With All Your Heart 1976

I'd like to read a few verses today from Mark chapter 12, starting at verse 28. And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, Which commandment is first of all? Jesus answered, The first 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. And 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 but he.

And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself with all burnt offerings and sacrifices. When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, You are not far from the kingdom of God. When it first began to happen, nobody thought very much of it, until it turned out to be kind of an epidemic.

It began one Sunday afternoon at about three o'clock of a magnificent new suburban church, well designed. People came from miles to see it. It suddenly simply collapsed.

Boom, down it went. There was no explosion. There was no fire.

It was as if some huge invisible foot just stepped on it. And down it went. All the inner city people thought, Ha, ha.

Serves them right. So the next week, around the same time, an old inner city church, almost a hundred years old, that was absolutely beautiful did the same thing. It just crumbled and was nothing but rubble.

No fire, no explosion. Down it went. By this time, the non-institutional Christians were feeling pretty good.

Serves them right, those people, those churchy people. What do they need those churches for anyway? So the next Sunday, as the non-institutional people had barely emerged from their New Testament house meeting, now the investigators soon learned that in every instance the congregation whose building collapsed on any particular day was visited on that day by an elderly man with what everybody described as wild-looking eyes. And there was some speculation that perhaps this was none other than Elijah.

Whether or not it was Elijah, all the believers began, in some kind of judgment, and people got nervous. They began to watch the door of their church before the service to see if this guy was going to show up. One day, this elderly man with wild-looking eyes turned up in the church that had the reputation all over the city and suburbs of having the best teaching on absolute commitment, true discipleship, total sell-out to Jesus and everybody wondered why he came there.

One of the brothers worked up his nerve and walked up to this elderly man and said, you know we're all petrified. We're aware that every place you go the building falls over afterwards and we realize that it's some kind of judgment. But what judgment? How are these people found wanting what's wrong with them? The elderly man looked up and said, mediocre lives, mediocre prayers, half-baked hearts, lazy minds.

The living and true God gives to them the very best He has. Takes His own Son out of His heart and lays Him down for them. And what do they give back? They're scraps.

They're leftovers. Would that they were either God is spewing them out of His mouth. Well, said the true discipleship man, in that case, I guess our building will stand because maybe you don't know it, sir, but we're the heaviest church in town on true discipleship.

The man just smiled and three o'clock that afternoon down came their building. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord 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.

Now, we're all aware of the fact that the judgment that begins at the house of God and which indeed has already begun, we only had the eyes to see it, has nothing to do with these buildings. They're neither here nor there. But it has very much to do with the structures, the things we build which form kingdoms that have nothing at all to do with the kingdom of God.

It's easy for me to become enthusiastic, really gung-ho, building something that's going to make me a name or forming a new kind of Christian community or building a better reputation for the congregation and I can do all that with great enthusiasm and drive while at the same time my heart for the living God is lukewarm, if anything at all. And everything that you and I build, no matter how enthusiastic we are, when our hearts are lukewarm toward God, is going to come down. Congregations, communities, new teachings, new systems, all of them will fall.

We will discover how many of the things that we do telling ourselves that we're doing it for the Lord are being done for us. If we honestly, as honestly as we can examine our thought life, our family life, our business life, our prayer life, we will discover that much of our effort the best that we do, you know, the one place where we come through with something excellent is for us. You know, and God gets what's left over.

He gets the mediocre. We're all familiar with the parable of the talents and we know how finally the Lord of the house returns and the first man called to him is the one who was given five talents and he says, Master, you gave me five talents. Here are five other talents and Master, you gave me five talents.

Come on out in the yard. I want to show you something. With the five talents you gave me, I gained 15 other talents and with the 20 I made this.

And then he pulls a string unveiling a magnificent bronze statue of himself holding a Bible. You know, and he says, well, you know, people are going to look at that and know how successful I am and that's going to lead them to the Lord. You know, he goes to the same place as those who buried his talents.

You know that. Any kind of mediocrity. All right, Cain and Abel.

Abel makes a sacrifice and it's accepted. Cain brings a sacrifice and it's not. Now, if you look at Cain's sacrifice, what's wrong with it? It looks okay, but God sees that this sacrifice is being offered with a mediocre half-baked heart and you can be sure if that's the kind of sacrifice which is being offered, he's saving the best for when his next door neighbor comes for dinner.

Any offering to God, which is mediocre, is not an offering. Any prayer offered up to God, which is mediocre, is not a prayer. Anything that you and I present to God, which is not with our whole heart, is worse than if we gave Him nothing.

It's blasphemy. When God, the true and living and good God, decided that He was going to redeem us from the evil we see on every hand and which we see in our own hearts and get us out of this curse, He didn't go looking through the junkyard to see if He could find the wreckage of some ruined angel that He could offer up as a sacrifice, but He takes His best, all that He has, His only begotten Son, and lays Him down for us. And when the Son arrives on the scene, Jesus, the Son of God in human flesh, He doesn't yawn and say, well, here I am, I guess I'll have to go through with this thing, you know, just kind of shuffle through it.

But at every point, He offers up to the Father His best. Everything He does is excellent. Everything He produces is quality.

And if you have any doubts, if there are people here in this room who have doubts concerning God will have to show that to you. But one thing that will help you is to simply go to Matthew 5, 6, and 7 and read the Sermon on the Mount with an open mind and an open heart and ask yourself whether this is indeed the absolutely best writing that you've ever read, the most magnificent words that have ever crossed human lips. Quality, nothing shoddy, nothing half done, always the best.

He heals all the way. And when the man who was blind was touched by the Lord and he still saw men looking like trees walking, Jesus doesn't say, well, that's good enough, what do you want? He touches him again until the man can see clearly. And when Jesus feeds the multitudes as He did in the lesson that Leon read this morning, it's always with abundance and it's always the best.

And at this moment, whatever the need is that we may have in our lives is answered as we open our hearts to Him with quality. You need an answer to your prayer? You're not going to get half an answer, you're going to get a whole answer. You're not going to be half healed, you're going to be entirely healed.

Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction, who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies, who satisfyeth thy mouth with good things so that thy youth is renewed like the eagles. But, in order to take these marvelous blessings that He gives and make them ours, they have to be received with a whole heart. It is absolutely impossible to take half hold of these things.

If you don't take hold of the blessing of the Lord, the life that He gives, the goodness and the peace, with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength, you don't have it at all. Many of us here are complaining, God never seems to do anything for me, never works out for me. It's almost a sure bet that the reason is, you know, that you're coming with a half-baked bucket to receive it.

One more time, I want to read this. May the Lord help us to hear it and then just a couple more comments from one of the scribes. One of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another.

And seeing that he answered them well, asked him, which commandment is the first of all? Jesus answered, the first is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your strength and with all your mind and with all your soul. And the second is like it.

In this kingdom, you know, we of course can always see how the other guy's kingdom is half-baked and he's in a religious kingdom and he's institutional and he's that, but we don't see it about ourselves. But if we want to truly live in the kingdom of the true and living God, three things to keep in mind. First, receive God's mercy with all your heart.

Put your heart into receiving His mercy. There's no way that you can get ahold of a heart half open. No way.

And the truth of the matter is that many of us, even right now, it's as if Jesus, and it's certainly true, is knocking at the door. We come to the door and we open it like this. We think he's like the fuller brush man.

He's going to stick his foot in. Don't worry, he's not going to stick his foot in the door. The door is shut again.

Now what good is it doing you? The fact that you opened the door wide five years ago and you came down to the front of the church or you fell on your face in the woods, praise God for that, but that doesn't make any difference if today you have the door shut only two inches open. Open it up. The second thing, and it's very much related to it, if we really want to live in the kingdom of God, we have said and done, consider our prayers an obligation that we have to perform so we get an A on our report card if we get to heaven.

Did you say your prayers today? How much time did you put in? Only 15 minutes? Oh, two hours, you're going to make it. We can pray with our mouths and our minds are far away or we can put in the time and our minds wander all over the world. We can fall asleep five times during our prayers because I'm so busy, I don't have time for it or I have so many problems I can't concentrate.

I believe the Lord has set it up in our circumstances in such a way that it's going to be difficult to find time to pray and to concentrate on our prayers so that when you actually get down to it, you will only do it if your heart is in it. If your heart is there and you have to get up and you have to get right back and you say, I can't even do that. Well, you can do this.

You can say, Lord, I don't know how to pray. I don't know the first thing about it. I've been trying for years.

I'm not getting to first base. Help me. You can't pray a prayer like that over and over and over again without having God answer it.

Prayer is laying hold of God. There is no other way that you're going to lay hold of God. Only you can do it and you can only do it when you put your heart, your heart into it.

And finally, when we live in God's kingdom, put your heart into practicing the mercy of God in the place where you are. Many of us really think we could do quite well showing God's mercy if we were only located properly. Or if the people to whom we brought these marvelous benefits had a little appreciation.

Or they were at least stimulated. Or they were good looking. Or they were important.

Or they had some money or something else to recommend them. But why is it that God puts me in a place where these boring people pester me all the time? Now, why do I have to be in such uninteresting circumstances? Why does God let me be among people who have never seen the change? If only God gave me something challenging, then I could do it. The truth of the matter is that that's what it's made of.

That's what it means to show the mercy of God right down in the crummy little situation where you are. With those crummy little people who are just like you to begin to practice toward them the mercy that God had practiced toward you and if you put your heart into it and this guy goes on and on and this woman goes on and on. If your heart is in it, you will know when it's time to say I'm sorry, you're wasting time now.

Get out and do something. Or you'll know when God is still saying keep at it, just listen. If it takes three hours, go on, hear them out.

You'll know what to do when you're concentrating. But what most of us do, we feel guilty to say no and so we just sit there. We're not saying yes, we're just putting in the time.

We're half-baked. Practice the mercy of God with all your heart and whatever messy little situation you may find yourself in will be the vestibule of heaven. God will move there.

God's redemptive grace will flow forth. Now I don't know about any other congregation or any other church in town that God has not called us to be the biggest church in Detroit or the best known. The God who gave us his best and is still giving us his best is only begotten from his own blood and waits for us, half-baked as we may be, troubled with hang-ups that we may have, waits for us right now to love him.

With all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength and to show our appreciation for the mercy which has come to us in the death and resurrection of Jesus by practicing mercy toward our neighbor. If we will do that, then when Elijah comes knocking on the door, we won't have to be afraid. Let's pray.

By the Holy Spirit's power, heavenly Father, we ask that today each of us will be given a vision to see the difference between your utter, perfect, marvelous working of grace toward us and our half-hearted response toward you and that you'd help us in repentance and true thirst and longing to turn our hearts all the way toward you and to open the door of our hearts, Lord Jesus, again this day, this moment, all the way toward you. That we might be able to live the life of mercy that you would have us live toward each other and toward all people. We ask it for your mercy's sake.

Amen.