With All Your Mind: Abraham/Gideon By Nate Williamson

As part of spirit week we are going over the key components of your theme verse for

this year found in Mark 12:29-31.

29  Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel!

The Lord our God is the one and only Lord.  30  And you must love the Lord your God

with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ [g]   31  The second

is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ [h]  No other commandment is

greater than these.”

This morning we are going to look at loving the Lord with all your mind.

God wants you to love and trust him with your mind even when things don’t make

sense to you. When you really trust somebody, you are willing to do things and

believe things that you wouldn’t otherwise. We see this throughout the Scripture

like Peter walking on water. He would have never even have thought that possible

until he saw Jesus do it. And knowing who Jesus was and seeing the amazing

miracles that Jesus has already performed, led Peter to defying everything his mind

said couldn’t happen as he walked on the water toward Jesus. And if you know that

Biblical account, you know that Peter didn’t keep walking on the water. As he looked

around at the wind and the waves, his old way of thinking came crashing back in and

he began to sink in the water. But Peter shows us how loving the Lord with all of our

mind will enable us to do the things we never would have believed possible.

But loving God with all of our mind means that we keep our thoughts in line

with what will honor God. Without God in our life our mind is a dangerous

minefield. We can believe things about ourselves that aren’t true and change the

way we live and act.

Let’s say you believe in your mind that everyone hates you (which is never

the case). What do you do? You shy away from other people. You don’t trust anyone

anymore. You don’t build any relationships and you become more isolated weird

and guarded. Because you believed something false, you have created an

environment that traps you and causes you a painful life.

Let’s look at the first patriarch this morning a guy named Abram. God

chooses Abram to become the father of many nations. He is going to make his name

great. Whoever Abram blesses God will bless and whoever Abram curses, God will

curse. God will give him a land that will be his descendents’ inheritance and those

descendents will be as numerous as the stars.

Why did God choose Abram? Because he was a nobody and a nothing. No

home, no kids, an old man with an old wife and no kids. But as God kept these

promises to Abram, he was going to cause Abram to love him with his mind and so

transform the way this old man thought and believed about himself.

Early on after God gave this promise, there was a famine and so Abram went

to Egypt for a time. But Abram was afraid that they would kill him to get to his wife

Sarai because she was so beautiful (even at the age of 65). He lost the battle of the

mind leaving God out of the equation. As a result, great sickness affected the

Egyptians who had taken Abram’s wife because of God’s promise “whoever you

curse I will curse.”

Later on, when Abram and Sarai thought it was taking too long for God to

fulfill the promise that they were going to have a son, they decided to do it their own

way. Sarai gave her servant to Abram as a 2 nd wife so that when she got pregnant

and had a child, Sarai could adopt him as her own. This was not unheard of in their

culture. And since his wife suggested it, how could Abram refuse? The problem is

that their thought process didn’t involve God. And so they made these choices

without consulting God, whose plan was that Sarai get pregnant miraculously in her

old age and have a son. What resulted was more conflict in their marriage that

involved a third party now that was eventually abused by Sarai.

Finally, when God told them that they were going to have a son 25 years after

the initial promise, Abram, now Abraham, makes the same mistake when being

forced to live in a local town and tells everyone his 90 year old wife is actually his

sister. And the same thing occurs again.

Finally, God gives them their son named Isaac. But not long after, God does

the strangest thing:

Genesis 22:1-18

Some time later, God tested Abraham’s faith. “Abraham!” God called.

“Yes,” he replied. “Here I am.”

2  “Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the

land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains,

which I will show you.”

3  The next morning Abraham got up early. He saddled his donkey and took two of his

servants with him, along with his son, Isaac. Then he chopped wood for a fire for a

burnt offering and set out for the place God had told him about.  4  On the third day of

their journey, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance.  5  “Stay here

with the donkey,” Abraham told the servants. “The boy and I will travel a little

farther. We will worship there, and then we will come right back.”

6  So Abraham placed the wood for the burnt offering on Isaac’s shoulders, while he

himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them walked on together,  7  Isaac

turned to Abraham and said, “Father?”

“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.

“We have the fire and the wood,” the boy said, “but where is the sheep for the burnt

offering?”

8  “God will provide a sheep for the burnt offering, my son,” Abraham answered. And

they both walked on together.

9  When they arrived at the place where God had told him to go, Abraham built an

altar and arranged the wood on it. Then he tied his son, Isaac, and laid him on the

altar on top of the wood.  10  And Abraham picked up the knife to kill his son as a

sacrifice.  11  At that moment the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven,

“Abraham! Abraham!”

“Yes,” Abraham replied. “Here I am!”

12  “Don’t lay a hand on the boy!” the angel said. “Do not hurt him in any way, for now

I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your

only son.”

13  Then Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. So he

took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering in place of his son.  14  Abraham

named the place Yahweh-Yireh (which means “the Lord will provide”). To this day,

people still use that name as a proverb: “On the mountain of the Lord it will be

provided.”

15  Then the angel of the Lord called again to Abraham from heaven.  16  “This is what

the Lord says: Because you have obeyed me and have not withheld even your son,

your only son, I swear by my own name that  17  I will certainly bless you. I will

multiply your descendants [ a ]  beyond number, like the stars in the sky and the sand

on the seashore. Your descendants will conquer the cities of their enemies.  18  And

through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed—all because

you have obeyed me.”

Why would God take Abraham and Sarah through a several decade journey of

faith and then ask them to sacrifice their son? Why would he give them this precious

life and hope for the future to simply have them kill him? It didn’t make sense. Why?

Because God wanted to see if Abraham had grown to a place where he loved God

with all of his mind. (You may have noticed that several of these images I am using

in this presentation are paintings that we have around the building. We have these

images around the church intentionally. Because they are key moments to our faith

where God showed us that perfect love and people of great faith responded in kind.)

In the past, Abraham loved himself in his mind more than God and more than

even his wife. At other times, God was not even a part of his thought process. But

now, God was asking Abraham to trust him with what he valued the most. It didn’t

make sense to Abraham at the time and it doesn’t make sense to us now.

But in the passage we see something beautiful. Isaac, who is to be the

unknowing sacrifice, asks his dad, “Why do we have everything for the sacrifice but

no sacrifice?” Even though Abraham’s answer is cryptic “God will provide,” Isaac

loves and trusts his father in his mind, and so is willing to still follow.

Hebrews 11:17-19 give us some insight into how Abraham was able to love

God with all of his mind in spite of what God was asking him to do:

17  It was by faith that Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice when God was testing him.

Abraham, who had received God’s promises, was ready to sacrifice his only son,

Isaac, 18  even though God had told him, “Isaac is the son through whom your

descendants will be counted.” [c]   19  Abraham reasoned that if Isaac died, God was able

to bring him back to life again. And in a sense, Abraham did receive his son back

from the dead.

Abraham had never seen anyone brought back to life before. But he had seen

someone who was brought to life from a barren womb. His faith had grown to a love

and devotion that he was going to trust God even when it doesn’t make sense.

That is why you need to fill up your mind with the promises of God so you

will know what to do no matter the situation. I have read a Proverb a day for a good

portion of my life and so I don’t struggle through a lot of decisions because I have

placed that godly wisdom of Word in my heart and mind and I can always pull from

it. I know who God is. I know what his promises are. I know that he is faithful and

true. I can look through all of human history and see.

I knew at your age that he had a wife for me. That is why I didn’t spend a lot

of time looking or trying to experience whatever I could with any girl that was

interested in me because in my head and heart I knew I was already hers.

We don’t live to get rich, be famous, have power or position because God’s

Word shows us none of those things satisfy. Even if God blesses you with those

things, it is not the point. He is the point. And the more we pursue him and love him

the more nothing we face will break us because we know that we know that we

know.

Love God with all your mind. Trust his Word. Believe his promises. And you

will live an amazing adventure designed by God.