Hear O Church, One Lord, One Life

Cultivating Missional Living

Hear O Church, One Lord, One Life

Theme: Committing Our Whole Lives to God

Deut. 6:1-9, Mark 12:29-31, Romans 12:1-2

Response: Seeing and Responding to Gods Missional Work

Lord Over All

Ours is a culture totally different from the audience that sat at the feet of our Jesus. His listeners were not comprised of twenty-first century Westerners who are mostly a reasoning and scientifically- minded society. The ancient Near East people were deeply spiritual and consciously aware of sacred, mystical, and even magical realms. Theirs was a culture that was filled with a number of gods and demigods. They were pluralists. Virtually every sphere of life had a god that was seen as ruling over it. There was a god of the forest, family, river, sun, moon, and harvest and so on.

So it is within this culture that one of the local scribes approached our Jesus to ask Him what the most important commandment was, (Mark 12:29-31). Can you imagine that? Out of all the commandments in the Old Testament, this guy wanted Jesus to narrow them down to the one. How could this be possible? I mean, God Himself issued each and every one of the commandments. Aren’t they all important? Every single one came from the lips of God! How could one commandment stand above all the rest?

And typically, in the Gospels when Jesus was asked a question, He answered it with another question, or sometimes even a parable. This as we have seen often in our Wednesday night Bible study was a very typical rabbinic method of teaching. But, on this occasion, departing from His normal way of responding, Jesus not only answered the question posed to him; He did so quickly and plainly.

It would not have been unreasonable to expect Jesus to respond. As He so typically did, by asking another thought provoking question. It is easy to imagine Jesus saying something like, look around you, look to the field and mountains, look to the sea. Which of all these creations of God is the most important. Our Jesus could have said, every commandment is God breathed and not one is more or less important than the other. But immediately Jesus answered without hesitation. And He went even further, he gave the guys a two for one deal. Jesus told the scribe the number one most important commandment plus the number two most important commandment.

‘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 and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.

Listen Up

The commandment that Jesus proclaims as the most important is known as the Shema, which means “hear.” What we are to hear is that there are not a multitude of gods (polytheism). The implication is that one God is Lord over every part of our lives, no exceptions. Nothing lies outside of His claim or His power. So, this idea destroys the concept of there being sacred and secular places in our lives. (Dualism) Our God is God from the bedroom to the boardroom, from the work place to the play place, from our living room to the school room, and everyplace in between.

The Shema (“ Hear, O Israel . . .”) in Deuteronomy 6: 4 is the claim of Yahweh over against the competing claim of the many other gods in the polytheistic religious environment of the day. It is a call for the loyalty of the people. The claim has direct and concrete implications: It is a call for the Israelites to live their lives under the Lordship of one God and not under the oppression of the many gods. In other words, it is a practical call not to live one’s life as if there were a different god for every sphere of life— a god of the field, a god of the river, a god of fertility, a god of the sun, and so forth.

The Word of our God loudly proclaims that there is only one God and He is Lord of every aspect of life. Again, here the concrete and practical nature of Hebraic thinking comes to the forefront. Polytheists can compartmentalize life and distribute it among many powers. But the man or women in the Israelite world who has faith is not distinguished from the pagan worldview by a mere spiritual view of the Godhead, but by the exclusiveness of his relationship to God, and by his reference of all things to him. So, Biblical believers have only one reference point. This is the biblical mode of thinking— concrete and practical. The implications are far reaching, not as simple theology, but as practical missiology. A re-Hebraizing of Christianity is so vital for the emergence of the missional-incarnational church.

This claim to unify our lives under the one God has truly radical implications for us today as we struggle to find new ground on which to base our discipleship. Biblical monotheism means that we cannot live like there is one “god” for the church and another for politics and another in economics or still another for the home. No, all of life, every aspect of it, every dimension, is to be brought under and unified under the ONE God, Yahweh. Seen in this light, the Shema is a claim of God’s exclusivity and a direct challenge from God about the role of idols in the believer’s life.

So, especially, in a culture like ours, where a lack of integration in every sphere of our lives is the norm, the importance of understanding and acting on the truth of the Shema cannot be overstated. Our society is one that lacks connection between the people and the places that make up our lifestyle patterns. The people we work with are not the same people we see in our favorite coffee house. The folks that we see in the park are not the same people we see in our grocery stores. And for the most part, none of these people are members of our own local church.

There are only one or two types of places most people, Christian or not consider to be sacred. These spots are official places of worship, a church, a synagogue, or a mosque and the home. The remaining places are called secular territory. If you ask most Christians, they consider their places of work, recreation, education, commerce, and the marketplace to all be secular places.

Lord of All

Secular, by definition means “non-sacred” or “apart from God” Theologians call this idea dualism, a terribly dangerous precept that not only limits God, but limits missions. The subconscious result of the dualistic divisions means that most Christians compartmentalize spirituality into two sacred boxes of church and home. So, we consider the people we encounter in differing territories the same way. Especially in Evangelical circles, the people that occupy “non-sacred” spaces often become categorized as “them” within the them vs. us delusion that has become part of the sacred-secular divide.

With the Shema, Jesus is saying that all dimensions of our lives are under His care, joy, and rule. God gets out of the stained glass box of church and moves into every sphere of society. We-those filled with His Spirit-can (should) begin to understand all of life as ministry and worship. This idea was echoed in the legendary movie, Chariots of Fire, in which Eric Liddell says, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast, And when I run I feel His pleasure.”

So as we seek to Shema (to hear) we aim to recognize God’s activity throughout our daily routines. By understanding that God is everywhere and that He is seeking to restore and redeem broken people and the brokenness throughout all of creation, our lives take on new meaning-spiritual meaning. …. See, there is this real tendency to think of the spiritual life as a life that will begin when we have certain feelings, think certain thoughts, and gain certain insights. …. The problem, though, is not how to make the spiritual life happen, but to see where it actually is happening. We will then work on this premise… that our God acts in this world and in the lives of individuals and communities. That God is doing something right now. So this work, this chipping away and sculpting by God is taking place whether we are aware of it or not. Our task is to recognize that, yes, it is God who is acting and we are involved already in that spiritual life.

This sacred-secular divide as a mindset, or a paradigm, has enormous implications for the life of a Christian. And when one lives under this misguided belief, we leave God out of the equation of the majority of our actual daily living. But when we seek to hear God in our daily routines, believing that the Lord is bringing His Kingdom to earth, we hear and see things we might have never observed beforehand.

For you who are Christian business men and women this means that the phrase, “This is a business” is no longer an acceptable term. Understanding the Shema means that we understand that God is just as much in on a business deal as He is on the Sunday Morning Praise and Worship.

Understanding God is one Lord over all things and beings keeps us tuned in to-hearing-His voice in every situation. He is Lord of the restaurant, Starbucks, where you work, play, and the neighborhood.

Romans 12:1-2

On the basis of the fact that God is overall and in every situation, Paul appeals to us to offer our whole world up to God in worship. He is Lord over every dimension of life. Since God is One we have the obligation to “bring every aspect of our lives, communal and individual, under this One God.

The Shema is one of the most practical and catalytic passages in all of Scripture. It is no wonder that Jesus calls it the most important commandment of all. It calls us to bring our minds, hearts, and bodies under the complete lordship of Jesus. God is no longer understood as involved in just the “spiritual” dimensions of our lives, because we have eliminated the sacred-secular divide from our concept of God and life in general.

This is the cornerstone precept of a Biblical Wordview. …We commit our whole life to God. Nothing is off limits. And, ..If the entire world, including our immediate world, and all that is within it is truly under the ownership of God, then there can be no part of my life that is not open to His rule.

But, honestly it is very easy to profess belief in one God, but in practice, live as though there are many. To confess Jesus is Lord, means we are loyal to Him throughout every sphere of our life, as consumers, as neighbors, workers, and friends. We live one life, under one Lord!

Response:

This week, decide how you can demonstrate your love for the Lord with your heart, (inner passion), soul (Mind and spirit) and your strength (Body). Give yourself an assignment every day. Prayer for your heart, reading for you mind, and serving someone for your strength.