971. Loving God with a Fervent Heart for Ministry

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. We're beginning a series called Loving God Preached in Seminary Chapel at Bob Jones, and today's speaker is Seminary Professor, Dr. Stephen Hankins. You have your Bibles open please to Matthew 22. I invite you to turn to that text of scripture. What can you do in order to love God with a fervent heart while you're in ministry?

I want to answer that question this morning for you. I want to begin by posing that question, but directing your attention to the lives of two people that I've known over the years. Both of them are men well advanced in years now. In fact, they're really what we would say kind of in the closing years of their life in ministry.

But I've known both these men literally now for nearly half a century. One of them was my office mate as he was an adjunct professor here at Bob Jones in pastoral theology. He would fly in from his ministry out west and he would come and teach men pastoral theology. But before he was a pastor, he was an evangelist. Then he became the pastor of this large and very influential church ministry in a large western city for over 35 years. And then in his 70s, he retired and began traveling as a missionary to Russia and consistently for many years spent a large percentage of his time ministering to pastors and evangelists in Russia.

Right after the Iron Curtain fell, right after the Soviet block dissolved and freedoms, you know, anew were abounding. He had an opportunity to influence them and he did that. He saw to and helped tremendously in the production of and distribution of a concordance in the Russian language for the Bible had phenomenal impact. And then along about after probably eight years of this, he learned about an opportunity for a church planning ministry again out west in a large city. And he took that on in his early 80s and planted a church and developed that church ministry. And that church ministry continues today as a thriving ministry. I've since worked with that man on a mission board and had many interactions with him and a man well advanced in years.

And yet with a heart that is on fire and fervent in love for God after well over a half century in serving Christ. Now, another man who was really my primary professor here at the university whose name, if I mentioned, you would probably know when I say my primary professor, I mean, in my doctoral program and in graduate work. His name is actually on a plaque by one of our rooms here in the seminary, Dr. Stewart Custer. I remember hour after hour after hour listening to this man who was in and of himself by himself a Renaissance man, a man of tremendous brilliance, tremendous recall of the word of God and of the knowledge of Greek, a man who would stand many times. In fact, more class times than not with tears forming in his eyes as he spoke of the Lord Jesus Christ and his love for the Lord Jesus Christ.

This man was the author of books, of commentaries, the teacher of many, many graduate courses. He then at the age of 52 became the pastor of the Trinity Bible Church where Dr. Greg Mazak is the pastor and for over 25 years was the pastor of that church faithfully preaching the word of God Wednesday morning or Wednesday night, Sunday morning, Sunday night, week after week. In addition to his extensive teaching responsibilities here, all the time maintaining this warm and fervent and wholehearted love for God.

Today, again, in his closing years of life, he spends most of his time in solitude and relative ill health. But even today, in the place where he lives, he ministers the word of God to the people that are there as he has opportunity. What is it that has allowed men like this to maintain this intense and fervent love for God over the long term, over such a long period of time? What is it that will allow you, that will help you, men and women serving Christ to maintain a full and fervent heart of love for God in ministry? Well, they rested in the promises of God and you have to rest in the promises of God.

But for God, men and women, we have no sufficiency for these things. We cannot possibly maintain a heart of fervent love for God without his help. But think of the promise of Hebrews 6-10 where the Scriptures say that God is not unrighteous to forget your work and your labor of love, which you've showed toward his name as you minister to the saints and still minister.

God will not forget you. God will never abandon you as you serve him, as you labor for him. And what about the promise of Romans 5-5? And I alluded to this this weekend at one point in my preaching. And hope maketh not ashamed because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, poured out in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given unto us. You know, this is further confirmed by Ephesians chapter 3 verse 16 and following in verses 17 and 19 in that tremendous prayer of the Apostle Paul when he prayed for the Ephesian believers. And he said that he, God, would grant you to be strengthened with might by a spirit in the inner man that ye being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. If it were not for God, if it were not for his willingness to minister to us by his spirit, we could not maintain a fervent heart of love. That as you're learning, as you have learned and you continue to learn, every dimension of holy life and service is not only dependent utterly upon God but faces us with a very serious and sobering human responsibility, doesn't it?

We're not earning God's favor but we have an obligation of obedience and we have the assurance of his assistance when we are obedient, when we turn to him. So we have a human responsibility as we get into the yoke of God to do what we are to do in order to stoke the fires of our love for God as we continue in ministry. What should we do in order to keep the fire of our love for God burning hot for him always in ministry?

Well, it's this text, this principle text, this touchstone text that I think really does answer that question. We, you, me, can make our love for God passionate, fervent, if we make it the supreme priority of our life. Looking at that text of scripture with me, I want you to notice in verse 38 that the Lord Jesus responded to this cynical specialist in the law of God by saying, after saying thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. We make this the supreme priority by looking at it as the first commandment. You know, it was the first commandment in time. What was the concept that governed all that went on in Eden? The very purpose for the existence of Adam and Eve was to love God and commune with him. This was divine design. And you know, that divine design and purpose has never been abrogated.

That's never been set aside. But it's more than just first in time in a historic sense. It really has to be first daily in our purposes, in our thoughts. It should first govern us in every word we say. It should be the first thing that determines in our thinking where we go, in the relationships that we establish. It should be first, the first consideration in all of our acquisitions, what we want to gather to ourselves or what we want to possess.

First in our consideration as how we spend our time, our energies. It is the first commandment. And this text of scripture also says that if we want to keep it as the supreme priority, we need to look at it as the greatest commandment.

First in time, first daily, day by day. But we look at it as the greatest commandment in the sense as that of greatest importance. It has priority over all other commandments.

The greatest as in broadest in scope. It literally touches everything in the Christian experience or should. Greatest in its depth, there is no commandment that is more significant for the human soul than this commandment. As the psalmist put it in 73, 25, and 26, and he put it so powerfully. Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon the earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart may fail me, but thou art the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

You God, you are the one who is all of my desire, all of my soul, all that I wish. So what do we do to maintain a fervent heart of love? We make this first and greatest commandment the supreme priority. Every day, every moment of every day as we walk life's pathway. We make it that supreme priority.

But we do something else too. Right here again in the text. It's found in several parallel passages as I've mentioned in the New Testament. We make love for God our all consuming passion. Look at this in verse 37. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength. And if you look at the parallel passage, or mind, and you look at the parallel passage in Mark 12-30, it adds all thy strength as well. All, all, all, all.

That is suggesting this sweeping, all consuming concern, this heaping of term on term with all your heart. Now most of you have had some Greek and others of you have had some Hebrew. You know the terms cardia and the term lev, these very general terms in the languages of the Bible. That communicate all the immaterial part of man, all the immaterial functions of the human soul. Whether it's the conscience, the moral function, or the volitional function, the function of the will, or the rational function, the function of thought, of thinking.

Whether it is really what we call the spiritual function, which is the part of us that reaches up toward God in worship and a desire for communion. All these things are interwoven and intertwined. They all make up this immaterial part of us. And here the author just heaps term on term to communicate this all inclusiveness of our passion for God. This is not to be lukewarm. We are not to be half hearted. We are not to be lacking in zeal. We are not to be partial in this. It is to be an all-consuming passion and we are to guard our heart, the Proverbs 4.23 tells us. To keep our heart with all diligence. For out of it are the issues of life. We understand that this immaterial part of us is key to us having the right kind of passion for God in anything that cools our ardor.

Anything that quenches the operation of the spirit of the living God as he fuels and fires our own soul toward God is something we avoid like the plague. But the text goes on and starts getting more specific. When you see a series of words like this that often are overlapping with one another in the New Testament, sometimes are used interchangeably as synonyms.

You really need to pose the question, is there anything distinctive that is being presented perhaps because they're listed one after another? Well, I think there is emphasis. This overlapping does give us stress to the idea about this all-consuming kind of commitment that we're to have.

But there's something distinctive about these terms in some context in the New Testament. We're to love God with all our soul. There are contexts where that term, tzuche, means the idea of the self. What comprises you, your desires, your unique set of giftedness. What makes you the person that you are? And clearly what's being presented here is that we have a stewardship of who we are. Our own unique particular giftedness that's been built into us.

Our own inclinations that have been built into us. Even for ministry that we train all those desires, all that is our self on expressing our love to God through obedience. What encouragement there is in Philippians chapter 2 verse 12 and 13 where Paul says, As you have obeyed in my presence, now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. To desire and to do. All of your desires that rise out of yourself based on your giftedness and the uniqueness of your person, train them on God as a peon of praise, as an act of worship to God. Never to selfish ends or purposes and all your mind, the text says.

Your reasoning, your thought processes, your memory, your imagination which leads to creativity, your powers of concentration. And yes, even your willingness to subjugate your mind in the face of paradox. You intellectually will bow the knee. You will say I see two ideas that appear to me to be rationally the polar opposites as I look at them here in scripture. I see God's divine sovereignty and I see man's human responsibility in so many ways, at so many points in the doctrinal truths of the scripture. And I cannot harmonize those things.

I don't understand. Rather than force those things and go one direction or the other to bring satisfaction to your mind, you humbly bow the knee and say my thoughts, oh God, are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways. And I acknowledge that your mind is the supreme mind and that you think things I cannot think.

You perceive things I cannot perceive. And I acknowledge myself as the creature and you as the creator, the servant and you as the sovereign. And this is loving God with your mind, where you refuse to make your mind an idol, the satisfaction of it, the harmonizing of truths that cannot logically be harmonized as something that must be happened, must happen in order for you to be satisfied as a believer. No, my love for God with my mind says I'll keep my mind where it should be. I will diligently use my mind to understand everything I possibly can understand and draw every inference and every logical conclusion I can reasonably draw within the boundaries of Holy Scripture. But I will not go further.

I will not step out of bounds. I will not exclude one to more fully embrace the other. This is loving God with our minds. And then with all our strength, all your power, all your might, all your mental and emotional and physical energy. Do you realize that that getting up early, that going at it hard, that staying up late, that sometimes or oftentimes those 12 to 15 hour days or yes, even at times, and I wouldn't recommend this on a consistent basis, but the all-nighters in order to get to the point where you have really reached a sense that you have done all that you can do for the glory of God, do you know that spending yourselves, men and women, utterly pouring yourselves out in emotional, personal, physical strength and energy is a good thing. It's an expression of love for God.

And yes, while we need to be measured and self-controlled and be good stewards of ourselves physically, of course, those times of great self-denial are not a wicked thing. They're a means of expression of our love for God, wholeheartedly. I mean, listen to the words of Paul in Colossians 1, 28 and 29. After he says that he preached Christ, teaching every man in wisdom that they may all be brought to a maturity, he says, Whereunto I also labor, striving according to his working which worketh in me mightily. He says, I labor, I labor to the point of exhaustion, striving, I agonize, I strain every nerve as the supernatural power of God works in me in order to do the work that God has called me to do. There you have it.

There you have the Paulistic view and approach to pouring out your energies for the glory of God as God divinely works in you to express your love for God. Does that sound extreme to you? Does it sound out there to you? Well, welcome to New Testament biblical Christianity. Yes, it is extreme.

And it ought to be extreme. For who can we be more extreme for and who should we be more extreme for than the God of heaven? What comfort we find in Psalm 138 3, where David said, In the day when I cried, thou answerest me with strength in my soul. Listen to Paul in First Corinthians chapter 9, 26 and 27. He says, I therefore so run not as uncertainly. So fight I not as one that beateth the air, but I keep under my body. I bring my body into subjection. Lest, while having preached to others, I myself so be a castaway. I'm going to use my strength. I'm going to use my energy. I'm going to do everything I can with what I have to demonstrate to God in this life that I love Him.

It's my all-consuming passion. It's my supreme priority, the first and greatest commandment. And then there's something else in this passage. And I think our hearts can be grateful to God for what He's put for us here in this text of Scripture, because also we can do this in order to show a fervent heart of love toward God in ministry. We can make love for God our hermeneutical lodestar.

Huh? What do you mean our hermeneutical lodestar? A lodestar is a point of reference in the heavens, the North Star, for navigational purposes, to know where we are.

More particularly, in a metaphorical sense, it's the idea of a guiding principle or guiding ambition, a guiding interest. Well, look again at this text of Scripture. What does it say? After giving the first commandment and the second that's like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. On these two commandments, the first and second hang all the law and the prophets. Is Christ the only one that ever said that?

No, listen to the words of 1 Timothy 1.5. When Paul said to Timothy, Now the end of the commandment is love or charity out of a pure heart, a good conscience, and faith unfeigned. Here's the goal.

Here's the objective. Here's the thing that should guide you in all of your understanding of the commandments of God and your obedience to the commandments of God. Love out of a pure heart, a good conscience, and faith unfeigned.

I want you to see in that statement here that these commandments, the greatest commandment of loving God and the second one like unto it, really provide order and clarity for all the rest of the commandments. Most of you at one time or another have driven through a neighborhood and seen a home being constructed. First a foundation laid and then framing that's provided. Until the foundation is laid and the framing happens, you see stacks of two by fours and bricks and various other materials lying about on the property in no particular order. But then the foundation and the frame goes up. And once the foundation and the frame goes up, what happens? Then everything else gets hung on the foundation and the frame. The electrical wiring gets all hung on that frame. All the plumbing gets woven through the various parts of the frame and the pipes get placed just so in all that frame. And then all the sheetrock comes on and now we actually have an interior and then the paint comes. And then in addition to paint, in come the cabinets and they all get hung on those two by four studs on that sheetrock and they get placed.

And before you know it, everything that gets hung on the frame makes the place beautiful and makes the place inhabitable. It makes it a domicile. But without the foundation, without the frame, there is no house. There is no place to live. There is no shape.

There is no form. There is no order. Men and women, these great commandments take all the randomness out of the Bible. And they give an order to the Bible because every commandment now becomes a means of expressing our love for God and our love for other people as a natural outgrowth of our love for God. And we're always posing the question, how is this related to? How is this an expression of my love for God?

How can it be? How can it be as an expression of my love for other people? But I want to take it a little step further and just say that it brings purpose to all that we see in the word. And I think the purpose that we see here primarily is that what we have in scripture is profoundly relational. It is all about our relationship with God and it is all about as an outgrowth our relationship to other people. We don't simply concern ourselves with the commands of God, the word of God, because we just want to know it. We just want to know the facts.

We just want to know the details. It is not for us an academic exercise. It is not for us just a duty or an obligation. There's a really, really suggestive passage in the New Testament about this. It's one you should saturate your soul in from Revelation chapter 2 verses 1 through 7. But in verses 2 and 4 in this letter to the church of Ephesus, we find a fascinating statement when the Lord Jesus says to them, I know thy works and thy labor and thy patience and how thou canst bear them which are, canst not bear them which are evil and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles and are not and has found them liars.

And then he says this, nevertheless I have somewhat against thee because thou hast left thy first love. First in priority, first in order, thy great love for God and the outgrowth of love for people. What was characteristic of these people? They knew the commandments of God. They were determined to be orthodox.

I mean dot the i's, cross the t's and completely intolerant of falsehood and false teachers. They were in some very positive ways people who embraced, as I mentioned this weekend, a theology of antipathy. They were for some things and they were really against some things and that's biblical. But something had gone awry. Something was wrong. Actually the Lord Jesus goes on and says to them, Remember from whence you have fallen and repent and do the first works. Recognize you've gone from a higher place to a lower place.

Why? Because in your attention to the word of God, the great hermeneutical lodestar has been blurred by the fog of your own thinking and your own behavior and you're not seeing it as the great guiding principle and you're simply doing what you're doing out of an obligation or sense of responsibility to orthodoxy or to your particular group or to your particular church instead of an expression of love relationally to God and for his people. This church, Ephesus, we learn of first in Ephesians 19. There was great personal holiness, there was incredible evangelistic activity that went on there. The Bible says that in verse 10 of that chapter that they which dwelt in Asia heard the word.

All they which dwelt in Asia. Verse 18 it says, And many that believe came and confessed and showed their deeds. In verse 20 it says, And so mightily grew the word of God and prevailed. That was Ephesus. Now Christ is saying, Remember from once you've fallen or I'm going to remove your candlestick, your influence is going to be gone.

Why? Because they had abandoned the ardor of their first love. Because their walk with God had ceased to be relational and the outgrowth of their walk with God had ceased to be relational to other people. You can maintain a fervent love for God in ministry if you make it the supreme priority. If you make it an all-consuming passion. If you make it your hermeneutical lodestar. We hope you'll join us again tomorrow at this same time as we study God's Word together on The Daily Platform.