All Your Soul Series

Message

Mark 12:30

All Your Soul

We are in the second week of having a very close look at

Mark 12:30-31

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 neighbour as yourself.” There is no commandment greater than these.’

Specifically this morning the focus is on Loving the Lord our God with all our soul. If we want to know how to love God with all our soul, we first need to answer the question “What is the soul?”

It is not such an easy question to answer. Because the Hebrew and Greek words which get translated as “soul” are words which can be translated in a number of ways.

So, to make it a little easier, it will help all of us to know the Hebrew and Greek words behind the English translations.

Hebrew is ?????? = nephesh

Greek is ???? = psyche

When the Septuagint translates Hebrew to Greek it almost always uses psyche for nephesh.

So now, when the Bible verses are up on the screen, you will know which word is being translated from the Hebrew or Greek.

Back to our question “What is the soul?”

Genesis 2:7

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being (nephesh).

Dust is formed into humanity by the Lord God.

Nephesh is given to humanity when the Lord God breathes His own breath into the man that has been formed.

Nephesh then is the “Lord-God-life-breath” given to mankind.

It is not just the actual air we breathe.

It is not just the flowing of blood around our bodies.

It is not just the functioning of our body parts … our head, our hands, our feet, our internal organs.

It is not just the initiation of who we are as individuals … our desires, our character, our will.

Nephesh is the totality of all of this.

The New Testament recognises the foundation of Genesis 2:7 – and then builds on that foundation.

Mark 8:34-36

34 Then (Jesus) called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save their life (psyche) will lose it, but whoever loses their life (psyche) for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? (psyche).

What good is it if you gain the whole world

… if you experience all the world’s experiences.

… if you feel all the world’s impulses.

… if you embrace all the world’s temptations.

What good are such gains if, in the process, you destructively injure the totality of who you are? Utterly destroying your psyche.

Destroying the Lord-God-life-breath.

Destroying the outcomes of the actions of your head, hands, and feet.

Destroying the consequences of your will, desire, and character.

Destroying the totality of who you are.

The soul … the nephesh/psyche … is all of our individual being. And there, at that point, is where we are called to love – command to love – the Lord with all our nephesh … all our psyche. That is what the first and greatest commandment calls us to do.

So how do we do that?

How do we love the Lord our God with all our nephesh/psyche?

Jesus’ question in Mark 8:36 is a good place to start.

What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? (psyche).

Right now each one of us are in a battle – a battle for our soul.

On one side of the battle there is the world.

Not the world as a big globe circling the sun.

But the world that is seeking to distract, disarm, divert and detour.

It is a world full of empty promises, meaningless purposes, false prosperity and counterfeit pleasure.

Temptation.

Sin.

Worldliness.

It is all in the same basket – all directed to one primary objective.

1 Peter 2:11

Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul (psyche).

The primary objective of the world is to wage war for your soul. The world wants to be the ultimate authority that provides the foundation to the totality of your being. That is what we face everyday.

If we don’t understand …

Or if we underestimate …

Or if we minimise …

… the stated objectives of this war we will lose the war. A war that is exclusively directed towards causing you to NOT love the Lord your God with all your soul.