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Today's scripture is a reading from the Gospel according to Mark, chapter 12, verses 28 to 44.
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?
The most important one, answered Jesus, is this,
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
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, love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no commandment greater than these.
Well said, teacher, the man replied.
You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him.
To love him with all your heart and with all your understanding and all your strength.
And to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices.
When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him,
You are not far from the kingdom of God.
And from then no one dared ask him any more questions.
While Jesus was teaching in the temple courts, he asked,
Why do the teachers of the law say the Messiah is the son of David?
David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared,
The Lord said to my Lord,
Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.
David himself calls him Lord.
How then can he be his son?
The large crowd listened to him with delight.
As he taught, Jesus said,
Watch out for the teachers of the law.
They like to walk around in flowing robes
and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces
and have the most important seats in the synagogues
and places of honor at banquets.
They devour widows' houses
and for a show make lengthy prayers.
These men will be punished most severely.
Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put
and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury.
Many rich people threw in large amounts,
but a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins
worth only a few cents.
Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said,
Truly, I tell you,
this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others.
They gave out of their wealth,
but she, out of her poverty, put in everything,
all she had to live on.
This is the gospel of the Lord.
Lord, praise to you, Lord Christ.
Well, thanks for that scripture reading, Brian.
Good morning, everyone.
My name's Andrew, one of the pastors here,
and I'm happy to share God's word with you.
Why don't we go to the Lord in prayer as we begin?
Lord God, I pray that in the preaching of your word,
that you would convince us how worthy you are of a heart, soul, mind, and strength kind of a love.
A love that gives everything to you, for you have given everything to us.
Be honored in the preaching of your word, I pray.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
All right, so we're continuing our series in Mark's Gospel, chapter 12 today,
and our focus, as many of you have probably noticed,
is on this concept of discipleship, right?
And more specifically, Jesus' words,
deny yourself and follow me.
Deny yourself and follow me.
You've been hearing that a lot over these past months,
and I'm really curious to know how many of us here hear these words,
deny yourself and follow me,
as a warm and honoring invitation into a great privilege.
Or how many others of us might hear these words as a harsh and repressive challenge
from like an authoritarian leader.
You know, during the early part of my life,
even growing up in the church, calling myself a Christian,
I would have identified with the second group, the latter group.
I would have said that being a Christian is so inconvenient,
so restrictive, so limiting, so prohibitive of my many desires,
I felt like my faith was antithetical to delight,
antithetical to the desires of my heart.
And while that thought still enters into my mind from time to time today,
one thing that's really helped me
was a moment that I had as a high schooler at a summer youth retreat.
My counselor, he sat down with me in the grass,
and he opened up his Bible with me
to a passage that I'd heard, I'd read, you know, hundreds of times before.
It was Psalm chapter 37, verse 4.
Delight yourself in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
You know, all my life, I had read that verse as meaning,
delight the Lord, make him happy, make him delighted,
and then he will give you your heart's desires.
But this counselor helped me realize that actually,
the passage was not telling me to delight God with my obedience
in order to get something from him,
but rather it was telling me to find my delight in the Lord.
And that I could trust that he would then give me the desire of my heart,
because if I was delighting in the Lord,
he would be the desire of my heart.
And he would not withhold himself from me ever.
And this was mind-blowing.
This was revolutionary for me.
One pastor, John Piper, he's built a whole ministry
based on this idea called Desiring God.
This idea affected me, so many people like me,
because so many of us had grown up in the church
knowing that the right answer to the chief purpose
of why we existed was to glorify God,
to honor God, to worship God and obey him.
But the thing was,
we all thought our life's purpose
was to glorify God
at the expense of our enjoyment,
at the expense of our deepest desires.
But what John Piper so clearly and concisely preached
was that the chief end of humanity
was not to glorify God by restricting our enjoyment.
No, he preached that the chief end of man
was to glorify God by enjoying him forever.
Like God didn't make us to be his sad servants
living lives desiring things
we were never supposed to want or have.
No.
God made us to be his cheerful children,
made to desire and enjoy him forever,
made to love him as he loves us.
And see, this is the heart of discipleship.
This is the goal of deny yourself and follow me.
It's not just another rule to add to the list.
Discipleship is about rightly ordering our hearts,
our desires, what we love,
denying our misdirected loves
and redirecting them
toward what our hearts were made to truly love.
To quote the theologian Jamie K. Smith
in the book You Are What You Love,
he writes this,
Discipleship, we might say,
is a way to curate your heart,
to be attentive to and intentional
about what you love.
See, again, the aim of discipleship
is not merely knowing the right things with our heads
or doing the right things with our hands.
It's about loving the right person with our hearts.
So to quote Smith again,
Discipleship is more a matter of hungering and thirsting
than of knowing and believing.
And he asks,
like, what if instead of starting from the assumption
that human beings are thinking things,
we started from the conviction
that human beings are first and foremost lovers?
How would that change our approach to discipleship
and Christian formation, he asks.
The question I want us to consider today
is not merely what should we know
and what should we believe,
but what are we hungering for?
What are we thirsting for?
What are our hearts inclined towards?
Or more simply,
what do we love?
What do we love?
And maybe your initial thought is,
well, I love a lot of things.
I love sushi.
I love movies, dogs, volleyball.
I love to travel.
And these things may all be good and true and fine.
Sure, we all have lots of lesser loves,
relative loves,
but my question is,
what do we love first?
What do we love most?
And this may seem like a pointless exercise,
like does it really matter?
Or who cares?
But while this might seem like
an unnecessarily abstract question to consider,
deep down,
aren't we all looking for something
or someone ultimate to love?
To devote our hearts to something
or someone ultimate to orient
our whole lives around.
An ultimate love that can rightly order
all our other loves.
That's what we need.
Think about it.
You might love dogs,
but isn't it important to love your neighbor
more than a dog?
Right?
Like, what would it say about you
and what kind of world would this be
if it was okay to love a dog
as much as a person?
Right?
Or even amongst people,
isn't it more important to love your mother
more than your next door neighbor?
And we could go on and on and on,
but my question is,
all the way down this chain of loves,
who or what should we love the most?
What ultimate love should condition
all our other affections?
Because if we haven't identified
this most foundational,
all-consuming love
that assumes first place in our hearts,
then our lives are basically
just being lived on a whim,
on unexamined, subjective intuitions
about what is right and good
and true and worthy.
And maybe some of us are okay
with this kind of relativistic way
of living in this world,
and we're not convinced
it really matters what we love
as long as we enjoy it
and nobody gets hurt.
But according to Jesus,
it absolutely matters.
It absolutely matters
what your highest and greatest love is.
And in fact,
the whole of the Christian scriptures
bear witness to the fact
that it is precisely
because humanity has loved
the wrong things
that this world
is as messed up
as it is.
See, it's not just
that we haven't loved enough.
It's not just like,
you know,
we just needed to put more love,
more positive energy
into the world.
No, the problem
is that we failed
to love rightly.
The problem with the world
is our misordered,
misdirected love.
It's that all of us
have been looking
for something
to devote
all of our heart,
soul, mind, and strength
to something most worthy
to live for,
something most worthy
to die for.
And yet we've set
our affections upon
all kinds of created things,
sure,
even some really good things,
but things
that were never designed
to bear the weight
of that kind of love
and worship
and adoration.
And this is what
the Bible calls sin.
And this has only ever led
to competition
and conflict
and chaos.
You have one tribe saying,
I love this
with all my heart,
soul, mind, and strength.
Another tribe says,
I love this
with all my heart,
soul, mind, and strength.
And what happens?
What happens?
They go to war
because of their
conflicting ultimate loves,
which they are willing
to fight for,
kill for,
and die for
because they've made
these conflicting loves
ultimate.
And so some,
particularly modern,
secular Westerners,
have suggested that
maybe the solution
is we should just
not love anything
with all our heart,
all our soul,
all our mind,
and all our strength.
Maybe we should just
love with moderation.
And in one sense,
they're right.
Nothing in this world
is worthy
of our ultimate,
untempered love.
But the solution
can't be just to dial down
how much we love
because not only will that
never actually solve
the problem of toxic
polarization and tribalism,
but my question is,
is a moderate love
the only kind of love
that was ever meant
to exist?
Is the world
truly better
without an all-your-heart,
soul, mind,
and strength
kind of a love?
Is there really
nothing in all of reality
that we can conceive of
that might be worthy
of that kind
of all-consuming love?
In our scripture passage today,
God's word reveals to us
something,
someone most worthy
of this exact kind of love.
Someone who is not
of this world
and yet came
into this broken world.
And this is the big idea today.
The life-giving Lord
demands and deserves
our love.
The life-giving Lord
demands and deserves
our love.
Now, where we are
in Mark's gospel,
here in chapter 12,
in the passages,
you know,
right before the text
that was read today,
Jesus has just been
questioned by
the religious leaders
regarding various questions
of the Jewish law,
questions about politics.
Should we pay taxes
to a foreign emperor
like Caesar?
Questions about marriage
and the afterlife.
If a woman loses her husband
and remarries,
who will she be married to
in the age to come?
Tough questions,
tough questions
that raised a lot of debate
and required tons of knowledge
about the Hebrew scriptures.
But of course,
none of these questions
could stump or trap Jesus.
They only became opportunities
for him to demonstrate
his knowledge
and his wisdom
and his high regard
for the Hebrew scriptures.
And so in our text,
verse 28 says
that one of the teachers
of the law
came and heard them debating
and noticing
that Jesus had given them
good answer
after good answer
after good answer.
He had one big final
and foundational thing
he wanted to hear
from Jesus.
No more traps,
no more trying to stump him,
just trying to get
to the bottom
of who Jesus is
and what he's about.
And it says he asked him,
of all the commandments,
which is the most important?
Like of all the 613 commandments
in the Torah,
which was the most important?
And so Jesus being
a faithful,
orthodox Jewish teacher,
he rightly cites
and paraphrases
the very words of Moses
from Deuteronomy chapter 6,
the central affirmation
of the Jewish faith.
We call this
the great Shema,
which means to hear
or to listen.
Verse 29,
Jesus says,
the most important one,
answered Jesus,
is this.
Hear, O Israel,
the Lord our God,
the Lord is one.
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 Jesus even cites
Leviticus chapter 19
to throw in a bonus,
second place commandment,
verse 31.
The second is this,
love your neighbor
as yourself.
There is no commandment
greater than these.
And then upon hearing
Jesus' answer,
this teacher agrees.
In verse 32,
he agrees,
well said, teacher,
the man replied.
You are right in saying
that God is one
and there is no other
but him.
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 the burnt offerings
and sacrifices.
Now if you are a Christian,
even if you are not
a Christian today
here in this room,
most of us probably
won't find this exchange
between Jesus
and the teacher of the law
to be very surprising.
And in fact,
this is probably what
so many of us,
Christian or not,
love and admire
about the person of Jesus.
He keeps the main thing
the main thing, right?
He keeps it simple,
love God most
and then love your neighbor
as yourself.
And we're like,
yes, of course,
love is the way,
more important than all
the burnt offerings
and sacrifices.
And I think this,
I think the tendency
for many of us,
modern Western readers
of scripture
is to kind of read this
in a liberating,
sentimental way.
Maybe even as if
Jesus is saying,
there is only one command
we really need to obey
and all the burnt offerings
and sacrifices
and other commandments
don't really matter
as long as we love God
in our hearts.
Like, oh, how nice of Jesus
to just simplify it
and bring it back to love.
We love that, right?
But if this is how
we're reading the passage
and Jesus' answer
about the most important commandment,
then I don't think
it's hit us
like it's supposed to.
Look with me
at verse 34,
how verse 34 concludes.
It says,
after Jesus gives this answer
and they have this exchange,
it says,
and from then on,
no one dared
ask him any more questions.
Like when the crowds
and the teachers of the law
heard Jesus' answer,
they were like,
oh, how sweet,
bravo,
great answer, Jesus.
Thank you for simplifying
and condensing
the 613 commands
of the Torah for us.
No,
they seemed to be hit
by the weight
of what Jesus was saying.
See,
when Jesus gave his answer,
he wasn't actually lowering
the bar of Moses' law.
No,
he was actually demonstrating
how shockingly high
the bar truly was.
Love the Lord your God
with all your heart,
soul,
mind,
and strength
isn't some lower standard.
It's actually the highest
of standards,
the most difficult
of all the laws
and commands
in the Torah.
You know,
like to the relativist liberals
who maybe want to advise
and suggest
a moderate,
tempered,
or generalized,
ambiguous kind of love
and sentimentalism
that doesn't pay attention
to the specifics
of God's will.
Jesus was saying,
no,
love the Lord
with all your heart,
soul,
mind,
and strength,
like in every detail
of your lives
through obedience
to every jot
and tittle of the law.
Out of the whole
of your soul,
met with every breath
and the whole of your life,
with all your energy,
vitality,
and spirit.
Out of the whole
of your mind,
with all your intellect
and all your rational capacities,
and even out of the whole
of your strength,
meaning all of your embodied
might and ability,
and even with all
your material resources,
this was an all-demanding love.
And this was equally disturbing
to the religious conservatives
who prided themselves
on following all the rules
and devoting all the details
of their lives
to following the law
because Jesus was saying,
external obedience
is not enough.
You actually have to love me.
Like out of your whole heart,
meaning the very command center
of all your affections
and desires
and commitments,
Jesus was saying to them
and he is saying to us
that the most important command
upon us
is a demand for the whole,
the whole of who we are,
inside and out,
in our actions
and in our affections,
in our dealings
and in our feelings.
Do you understand
what he's saying?
Do you understand
what a show-stopping answer
this was
for Jesus' Jewish listeners?
Can you begin to feel
the weight
of this command
that we have perhaps
become overly familiar with?
He's demanding
everything of us.
Not some generalized,
unthinking,
sentimental,
yeah, sure,
I love God
kind of a love.
And not even the most
meticulous,
mere obedience.
This was the greatest
and most important law
to love the life-giving Lord,
Yahweh,
the maker of heaven and earth.
To love this giver of life
with the whole of the lives
he's generously given to us.
And my question is,
do any of us
love God this much?
Has anyone here
loved their maker
out of the whole
of their heart,
out of the whole
of their soul,
out of the whole
of their mind,
and out of the whole
of their strength
with every second
of their existence?
What God demands of us
is a terribly,
terribly high standard.
And rightly so
because he is God.
He is the Lord.
It is he who has made us
and not we ourselves.
As the Shema says,
the Lord Yahweh,
the I am,
our God Yahweh is one.
That means he is indivisible,
absolute,
the one and only,
without rival,
the maker and sustainer
of all of life,
eternally pre-existing
all things in glory
and honor and power,
worthy of all the love
that ever existed.
And not because he's
an egomaniac,
but because he's God.
He's the only one
that can bear the weight
of an all your heart,
soul, mind,
and strength
kind of a love.
Anything else
we try to set
that kind of love upon
will ultimately crumble
under the weight
of such love
and eventually disappoint us
and then discourage us
from loving again.
Like, think about it.
Maybe your ultimate love
is your spouse
or your romantic partner
or maybe your love
is set upon
that future longed-for partner
that you hope to have
if you're single.
But even as great
as that person may be,
will they ever be
the most supremely worthy
of your undying affection?
Is it not possible
that they will let you down,
hurt you,
forsake you,
break your heart?
That is the danger
and the inevitable demise
of placing our wholehearted love
upon anything other than God,
the God who has promised
to never leave us
nor forsake us.
So you see,
this isn't some arbitrary command
issued by a megalomaniac God.
It's the only kind of
divine command and demand
that actually makes sense.
And it's absolutely imperative
for us to understand
if we desire to be citizens
in this God's kingdom.
But what's interesting here
is that even while the scribe
agrees with Jesus,
Jesus doesn't say,
nice, you got the answer right,
you're in.
No, he says in verse 34,
you are not far
from the kingdom of God.
Like you're close,
but you're not far,
but you're not in.
You're close,
but you're not in.
You're not far.
You're close,
but you're not in.
And this means that
it's not enough
to just agree
about the greatest commandment
to love the Lord our God
with all our heart,
soul, mind, and strength.
No, we also need to know
who exactly this Lord is.
And this brings us
to verses 35 to 37.
Here,
Jesus subtly indicates to them
who the Lord is
that demands and deserves
their love.
And it's him.
Yahweh come to them
in the flesh.
And notice how he goes about
making his case.
He doesn't give them
some irrefutable philosophical argument
or give them some grand,
massive, undeniable miracle.
No, he gives them
a Bible study.
Because for Jesus,
the scriptures bore
perfect, undeniable,
authoritative witness
to who he was
as both the messianic
royal son of David
and the Lord Yahweh
at the same time.
Look what he does here.
First,
in verse 35,
he recognizes that
everyone agrees
that the coming Messiah
would be a son
of the great King David.
A great figure
from Yahweh
would one day,
a great figure
whom Yahweh
would one day
enthrone
at his own right hand,
establish his kingdom forever,
put all his enemies
under his feet.
And yet,
there's one extra detail
that David himself mentions
in Psalm 110
that Jesus cites here
about this messianic
son of David.
David writes,
the Lord,
that is Yahweh,
Yahweh said to my Lord,
sit at my right hand
until I put your enemies
under your feet.
So what Jesus is asking
is how can David's Lord
also be his son?
Like no father,
especially no king
in a traditional Jewish society
would ever call their son
their Lord.
And yet,
that's what David
seems to do
in Psalm 110.
And Jesus is asking,
what's up with that?
What's up with that?
Now,
Jesus doesn't give
an answer here,
but he's giving
a huge hint.
A huge hint
as to who the Lord is.
A huge hint
as to what kind
of Lord he is.
He's both
the messianic
son of David
and David's Lord.
See,
all the Jewish people
in the temple
were definitely
expecting a Messiah.
And maybe
they were even
willing to believe
that Jesus of Nazareth
might be that
messianic
son of David.
But for the most part,
their conception
of this expected
son of David
was that he would be
some kind of
political revolutionary
who would reestablish
the kingdom of Israel
under the reign
of David's ancestors.
But what they didn't
understand was that
they needed so much more
than a son of David.
They needed
a son of God.
They needed
Yahweh himself.
And this is why
Jesus told the scribe
who had the right answer
about the greatest
commandment
that he was not
far from the kingdom
but he wasn't
exactly in it
either.
Because no one
realized the true
identity of the Lord.
They didn't realize
the life-giving Lord
who demanded
and deserved
their love
was standing
right in front of them
and that he was
at the very same time
the messianic
son of David.
And this is so key
to understanding
who Jesus is.
This is so key
to understanding
what it means
to be a disciple
and to deny ourselves
and follow him.
So key to loving
the Lord our God
rightly with all
our heart, soul,
mind, and strength
we have to understand
that Jesus
the human son of David
is at the same time
the Lord.
This is the only way
we will ever enter
the kingdom of God.
This is the only way
we will ever love
the Lord rightly.
We have to understand
the two natures
of Jesus Christ
that he is human
the son of David
and divine
the son of God.
And if we don't hold both
we will never understand
the nature
of this Messiah's kingdom
and we will never
love the Lord
nor our neighbors
as we ought.
Now Jesus gives
an example of this
in verse 38 to 40
about how
if you don't understand this
you're not going to love
your neighbors rightly.
Calling out the teachers
of the law
who care more
about respect
and status
in the marketplace
and the synagogue
than the widows
they were supposed
to care for.
The Pharisees
failed to love
the widows
all because
they didn't understand
the true nature
and identity
of the Lord
who demanded
and who deserved
their love.
See this phrase
they devour widows
houses
what was going on here
what this means
is they were greedily
cheating widows
out of their property.
So in ancient times
widows had
little or no power
in the courts
and it was not uncommon
for a husband
to appoint in his will
a Jewish legal expert
a scribe
or a Pharisee
to be the executor
of his widow's estate.
So essentially
this gave the executor
authority to oversee
the widow's finances
and assets
so it would not be hard
for a corrupt
teacher of the law
scribe, Pharisee
to find legal ways
to trick a widow
out of her house
and other property.
And this is precisely
what the religious
leaders were doing.
And this would make sense
for them to do
if they didn't realize
who the Lord truly was.
If your conception
of the Lord
this Lord
that you're supposed
to love
if your conception
of this Lord
is that he's just
some kind of high
and holy God
in the sky
who put you
in charge
of the temple
and over the affairs
of poor widows
it wouldn't make sense
for you then
to care more
about your status
than people.
It would make sense
for you to even
deceive yourself
into thinking
that your status
and your religiosity
were proof
of your piety
and of your love
to the Lord.
When you don't know
the true identity
and nature
of the Lord
you will always care
more about status
than God
and people.
You may even
deceive yourself
into thinking
that status
and religiosity
are confirmation
that you love
the one true Lord.
The teachers
of the law
genuinely thought
that they loved
the Lord
with all their heart
soul, mind
and strength
but they were
genuinely mistaken
and they loved
really their status
and their money
and public opinion
far more
than they loved
the one true Lord.
But while these
religious leaders
they failed
to love the Lord
rightly
Jesus was able
to identify
someone in that
temple that day
who did illustrate
how to love the Lord
with all her heart
soul, mind
and strength.
Verse 41
Verse 41 says
Jesus is sitting there
in the temple
watching the crowd
give their free will
offerings to God
in the temple
many rich people
are throwing down
big money
and Jesus doesn't
critique these folks
it's good that they're
giving but most
notable to him
most notable
in the eyes of God
is this poor widow
who also comes in
dares to go in
amongst these big
ballers and shot
callers right
and put her own
meager contribution
next to theirs
two very small
copper coins
worth only a few
cents in the Greek
these coins were
the smallest currency
that existed
two lepta
less than a few cents
even according to
some commentators
and Jesus does this
verse 43
calling his disciples
to him
Jesus said
truly I tell you
this poor widow
has put more
into the treasury
than all the others
they all gave
out of their wealth
but she out of her
poverty
put in everything
all she had
to live on
Jesus sees
this woman
that no one else
sees
he values her
offering
when the rest
of the world
sees her as
having nothing
valuable to offer
the world offered
the world valued
her at
two cents
but God values
her as a whole
life offered
up to him
and these are the
economics of the
kingdom of God
no gift is ever
too small in his
eyes
it might just be
that the time
and money you
spend to take a
kid out
from our youth
group to Boba
the moment you
spend to stoop down
and give a little
preschooler a high
five
or the moment you
spend packing those
little mustards
into those brown
bags for our loaves
and fishes ministry
to serve our
houseless neighbors
it might just be
that such free
will offerings as
those are more
valuable in the
eyes of God
than the million
dollar deal
commissions your
tithing to our
church
or consider this
what if Jesus
cares less about
what you give
and more about
what you hold
back
what if the
application for
some of us is
not hey give
more
but hey what
areas in my life
am I treating
like they don't
belong to
Jesus
like doesn't all
we have belong
to the Lord
the widow
understood this
she gave in
greater proportion
because she had
a greater faith
she gave in
greater faith
everything she
had to live on
trusting that her
father in heaven
would give her
that day
her daily bread
she committed
to first of all
saying hallowed
be your name
your kingdom come
your will be done
because in many
ways she had a
clearer
view
and understanding
of who the
Lord was
of who Yahweh
was
a clearer view
than the teachers
of the law
who loved money
and status
more than the
Lord
you know I can
end this sermon
holding up this
poor generous
widow as the
model for our
capital campaign
as we're trying
to finish paying
off this building
and I could end
with an application
like you know
try harder
to be generous
and trust God
like this widow
give it
give your all
just give it all
but you know
there's this little
detail in the
Greek that
indicated to me
that actually
this widow
is not primarily
meant to be
a mirror
for us to see
ourselves
for us to compare
ourselves to
but she's more
like a window
for us to see
Jesus
in the Greek
Jesus says
she out of her
poverty gave
all she had
the whole
of her
bios
that is the
whole of her
life
does that remind
you of anyone
in the person
of Jesus
God has revealed
himself as the
life-giving Lord
in more than
one life-giving
way
not simply by
giving us life
but by giving up
his own life
his bios
for us
not simply by
breathing his
spirit into our
lungs but by
breathing his own
spirit out
upon a cross
this life-giving
Lord loved
his father in
heaven with all
his heart
soul
mind and strength
and he at the
same time
endured his
wrath against
our sins
he endured the
judgment upon
all our
misdirected loves
upon that cross
and in doing so
he has shown us
how to love
our neighbors
even more
than ourselves
he gave it all
you might even
say he loved us
with all his
heart soul
mind and strength
a love without
limits from that
cross
and it's only
when we've
encountered him
as both
life-giving
Yahweh on
high
and life-giving
son of David
on a cross
that we will
ever love him
as he demands
and as he
deserves
we'll ever love
him as he's
loved us
first
will you pray
with me
Lord help us
to see ourselves
first and foremost
not as thinkers
or doers
but as lovers
Lord would you
redirect our
loves toward you
would you convince
us that there is
no one more
worthy
of our love
our heart
soul
mind and strength
love
than the
life-giving
Lord
Jesus Christ
who didn't
just give us
life
but gave up
his life
so that we
might be brought
back to you
Lord what do we
have that we
have not received
what do we have
that does not
belong to you
Lord let us
give lives
let us live lives
of sacrifice
of acknowledgement
that everything
we have
is yours
and would you
in doing that
receive glory
and would you
bless the world
in our generosity
I pray
in Jesus' name
amen