mike Gilbart-Smith

Well, do you keep that passage open? We are not

looking at that whole tremendously long passage.

Over the summer, we had a sermon series where

we took six weeks to look at that passage. And

so I thought the week that would be most appropriate

for a theological college is for us to think

what it means to love the Lord our God with all

our mind. It was Shakespeare who first said,

love is blind. I think he was the first to say

it. And when he said it, he meant love can look

beyond externals, like the clothes that Jessica

was wearing in The Merchant of Venice, to see

the real person. Love is able to see more than

what is visible. But as a culture, we've taken

that quote and run with it, haven't we? Dickens

used it like this, but love is blind and Nathaniel

had a cast in his eye and perhaps these two circumstances

taken together prevented his seeing the matter

in its proper light. Love is blind doesn't mean

we can see more, it means we can see less. So

that Abhijit Naskar, a neuroscientist, writes,

love that doesn't turn you stupid is no love.

It shows that to a large degree, our culture

separates love and thought. Love and the mind.

Elvis Presley probably put it most famously.

Wise men say only fools rush in, but I can't

help falling in love with you. I know it's stupid.

I know it's foolish, but I can't help it. That's

how we tend to think of love. And so our culture

is surprised by at least two things in the commandment

that Jesus says is the greatest. And if it's

the greatest commandment, it means that it defines

who we are. This is what it means for us to be

made human, is that we are to love the Lord.

Firstly, our culture... Thinks we cannot be commanded

to love. Doesn't love just happen to you. I can't

help falling in love. And in particular. The

very idea that we could love with our minds.

Is bad enough but that we must love with our

minds. Well it's tremendously counter cultural

isn't it. And yet this. When asked what the greatest

commandment is, Jesus doesn't begin by saying

love. No, he starts earlier in Deuteronomy chapter

Deuteronomy 6 · chapter mention

6 with the word hear. Hear, O Israel, the Lord

our God, the Lord is one. Love is a response

to truth. It's why we've been singing about the

gospel on which we stand. It is when we discover

who God is in our minds as we hear and believe

the gospel that we are able to respond with our

hearts and our soul and our strength to love

him. So very briefly, four ways in which we must

love the Lord our God with all our minds. Number

one. We need a posture of worshipping the Lord.

A posture of worshipping the Lord. We're not

told love the Lord. We're told to love the Lord

your God with all your mind. Different loves

in relationship are shaped differently. I have

the blessing of having a wonderful wife and six

children. And it's wonderful to observe the way

in which my wife loves my children and my children

love my wife. And that develops over time. But

think about a newborn baby. If you can't think

without singing, turn around. See a fairly newborn

baby at the back of the hall. Imagine if you

confuse the way in which a mother is to love

the baby and a baby is to love the mother. A

mother loves the baby by, yes, looking at a baby

thinking, aren't you cute? But also providing

for that baby, sustaining its life through food

and care and affection. Imagine if the mother

thought that they should love the baby in the

way that the baby should love the mother, by

depending upon the baby for everything. Now it

is true that the Lord is declared our friend.

And that friendship is a symmetrical relationship,

isn't it? I've got a friend called Freddie. He's

my friend. I'm his friend. It's the same both

ways. But almost all the ways in which our relationship

with the Lord is defined are asymmetrical. Yes,

he is our friend. We are his friend. But it is

not a friendship of equals. He is our friend.

We are his subjects. He is our savior. We are

those he has saved. He is our God. We are those

who are to worship him. And so in a theological

college where much of our time is spent with

God as an object of our study, We cannot have

him an object of our study until we first have

him as an object of our worship. And everything

we learn about God and what it means to be God's

people should lead us to worship. It's why it's

a great way to finish a lecture with a prayer

of praise or even a hymn. Because we've learned

more about our God. The Lord, our God, the one

with whom we are in covenant relationship. And

we should not do so without praising him. A posture

of worship. Secondly, a pursuit of his word.

Jesus says, quoting Deuteronomy, Hear, O Israel,

the Lord our God, the Lord is one. There is a...

A tradition in Hinduism where Krishna says to

his disciples, I am whomever my lover wishes

me to be. So if you want me to be this, I'll

be this. If you want me to be that, I'll be that.

That is not how the Lord presents himself. He

says, I am who I am. He declares, the Lord your

God, the Lord is one. He is one Lord who in his

amazing mercy has revealed himself to us in his

word. And principally in his son. Where we learn

that the one is three and the three are one.

And so we must study God's word in order to love

the Lord with all our mind. I used to be a pastor

on Capitol Hill in Washington, D .C., and we

had weekly evangelistic lunchtime talks, and

I gave a talk from God's Word to which one of

the staffers, which basically means young people

who are very bright who do photocopying for senators,

said to me, that was very interesting what you

shared for the Bible, but I like to think of

God as being like this, and then described how

he liked to think of God, to which I said, well,

I hope you understand that what you like to think

of God tells us an enormous amount about you,

and it tells us absolutely nothing about God.

Because God is who he is, and we need to listen

to his revelation to find out who he is. And

it's not enough to make God the object of our

study so that we can worship him by using the

minds of others. Perhaps you have a favourite

theologian and you like to love the Lord your

God with all Bavinck's mind or Turretin's mind,

or insert favourite theologian, or a favourite

pastor and you love to love the Lord your God

with John Piper's mind or whoever it might be

for you. Or instead... Yeah, the essay comes

and, you know, you've got that AI policy, but

you just have a little look at what AI says about

the question. Because, let's be honest, it can

probably answer it better than you. Certainly

it can answer it better than me. But the Lord

says, love the Lord your God with all your mind.

I think one of the great blessings of AI is it

tells us how thick we are. It can do things that

we could never do in 100 years in 12 seconds.

And that is a blessing. Because the Lord didn't

tell us to love him with all our minds because

he's in awe of our intelligence. No, from the

very beginning, he created beings with intelligences

far beyond us. And one of the great things about

AI is it's challenging our very idea of what

it means to be human. I've really enjoyed Christopher

Watkins' podcast on AI, on the Gospel Coalition.

It's called Silicon Spiritualities. This is one

of the things he said from a recent episode.

There are two worlds in which you can live in

the world of AI. There's the world in which you

are your performance, you are your metrics, you

are your intelligence. Good luck living in that

world today because AI is coming for you. It's

going to outthink you, outcreate you. If that's

what you build your identity on, it's not looking

good for you. But let me invite you into another

world where you aren't what you think or what

you create or what even you produce relationally,

but your identity is a wonderful gift bestowed

on you, not because you are the greatest, but

because the greatest God has loved you. And we,

in response to his love, are to love the Lord

our God with all our minds. Number three, a practice

of remembering. We are constantly to remember

how he is lovely and to be loved. How do you

think about exams when they're coming up? I hope

you think about exams at Theology College not

in the way maybe you thought about GCSE physics.

Where you think, I've got to cram the knowledge

and praise God, when I get to the end of the

exam, I never have to do physics ever again,

or insert least favourite subject. No, think

of it much more like the driving test. You are

learning these things about the Lord so that

you can put them into practice in the rest of

your life. Imagine thinking, thank the Lord I've

got through my driving test, I never have to

remember what to do behind the wheel again every

time I drive. No, we are to learn about the Lord

so that we can remember who he is and live in

love towards him. Number four, a patience in

maturing in love. Love of the Lord with our minds

is to be a lifelong pursuit. We are to love the

Lord with the mind we have today, though not

the mind we hope we will have by the time we

graduate. Not the mind we wish we still had,

now that some of us are beyond 50 and the mind

is getting worse. No, the mind you have today,

love the Lord with that mind, looking forward

to the day where your mind will be fully renewed.

That great chapter of love, on love, in 1 Corinthians

13, the Apostle Paul writes, for now we see only...

a reflection as in a mirror, then we shall see

face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall

know fully, even as I am fully known. And now

these three remain, faith, hope, and love, but

the greatest of these is love. Faith will give

way to sight, hope will give way to reality,

and love will remain forever. And one day the

object of our love we will know fully, not I

think because we'll suddenly become infinite

and omniscient, but because there will be no

barriers to us exploring more deeply how he is

worthy of our love as our minds know who he truly

is and express that love in worship forever.

Will we not love the Lord with all our minds?

Let's go to the hymn in prayer now. Father, we

praise you that you have given us minds and we

confess that they are not infinite like your

mind. They are not unconfused like your mind.

But we pray that with growing clarity. We will

read your word so we will know who you are, so

that we will love you with our minds, and that

love from our minds will flow into our hearts

and our soul and our strength, that you might

be the sole object of our worship. Father, we

thank you that when we find it hard to love you

with our minds, you hold up to us your Son, the

Lord Jesus Christ. We come and see him, the king

of love who died for his subjects, the God who

became human because of his love, that he might

be an atoning sacrifice not only for our sins

but for the sins of the whole world. Cause us,

Lord, to meditate upon his cross. that our response

to you would always be love. And we pray this

in Jesus' name. Amen.