You can believe that Jesus is the Savior, but that's not the same as knowing that He's your Savior. The difference has eternal consequences. Today on Turning Point, Doctor David Jeremiah sheds more light on the value of devotion, of being completely committed to Christ. It's an essential piece of protection in the arena of spiritual warfare. With the conclusion of his message, devoted souls, here is David.
The Bible tells us, friends, that we're to love the Lord God with all of our hearts, our minds, and our souls. And we've been learning about the soul, the inward part of who we are, our relationship with God, the part of us that relates to God, the part of us that will live forever. The real you is your soul, and the Bible says that the real you. Needs to love God with all your soul, with everything you have. Don't leave anything left out.
Love Him in a devoted way.
Some of you would say, "Yeah, I'm devoted to my wife. That's great." But the Bible says you're to be devoted to God too, and we're talking about that once again today here on Turning Point. Before we get there, just let me remind you that you can get your copy of the Battle for Your Soul. Which is the new book that just has been released from Turning Point? It's our October release, and it is a two hundred and forty-page hardcover book with a scriptural and topical index.
Thirty-one chapters examining all of the different aspects of spiritual warfare under the title of the battle for your soul. I want you to have this book. I know this book will be helpful to you. I know it will encourage you and strengthen you, and if you let it, it will keep you out of trouble. When you send a gift to Turning Point during the month of October, just say please send me the book about the soul.
Do the best you can, but this book is available for gift of any size, and we delight to send it to you. It will be on its way just as soon as we hear from you.
Now this is the privilege we have to teach the word of God each day. Hope your soul is open for some more food. Here it comes. Our text today is in the twelfth chapter of the book of Mark, and Jesus in this chapter is fielding a series of hostile questions that are being posed by critics who are trying to trip him up. To get him caught in a trap that he couldn't get out of by the things they asked him.
Finally, a scribe posed what would appear to have been an honest question. Here was this question: Mark twelve twenty eight. Then one of the scribes came and, having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, "Which is the first commandment of all?" Of all God's commands, which one mattered the most? And so Jesus provided his answer in these famous words of Mark twelve twenty nine and thirty. Jesus answered the scribe and said, "The first of all the commandments is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.'" And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.
This is the first commandment. The Old Testament refers to the heart, soul, and strength, but Jesus added a fourth one. He said, "And love God with all your mind." Wow, being devoted to God includes a mental element. As well as a spiritual and physical one, every sense in which God has gifted our minds can be turned back to Him in devotion and reverence. Aren't you grateful for the people of God who devoted their minds to Him and provided all of our great hymns and all of our commentaries and books that we read that help us understand God?
They devoted their minds to God. C.S. Lewis said, "God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers." He said, "If you're thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you that you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all." And I think sometimes we should teach that to our children before they get too far into school that you're not just there filling a Require motor sitting in a seat, but you're there to use the brains that God gave you to bring glory to His name. What does it mean to be devoted to God or to live as a devoted soul? First and foremost, devotion to God requires us to love Him with all of our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our mind, and with all of our strength.
I want to pause here to take the pressure off of all of us, if I might. And when you read a passage like this, if you're like me, you ask yourself this question: Have I ever truly done that completely at any time in my life? Because it seems like such an absolute requirement, all of your heart. All of your soul, all of your strength, all of your mind, love God like that. And I'm reminded of something one of my professors taught me when I was in seminary.
I will never forget this. He said, "When you're a preacher, you're going to have to talk about a lot of things that you may not have fully experienced yourself. But just remember this: you don't have to be all the way down the road, but you need to be on the road." And let me say that to you today. Many of us here, we're going to say, "I don't think I've ever loved God like that." Can I love God with all my heart, all my soul? That's what the requirement is.
But the question isn't, "Are you all the way at the end of the road? Are you on the road?" Is this your heart and desire? This is what you want to do. There's something within you that says, "Lord, help me to be like that." Let's talk about the conduct of devotion from this passage. Devotion requires totality.
There's a key word that's repeated four times in Mark. Did you notice it? It is the word "all." You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment. Within the battle for our souls, one of Satan's attacks.
Involves suggesting that we can compartmentalize our lives into two buckets, one bucket labeled me and the other bucket labeled God. And according to this way of thinking, we put a few of our resources and time and energy into the God bucket in order to help advance His agenda in the world, and we give much of ourselves to serve Him, but not all. Satan encourages us to reserve a portion for the me bucket, for my plans, for my goals, for my own little kingdom, and this is harmful because it inevitably creates opportunities for conflict between our agenda and God's agenda, our will and God's will. Consciously or unconsciously, we begin to resent everything that goes into God's bucket. Especially if it is in conflict with something we think we want to do, we forget that God Himself is the source of every single thing that we have in the first place, and we don't really have anything that isn't in God's bucket when it starts.
He loans it to us, makes us stewards over it, but we have the choice then to use that in certain ways. The more we grow in devotion to God, the more we will offer Him. All that we have, and all that we are, because devotion requires totality, and then devotion requires priority. This is the first commandment. Remember, the scribes said, "Jesus, tell me what is the first commandment?
What is the most important one?" And Jesus said, "The most important one is to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind." When the Israelites harvested the fruit of the land through their crops and their herds, they set aside what they called the first fruits as an offering to God. The earliest and best portions of their harvest were given back to God in recognition of His role as their provider. And when the prophet Daniel lived as a captive in pagan Babylon, he made it his practice to kneel before God and pray three times a day. This was his way of setting himself apart from the idolatry that surrounded him in Babylon. In fact, Daniel was so public and so consistent regarding his prayer that his enemies became aware of it and decided to use it against him.
They persuaded King Darius to pass a law that no person could pray to anybody else but to King Darius for thirty days, and then they caught Daniel praying, and he was thrown into the lion's den. Do you remember that? Are you familiar with what happened after the? King made the rule that you can't pray. I always thought this was an in-your-face thing that Daniel did, but it wasn't at all.
The Scripture says, "Now Daniel knew the writing was signed, that he couldn't pray to anybody but to Darius, and he went home and in his upper room with his windows open towards Jerusalem." He knelt down on his knees three times that day and prayed and gave thanks before his God as was his custom since early days. And I remember when I first read that, perhaps even when I first taught that, I portrayed Daniel as the kind of guy. I'll show you what I'm going to do. You tell me I can't pray. Open the windows wide open.
Pray as loud as you can towards Jerusalem. I'll show you what I can do. But that isn't what happened at all. He just went home and did what he normally did. It says at the end of the text, as he had done from early days, he said, "Darius isn't going to interrupt my priority with God.
My priority is to pray three times a day, which I will continue to do." And so, he had to experience the lions' den, and you know the rest of that story. When we show God that He is first. In our lives today, we do that through our tithing. Did you know that's one of the things that happens when we put God first in our giving? We show God He is first through our worship.
We show God that He is first through our prayer, through our Bible reading, through our faithful service, through the things we do to help other people in and out of the church in our community. When we do that, we're saying by our conduct, God, You are first in my life. In John 14, Jesus tells us there is another way that we can show him that he's first, and I believe that it is the most incredible thing in the Bible, and maybe one of the most forgotten things in the Bible. I'm going to tell you today, with absolute certainty, how you can prove that you love God in a way that no one will ever be able to dissuade you. Here it is, and it's not my words.
It's John fourteen. Jesus is saying, "If you love me, keep my commandments." He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me. Do you know who loves Jesus? The people who do what he tells them to do. Jesus didn't say, "If you love me, tell me." He didn't say, "If you love me, sing a song to me." As important as that may be, he said, "If you love me, obey me." And John added to that.
Over in First John five three, we read, "For this is the love of God that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome." God is loved by us when we keep His commandments. That's how you and I can show him that he is first place in our lives.
So, you may be in a crisis, maybe something's going on in your life where you are facing something you really are being drawn to do, but you know it's not pleasing to the Lord. You know how you can love the Lord? Do what He tells you to do. Do the right thing. When you do the right thing, when you do what God tells you to do, you are saying to God, "I love you, Lord." And I'm going to do what you tell me to do.
Devotion requires totality; it requires priority, and it requires thirdly ministry. Here's another thing that's tied to this passage in Mark: the more our souls are devoted to God, the more we will find ways to invest all of ourselves in His kingdom. To make him our first priority and to love others as he loves us—that's what Jesus added to his conversation with the scribe. Remember, the scribe said, "Lord, tell us what's the first commandment." And Jesus came back and said, "I'll give you number one.
Now, give you number two." And verse thirty-one says, "And the second like it is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." There's no other commandment greater than these. The scribe had asked Jesus to identify one command, and Jesus said, "Love God and love your neighbor." In his letter to the Romans, Paul summarized the last five commandments under the heading of loving your neighbor. Watch this. Here is what he wrote: "Owe no one anything except to love one another. For he who loves another has fulfilled the law." For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery.
You shall not murder. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. You shall not covet. If there is any other commandment, all are summed up in this saying: namely, love your neighbor as yourself.
When a lawyer asked Jesus what it meant to love his neighbor, you know what Jesus did. I love this. Jesus is such an illustration and teacher to me as a pastor. He told a story. I love Jesus stories, don't you?
The reason I tell so many stories is I'm trying to be like Jesus. Jesus told stories, and stories are like windows that open your eyes to truth that you wouldn't know otherwise.
So Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan.
Now let me just review that a little bit. The Good Samaritan is the story of a man who had been beaten, robbed, and left for dead among the roadside, and several religious people saw the wounded man. But chose to walk by. A Samaritan stopped to help. He treated the man's wounds.
He transported him to safety, and he paid for his care. And Jesus is saying to these scribes and Pharisees, "That's what a neighbor does." In other words, Jesus says, "Love for our neighbors more than a feeling; it's seeing a need and doing something about it." Now we all pay lip service to that. We all agree with it. When you love somebody, you want to do something to help them. That our neighbors are anybody we find who needs help.
We all agree with that. But the problem is, we don't do it. I remember a story about a group of seminary students who were assigned to write an in-depth paper on the parable of the Good Samaritan. Their task was to analyze the passage carefully. Comment on its terms and themes, and prepare their own translation of the text and presented in class.
But a few of the students became more interested in the practical implication of the assignment, and on the morning the papers were due, they devised an experiment. One student volunteered to play the part of an injured traveler. His friends tore his clothes, smeared dirt and ketchup on his face. And on his body, and left him beside the path leading from the dormitory where the students lived, who were preparing the paper, to the classroom where they were going to present the paper. Then they hid by and watched what would happen.
As the other students hurried to class, the wounded man groaned and cried out for help. One by one, they passed by.
Some of them walked around him. Others actually stepped over him. A few spoke to him, but nobody stopped to help him. These students were on their way to discuss the good Samaritan, and they failed to act like one in the process. What a great test that was for these young people, and how easy that describes how we often approach subjects like this.
If we're good neighbors, we help those who are in need. We know it. But the apostle John said, "Whoever has this world's goods and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?" My little children, listen to this. Let us love, not in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. In summary, what does it mean to love our neighbor as ourselves?
It means we are to have time for, be interested in, and deeply desire the welfare of our neighbor, in the same way we have attitudes toward ourselves.
Now let's go back where we started. Maybe you're asking what happened to the scribe who asked Jesus that question. After hearing Jesus' answer to the question about the great commandment, the scribe responded with wholehearted agreement. He affirmed that there's only one God. He acknowledged that loving God and loving one's neighbor are more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices prescribed under the law.
And Jesus said a very strange thing to him. I don't think I ever realized how strange this is until I studied it. This time, Jesus said in Mark 12:34, he said, "You're not far from the kingdom of God." He didn't say you're in the kingdom. You ain't there yet, but you're not far. What did Jesus mean?
Jesus meant the scribe had correctly understood God's priorities. He recognized the supremacy of loving God and loving others, but he still needed to take the final step of faith by submitting himself to Jesus. One commentator said, "The teacher of the law is not far from the kingdom. He is not in the kingdom, but he does not have far to go. To be in the kingdom, you have to do more than simply approve of Jesus' teaching.
You must submit entirely to His authority and His person. Can he make the next step and accept Jesus as the Son of David? If he does that, he won't be almost in the kingdom. He'll be in the kingdom." And that's the way it works for all of us, isn't it? One of the things I think about as the pastor of this church for all these years is how many people have come here, sat in these pews, and listened to me preach, and given approval to what I've said, and actually said, "I believe what you say," and yet never, ever have made the decision.
To accept Christ, I say to you what Jesus said to the scribe: You're almost in the kingdom, but almost isn't good enough. When you get to heaven, almost won't get you in the door. You have to be committed. You have to understand what's the next step. What I need to do besides believing that Jesus is the Savior, you have to acknowledge that He's your Savior, and ask Him to come into your heart and cleanse you from your sin, and be the Savior of your life.
It's one thing to affirm that loving God is the great commandment. It's another thing to devote your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength to Him. The scribe wasn't far from the kingdom. The question is whether he or whether we are willing to take that final step of wholehearted devotion to Christ. You probably have never heard of William Featherstone.
He was born in Montreal, Canada, all the way back in 1846. Gave his life to Christ at the age of sixteen. Married and started a family. Then, at 26, he passed away from unknown causes. In just about every aspect, his life was short, forgettable, and uninteresting.
But he had one noted accomplishment in history: a poem that he wrote right about the time that he became a Christian. He sent that poem to his aunt, who later had it published. Decades after the young man's death, that poem became the lyrics to a hymn. One of my favorite hymns when I was growing up in my dad's church was this: "My Jesus, I love Thee." Those lyrics are undeniably beautiful. Here's a couple of the verses: "My Jesus, I love Thee.
I know Thou art mine. For Thee, all the follies of sin I resign." My gracious Redeemer, my Saviour, art thou? If ever I loved thee, my Jesus, tis now. I love thee in life. I will love thee in death, and praise thee as long as thou lendest me breath.
And say, when the death dew lies cold on my brow, if ever I loved you, my Jesus, tis now.
Some people might say William Finnessey accomplished very little with his life, but I say he achieved what matters most. He loved God. He was devoted to God, and the echoes of that devotion continue to ring out today, when people sing that hymn in their churches. That points us to an important secret for our own spiritual growth: recognizing that devotion to God is both a means. And a measure for success each day.
Take a moment to contemplate what you experienced during your working hours. Set aside your to-do lists, your life goals, your career benchmarks. Try your best to put the pressures you've been feeling on hold. Let go of your personal expectations, and instead of all of that, simply ask yourself this question: Did I love God today?
So how do I love somebody I can't see, somebody I can't touch? The Bible says you love him by loving others. Have I set myself up to experience a greater connection with God tomorrow than I did yesterday?
So if you do that, little by little, every day you give yourself that little quiz: Have I loved God today? You will discover that you're loving God more and more along the way. You see, the reason we don't love God more is we never stop to ask ourselves if we're loving Him at all. And I want to encourage us all to do that. I'm going to do that.
What does it mean to really love God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength? To love Him first, and to love Him by loving others. And ministering to their needs and helping them—that's what it means to really be a devoted Christian. You know, I think it's a really interesting thing when it first dawns on you that the way you love God is by loving others, and the Bible teaches that very clearly.
So, if you want to show your love for God in a tangible way, reach out and love those who are the creations of God. Whether they be Christians or not, love them, love them with all your heart, love them as God would have you love them, and in the process, you will be loving God as well.
Well, tomorrow we're going to talk about a very interesting subject in the defense of our souls against the enemy. One of the things the Bible teaches will work for us as a mighty weapon is the weapon of worship. One day to discuss that tomorrow on the Friday edition of Turning Point. I hope you'll join us. It's from the Old Testament story of Jehoshaphat, and it will be a blessing to you, I'm sure.
Thank you for joining us today. Have a great day, and we'll see you next time. Today's message originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Senior Pastor Dr. David Jeremiah. Drop us a note to let us know how God is using this ministry in your life.
Write to Turning Point, P.O. Box 3838, San Diego, California 92163. Visit our website at davidjeremiah.org/radio, or call 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David's new book, *The Battle for Your Soul*, and learn to be victorious in spiritual warfare. It's yours for a gift of any amount.
You can also stream more than twelve hundred of Dr. Jeremiah's messages on demand on any screen on our streaming service, Turning Point Plus, for a monthly gift of any amount. Visit turningpointplus.org for details. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue the battle for your soul on Turning Point with Dr.
David Jeremiah.
