How Much Is “All”?
Texts: Deuteronomy 6:4-5; 10:12-13; 11:13-15; Romans 12:1-12
Pastor Phil Hughes, American Fork Presbyterian Church, Utah
September 3, 2023
The Shema – which means “hear” or “listen” in the Hebrew language of the Bible – tells us to love the Lord our God. Hear/shema this! Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
It isn’t just love the Lord with heart, soul and strength, but with “all” our heart, soul, and strength. It isn’t with some, or with a little bit, or partial heart, soul, and strength, but all. Three times we hear “all.” A small word that covers big territory. The Shema “heaps up three expressions to try to convey the totality of…commitment appropriate to the love of the Lord our God.”[1] The use of “all” three times highlights the “total response of love to the Lordship of God.”[2]
Loving the Lord with all of our heart and soul is repeated in chapters 10 and 11 of Deuteronomy.
Apparently, the Lord doesn’t want just half-hearted devotion. Those who are in relationship with him are to love him full-on, with abandon, pedal to the metal. We are to love with the full capacity of our being: heart, soul, and strength.
Different people over different times have thought about how we human beings are put together. That we have bodies is obvious enough. That we have minds is pretty certain. People have wondered more about the soul; what it is, what it does, what it is like. Does it even exist? My philosophy professor in college didn’t believe that human beings had souls.
The Shema suggests that human beings are at least made of heart, soul and strength. Each of those things meant something different to people in ancient Israel.
First, what is the “heart” in the Old Testament? In our language and worldview heart is the place of our emotions. When we give our heart to someone we are emotionally taken with them. But in the Hebrew worldview the heart was the place of the intellect, what we think of as the mind. In the Old Testament the heart is the place of understanding. When we are confused about something the heart is where it happens. So when we read in the Bible about being “foolish of heart” or “slow of heart” it is a way of saying that a person doesn’t understand. They don’t get it. My family often says this about me.
The heart was also the place of the inner person, where character is formed. We think of the heart this way. So to love the Lord our God with all our heart is to say that our love for the Lord must be something we understand. We think about it, are clear about it, and know how we are to love him. And it will form us.
Second is the soul. In the Hebrew worldview the soul was the place of emotions. It is the place of our passions and appetites. It is the breath, the blood, the life of a person.
We read in Genesis 1:30 about the “breath of life” that God gives to all things. The word that is used is the word for soul. In Genesis 2:, when we read “the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being” again this is the word that is used. The soul is the very life of a person.
The soul is like the operating system of the human being. It is like a program that runs a computer or our phone. The operating system manages all the software. Your computer is worth nothing without an operating system. Microsoft Windows and Apple OS are examples of operating systems. It’s the big deal on the computer. The operating system needs to be working well for everything to work well.[3] (Some of us are thinking right now, “Oh, that is what is wrong with me. I need an operating system tune up.”)
The human soul seeks to integrate our will (intentions) and our mind (thoughts, feelings, values and conscience) and our body (strength and actions) so that we are a whole person. The Shema declares that the Lord our God is one. If this is so then we are most integrated when he is at the center of our lives. If God is the operating system then all the different responsibilities, loyalties and relationships that pull us in different directions, all the contradictions and struggles we face in life, can in some way be unified. If we connect all of the competing parts of our life to God we will be more whole because he is at the center of our soul.
When Psalm 103 begins by exclaiming, “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name” the soul is the place where all that is within us is brought together.
In his book called “Soul Keeping” Pastor John Ortberg pointed out that the soul is the place of our desires and wants, and the soul always desires and wants. Our wants and needs are meant to point us to God. But it’s easy to give our greatest love to other things. This is called idolatry. Idolatry is loving other things way ahead of God. Idolatry is misplaced love.[4]
Our souls were made by God, made for God, and made to need God. To love the Lord with all our soul is to love him with all of our life.
And then there is “strength.” The root of the biblical word for strength means “muchness,” “abundance,” “exceedingly.” Strength is the place of will power. Sometimes we need a little elbow grease to love God. It can be easy to make promises devote ourselves to God in the heat of emotion, when the music and message stir us, when we are with the crowds that are shouting the praises of God, when we are on a spiritual high, or everything is well. But will I be loving the Lord my God with my strength – with my will power, my “muchness” – when circumstances are tough? When I am down? Do I love God and have the determination of faith in the hard and heavy things? The reality of our love is probably most revealed in adversity, in times of dryness, or when things aren’t particularly fulfilling or easy.
Loving God with our strength includes all we have physically. It’s our energy, our resources, and our gifts.
So our heart is the way we think. Our soul is the things we desire. Our strength is our actions that show in the way we actually live.
We get an example of someone who loved the Lord in this way in the person of King Josiah. In the book of 2 Kings we read this:
“Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did—with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses.”[5]
King Josiah’s life was described with the exact words of the Shema. What a great way to have our life summarized. King Josiah heard the words of the Shema and lived them.
At funerals, people’s lives are summarized in all kinds of ways. “He lived life to its fullest.” “No one ever said a bad word about her.” “Well, he paid his bills.” Oh that it will be said of us, “He/she loved the Lord their God with all their heart, all their soul, and all their strength.
Remember the Shema directs us to love the Lord our God. It is not just think about the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength. It is not just revere the Lord your God. It is not admire the Lord. We are commanded to love. It is our love that God wants.
Love for God is going to produce in us a hatred for wrong, a thirst for holiness, gratitude for all God’s goodness to us, joy when the Lord is near, grief when he is absent, mercy for others. It touches our whole life. It makes us want to please God. Don’t we want to please those we love?
In Romans 12, after writing so much about how we now have relationship with God through the grace shown in our Lord Jesus Christ, Paul writes:
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.[6]
Paul was drawing on the Jewish image of sacrifice. When an animal was placed on the altar, everything was consumed. Sacrifices were not partial. Offering our bodies and renewing our minds is another way of saying the whole of us. It is all our heart and all our strength. Paul is saying “put yourself on the altar for God.” “Give him all you are.”
Eugene Peterson puts Paul’s words from Romans 12 like this in The Message:
Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it.
That sounds like loving the Lord with all we are to me.
I asked this last week, and I ask it again: how much do you/do I love the Lord? All is not a little bit, it is not some, it is not even most of. It is all.
Now, this doesn’t mean we think about the Lord all the time. It doesn’t mean we consciously feel passionate about the Lord 24/7. It doesn’t mean we never sit down or rest from doing everything we can for God. No one can do that.
But in our every day, ordinary life do we love him? In the places God has put us, in the life he has given to us, in the circumstances and the realities where he has led us, do we love him? Are the things of our life connected to him? Like spokes to the hub of a wheel.
Do we love God by giving him our attention and focus each day? Just like we read the paper or go for a walk each day, do we have a time of devotion to him?
Do we love God in our family relationships? Do we love him in the way we treat our spouse, our children, our parents? Even with the challenges?
Do we love God in our business practices, how we make money, in the way we treat our employees or customers, the students we teach, the people we deal with?
Do we love God with the gifts of our time, our wealth, our knowledge and abilities?
Do we love God with our mouth, with our eyes, with our ears, and with our appetites?
Do we love God in the priorities, values and convictions we hold in our life?
Do we love God in our neighbors?
Loving the Lord with all keeps us from compartmentalizing our lives from him. I can’t love him on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, but not on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Nor do I love him just in my church life but not in other parts of my life. All is all.
To love the LORD our God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our strength is to surrender to him. Scott McKnight says that surrender is “not giving up things for God so much as giving ourselves to God.”[7] We place our business, our schedule, our family, our spirituality, our leisure – all the different parts that make us up - underneath the Lord. We give them to him and say, “Here, Lord, I offer these back to you. Do with me as you wish.”
It is in line with what we pray in The Lord’s Prayer when we pray, “Your will be done.” It’s not “my way” but “your way.”
When we put it all together it adds up to this: You shall love your God with all your being, with every aspect of your personality, with all you are, without exception or reservation. Sound impossible? Again, it is about love. We love what we desire and wish for. We are to love God, not merely want to keep on the right side of him.[8]
The good news is that when we don’t do “all”, because sometimes we don’t, the Lord doesn’t condemn us. He knows how we are made. In his love for us he is gracious to us, forgives us, and will lift us up to start again.
And our “all” might not be very much. Particularly at a given time. Our “all” might be just a few moments. Our “all” might be a small act. Our “all” might be just showing up though we do very little.
“All” is OK even if its small. Jesus saw a poor widow put two very small copper coins into the temple offering on day. Small coins called “lepta” which were the smallest level of money in the New Testament – think pennies. And he praised her in front of everyone for putting in more than those who had much more wealth and who had actually put in money of greater value. Why? Because, Jesus said, she put in all she had.[9] But it wasn’t big.
The Lord knows what our “all” is. And to offer our “all” in love to the Lord, whatever the amount, whatever the measure or whatever the effort, is the best sacrifice of love to him. It might be, “Lord, I’m not feeling it today, but what I do have I want to give it to you.”
When my daughter Cara was about seven years old she made a bowl for me. I use it just about every day for my oatmeal or my ice cream. We have many other bowls I could use, but for years and years, I have almost always used this one. This isn’t going to be picked up by Kohl’s or Nordstrom’s as a line of dishes. It isn’t elegantly painted. I couldn’t get any money for it. You wouldn’t want it. But it says, “I love you, Daddy” on the bottom. And Cara put in all her heart, soul, and strength to make this out of love for me. It’s my favorite dish, period. Exceptionally made? No. With all her love? Oh yes.
Many a parent or grandparent has a picture from a child prominently displayed because it was made and given to you in love. And it means more to you than any work of art from the most exquisite gallery that could be given to you because it came from the very heart of your child.
God loves it when we take whatever we have – big or small, strong or weak, well thought out or uncertain – and just give it all to him. The best we are. The best we have. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be all together.
The Shema calls us to love the Lord our God. Give him your “all.”
Prayer: Eternal God, you have made us in your image. You have given us hearts, minds, and bodies to know and love you. May your Holy Spirit stir our desire for you, so that we will love you with all that we are. And we thank you for loving us. Amen.
[1] Patrick Miller, Interpretation Commentary on Deuteronomy, p.102
[2] James Edwards, Commentary on Mark
[3] John Ortberg, Soul Keeping, pp.41-43
[4] Pp. 82-83
[5] 2 Kings 23:25
[6] Romans 12:1-2, NIV
[7] The Jesus Creed, p.208
[8] David Payne, Deuteronomy, The Daily Study Bible Series, p.49
[9] Luke 21:1-4