Tuesday - The Most Important Commandment

We are continuing our study in the life of Christ and we find ourselves tonight in Mark chapter 12. So I invite your attention to Mark's gospel. Let me just remind you where we are. We try to plop ourselves down in the middle of a stream of events. It's kind of hard to do that and so I want to just remind you of where we are. We are on Tuesday of our Lord's last week, the week of the crucifixion and Jesus is teaching in the temple and there is a lot of almost sparring going back and forth between Jesus and the religious leaders in Israel. And so there's a lot going on that way with our Lord. You remember he started teaching and he was first of all questioned about his authority. What authority are you doing this? And Jesus responds with a question that the Pharisees or the chief scribes and the elders could not answer. And then he fires off at them three straight parables designed to unmask their hypocrisy and the motive behind their questions. Following that they kind of regroup and they start coming back at him. All this is happening as he's teaching in the temple on Tuesday. They come back at him with some questions of their own and you recall that first of all the Pharisees and the Herodians, strange bedfellows, if you will, that's a very unlikely combination of mindsets and philosophies and religious and political beliefs. But they team up to come at the Lord Jesus with a question about taxes. And Jesus brilliantly answered that, basically stopped their mouths on that. And then the Sadducees come forward as the Pharisees and the Herodians kind of slink back the Sadducees move in for another question. And they ask him the question about the resurrection. Remember the one bride for seven brothers question. And he again brilliantly answered that and they kind of slink back. And now someone else comes forward to ask a question. So again, we're on Tuesday. All these things are being fired at Jesus as he's teaching in the temple. And we pick up tonight in Mark chapter 12, verse 28, with someone else coming forward to ask him a question. Now in this man that comes forward and it is a man alone who comes forward to ask this question, Jesus finds someone who I would describe him this way. Well, Jesus will describe him this way. He is near the kingdom, but he is not in the kingdom. He is near salvation, but he hasn't made the commitment yet. And so this is an interesting case study, if you will, of where people's hearts are kind of some movement spiritually, but where Jesus says a person needs to be to actually be in the kingdom. So let's see what this man has to say. And we begin with him being near the kingdom as Jesus will, will say in just a few moments. The question that he asks in verse 28 is this, 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. Okay, now let's get the setting here with this question. This is a teacher of the law. In other words, a scribe, same thing, a scribe is a person who studied the Old Testament law in order to teach it to other people. Now a scribe was typically in the party of the Pharisees. They're the ones that took the Old Testament law more seriously. And so a scribe would typically be also a Pharisee, and we'll see a little bit later on that that seems to be the case. But he comes to Jesus with this question. Now, he probably is no friend of Jesus, but Jesus detects in him some movement spiritually that he is not where the other Pharisees are. And this scribe evidently finds himself drawn to Jesus. At least I think that's part of what's going on here. Because the Bible says here, he was listening to the debate that was going on between Jesus and the Pharisees and the Rhodians and the Sadducees. And then he comes in and he notices that Jesus had given them a good answer. So that implies that he is impressed with Jesus' response, that he's in a sense inwardly applauding what Jesus has said. And maybe he's drawn to ask a sincere question. I think that's at least part of what's going on. Matthew's gospel tells us, however, that the Pharisees got back together and this scribe is representing them. So there's, I think there are a couple things going on here. He's a representative of the Pharisees, but I think he offered, I think he volunteered to be the one to represent them and ask this question because I think there's a little bit more going on in his heart than what you find in most of the Pharisees. I think we'll see that as we move through the story. So he is representing the Pharisees according to Matthew's gospel, but he also, I think, has a genuine interest in the question he asks. And the question he asks is this, of all the commandments which is the most important. Now that was the favorite question to debate among the scribes. Again, the scribes studied the Old Testament so they could teach it, and they studied it so meticulously and so carefully that they had catalogued 613 commands in the Mosaic law. And a constant debate among the Pharisees, particularly the scribes, was which of those are heavy and which of those are light. That was their term for which of those commands are really commands that we need to think, I mean, really serious. I mean, these are the top echelon, top level of questions, and which of them are maybe less important secondary issues. You know, that kind of thing. So they debated this constantly and they tried to categorize the 613 commands into ones that were really important and ones that secondary things. So he's asking this question to try to get Jesus to commit, okay, which one's the greatest? Of all the ones of the 613, I'm not asking you just to tell me one of the ones that's a heavy one rather than a light one, tell me which one is at the top of your list. And there's a sense in which there's a test here, but I think also on the part of this man, there's some genuine interest in what Jesus would say. So that's the question. Jesus' response is one of the most well-known statements that he makes in all of the Gospels. You hear this a lot. It's called the greatest commandment, but really it describes what Jesus or what God is looking for. Okay, what's the greatest commandment? Well, Jesus is going to not answer the question by giving, okay, this is number one of the 613. He's not going to categorize things. Jesus is going to cut straight to the heart of the issue and he's going in his answer to show us and show this scribe, what God is looking for. And it is this. It is a heart righteousness. That's what God's looking for. A heart righteousness. Okay, let's see what his response is. Verse 29, the most important one, Jesus answered Jesus is this, here, 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. Now we've heard that over and over again that the greatest commandment, love God, love others, we've heard that so much that I think sometimes we kind of miss the importance of what Jesus is saying. So let's unpack it a little bit. Let's see what's in these verses. Again, Jesus begins in verse 29 by saying this is the most important one. He starts actually quoting Deuteronomy chapter 6 and verse 4, he starts in verse 29 by saying, here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Deuteronomy 6, that's a quote from Deuteronomy 6.4. We'll put Deuteronomy 6.4 on the screen because Jesus says, first of all, what God is looking for in this heart righteousness is loving God. Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. That's Deuteronomy 6.4. So Jesus is going to say, okay, Israel has one God. There is a unity in the God head and you're to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Now, in quoting from Deuteronomy 6.4, he takes this scribe back to what was considered the key passage for Israelites in all the Old Testament. It was called the Shema, which is the first Hebrew word in that verse in Deuteronomy 6.4. But Deuteronomy 6.4, because of all the idolatry in the other nations around Israel, Deuteronomy 6.4 was considered their foundational theological statement. There's one God, one God. We're not polytheists. We don't worship many, many gods. There's one God. And that was considered the key foundational theological statement in Israel's theology. And so it was repeated every morning and every evening in Jewish homes. It was also the verse that opened every synagogue for service. I mean, if we opened every church service with the same verse, you'd kind of get the impression it's a key verse. All right, and that's what it was for the Israelites. That was the key passage opened every synagogue. You may have heard of what's called phylacteries and mizuzas. Do you know what a phylacterie is? Do you remember what that is? Heard something. Okay, forehead, a little box, right? Yeah, that sort of phylacterie was. It was a little box that was strapped to the forehead of very orthodox earnest Jews. And by the way, you can still see that in Israel today. I've seen them at the wailing wall. Orthodox Jews with phylacteries on their forehead, or they would wear them on their arm also. And there was a little box that would contain scripture. And almost inevitably it would contain at least this verse. Now, what was a mizuza? What was that? Do you remember? A box in the home. Where in the home? The door. Okay, on the outside of the door or the gate, indicating that the entrance to the door was guarded by the word of God, this passage should also be found in that little box. I mean, that's how important this was to the Jews. And most of the Jews, every time they would come into their gate or their front door, they would touch that box as a reminder that they worship the true God, the one and only true God. And that was to be a constant reminder to them. So this was a very basic and key passage to the Jews. And so Jesus starts there and no doubt the scribe would be nodding his head at this point and saying, okay, you're starting in the right place. But then Jesus goes on to describe what this loving God is all about. Love the Lord your God. Now let's just take that for a moment. When Jesus says, love the Lord your God, what does what does that mean? What what does love what what does love really mean? That's really a dumb question, isn't it? That that's not really phrased very well. You know, there are different kinds of love. There's physical attraction. There's romantic feeling. There's a friendship kind of love. But that's not the kind of love that Jesus is talking about here. The kind of love, none of those kinds, the kind of love Jesus is talking about is the deepest kind of love, which means to sacrifice yourself for the good of another or to surrender yourself and agenda to the good of another person. The idea of giving of yourself, the idea of surrender of yourself for what is best for another, it's the word agape. So that's the strongest Greek word or concept of love. It means to surrender yourself for the good of another person, to give of yourself for the good of another person. So when it means to love God that way, what does that mean? Surrender your life? Yes. What else would you think would be included? We're involved in that. Worship, he's above all. It's obviously more than just have some nice feelings about God. Oh, I love you. Have good feelings about God. When Jesus says love God, he's talking about surrender yourself to him. He's not talking about just recognizing who he is. He's talking about surrendering your whole life. Everything you are to him so that he is first. Put the other person first is the idea of agape love. And so to love God that way means you surrender your whole life to him so that he is preeminent. He is first in your life. But Jesus doesn't stop with just the word love. He says, and this is also a quote from Deuteronomy 6. So he's quoting Moses here, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. Now the first three of those kind of overlap, heart, soul, and mind. We don't have the time to get into this, but if you do a study of the biblical doctrine of man and the different components of man, you'll find that man is made basically of two parts, the material part, the body, and the immaterial part. What is the real us on the inside? The immaterial part, many people think, is divided into two, soul and spirit, but the Bible has a lot of other words. The Bible talks about mind, conscience, will, emotion, you know, those kinds of things. So those words a lot of times overlap. In fact, both in the Old Testament and New Testament, soul and spirit are used interchangeably. So in spite of what Bill Godthard says, they are not nicely divided. So basically what Jesus is saying is love God with everything in you, heart, soul, mind, all of that has to do with the inside, who you are on the inside, are on the inside really. And the idea basically is with your intellect, emotion, and will. Those are the three components of human personality, and these words refer to the inside, intellect, emotion, and will. Mind, emotion, and will. Okay, so we are to love God with all of our mind, emotion, and will, and then we are to loving with all of our strength. That is the outer manifestation, the actions, the influence that we have, the words we speak, those kinds of things that are out there, visible. Alright, let's think about that for a moment. What does it mean to love God with all your mind? What does that mean? Watch what we put in it. Okay, remember the idea of surrender, our mind should be surrendered to the Lord. Okay, watch what we put in it. Good, good description of that. What else could it mean? We learn, okay, we learn of Him. Not only watch what we put in it, but we have not put bad stuff in it, but put good stuff in it. Get the meat of the word in it. You know, learn more about Him and who He is and what He expects of us. Yeah, that's a part of loving Him with all of our mind. What else? Focus and concentration. Paul said it in 2nd Corinthians 10 bringing every thought into captivity to Christ. Yeah, okay, what else? There's a whole whole area that we haven't touched on yet, and it's something that many believers don't really think about. And that is developing our minds, using all that we have that God's given us for His glory. Developing our thinking capacity, being involved in things that will help us to think deeply and to develop all that God's given us, surrender everything we have to Him. I think loving the Lord with all of your mind includes that as well. It includes developing your capacity to think and grow and mentally because God gave you your mind, and He wants you to use it well. Our ability to think ought to be developed fully, but also I think in humility and in submission to Him, surrender to Him. Okay, so we don't become proud of knowledge, but we keep it in its proper perspective. But to grow in our intellectual capacity, if we keep that surrender to Him, that's a part of loving Him with all of our mind. Okay, so loving with all of our mind, I think we've touched on a lot of things there. I think it also may have to do with attitudes. You know, that's a part of our mind, our attitudes, our whole approach to life, our whole way of thinking about life, that our approach to life be biblical, mindset, a lot of things involved in loving Him with all of our mind. What about emotion? What does it mean to love God with all of our emotion? Okay, I love that. In the old days, they loved you with all their liver. That's right. That's exactly right. You know, the Bible talks about having tender compassion, bowels of mercies and that kind of thing. And in Bible times, the seed of the emotion was in the gut. It was not what we think of as the heart, but it was the gut. And so, yeah, love you with all of our liver, or I love you with both of my kidneys, you know, that kind of thing. That was the idea in Bible times. What do you think? What else do you think it means to love the Lord with all of our emotion? Don't be restrained. Okay. All right. I think it can include that. I think sometimes we are a little afraid of expressing emotionally how we feel about the Lord, the joy that we have because of what he's done for us, what he means to us. A passion? Yeah. Okay. So expressing joy, expressing a passion for souls and for what moves the heart of God, ought to move our hearts for sure. So yes, the positive side, certainly, what we've talked about, that we should experience fully the joy of the Lord. And I don't know about you, but I don't practice that very well. But to experience fully the joy of the Lord, the joy of being his child, of being in his family and being a part of what he's doing on this earth, you know, that ought to bring us great joy. How much time do we waste, you know, being frustrated and upset and irritated and grittin' our teeth and all that when we ought to be loving him with all of our emotion, with all of our joy. But there's another side of it too. There's another side to our emotions, isn't there? What about pain? What about suffering and heartache? Those are very real emotions, right? How do you love God with all those emotions? You trust, okay? Trust that he does what's best. Yes, this life is temporary and there are heartaches that we will, God will see us through. I think one of the things that a lot of Christians, a lot of believers, I don't want to say it, get wrong, is we want to act like there are no negative emotions. There is no pain in suffering. We're always supposed to be smiling and happy all the time. But to love God with all of our emotion, I think, means to be honest about the painful emotions, to be honest with them and bring them to the Lord, not to deny them, not try to bury them, not try to shove them down, not to try to act like they're not there, but to be honest about them. Lord, I'm hurting right now. This is painful. I'm feeling such sorrow or I'm feeling such anger. But the proper way to love him with all those emotions is to bring those to him. Remember the idea of surrender. Surrender those to him. So yes, I think we can love God even with all those emotions. Okay, loving God with all our mind, emotion, will. What does it mean to love God with all your will? Love the truth. We make that truth of past love. We make that truth. We bring them to our will. Okay, all right, our will is the ability to choose, isn't it? Decide and you're exactly right, Donna, when we love him with all of our will, we make a choice. We decide to obey him, to live for him. Okay, anything else there? Loving him with all of our will. Work at it because it's not easy. That is very true. Denying self. Yes. Exactly. And it's a great point, Marty, because so often our will, because of our sinful nature, pulls us to make decisions in the wrong direction, doesn't it? And we are tempted to make wrong decisions because of our sinful nature. So when we realize we have to deny what our sinful nature is telling us, deny self in that way. And direct our will toward the will of God toward his word. Yeah, that's a great, great way to put it. Okay, our will not only involves the capacity to choose, however, our will also is rooted in deeper motivations of our heart and our spirit. So we ought to be praying not only that God will help me to make the right choices in life, but those choices will come from the right motives. And from the very depths, from the root of our choices, the choices I do make will also be motivated by a pure heart. In other words, that I'll have the right motives because you know, you can make right choices and do it for all the wrong reasons, can't you? You can make good choices and do it to be seen of others, do it to be recognized, do it to get glory for yourself. So choices and the will, loving God with all your will, goes deeper than just doing the right things, making the right choices. All that's extremely important. It also includes making those choices from the right motive, from the right reason. Okay, so love God with all your mind, emotion, will and strength. What does it mean to love God with all your strength? All your being, okay? Enthusiasm, all right? Even when it's not, even when it's not easy, yeah. Put the effort in to obey the Lord and to live for Him. Okay? Loving Him with all your strength, that's good. It would include all of our actions, wouldn't it? All of our efforts, our energy, whatever we give our energy toward, whatever we direct our efforts toward, would be where our strength is going. And so loving Him with all of our strength means every action, every effort that we give forth. And all that's kind of tied to mind, emotion and will obviously, but that's the outworking of it to love Him with all of our deeds, all of our actions and our influence on others and our words, those things that are visible, our strength. Okay? I think we've explored that pretty well. What it means to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Jesus, Jesus basically said that's the most important commandment that summarizes a lot of things. But then notice, He said the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. If love means to give of yourself sacrificially for the good of another person, then what He's saying is treat other people that way. Give of yourself surrender your own agenda to what is best for others. And you know, when you think about love in a family, for husband or wife, for children, for parents, really that's what it is. It's denying yourself to do what's best for them. That's the ultimate kind of love. But the same thing is true with fellow believers in the body of Christ with literal neighbors that we would think of that maybe live in our neighborhood that maybe friends or associates or anyone who has a need, right? Remember what Jesus told the story of the good Samaritan to answer the question about who is my neighbor? Who is my neighbor? Anybody that I encounter that has a need that I can help meet? Then I'm to love them in that way. That's loving your neighbor. So love your neighbor as yourself. No commandment greater than these. And really, all of God's commands, at least the 10 commandments are summarized in those two, aren't they? Love God takes care of the first four. Love your neighbor takes care of the next six. And that's how they're divided up. The first four have to do with God. Second, six have to do with with relationships with others. So what God is looking for is a heart-righteousness loving God, loving your neighbor. Anything else there before we move on, we're going to have to move quickly. I'm going to have to turn the clock sideways a little bit. Okay. Jesus has said that's what God is looking for, a heart-righteousness, but our greatest danger is a head knowledge. Not a heart-righteousness, a head knowledge. That's our greatest danger. And this man that has come to Jesus illustrates it perfectly. Now notice what is said. Verse 32, well said teacher, the man replied. Well said basically as an exclamation, meaning great answer. So wow, Lord, great answer. Okay. Now notice what he says next. You are right in saying that God is one. There is no other but him to love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength, to love your neighbors yourself is more important than all bird offerings and sacrifices. Okay. When this man says to Jesus, you are right. Basically he's saying, I agree. I agree with you that loving God and loving others is more important than religious observances and rituals. Now does that sound like a Pharisee to you? It doesn't really sound like a Pharisee does it. Doesn't really sound like the typical Pharisee line. But this man evidently understands a little better than most of the scribes and Pharisees. What true relationship with God is about. At least he's on the edge of it. He's getting somewhere with it. He's making some progress. And so notice what Jesus says to him. Basically he says this, you're not far. You're not far. Verse 34, when Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, you are not far from the kingdom of God. Now that is a fascinating expression. You are not far from the kingdom of God. Jesus obviously was pleased with his answer, wasn't he? I think Jesus knew and saw that this man was not touting the normal Pharisee line. He was not towing the party line. He was thinking for himself. And he had come to some kind of an understanding that there's something more than just going through the religious rituals, bringing the right sacrifices and keeping the mosaic law and doing the right things. There's something more than that. This man seems to have grasped that. That the heart relationship is more important than the outward religious rituals. He's moved further than most of the Pharisees had. At least he's being honest with what the Bible really teaches. And Jesus recognizes that. But this is also, it's not only a statement of commendation to this man, it's also a warning. So I want us to see the warning in these words. Because the warning is very important for us to get. You are not far from the kingdom of God, meaning you're close, but you're still outside the kingdom. You're not far from it, but you're not in yet. And you know what? That can be a very dangerous place to be. Being almost there is not enough for salvation. Understanding the right truth is not enough for salvation. Now let me say it very plainly in our terms. Here's what Jesus is saying. It is possible to be within an inch of God's kingdom or of salvation and miss it completely. It's possible to have all the hidden knowledge and never accept it personally in your heart. Jesus is saying it's possible to grow up in church and have godly parents, but to have never personally come to a saving knowledge of Christ. It's possible to get real close and still be outside. It is possible to study theology, to know the original languages, to be much smarter than the preacher and still be lost. It is possible to do that and be the preacher and still be lost. It's possible to have a lot of hidden knowledge and to know what's right, to know all the answers and be lost. See this guy knows he knows that he's had a grise with Jesus. He says, oh yeah, I agree with you. You've answered wisely. It's more important to love God and to love others than to bring all the right sacrifices. But Jesus says, you're not in yet. I mean, you've got the right knowledge, but you haven't made that heart commitment yet to what you know. And so you're an inch from the kingdom. You're near, but you're not in. It is possible to hear over and over and over again the gospel of God's grace and still be trying to work your way to heaven. Be trying to please God by the things you do or the things you don't do. It is possible to become hardened to the truth because you've heard it so many times and you may be able to spout off the verses and answer the right questions and yet be far from God as far as your heart is concerned. Near in your mind, far in your heart. That's what Jesus is saying and it is very a very important warning for us today, especially when we have so much Bible knowledge to realize that that does not equate to salvation. Okay, it is the heart commitment to Christ. So this man was near. He's not far away, but he's not there yet. He's not there yet. Well, what does it mean to be in God's kingdom? There's too much here to get into in verses 35 to 37 because Jesus, Jesus basically is going to talk about. He's going to address another question. By the way, at the end of verse 34, it says, and from then on no one dared ask him any more questions. Okay, they've been firing questions at him and he's answered everyone so brilliantly that their mouths are shut. They don't have any more questions. But Jesus is not done yet. So Jesus is going to ask a question and this is, oh, I wish we had time to do it tonight because we're going to lose some of the force of it by not tying it with what's just been done. What what Jesus basically is going to do is he's going to show them the difference between near the kingdom and being in the kingdom, near salvation and really having grasped it. And it's all about an understanding of who Jesus is and what he's done. And Jesus is going to ask a question to force them to recognize who he is and they know they know the answer from the Old Testament and they won't respond. And the crowd loves it. The Bible says the crowd delighted in his teaching because they could see he was, he got the Pharisees squirming. Well, next time we won't have a service next Wednesday night. But next time we will, we'll come back to this and we'll try to paint the context again. But I want you to really see what Jesus does with this question. It is a beautifully, beautifully designed question to get them to, to be able to see and they have to admit that Jesus is both God and man. And he paints them into that corner with the masterful use of the Old Testament. They have to admit who he is, but they're not willing to do it so they don't answer. Unbelievable the way Jesus does this. So, but but he'll talk about what it means to actually be in the kingdom. Okay, let's, let's close. Father, thank you for our Lord and his masterful understanding of your word, but also his clear, clear teaching that it is not just a knowledge of your word like the scribes that get you into his kingdom. It is a personal appropriation of that knowledge in your heart to trust what you know. Father, I pray that you would help us not to make the mistake of having a head knowledge and being satisfied with that. But to translate that into a heart surrender to you, to really love you with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. And then to live in such a way that we demonstrate that same surrender, putting others first, loving others. I pray, Father, that you would help us to live out what Jesus teaches. Help me to do that better tomorrow Lord. Help me to do it better this week by your grace, by your spirit's power. Help us all to love you more and love others more. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.