COMMITMENT OF THE HEART
MARK 12.28-34
Have you ever had your heart broken? Do you know of someone who it is said ‘they died of a broken heart?’ Our hearts are very important to us. According to medical statistics ‘heart disease’ is the biggest killer in Northern Ireland. Physically we cannot live without our hearts. Emotionally our hearts are important and according to the answer Jesus gave to the ‘teachers’ question in Mark 12 are hearts are important, nay vital, in our commitment to God our Father. So let us look a little more closely at this passage and see what we can learn about commitment from it.
CONTEXT
Jesus is at the centre of a series of disputes within the Temple precincts. This is one of many questions that he had faced. One of the teachers of the Law steps forward and asks a question: ‘What is the greatest of all the commandments?’ You see the rabbis had added up all the Laws and come to the conclusion that God had given the people 613 commandments to obey. His question is ‘which of these 613 is the most important?’ In his reply Jesus joins two commandments together. The first one is found in Deuteronomy 6.4-5 – the Shema, which every Hebrew child was taught from earliest childhood. This is an uncontroversial reply. However Jesus adds a second commandment to this from Leviticus 19.18 and concludes ‘there is no greater commandment than these.’
I want you to note that in his reply Jesus uses the word ‘all’ of the heart, the mind, the soul and the strength. He is emphatic that love of God is to be total. Love of God is to encompass every aspect, every power, absolutely everything there is of us. ‘All’ leaves nothing out. It is not to be part of your heart, or part of your soul, mind and strength – No! it is to be ‘all.’ He then follows this with the practical outworking of loving God – love for your neighbour. It is interesting that in answer to the question of who is my neighbour Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan – and I do not need to teach you on that. You see for Christ Jesus the two commandments are complimentary. Love of God must be seen and shown in love of your neighbour. Love for your neighbour is perfected in love for God.
The teacher of the Law agrees with Jesus’ reply and then adds that these two commandments are more important than ‘burnt offerings and sacrifices.’ Jesus tells him he is ‘not far from the kingdom of God.’ He is not in but he is close. I think that is telling of this man. He was not far from the kingdom of God and yet he was not within the kingdom of God. I find that amazing that you can be so close and yet remain outside the kingdom of God. How come? I think the answer is given in Jesus’ answer to the first question. ‘Love God with all your heart etc.’ Let me expand on that for a few moments.
YOUR HEART.
I want to concentrate this morning on your heart and on your heart alone. I don’t know if you have ever seen the film The Matrix. In the film Neo is given a choice by Morpheus. The choice is between a blue pill and a red pill. If Neo chooses the blue pill he will wake up in his bed and believe everything of the Matrix, everything you want to believe. Morpheus tells him if he chooses the red pill then ‘you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.’ Neo chooses the red pill. Lucy steps through the wardrobe into Narnia. Aladdin rubs the lamp. Elisha prays that the eyes of his servant would be opened. Peter, James and John follow Jesus up the Mount of Transfiguration. And all of them discover that there is far more going on than meets the eye. Each time the question is ‘Do you want to see?’ And that is exactly what Jesus is asking here of this man when he tells him to love God with all his heart. Why start with the heart?
Reality is where the Heart Lives
You see the heart is where we live in reality. Your heart knows and wrestles with realities. The mind receives and processes information. The mind lives on facts. The heart does more than display emotions. Your heart can be wounded, grieved, pierced, broken but it also can be glad and cheerful. Jesus said ‘Blessed are the pure in heart…’ In Luke 8.15 the seed which falls on good ground falls on a noble and good heart. You see the mind, though it is important, deals with abstractions – for example 2+2=4. But the heart, the heart well it deals with the realities of living, dying, loving, hating and it concerns itself with commitment. Those who live by the mind only are detached from real life. Those who live by the mind only seem not to be touched by the world around them. We say of them they are ‘cold people’. Your heart is something else though. It is much more than your emotions. Emotions are the voice of the heart – they are not the heart but its voice. They express deeper movements of the heart – for example we weep at death. Each of us experience and respond to life with the heart. Each of us experience and respond to God primarily with our heart and that is why Christ begins with the statement we are to ‘love God with all our heart.’
Listen to these words from 1 Samuel 16.7 READ. When God came to choose a king for Israel, after he had rejected Saul, He was concerned about the man’s heart. It was the heart God looked upon. The heart spoke of the man – his character, his commitment, his passions and desires. The heart of David revealed a heart devoted to God. In 1 Kings 3 when God asks Solomon what he desires listen to what he asks for – verse 9 ‘a wise and discerning heart’ so that he might be able to govern the people wisely. A wise and discerning heart. Not a wise and discerning mind but heart. You see according to the Bible the heart is the place where we do our deepest thinking. That is why we often read in the gospels of Jesus ‘knowing the thinking of their hearts.’ Listen to these words of Hebrews 4.12 – read. God’s Word judges the attitudes and thoughts not of the mind but of the heart. Listen to these words spoken of Mary after the birth of Jesus – Luke 2.19 – she pondered them in her mind – No, in her heart. She pondered them in her heart.
Why is the emphasis constantly placed on the heart? Well listen to what the writer of Proverbs 23.7 says – ‘As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is.’ Your heart reveals who you are. It is the thoughts and the intents of our hearts that shape our lives. You see the storehouse of our memories is held in our hearts. ‘I have learned it by heart’ we often say. It is inscribed in our memories but that inscription is held in our hearts. In your heart, in my heart we hang on to the most important things in our lives. That is why in Deuteronomy 4.9 Moses says this to the people of God READ verse 9. Do you hear what he says? Don’t let them slip from your heart. What was he speaking of? He was speaking of the great deliverance of the people of God from slavery in Egypt. He called them to remember, to recall and to retain in their hearts the things they had seen. What had they seen? The plagues, the Passover, the crossing of the Red Sea, the manna and quail, the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud. They had seen water from a rock and they had seen the manifestation of God’s glorious power in the deliverance of the Law. These things they were to remember in their hearts and from their hearts teach them to their children. We would do well to listen to such advice ourselves this morning.
Listen to these words written by Paul in Romans 10.9-10. You see the importance of your heart in commitment to God? You understand in your heart and you believe and confess in your heart. Friends your heart is vital if you would be committed to Christ Jesus and therefore committed to God. In Jeremiah 31.31-33 God says that the New Covenant, the one sealed with the blood of Christ, will be written on our hearts. That is why David prayed in Psalm 51.10 for a clean heart because he knew it was in his heart that the sin which the Law revealed resided. That is why the writer of Proverbs in 4.23 tells us to guard our heats because it is the wellspring of our very lives.
I am sure you can all remember the film The Wizard of Oz. You may not be as familiar with the book written by Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, upon which the film was based. In the book, and the film, the Tin woodman wants a heart. In the book we read that the reason he needs a heart is because the wicked witch had put a spell on him in which his axe slips and cuts off limbs. He replaces each with a metal limb and gradually becomes the tin woodman. One day the axe slips and slices him in two and he loses his heart in the process. For a while it does not seem to matter to him. However he was once in love with a munchkin maiden and with no heart he is now unable to love her. There is a dialogue in the book between the scarecrow and the tin woodman about which is more important – a heart or a mind. The tin woodman says that without a heart you cannot be happy and he is right.
Friends are you like the tin woodman – you were once a real man. You once loved and gave love. You once lived but now your life has been reduced to efficiency and drudgery. You see without a heart the tin woodman was unable to love and was unable to live and was doomed to unhappiness despite his efficiency as a woodman. Friends I think that is why I want to pray along with David ‘create in me a clean heart O God.’ And it is also why I want God to fulfil his promise in Ezekiel 36.26 ‘I will give you a new heart.’
CONCLUSION
You see Christ is right when he says in Luke 12.34 ‘where your heart is there will your treasure be also.’ So friends ‘where is your heart this morning?’ Can you say that this morning you love God with all your heart? You see the other ones depend on this one. You cannot love God with all your mind, soul and strength if first of all you do not love him with all your heart. We say of some people ‘their hearts are not in it.’ How do we know that of them? Because when we look at them we can see that they do not put all their strength into it. We can see that they do not put all of their mind to it and that not all of their soul is in it either. Friends we may not be able this morning to truly know anyone else’s heart in relation to God but we do know our own. More importantly this is what the Lord God says in Proverbs 21.2 – he weighs your hear this morning. What does he find? Does he find a heart committed to him and devoted to him? Or does he find a half-hearted commitment? He once spoke to a church where he found half-hearted commitment and this is what he said to them Revelation 3.16 ‘I am going to spit you out of my mouth.’ Harsh words? I don’t think so. His commitment for us was total – the Cross, his life, his blood. I don’t think asking us to commit all of our heart to him is to big an ask at all. So friends, how is your heart this morning? The thermometer of your heart tells you this morning of your level of commitment to God. the thermometer of your heart towards God will dictate your love for your family and for your neighbours. Field Marshall Montgomery once said this: ‘ It is essential to understand that battles are primarily won in the hearts of men.’ So this morning I encourage you to win the battle in your hearts and be committed totally to Christ Jesus. When you have committed all your heart to Christ then you will truly know life in all its fullness which is his promise to you for all eternity.
Amen.
