Sermon by Pastor Brent Kompelien
March 5, 2023
INTRO
We are going to take a break from the Gospel of John for the month of March as we lead up to our Vision Sunday and Annual Meeting on March 26.
I want to take this month to underline the central purpose of why we exist. Our mission statement is that (SLIDE 2) “We exist to glorify God by enjoying and loving Him, loving others and leading people to become devoted followers of Jesus Christ.”
In other words, we are a Great Commandment church and a Great Commission church. We are called to love God supremely, love others sacrificially, and we are called to be a disciple-making church that brings the message of the gospel to our community and applies it to our daily lives.
(SLIDE 3) As we’ve been moving ahead with this gospel-centered mission, one of the core convictions that God has crystallized for us is the concept of “Disciple-by-Doing.”
We are developing this concept ourselves as a way to help us understand how we can more effectively make disciples in the post-Christian world. This is why you’re going to see some pilot projects in the coming months.
Disciple-by-Doing is a vision for disciple-making that takes the truths of God, the message of the gospel, and the goals of spiritual growth and maturity and makes it come alive through hands-on activities of everyday life.
Friends, we live in such a fragmented, distracted, lonely, humanistic, self-centered world. We’re told that truth is relative, that you’re entitled to your self-made meaning, and that this earth is a mere hunk of space dust randomly hurtling through a purposeless universe.
What people in the post-Christian world need to see is that there is purpose, there is beauty, there is goodness, there is a design and a Designer, that He is the transcendent reality, a personal God who fashioned you and loves you and created you for his glory.
Disciple-by-Doing is a vision for putting the pieces back together in our fragmented and relativistic world. It is a way of not only teaching the concepts of God’s truth from Scripture, but making the Word of God come alive as His truth, His beauty, and His goodness are seen and known as we get our hands dirty and experience life together through the eyes of faith, through the lens of the Kingdom of God.
It starts with recognizing that every part of our lives are to come under the Lordship of Jesus. It begins with a realization that we need a whole-life, whole-hearted discipleship.
This series we are going to do in March is going to use the Greatest Commandment as the launching point to describe a whole-life disciple making vision that encompasses every aspect of who we are: loving God with ALL of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
(SLIDE 4) Today, we are going to talk about the most fundamental calling: That we are to love God with all our heart, which means reordering our loves.
March 12 Pastor Steve will preach from Romans 8 to help us learn about loving God with all our soul, which means redefining our identity.
March 19, I’ll be guiding us through 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 to show how we are to love God with all our mind, which means rediscovering the truth.
And on our Vision Sunday on March 26, we will wrap up the series in Romans 12 and Daniel 1 to describe how we need to love God with all our strength, which means repatterning our lives.
Let’s jump into today’s passage. (SLIDE 5) Open with me to Mark 12:28-34. We are going to set the foundation for our series by focusing on the most important aspect of discipleship: That we are to love God with everything we’ve got!
As we look at this passage, you need to know that Jesus is being confronted by the religious leaders just weeks before he is crucified. This is a clarifying moment where Jesus makes it abundantly clear what is expected of a disciple. Let’s read our passage. READ Mark 12:28-34.
ORG SENT — Ok, here’s how we are going to tackle this passage. I’d like to walk through what is going on in this conversation between Jesus and this teacher of the law, then dig deeper to understand the background of this statement by Jesus, and finally describe how this whole-hearted discipleship looks for us today.
MAIN 1 — Greatest Commandment (vv. 28-31). (SLIDE 6a)
Go back to verse 28 with me. Look at what this teacher of the law asked Jesus: (SLIDE 6b) “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
This isn’t an arbitrary or novel question. It was a hotly debated topic in 1st century Judaism. There were 613 laws in the Torah. It was common for the Jewish religious leaders to make distinctions between “lighter” and “heavier,” or “smaller” and “greater” laws. These distinctions became sources of debate between Pharisees and Sadducees throughout the generations.
The hierarchy of laws was a way to establish norms of legalistic behavior. It allowed for an evaluation of who was less or more sinful.
KEY — Jesus doesn’t play by these rules. His response encompasses a whole-life discipleship that touches every part of who you are (heart, soul, mind, strength).
You see, Jesus quotes the Shema from Deuteronomy 6. (SLIDE 6c) Why?
ILLUST — Devoted Jews would use this verse as a prayer and a confession of faith every morning and every evening. Evidence for this goes back at least to two-hundred years before Jesus. And it continues today for some orthodox Jews.
Let’s go back to Deuteronomy 6 so that we can see this text for ourselves and understand why Jesus would quote from this chapter to explain the greatest commandment.
MAIN 2 — Background (Deut. 6). (SLIDE 7a)
The book of Deuteronomy is the farewell speech of Moses immediately before the Israelites enter the Promised Land. In chapter 5, Moses had just re-stated the 10 Commandments. Now in chapter 6, Moses speaks to the people like a pastor. (SLIDE 7b) He goes deeper and describes the heart behind the commandments by casting a vision for a whole-hearted devotion to God.
READ Deuteronomy 6:4-9.
This is a “whole-life” discipleship! (SLIDE 7c)
No matter where you go (sit / walk) (SLIDE 7d)
No matter what time of day (lie down / get up) (SLIDE 7e)
KEY — It encompasses everything. This is critical, because we need to start viewing discipleship not as a check-box or as a task or as three easy steps to maturity…we need to start viewing discipleship as a long-haul, multi-layered, refining, sharpening, shaping, and transformational journey.
In other words, there is no short-cut to maturity. But the journey to maturity happens as the truths of the gospel and faithful obedience to God modeled and displayed and communicated in word and deed throughout the everyday activities of life. That is Disciple-by-Doing!
ILLUST — Visiting my grandpa in MN as a kids, going to the lake, working on projects. He was a “come along with me” kind of person. I saw how he treated people, I saw him deal with difficulty, and I listened to him pray. He taught me so much more than skills, I caught a vision for faithfulness to Jesus.
You see, the central command here is simple: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”
Loving God is the most basic, the most fundamental, the most important thing a human being can do. (SLIDE 7f) It is what you were designed for. It is what will cause you to flourish, it is what your family needs most, it is what your friends need most, it is what this world needs most…for you and me to love God supremely with everything we’ve got. All else flows from this one command.
The great theologian Augustine described the importance of this when he talked about “rightly ordered love.” We have many things we love, and we were made to love. The reality is that we will set our affection on someone or something. But when we take a good thing and make it an ultimate thing, we’ve crossed the line into idolatry.
ILLUST — Augustine wrote an incredible book called “City of God” and in this book he writes these profound words, “Set love in order in me.” (City of God, XV.22)
The right ordering of our loves begins with God. He is supreme, and all other loves flows from there.
We could talk about the attributes of God, the sovereignty of God in history, or the specific ways God has worked in your life, and ALL these things would be cause for rejoicing and wonder and awe. We could talk about love as an action, not merely a feeling, because we are to love God by obeying him. “If you love me, keep my commandments,” Jesus said. We will get to these ideas when we talk about the rest of the heart, soul, mind, and strength throughout this series.
But first, we need to first consider why this Deuteronomy passage, and Jesus as he quotes from this passage, would emphasize a whole-life, whole-hearted discipleship that encompasses all kinds of normal daily activities.
I think the key lies in the rest of the account of Mark 12. Let’s go back to verses 32-34.
MAIN 3 — Not Far From The Kingdom (vv. 32-34). (SLIDE 8a)
Did you notice that the Scribe added another dimension to what Jesus said? Look again at the end of verse 33: (SLIDE 8b) “…more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
Sure, obedience is better than sacrifice. We know this from the OT:
(SLIDE 8c) Hosea 6:6 — “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.”
(SLIDE 9) Micah 6:6-8 — “With what shall I come before the LORD and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of olive oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
Jesus says to the Scribe — (SLIDE 10a) “You are not far from the kingdom of God” (v. 34)
Here’s my question — Loving God supremely and loving others sacrificially is the highest calling of a human being. BUT CAN WE ACTUALLY PULL IT OFF?
APPLY — In other words, are we missing something here if we merely talk about the need to love God and love others under our own strength and without a deeper transformation? Maybe the “not far” Jesus is talking about here is something deeper that needs to happen in this Scribe’s heart?
The Bible is clear: (SLIDE 10b) We need a new heart! We need to be regenerated by the Spirit of God! We need to be born again to become new creations!
(SLIDE 10c) Ezekiel 36:26-27 — “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”
(SLIDE 11) John 3:3 — “Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
2 Corinthians 5:17 — “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
Without the regeneration of your inner being, you can’t love God whole-heartedly, you can’t love Him supremely, you can’t turn every desire and every attitude and every action toward the glory of His name! You are dead, lost, and an enemy of God with a heart of stone…it is the Spirit of God who gives you a heart of flesh, a soft heart, a heart that can be directed towards God.
KEY — We can still struggle to love God supremely. It is not about perfection, it is about the movement of your heart toward him!
APPLY (SLIDE 12, blank)
This is why we are going to talk about a gospel-centered process of spiritual formation in this series in March. This is why we need to embrace the long-haul formational journey of discipleship.
ILLUST — I was at Men’s Retreat for Friday and Saturday, and a few of us had a fun conversation in the car. We were discussing how we should approach discipleship in the church, mainly because I had their captive attention to take my sermon for a test-drive!
I was describing to them the difference between a technical challenge and an adaptive challenge.
A technical challenge is like picking the color of the carpet: We generally know what colors look good, and we can make a decision based on assumptions about carpet colors that would match our walls. It’s pretty straight forward and we can find technical solutions that quickly solve the issue.
An adaptive challenge is one that doesn’t have quick and easy solutions: You must enter into a learning process in order to figure out the answer. It requires growing, changing, charting a path forward that is a new work and results in a fundamental transformation. But it takes time, you must be patient, gracious, and persevere to move toward genuine growth.
(Also: Physical health)
Friends, one of my central concerns about the church in America is that we’ve taken the adaptive challenge of discipleship and we’ve tried to provide technical solutions in the form of “3 easy steps to having a great marriage,” or “5 tips for getting the most out of your devotions,” or “Quick and easy Spiritual Growth.”
We want the short-cuts to maturity. We somehow have tricked ourselves into thinking that we can life-hack our way to sanctification!
But what does Jesus call us to in Mark 12? Or what does Moses describe in Deuteronomy 6? Or what does the rest of the New Testament tell us about walking in faithfulness to Jesus? — It encompasses our entire heart, soul, mind, and strength. It is a love for God that is impressed on our hearts no matter where you go or what time of day. It is a persevering faith that is a living faith!
KEY — Learning to love God supremely is a life-long process of refining and reshaping our lives, beginning the with the regeneration of our inner being by the Holy Spirit, continually being sanctified to be more and more like Christ, and seeing God wear new grooves and beat down new paths of obedience in our thoughts, attitudes, and actions.
That’s what we are going to talk about in our series, and this is what “Disciple-by-Doing” is all about: Redeeming the everyday activities of life, every moment, every relationship, every bit of wonder at God’s creation as an opportunity for discipleship and being an ambassador of God’s goodness, beauty, and truth proclaimed in the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is about learning to love God with everything, realizing that we love because he first loved us.
ILLUST — (SLIDE 13) Augustine said, “O Love ever burning, never quenched! My God, set me on fire with your love! You command me to be content. Give me the grace to do as you command, and command me to do what you will!” (Confessions, X.29)