Soul, Mind, Strength - Mark 12:29 Series

Mark 12:28 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.'

Introduction

Review

Last week we began studying what Jesus said is the greatest, most important command in the Bible. And it is not only the greatest, but it is also the summary of the whole Bible, and the basis for the whole Bible. Nothing in Scripture has any meaning apart from that command. If you obey it you are doing the greatest activity possible for a human being, and if you disobey it you are committing the greatest possible sin. That command is love the Lord your God with every part of your being.

And the first part of your being that he mentions is your heart, the seat of the emotions. That’s the starting place because love is all about delight. You desire the object of your love, and when that desire is satisfied it produces delight.

Today I’d like to move on to the next category – love God not only with all your heart, but also with all your soul. What is that? If the heart is the seat of the emotions, what is the soul?

What is the Soul?

If you look up the word soul in the OT you find something very interesting. The heart is the seat of the emotions; the soul is the seat of appetite. The Hebrew word for soul is NEPHESH, and that is the normal, everyday Hebrew word for appetite.

Numbers 11:6 But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!"

Your soul is that part of you that craves and hunger and longs and desires. It’s that part of you that sometimes feels empty and needs something to satisfy it. And it sometimes feels dry and needs something to refresh it. The soul is the throat and the stomach of your inner man – which is why Scripture so often speaks of the hunger and thirst of the soul.

Psalm 42:2 My soul thirsts

Psalm 63:1 my soul thirsts

Psalm 143:6 my soul thirsts … like a parched land

Psalm 36:8 You give them to drink from your river of delights

John 7:37 If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink

Isaiah 55:1 "Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! 2 Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labour on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of foods.

Psalm 63:5 My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods

Just as your body is designed to keep getting hungry and thirsty, multiple times a day, God also designed your soul to run low on what it needs over and over and needs to be replenished.

What does that feel like when that happens? When your body is low on food, you feel hunger (a physical sensation of emptiness, weakness, pangs in your midsection). When your soul gets low on what it needs, you get low on things like encouragement, strength, peace, motivation, joy, happiness, courage, etc.), then you feel spiritual hunger, which feels like emptiness, boredom, discontent, lack of motivation, lack of fulfillment, worthlessness, aimlessness, etc. That’s the hunger of the soul, and it’s designed to make you seek spiritual food.

When your physical throat dries up, you feel thirst (a sensation of dryness that makes you desire water). When your soul dries up, you feel the thirst of the soul. What does that feel like? Depression, irritability, anxiety, restlessness, discouragement, sadness, indifference, despair, apathy, etc. Those things are what it feels like when your soul gets thirsty.

Or to simplify it, the hunger and thirst of the soul is what it feels like on the inside when you lack joy. Whenever we get low on joy, we have the hunger and thirst pangs of the soul And everything we do in life is designed to satisfy those pangs. It’s why we do everything we do. It’s why people get married, it’s why people get divorced. It’s why we sit down and watch TV or read a book or talk to friends or listen to music. Those are all efforts to satisfy that thirst of the soul.

The Soul Loves What it Desires as Food

So what does it mean to love God with all your soul? What does it mean to love God with that part of you that craves joy and encouragement and hope and pleasure and all the rest? You love God with your soul – you love God with your spiritual stomach by looking to God as food and drink. When you are restless, unhappy, empty, unfulfilled, depressed – what do you do to feel better? Whatever you run to in those times, that’s what your soul loves. If you get depressed and listen to music to feel better, that means your soul loves music. If you have anxiety and you drink alcohol or take pills to feel better, your soul loves alcohol and pills. The way to love God with all your soul is, whenever you feel those painful emotions – lack of happiness, you look to God alone to satisfy your cravings for happiness.