Love God With Your Mind - Mark 12:28-31 Series

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Mark 12:28-31 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?" 29 "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 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 neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."

Introduction: Thoughts are Deeds

When you think, are you doing something? Sitting still in a chair just having thoughts - are you actually performing an action, or is it more like a virtual action? When you do something with your body – that is a real action. But what about when you are just sitting still in a chair - thinking? Is that really doing something, or are you just sort of doing something?

You probably know the answer. If you have read the Bible very long at all you know how God speaks about our thoughts. Thoughts are treated the same as physical actions. There is severe punishment for people who have evil thoughts - even if your body does not act on it. Jesus said lustful thoughts are adultery and angry thoughts are murder. And did you know that the one time the human race became so wicked that God killed every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth with a flood, it was because of ... thoughts?

Genesis 6:5 The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.

Amazing - the most extreme wickedness ever and not one word about any physical actions! God wiped out humanity for their thoughts.

So yes - thoughts are real actions - actions that deserve reward or punishment. Any untrue thought about God, or any thought that does not give proper honor to God, deserves punishment in hell. Any thought that treasures some created thing above God, any thought that belittles God, any thought that opposes God’s Word, any selfish thought, greedy thought, any thought that misrepresents the truth about God - every one of them is a wicked action deserving of severe punishment.

And good thoughts are worthy of praise and eternal reward. If you are discouraged because you do not really have the opportunity to accomplish anything really great - don’t be, because you can accomplish something great. You can have great thoughts. Just as God will mete out severe punishment for evil thoughts, He will heap up massive, eternal reward for good thoughts.

So it is no surprise that the enemy has waged an all-out assault on the Christian mind. God requires that you love Him with all your mind, so it is no shock that Satan would work overtime trying to shut that down. So before we get too far into what it means to love God with your mind, I would like to warn you about four ways that Satan has frequently succeeded in shutting down our efforts to love God with all our minds. Satan’s goal is to deceive God’s people into thinking that there is something unspiritual about using your mind. He wants us to think that rational, logical thought is kind of ordinary and human and fleshy and not very spiritual.

Failures to Love God with Our Minds

Mindless Meditation

One way he has done that is with mindless meditation (or mindless prayer). Empty your mind and pray without thinking. This is the influence of eastern mysticism.

Is this Mysticism?

But before I expand on that let me just say a few things about mysticism, because there are no doubt some people who have some red flags about this whole series because it sounds kind of mystical. Any time you start talking about fellowship with God, communion with God, drawing near, experiencing the presence of God, listening to God – that kind of language sounds mystical. Is it? Am I teaching mysticism in this series? Well, it depends on what you mean by mysticism. People define that word in different ways. I read one person who said mysticism is “any direct experience of God.” If that is your definition of mysticism then. yes – I am into mysticism big time. Every time the Holy Spirit does something to sanctify me or convict me of sin – that is a direct experience of God, is it not? So by that definition I would certainly hope we are all into mysticism. And when you read writers like John Calvin or John Owen and they use the word “mystical” – that is what they mean.