Bottom-Line Commandments

Now, I tend to be a bottom-line person. My conversations are short. I prefer straight-to-the-point meetings. I like quick action—give it to me straight, let’s go. I’m an activator, which is the opposite of a processor. Now don’t worry if you’re a processor; God loves both types of people—activators and processors. He just has to tell the processors a few more times before you believe them!

So, because of my tendencies, this particular scripture really stood out to me because I can see myself in the story. Let me read the scripture for this series:

“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?’ ‘The most important one,’ answered Jesus, ‘is this: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.'”

I love this! See, the teacher of the law that day asked the question that I would have asked. Now, it would have taken some confidence to raise your hand and ask Jesus a question, but that’s what he did. He said, “Jesus, give it to me straight. Bottom-line this thing for me.” And you might say, “Well, why is this important? What’s happening in the context of this?”

Well, you see, the context of this scripture is that the Jews had 613 laws—613! And the processors—where are my processors at? You don’t even want to admit it! Where are my processors?—they used to sit around all day with other processors and debate which of the 613 were major laws and which ones were minor laws. Day after day, that was the big topic of debate.

So Jesus comes on the scene, and His unique presence, His mind-blowing teachings, His fresh perspective, and His miraculous actions—you can see how it stirred up all these questions, and people are asking what’s most important out of the 613 laws. Now, I just absolutely love thinking about the Pharisees and the Sadducees and Jesus there, and they get so extremely agitated when Jesus breaks one of their laws. It just makes me smile.

So Jesus bottom-lines the commandments by providing us what has become known as the Great Commandment. You may have heard it before: basically, love God and love others. And so for today, the question is: How do I love God with all of my heart? And then next week it is: How do I love God with all of my soul?, followed by all of my mind. That’s gonna be the plan for our series. Does that sound like a plan?

The Epicenter of Emotion

So when I speak about the heart today, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page. I’m not talking about the biological organ that’s physically pumping 10 to 12 pounds of blood through our system—that’s not what I’m talking about. Rather, I’m using the word “heart” as the seat of emotion and love. The most common non-biological definition treats the heart as the epicenter of emotion, affection, and desire. It’s the subjective space where feelings of love, empathy, passion, beliefs, and heartbreak originate.

Think about this: I’m sure you’ve carved your initials on a tree before, plus the one that you thought you loved at the time, and you put a heart around it, don’t you? The seat of emotions. Maybe you’ve gone downstairs in your basement and somebody comes around the corner and scares you—you grab your heart, don’t you? Without even thinking about it, we grab our heart because it’s the center of our emotions.

Four Common Heart Soundtracks

And so here’s the tension that exists for us: that we have these internal soundtracks that get in the way of us loving God with all of our heart. Today I’m going to suggest four common soundtracks:

1. “Follow your heart.” This is so very popular. You hear people say this all the time. Sometimes it’s packaged as “be true to yourself,” “you do you,” or “listen to your heart, whatever you feel like.” Oh dear, just follow your heart! If you’re a grandmother, please don’t ever say that.
2. “Don’t trust your heart.”
3. “I am not good enough.”
4. “Me, mine, and my way.” You see, with this soundtrack, there is no way that we ever say this out loud unless we’re in preschool. Preschoolers talk about “me” and “mine” all the time. But we become masters as we grow up of repackaging our deepest heart’s desire—always looking out for number one. We can kind of finagle the system a little bit.

So I ask: Which of these four is a recurring soundtrack in your heart?

Maybe this has happened to you before: the alarm goes off and immediately the radio comes on, or you get in your car in the morning, the radio comes on, and there’s a song—the first song of the day—and that stays with you in your head all day long. There’s actually a term for that: it’s called an “earworm.” Very attractive! And it’s a catchy song that’s stuck in your head on a loop all day long. And that’s sort of what I’m speaking about today when I talk about these soundtracks being so deeply ingrained in our hearts that they’re just on a loop all the time.

The Sources of Our Soundtracks

So you may say, “Well, where do these soundtracks come from?” Here are the sources of these popular soundtracks:

• For “Follow your heart”: It comes from Disney. Now listen, I love a good Disney trip! But it is always the same characters repackaged, always the same songs: embrace your true self, optimism and love will ultimately win the day. “Every turn I take, every trail I track, every path I make, every road leads back to the place I know where I cannot go, where I long to be. See the line where the sky meets the sea? It calls me! No one knows how far it goes…” Didn’t you see Moana? Just follow your heart!
• For “Don’t trust your heart”: It comes from the Bible. It’s the Bible’s soundtrack. Here are some of the scriptures listed: The heart is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things, the Bible says. Out of the heart come evil thoughts. Don’t trust your heart; your heart is diseased by sin. The starting place of our heart is that it is far from God. The Bible also says our heart is a treasury of evil.
• For “I’m not good enough”: It comes from Satan. “God does not love you. Do you know what you’ve done? You are unlovable. You will always be that way.” Satan whispers, “God cannot love you.” And he has been whispering that same lie in human ears ever since the Garden of Eden. And I’ll tell you this: Satan is persistent, but he’s not very original. Same lie!
• For “Me, mine, and my way”: It comes from society. Every commercial you watch is going to make your life better if you just buy this—it’s all about you! Have your hamburger your way. Everything is about you, and the soundtracks of Frank Sinatra (“My Way”), Bon Jovi (“It’s My Life”)—pick any popular song right now. It’s all about me and my happiness and my feelings.

So, those are the sources of the soundtracks of our heart. And so I ask again: What is the bottom-line beat of your heart? Try to identify what is at the core of your life. What is the soundtrack that you are most prone to if you don’t catch it? If you don’t become aware, it would be so wise for you to identify that.

How Jesus Transforms the Heart

And here’s what’s so great about Jesus: let’s bring Jesus on the scene! He meets us where we’re at, and He answers our questions directly, just like He answered the teacher of the law.

So you say, “Jesus, should I follow my heart?” The answer is no, don’t follow your heart. In fact, Jesus said this:

“What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly. All these evils come from the inside and defile a person.”

Don’t tell your grandkids to follow their heart!

Well, you say to Jesus, “Well, if I can’t follow my heart, what do I do?” Here’s the thing: God doesn’t leave us that way. There’s a scripture in Ezekiel that says: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

Now, in context, this is a promise to the nation of Israel, but it’s also this explanation of the figurative heart transplant that Jesus desires to do inside each of us through His Holy Spirit. So that your heart is no longer full of all the evil that’s described in Mark chapter 7, but now there’s this deep, radical transformation. There’s a heart that’s now full of the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, gentleness, kindness, patience, faithfulness, and self-control—so different than the lists that I read before. There’s this total heart cleansing that takes place.

And so then you ask Jesus, “Well, Jesus, am I not good enough?” And Jesus speaks into your life and speaks into Satan’s most long-standing lie, and He says a verse that you may have memorized: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” Jesus says that He loves you so much that He died for you. Satan, you are the father of lies! Beware of those whispers that come in.

“Well, Jesus, I think about myself all the time. I’m number one. It’s all about me. Is that okay?” Jesus says this: “I have a better way. Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.” It’s going to be a better life.

The True Soundtrack: Follow Me

So, how do I love God with all of my heart? First thing is we ensure that we have the right soundtrack on repeat in our heart.

• For “Follow your heart,” Jesus says: “No, no, no. Follow me.”
• For “Don’t trust your heart,” Jesus says: “No, I will give you a new heart. Follow me.”
• For “I’m not good enough,” Jesus says: “I love you so much. Follow me.”
• For “Me, mine, my way,” Jesus says: “I’ve got a better way. Follow me.”

So the soundtrack that you want to have going on in your heart is: Follow me.

See, in a world that is nipped, tucked, and liposucked, we need to surrender to the Surgeon. We need a heart transplant. The bottom line of loving God with all of our heart is that we must allow God to access our hearts, to be able to transform our hearts, to change us.

It made me think about how in a few weeks, my oldest daughter is getting her first apartment, and I was there when she received those keys for the first time and was able to walk in and open that door. Do you remember your first apartment? For Jesus to do the heart transplant that we’re talking about, we need to give those keys to Jesus and allow Him access to every room, every closet, every storage shed. You say, “How do I love God with all of my heart?” I need to give God the supreme, prominent place of my affections.

And it doesn’t matter who you are, what your title is, or how rich you are—every generation has desperately needed a heart transplant from our Savior. I was able to do the Bible story station with all the kids at VBS this week, and we went through the story of young David. Young David becomes anointed as the next king of Israel, and King David is the most successful king in Israel. He’s richer than all of us combined, and we get insight into his writing in Psalm 51. With tears in his eyes, he writes, “God, create in me a clean heart. I have everything I ever need, but I need a clean heart.” That’s what he needed the most: a heart that is surrendered to follow Him.

And so during our series over these next three weeks, we’re going to go one step at a time through this Great Commandment. It starts with your heart. To love God with all of your heart, it’s this understanding of the grace and the love that He has for you. When you come to the realization—you’ve got to catch this—that I cannot give away what I have not yet accepted. So we can’t even get to the “love others” part until we get to the “love God” part. Genuine, all-encompassing love for God must always begin by fully receiving God’s unconditional, sacrificial love. That’s the order.

And so I ask: Is your heart right with God? Do you know Him? Do you love Him? Surrender to the Surgeon for the heart transplant that we all need.

The Rescuing Power of Christ

Now, I left you on a cliffhanger, and so before I finish, I want to come back to Clara’s waterfall zip line experience.

I want us to try to not just see this experience, but I want you to try to connect with this terrifying experience. I want you to try to identify a time in your life where you felt panic. And I know that it’s painful to bring that back in your mind, but you’ve had a time that you’re thinking of where you too felt alone and you felt helpless—figuratively speaking, hanging on by a thread. And in that moment, your future was unknown. You didn’t know what was going to happen next. And it’s not a pleasant reflection, and I understand that, but the reason I ask you to recall that panic in your life is so that you see this as a representation of your moment.

On that zip line above the chaotic falls, that’s you. It’s an illustration of that time, a moment in your life where you felt panic. But then something happens: there’s a rescuer that comes to you, and the rescuer attaches themselves to you, and they’re locked in, and they’re sealed, and you’re secure. And that rescuer brings you from a state of dangling to a firm foundation, and panic is replaced by a feeling of peace that is absolutely indescribable unless you have experienced it.

And the reason I’m telling you that story is so that you hear that Jesus is our rescuer. He is our source of peace in a very loud world full of deceptive soundtracks.

And so I ask again: Is your heart right with God? Do you follow Him? Does He have the keys to your heart? The final scripture I’ll share with you today is this one in Romans 10:9: “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” No one else can offer you the heart transplant the way Jesus can, so you surrender to the Surgeon.

You received a communion element when you came in, and if you’d like to participate, you can take that now. Communion is a time for us to remember how much God loves us, and it’s a symbol of His blood and His broken body. We try to do it once a month here because we need reminders. As we take this together, if you don’t even know what to say, let me give you two lines: Say, “Thank you, God, for Your love,” and then say, “Please come work on my heart.”