A Life-Changing Resolution
Mark 12:28-34
January 1, 2006
Introduction
How many of you here have made some resolutions for this year? It’s okay, you can be honest!
Here are a few less-serious resolutions:
"I have resolved not to do drugs anymore, because I get the same effect just standing up really fast."
"I have resolved to live in my own little world, because at least they know me here."
"I have resolved to stay married, because it is so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life."
"I have resolved to not make any resolutions, because nobody is perfect. I’m a nobody, therefore I’m perfect."
(SOURCE: Rodney Buchanan in "Starting the New Year Right" Sermoncentral.com Contributed by: SermonCentral PRO)
I’m not real big into resolutions, personally. I have nothing against them, and I applaud those of you who make them. And I’m ecstatic for those of you who actually keep them.
But today I want to give you some ideas that you can take with you to help make this year one of the best you’ve ever had.
And in doing that, I want to suggest a resolution that you can use year after year for the rest of your life.
This resolution is taken from the passage of Scripture we’re going to look at during our time together this morning, and it’s found in Mark 12:28-34. I’d like you to turn to that passage in your Bibles. If you’re using the Bibles in the seats, this is found on page 718.
And while you’re getting there, I want to just give a little bit of context.
Jesus had just gotten done answering a bunch of his critics, one after another. They had been trying to get him to say something that would cause Him to trap himself. It hadn’t worked before that, and it doesn’t work this time.
One of these fellers had been watching and listening to the exchange, and finally comes to Jesus with his own question, a question that goes to the very heart of what the Bible teaches about God and how we’re to relate to Him.
So I’d invite you to follow along with me as I read this passage from Mark 12:28-34 -
One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"
29 "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: ’Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ’Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these."
32 "Well said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33 To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."
34 When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.
From this passage, I want to share with you what I think ought to be the resolution at the top of the list for everyone who call themselves Christians:
To take practical steps know God better and love Him more.
Now notice I didn’t just say: know God better and love Him more. I said: take practical steps to know God better and love Him more.
I want to give you some ideas that will help you do that. As we look more closely at this passage, especially verses 30-31, I want us to see that God wants us to love Him in four ways, according to this passage.
And we’re going to briefly look at each of these as we examine how to put this resolution into practice.
Ready? Let’s dive in. First...
1. God wants us to love Him with everything inside us.
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul..."
This is loving Him passionately.
Now I don’t mean some sappy, romance novel or romantic comedy movie kinda passion.
When a person is passionate about something, it drives them. It defines how they live.
If a person is passionate about farming, then it’s what drives their day to day life. They make all their decisions around that passion.
Well, with God, we’re supposed to love Him so much that He is how we define our lives. We live according to what we know will honor Him and please Him. It means living by God’s agenda instead of our own.
We do our jobs and raise our families in ways that reflect Biblical principles and priorities rather than the principles and priorities of society.
We’re saying to God, "You’ve got me, Lord. Heart and soul. Everything I am, everything I’ve got. I’m loving you all the way."
That’s what Jesus is saying about how to love God passionately.
A couple ideas on how to do this:
* Adopt or renew a form of intake of the Bible. Reading, memorizing, etc.
* Adopt or renew one of the spiritual disciplines: fasting, extended prayer, solitude, etc.
Why do these things? Because they open our spirits up to God in ways that allow Him to speak to us through the Bible and God’s people so that we’ll actually catch what He’s trying to say to us.
Have any of you here tried getting cell phone service between Pierre and Rapid City? Good luck! Not many towers, and lots of hills between the ones that are there.
And if you can actually get a call through, it’s all scratchy, and you spend more time saying, "WHAT?? WHAT?? WHAT????" than actually having a conversation.
But when you get to an area that has real service, the calls go through cleanly, and you can understand each other perfectly. Unless you’re talking to your teenager - but that’s another message for another time!
Anyway, when we get that pipeline of communication between us and God open, things can happen in our relationship with God and in our relationships with other people.
And we can love Him the way Jesus says we’re suppose to.
Second...
2. God wants us to love him with our
brains.
"...and with all your mind..."
This is loving Him thoughtfully.
One of the things that drives me and my ministry is the idea that we don’t have enough Christians who know how to use this: their head.
The Christian faith is full of clichés. And a lot of Christians are good at quoting them.
But living for Jesus isn’t about quoting a bunch of clichés.
Folks, the Christian faith is a reasonable one - one that thinking people should be able to embrace. It’s not a blind faith at all. If someone wants to examine whether or not Christianity is real and has anything real behind it, let them.
And if they’re intellectually honest, they’ll examine all the evidence, and realize just how reasonable and logical Christianity really is.
Another need here is for people who can accurately apply what the Bible says to real life situations.
I think one of the reasons more people don’t come to faith in Christ is because they see Christians who have absolutely no clue how to put Biblical principles into practice in real life.
At AWC, we’re committed to helping people do that. Our "motto," if you will, is printed on the front of your bulletin: Real faith in the real God for real people in the real world.
But for this to really take hold, it takes people who are serious about using the brain God gave them. In every area of life, not just their spiritual life.
Some ideas:
* Attend and actively participate in an adult Bible study (and wouldn’t you know, we’ve got one starting real soon!).
* Read something that challenges your thinking.
* Make a commitment to use the filter of Scripture to evaluate what you read, see, & hear. "Separate the wheat from the chaff."
There is lots of stuff the Bible says is just fine, and there’s stuff the Bible calls sin. You need to know the difference, and that only comes from getting into it.
The Bible is a great filter for keeping us from the stuff that can get us into trouble.
Make it point this year to love God with your brain. Here’s the third way Jesus tells us to love God:
3. God wants us to love Him with our
gifts and abilities.
"...and with all your strength."
He wants us to use the talents, spiritual gifts, finances, influence, or whatever He’s given us.
This is loving Him practically.
He didn’t just give us these things for our own enjoyment and enrichment. He gave them to us to use for His glory and to advance His kingdom.
A couple ideas:
* Take an inventory of your talents and think of how they can be used through the ministries of AWC.
Some of you are skilled at manual labor. You can use that in lots of ways. I can’t because I can barely figure out which way to turn a screwdriver.
Some are gifted musically, or organizationally, or just have a good eye for decorating and stuff.
Believe me, the church can use that stuff to help people find Jesus and live for him, whether through our worship services, benevolence events we might put on, or whatever.
* Take an inventory of your spiritual gifts and think of how they can be used through the ministries of AWC. (CLASS 301 - March 25)
Spiritual gifts are things like faith, administration, leadership, evangelism, service, hospitality, and the like.
If you are a believer in Jesus, then the Holy Spirit has given you at least one spiritual gift to use in His service.
It’s fascinating to look back and see what God has done in and through you that will give you an idea of how He has gifted you to partner with Him in expanding His kingdom both locally and around the world.
God gave us gifts and abilities to use. And using them for Him is loving Him.
We’re to love God with everything inside us, we’re to love Him with our brains, and we’re to love him with our gifts and abilities. Let’s quickly look at the fourth way to love God, according to our passage.
4. God wants us to love Him by loving others.
"Love your neighbor as yourself."
This is loving Him socially.
I’ve said over and over that our faith in Christ is supposed to spill out into our relationships with other people. We’re not supposed to hoard the good news of Jesus, and we’re supposed to do good for others in His name.
Maybe you’re not the "social butterfly" type. That’s okay - that’s not what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about the fact that we are to touch others with the love of Jesus. And there are lots of ways to do that. I’ve given you three suggestions in your note-taking guide:
* Volunteer with the Salvation Army or other charitable organization.
* Look for ways to help someone in your neighborhood in some area in which you have abilities. Shovel someone’s sidewalk, help them clean their gutters. Maybe you’re a whale of a griller, and you can have some of your neighbors over for a cook-out. Just to get to know them better and share some good food.
* Pray for opportunities to share Jesus with your neighbor.
Folks, your neighbors need Jesus, just like you do. Pray that God would allow you to either talk about Jesus with them, or just to invite them to church sometime. Anything to expose them to the life-saving and life-changing message of Jesus.
Conclusion
It’s easy to look back at last year and think of things you didn’t get done, or things you wish you could have done better, or whatever.
Brooks Atkinson said, "Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go." (SermonCentral.com)
Today’s a new day. Today begins a new year. And today you can begin again.
Don’t try to do this whole list - you won’t get it all done, and you’ll get discouraged and probably quit all of it.
Take one or two and run with them. And really make the effort, trusting God to work and move in and through you.
Let me take a slight detour for a minute, okay?
Notice what Jesus said back in verse 34:
"You are not far from the kingdom of God."
And notice who he said it to: a teacher of the law. He said this to one of the religious teachers of Israel - one of the big guns in the religious community there.
Why would Jesus need to say this to a guy like this?
Because he had an erroneous perception of what God was all about. Even with all his learning, he was blind to the truth, and was still outside the kingdom of God. Being religious didn’t cut it, according to Jesus.
So what does it take to be part of the kingdom?
Well, it boils down to one thing: taking Jesus at His word.
He said that unless a person was born again he couldn’t get to heaven. In other words, unless that person understands and believes that Jesus died for their sins and rose from the grave, completely putting their trust in him for forgiveness of sins and a home in heaven, they don’t get in.
No matter how nice a person is, or how "little" bad things a person does, no one gets to heaven except by trusting in Jesus. The Bible says that if we’ve broken even one of God’s commands, we’re guilty of breaking them all.
And we get the punishment for someone who breaks God’s commands - eternity in hell.
That’s not my words - that’s Jesus’ words. But the good news is that Jesus also said that He came so that we could escape that punishment by placing our trust in Him.
So the question becomes this: was Jesus telling the truth? Because if he wasn’t, he was either a liar or he was insane.
Jesus claimed to be the Son of God and to be the only way to heaven, and that absolutely no one on earth gets to heaven outside of faith in Him.
A "good teacher" wouldn’t make such a claim if he knew it wasn’t true, and if he was nuts, then he wasn’t the Son of God. And if He was a liar or insane, then we can’t trust anything He had to say, right? Even the stuff we like!
So what’s it going to be for you? Are you going to take His word for it, or are you going to reject His word? The choice is yours.
The Bible is very clear that everyone who chooses to call on Jesus finds forgiveness for their sins and a home in heaven. You can walk out of here today knowing for sure that you’re going to heaven.
You can’t earn your way to heaven - no amount of good works gets you there. No amount of charity gets you there. No amount of religion gets you there. Being baptized doesn’t get you there. Taking communion doesn’t get you there. Being a church-goer doesn’t get you there. Being a pastor sure doesn’t get you there.
Remember our friend, the "teacher of the law?" His religion and his status didn’t help him any more than yours and mine will help us.
All you can do is say to Jesus, "I’m a sinner and I know it. I need your forgiveness. I believe you died for me and rose from the grave so I could have a home in heaven. And as much I know how, I’m putting all my trust in you, Jesus. Help me live for you from now on."
Don’t take my word for it. Take Jesus’ word for it. He’s not a liar, and He’s not insane. He’s the Son of God who loves the whole world so much that He died so that everyone who believes in Him could go to heaven.
We’re going to close in just a moment in prayer. I’m going to pray for all those who want to run with this resolution that I’ve been talking about. And then I want to pray for those who want to celebrate New Year’s Day by walking into a new life in Jesus.
If you want to leave here today knowing for absolutely sure that you’re sins are taken care of, and that you are a child of God with a home in heaven when you leave this earth, then you can pray along with me.
