All Your Strength Series

Message

Mark 12:30

All Your Strength

We are really getting to know this one verse, aren’t we:-

Mark 12:30

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.”

In this verse Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 6:5.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

The word in the command which we want to focus on today is “strength”.

And, as we have seen again and again, having a closer look at each of these words has revealed aspects of the verse that you just can’t see in English.

Looking at the Hebrew of Deuteronomy 6:5

(You can find the text online - the word on focus is the last Hebrew word in the verse)

The highlighted word … in Hebrew it is pronounced meode.

The highlighted word is the one translated “strength” in English – it is the least common Hebrews word you would use for the word “strength”.

Some Hebrew “strength-words” convey the idea of physical power and might.

Some Hebrew “strength-words” convey the idea of capacity and energy.

Some Hebrew “strength-words” convey the idea of having emotional strength and courage.

Meode doesn’t have these meanings. Let’s have a look at a few verses.

Regularly throughout Genesis 1 we see a pattern.

God creates on a day.

The summary of the day … “God saw that it was good”.

However, after the sixth day:-

God saw all that he had made, and it was very (meode) good. (Genesis 1:31).

Psalm 92 is a psalm which describes why we should praise God.

How great are your works, Lord, how exceeding (meode) profound your thoughts! (Psalm 92:5)

1 Kings 7 is describing the furnishings in the temple which Solomon built. When the passage talks about the bronze pots, shovels and basins …

Solomon left all the vessels unweighed, because there were so many (meode meode) of them; the weight of the bronze was not ascertained.

1 King 7:47

Meode is nearly always an adjective … it gets added to a noun to give a fuller description.

Not just good … but very good.

Not just profound … but exceedingly profound.

Not just a quantity … but a “beyond measure” quantity.

So, when it comes to conveying the idea of strength, meode.

… isn’t a measure of muscle.

… it isn’t a measure of energy.

… it isn’t a measure of power.

Meode focusses on intensification; a higher level of quality; abundance.

Meode is a word that focus on moving beyond.

Meode is almost always an adjective, except for two times … two times out of 300 … when it is used as a noun. Two times when it stands all by itself as a describing word.

The first time is

Deuteronomy 6:5

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength (meode).

The other time is in the context of talking about the reforms of Josiah who, at the age of 18, restored the worship of the temple and the law of God.

25 Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did – with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength (meode), in accordance with all the Law of Moses.

2 Kings 23:25

Josiah’s actions

Fully listening to God in repentance when the book of the law was discovered.

Removing all the false places of worship … and all the false priest … and all the false religions.

Restoring the temple as the only place of worship to the one an only God.

Josiah’s love for God had an intensity, and a higher level of quality and an abundance that moved his dedication and commitment beyond any king who came before or after … that includes King David.

Loving God with all his “beyond-strength”.

Meode.

That is how the word works in the Old Testament.

Jesus in our text takes Deuteronomy 6:5 and applies that verse …

… laying the foundation for the first commandment.

… Jesus takes that verse and applies it to His hearers.

The Scriptures in Mark 12:30 also could have chosen a number of different words that get translated as “strength”

The most common word – 120 times in the New Testament – is the Greek word dynamis

Dynamis … dynamite – you see the connection don’t you.

dynamis is “ability”.

dynamis is “power in action”.

dynamis is “mighty works”.

dynamis is “strength”.

dynamis is not the word Jesus uses.

The word which is used is the much less common Greek word - hiskus

Apart from the verses where the greatest commandment is being spoken about this word only occurs 7 times. But those seven times speak profoundly into what it means to love God with all our strength. Again, looking at a few verses.