Priority 1
Mark 12:28-34
September 15, 2002
“Soul Desire”
A lawyer came to Jesus, spurred on in part by his Pharisee cohorts and, I believe, in part by a desire to know the truth. He came asking an important question; he came to the right place to get the answer. No one could ever be more qualified to answer that question than Jesus! His question forms the basis for our sermon series begun a couple of weeks ago, focusing on “Priority One”. Stand with me as we read the question—and Jesus’ answer—from Mark 12:28-ff!
I have long had an appreciation for Soren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard lived in Denmark in the early to mid-nineteenth century. His was a brooding and dark personality; he was preoccupied with guilt and fearful of death. But you wouldn’t have known it to speak with him. Kierkegaard made it his practice to appear early in the lobbies of Copenhagen’s theaters; he would make it a point to be jovial and friendly, chatting up the hoity-toity crowd who made up Copenhagen’s high society. Once the play would begin, though, Kierkegaard would rush home to write. Carefully he would time his writing, so as to be back in the lobby in time for intermission, during which he’d repeat this façade of gaiety. What his high society friends did not know was that his business was to write some of the most trenchant—and at times scathing—social commentary on Danish society.
One of Kierkegaard’s frequent targets was the church, a church he found to be so far removed from the teaching of Jesus as to be laughable. He spared no part of the church, beginning with the state-paid, professional clergy who so watered down Jesus’ message as to make it a whole other gospel, to the people, whose everyday lives lacked passion and commitment. To illustrate this, he told the story of a magical land inhabited only by ducks. And of duck church. One fine Lord’s Day, he wrote, all of the ducks dutifully waddled to duck church, where the parson duck stood to deliver his homily. He opened his duck Bible to the place where it spoke of God’s great gift to ducks—wings. “With wings”, said the duck preacher, “we ducks can fly! We can mount up like eagles and soar the heavens! We can escape the confinement of pens and fences; we can know the utter euphoria of unfettered freedom! We must give God thanks for such a great gift as wings!” To which all of the ducks in duck church stood to their feet with a hearty “Amen!” And then, they turned around…and waddled home.
I wonder what Soren Kierkegaard would have to say about American Christianity? Specifically, I wonder what he would have to say about our lack of obedience to Jesus’ command, wherein He tells us that priority one is that we love God with all of our hearts, souls, minds, and strength. Specifically, today we focus on loving God with all of our souls. The soul, our translation of the Greek word psuche, represents, according to Kenneth Wuest, “the seat of will and purpose”. It is the source of vitality in life; it is the motivating power that brings strength to the will. Thus,
To love God with all of one’s soul means to make loving God a Passionate Pursuit.
To love God with our souls involves making the love of God, and the doing of His will, and the obeying of His word, and the seeking of His glory, and the worship of His Name, the consuming passion of our lives. Today I want to talk about having a passion for God. Let’s look first at
I. The Need for a Passionate Pursuit
Many, if not most, people have a passion about one thing or another. And some of that is okay. My father took up genealogical research a few years back; it interests him, and that’s okay. Bill Philson is a history buff; I enjoyed a presentation of his this week. Some people are into gardening, or hiking, or video games. I enjoy golf; I wouldn’t say I have a passion for it, like some people. A golfer is talking to his buddy, and he says, “hey, I got a set of clubs for my wife!” Other golfer asks, “so, you think it was a good trade?” Some people’s passion is to collect stuff—I collect sports memorabilia—but some are so into it that they put it on display. In Auburn, Washington, for instance, there is a banana museum, featuring a collection of nearly 4000 different items related to that fruit. In Charlottesville, Virginia, a lady named Kelly Godfrey plans to open the “Toaster Museum”—there already exists, much to my relief, a “Toaster Museum Foundation”; you can check it out at, of course, www.toaster.org! I clicked on “Frequently Asked Questions”, wondering if my question would show up: “what is wrong with you?” Go to Boston, and you can visit the “Museum of Dirt”. And, to get to the end of things, there is, in New Delhi (thankfully) the International Museum of Toilets! This world is going to pot, isn’t it? Guess I should have flushed that one...
It’s not that people aren’t passionate. The question is, are we passionate in our love and desire for God? Let’s note first
A. When Passion is lost
We live in a “whatever” age. It seems that that word epitomizes many in our society today, people who’ve lost passion for much of anything, whose “don’t care” attitude surfaces in one word. “Whatever” is the code word for a loss of passion.
It is serious when Christians lose their passion for God. Life can beat us down sometimes; as one person has said, the problem with life is that it is so daily! And amid the daily grind, passion begins to fade. I don’t think passion usually goes away in some cataclysmic event; rather, it tends to seep out of us like a slow leak. Hudson Taylor’s words are true—and at the same time chilling:
"Finding one’s purpose with God can be a strange and mysterious journey. Or it can be as plain as asking God for a task and then watching or desire for that task grow within you. Problem is, most of us forget to ask God to fill us with a fervent spirit to serve Him. Then, years later, we wake up and realize we had our life. We made our small choices...our safe choices. But somehow we missed the richness of following God down an uncharted path." Hudson Taylor
I fear among Christians a “give up” mentality as regards the onslaught of a passionate minority who mock Biblical truth. I fear a quiet resignation to the spirit of the times, and a corresponding erosion of the moral fiber of our nation. Winston Churchill, I believe it was, said that “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” When Christians lose their passion for God, and their commitment to truth, then we have a real problem.
B. When Passion is misguided
Passion can be exercised in sinful ways. Samson and David were passionate men, at times passionate about God—in fact, that characterized David’s life in general. But they were led astray by sexual passion. Peter was a man filled with passion—though sometimes it was employed for the wrong ends! In The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats speaks of a time when “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Be assured that many of the foes of the gospel are filled with such passionate intensity. Hell is burning while the church is asleep! May God fire our passion for Him!
C. When Passion is in evidence
Webster defines passion as “strong desire or devotion to some object, activity, or concept.” Passion for God energizes the Christian life; it moves us from being spectators to being participants, from being mere hearers of the Word to being doers of it. Loving God with our very souls will turn the commands of God from legalistic drudgery to life-giving opportunities. A passion for God will turn prayer from a tedious task into an opportunity to commune with the living God. Loving God with our souls will cause us to see others in need as people for whom Christ died—and thus as opportunities for us to serve—rather than as inconveniences. A passion for God will lead to a passion for loving other people as well. Without passion for God, minus loving Him from our very souls, it is impossible to really live a life pleasing to Him.
II. The Nature of a Passionate Pursuit
A. Passion comes from God
“We love Him because He first loved us.” Until I have experienced the reality of saving love, I cannot possibly have a passion for God. Salvation is God’s work in my life, apart from anything I do, and it is God Who puts this love in my heart for Himself.
At the same time, we need to continually stoke our passion for God. I spoke of the “slow leak”, or of the fact that our spiritual “batteries” run down over time. I’m reminded of the story of the Pentecostal church. Pentecostals get a little more emotional in their worship than we do, sometimes crying out to God in audible voices. This particular brother kept crying out to God, “Fill me, Lord…fill me, Lord…fill me, Lord!” Finally, one dear sister had heard him make that cry enough and she replied, “Don’t do it, Lord; he leaks!” Yeah, we all leak—which is why we need to be refilled! We get that refilling through time spent alone with God, studying His Word to us, meditating on it, confronting ourselves about the sin in our own lives and asking for His cleansing, and then asking the Holy Spirit to fill us and control us. The promise from God’s Word is that if this: “submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you!”
In Revelation 2, John records the Word of the Lord to the church at Ephesus. He commends them for their discernment, and for their perseverance amid trial, and for their work in His name. But then He gives them one severe warning, when he says to them, “You have lost your first love.” Here was a church with discernment (a trait sorely lacking in the contemporary American church! Some of you will be happy with me for saying this, and some of you will be angry, but I’m going to say it anyway, because it’s the truth. Tomorrow evening in Pittsburgh, a church is going to host Amy Grant in concert, promoted by Pittsburgh’s leading Christian radio station. If they had the discernment they should have, they wouldn’t be hosting or promoting Ms. Grant, and I hope that you have the discernment not to buy her music anymore, or to waste good money on her concert.); a church which had persevered amid trial; a church faithful to minister in the name of Jesus. And yet, though they had all of these things, they had left their first love. It is possible to fall in love with the “stuff” of church, whatever that might be, and lose one’s first love for God. It is possible even to fall in love with the idea of study, or the idea of prayer, or the idea of ministry—important as those things are—and place them above our passion for God. I can be more passionate about preaching than I am about Jesus—that’s how subtle this danger is! Passion for God comes from God—we must tend the flame!
B. Passion empowers us to serve God
Half-heartedness in God’s service is sacrilege. Giving God our second-best, or worse, is just wrong. He deserves the best we have. Passion for Him, loving Him with all our souls, will lift our efforts to serve Him to the level of our very best. “Only our best for our Lord”: that is printed on our bulletin every week as one of the principles we believe in. That ought to apply to everything about this ministry, from the quality of music on Sunday morning, to the seriousness with which we take the task of teaching our children, to being on time to serve in the church nursery. Anything less reflects poorly on our love for God!
III. The Impact of a Passionate Pursuit
No one who has ever accomplished anything of note in this world has done so without a passion. Wednesday I watched a fairly graphic video detailing the events of 9/11. One interview was with a lady whose husband perished, a captain in the FDNY, a man who would lead the charge into a building to rescue people. He chose his profession—which would lead to his death—out of a passion to help those in need.
A. Passion changes things
People with passion for God and the things of God are people likely to accomplish great things for God. “If God is your Partner”, someone has said, “make no small plans!” One common denominator among the ministers and teachers and missionaries and Christian servants down through the centuries whose lives are successful for God is their passion for God. Passion changes things, but also
B. Passion changes us
Jesus’ promise of abundant life is for those who lay aside earthly concerns and passionately follow Him. Passion for God allows us to become all that God has for us to become. Passion for God makes of life an adventure lived before the face of God. Passion will yield courage, the courage to stand with conviction in the face of a world increasingly hostile to Christian truth and discernment. Passion for God will yield a perseverance that will stick it out when others fold. Passion for God will take us to a needy world with the conviction that Jesus is the only answer. Passion for God will make new men and new women out of us. God, give us passion for Your name and your truth!
Being the sports fan I am, I try to be careful not to bombard you with sports analogies all the time, but this one is apropos. I get frustrated some times when, late in the first half, a team with the ball, instead of attempting to march down the field and score, decides to get ultra-conservative, and instead just attempts to run out the clock. No passion to score more points; let’s just take the snap, kneel down, and run out the clock. How many people—including Christians, and for the point I’m making, particularly Christians—are living life doing the equivalent of running out the clock? Instead of passionately loving and pursuing God and His righteousness, instead of getting their hands and knees dirty for the Kingdom, they’re content, even as there is need all around, and even as God has given us marching orders, to run out the clock. They lose their passion for God and stay on the sidelines, content to live out their days in a mediocre, no challenge, semi-Christian way. I don’t want that!
I referred earlier to Soren Kierkegaard. Listen to a little more of Kierkegaard’s writing, true in his day, but I daresay equally so today:
“Let others complain that the age is wicked; my complaint is that it is wretched, for it lacks passion. Men’s thoughts are thin and flimsy like lace…too paltry to be sinful. Their thoughts are dull and sluggish, their passions sleepy…out upon them! This is the reason my soul always turns back to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. I feel that those who speak there are at least human beings: they hate, they love, they murder their enemies, and curse their descendants throughout all generations, they sin.”
A passionless Christian is a contradiction in terms. Contrast that with these words penned by Bob Moorhead. Perhaps you’ve heard them before, but they challenge me every time I read them. He entitles it, “My Commitment as a Christian”.
“I’m a part of the fellowship of the unashamed. I have Holy Spirit power. The dye has been cast; I have stepped over the line. The decision has been made. I’m a disciple of His. I won’t look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still. My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, and my future is secure. I’m finished and done with low living, sight walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tamed visions, worldly talking, cheap giving, and dwarfed goals.
“I no longer need pre-eminence, prosperity, position, promotions, plaudits, or popularity. I don’t have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded, or rewarded. I now live by faith, lean on His presence, walk by patience, am uplifted by prayer, and labor by power.
“My face is set, my gait is fast, my goal is heaven, my road is narrow, my way rough, my companions few, my Guide reliable, my mission clear. I cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away, tempted, turned back, deluded, or delayed. I will not flinch in the face of sacrificed, hesitate in the presence of the adversary, negotiate at the table of the enemy, ponder at the pool of popularity, or meander in the maze of mediocrity.
“I won’t give up, shut up, let up, until I have prayed up, paid up, preached up for the cause of Christ. I am a disciple of Jesus. I must go ‘til He comes, give ‘til I drop, preach ‘til all know, and work ‘til He stops me, and when He comes for His own, He will have no problem recognizing me, for my title will be clear!”
Points to Ponder:
1. Honestly, about what are you most passionate? What evidence in your life points to this conclusion?
2. What are the things in your life that tend to dull your passion for God? What needs to change?
