The Greatest Commandments - Mark 12:28-35
Notes
Transcript
How long can you balance on one foot.
Some of you will do better than others. But even the best of us will only survive several minutes at the most.
Well, did you know that the world record for standing on one foot is 76 hours and 40 minutes! That’s over three days!
It’s hard enough to stay awake that long, not to mention maintain balance that long.
The gentleman who holds the record also hold 69 other interesting records, like moon walking nearly 50 kilometers in 24 hrs (that’s around 31 miles), and traveling over 140 miles up and down escalators for nearly 146 hours straight (about 6 days), and 66 other records of similar feats.
He has been a bit of a professional record breaker, and yet, when interviewed about his record for standing on one foot, he said “If they paid me a million dollars I would not do it again” and “it was very, very painful”
Three days on one foot.
I doubt anyone here would last three hours, and most of us would be hard pressed to do three minutes!
But what if I told you I could teach you all the Law of God while you were standing on one foot, for however long you could manage it?
There once was a Rabbi by the name of Hillel. He was a very influential Rabbi who died when Jesus was around the age of 15 years old. Those who followed him were called the “house of Hillel” and he developed a school of thought that sparked debates about interpretations of the law.
There is an exchange preserved for us between Hillel and a gentile man who came to Hillel with a bit of a mocking challenge:
“Make me a proselyte (a convert to Judaism) on condition that you teach me the whole law while I stand on one foot” which was to say “I’ll convert if you can teach me everything I need to know before I loose my balance”
Even if this guy was the world record holder, teaching someone the entire Bible in three days cannot be done, can it? That’s essentially what this man believed. Because you cannot teach me the law in this way, I guess I’ll never be a convert!
But Hillel responded:
“Do not do to your neighbor what is hateful to you: This is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary”
Jesus would eventually give us the golden rule which is essentially the positive version of Hillel’s comment in Matt 7:12
“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
All of the Bible’s commands can be summarized in this way.
Now, what does this look like? What actions are loving? What things might seem loving but are unloving?
Hillel would say, well that’s why we have the rest of the law. To help us figure out all those questions.
In our text today we have a similar distillation of the Law.
Jesus has been duking it out in a battle of wits with the religious leaders and has been absolutely mopping the floor with them.
They try to trap him with a question about taxes.
They try to corner him with a question about the resurrection.
Here we have something a little bit different.
This scribe does not seem to be attempting to trick Jesus. He seems to have a genuine interest in learning from the Lord.
Not everyone asking questions is a scoffing mocker. Some really want to learn.
And from Jesus we will learn. If you wanted to sum up the entire Bible. If you wanted to boil everything down. It would all come down to these two commands. What should be the two greatest priorities in a Christian’s life?
Love God. Love Others.
Let’s read the text.
And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘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.” And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.
I want to highlight the honesty of the of Scribe.
He comes and after hearing the previous conversations and that Jesus has answered well, he decides that he is going to ask him a question.
This scribe is functions as a refreshing foil to the other religious leaders.
They other groups, all they want to do is bring Jesus down, to trap him, to trick him into saying something they could use again him.
This scribe. He wants to learn. He’s got one shot to ask Jesus whatever he wants, and he asks which of all of God’s commandments is the most important.
Now the ESV has translated that phrase somewhat idiomatically. Literally the question “which commandant is first of all”
But we know that he isn’t asking what was the first commandment given. That would simply be an easy trivia question.
No, this is a question about supremacy. Which commandant mas the first place. Which is has the foremost priority.
You can really never go wrong when asking questions about priorities.
It is also always beneficial to ask what should my priorities be.
That is the question the scribe asks.
And Jesus is going to give not just the first priority commandment, but the second as well. Priorities 1 and 2.
The first?
Priority #1: Love God.
Priority #1: Love God.
Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy 6:4–5 with this text.
I’d like to take us back there. Turn in your Bible back to Deut chapter 6.
Just to set a little bit of context. Do you remember when Deuteronomy takes place the in chronology of the story of the people of Isreal?
The people were slaves in Egypt, God rescued them from there and brought them out of Egypt. He took them to mount Sinai where he gave them his law.
He brought them to the brink of the promised land to bring them in, but they feared the inhabitants of the land more than they feared God so they refused to go in.
As a consequence, they ended up wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. Now the 40 are complete and once again God has brought them to the edge of the promised land. They are about to enter.
Deuteronomy is a book whose title literally means “Second Law”
This is Moses reviewing the law with the people to remind them of what God expects from them.
“Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the rules—that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.
Here’s what you need to do, Israel. This is what needs to happen.
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
This is the greatest commandment. This is the foremost commandment. This commandment should receive the top priority.
Why? Of all things that ought to be done, why should we love God?
We should love God because He is worthy of our love.
We should love God because who he is
He is the creator.
He is the only fully independent being
He is the most glorious and most magnificent
There are some people you have a natural love for simply because of who they are. Your parents, your children, etc. How much more should that be true about God?
We should love God because of what he has done.
He has made us
He has given us life and breath
He has sent Christ to save us.
He sustains us even now.
When we see the kindness of others toward us, our natural response is that of love. How much more should that be true about God?
God is worthy of our love and devotion.
This should be our top priority.
But what does it look like to love God?
First,
To Love God is to Know Him
To Love God is to Know Him
The passage that Jesus quotes begins with “The Lord our God, the Lord is one”
He is Lord. That is the covenant name of God. Yahweh. Adoni. I am who I am. The self-existing one.
He is God. He is the supreme being. The creator and sustainer of all things.
He is One. There are not many gods. There is but one true God.
How do we get to know him? We study the Scriptures. What he has communicated to us.
Scripture reveals so many things about our God. The more you learn, the more we should respond with love for Him.
To love God is to know him.
Second,
To Love God is to Obey Him.
To Love God is to Obey Him.
Jesus said to love God with all your heart soul mind and strength.
Many people have attempted to break down these four terms. Heart, soul, mind and strength.
The heart is the seat of the affections.
The soul is the core of our being
The mind is our intellect
Our strength is our physical body.
There is truth to that. It may be helpful to think in those terms. Do I love God such that my affections are drawn to him?
Do I love God with how I use my mind and what I choose to dwell on in my mind?
Is my behavior such that it demonstrates the love of God?
What is being communicated is certainly that we should love God with every aspect of our being, but the emphasis is on our whole being.
Everything that we are, all that makes you, you, all of it should directed in love of God.
This will impact your thinking. This will impact your affections. This will impact your decision making. This will impact every area of life.
And this most profoundly will affect how we relate to his commands.
Jesus said, in John 14:15 ““If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
John wrote in 1 John 5:3 “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.”
If God is everything that we just said, and if he has done everything that we have just said he has done, then keeping his commandments is the thing that makes the most sense as we pursue loving him.
Now, I remember when I first really considered the words of Jesus in John 14 when he said “if you love me, you will keep my commandments”
I had a very negative reaction to that because just a few weeks before looking at that passage as a teenager, I had just witnessed someone I had just met use a phrase like this to his girlfriend to manipulate her into doing what he wanted. He wanted her to bring him something, and she didn’t want to do it so he said “hey. if you loved me you would do that for me”
Which may or may not be true, depending on the context.
But what he failed to realize is that she could turn the situation right around by saying “hey, if you loved me, you wouldn’t be trying to manipulate my behavior in this way”
But I had just watched him do that, and then I read this passage a few weeks later and I was scratching my head. Why is it manipulative for this guy to say that, but not manipulative for Jesus?
We just talked about how God is worthy. And if he is worthy, then our love for him would be expressed in the manner that he commands. He is God, after all! but consider this:
Obedience to God shows him honor.
Obedience to God demonstrates our dependance on Him.
Obedience to God reveals that he is the supreme being worthy of our worship.
And honoring God and demonstrating his supremacy is a very legitimate way to express our love for the one who has created us.
Second, there can be truth to the conversations about human relationships that if you love someone it would show up in certain ways.
If a husband loves his wife, it should be revealed in how he interacts with her, how he cares for her, how he provides for her.
If a wife loves her husband, it should be evident in how she interacts with him, how she helps him, and respects him.
HOWEVER. In our human relationships, using that line “if you love me you would do this for me” as a weapon to get what you want can be very selfish and unloving itself. It would be more productive to have that conversation with a pastor or counselor.
But for God, who cannot be unrighteously selfish, it is only good and right and appropriate to set up this standard.
So love for God is reveled in how we live, how we live in obedience to him.
And how do we know what is right? How do we know if we are in obedience?
God tells us. In fact, in the original context of Deut, Moses was directing the people to have the Word of God constantly before them.
Deuteronomy 6:6–9 “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
The word of God should always be before you, so that you can live in obedience to it.
If you do not know the Word of God, you will not know the God of the Word and you will not know what it is that he desires from you.
But the desire to live in obedience to God stems out of this primary command: Love God with everything that you are.
That is to be our #1 priority in life.
Practically
This means you make time with God a priority. Prayer. Scripture reading.
This means you make gathering for corporate worship a priority.
Love God.
Priority #2: Love Others.
Priority #2: Love Others.
Verse 31.
The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Jesus quoted Leviticus in this text. I don’t know where you’re at with your Bible reading plan so far this year, but in February many plans are in Leviticus and lots of people fall off the plan around this time.
Here Jesus quotes from Leviticus. Perhaps Leviticus is worth the time investment for you after all.
Before we look at Leviticus, I just want to note some passages of 1 John once again.
John wrote in 1 John 4:7–8 “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
and then in verse 11. 1 John 4:11 “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
and then down in verse 20 1 John 4:20–21 “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
John connects the love of God to love of one another. You cannot say you love God while treating other human beings that God has made in His image like garbage!
If you say you love God, you will also love people.
But what does it look like to love others?
To Love Others to Show Deference
To Love Others to Show Deference
There are various places we could turn to that demonstrates that loving others means you are considering their needs and that you have a willingness to defer to their needs over your own.
To Love Others is to Serve Them
To Love Others is to Serve Them
Some have pointed out that this is something we cannot even do on our own. And that is true. We need the Holy Spirit to be at work within us to work this out.
And Yet! We are called to pursue these things! We are commanded to love God and neighbor!