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The Greatest Commandment
Introduction- Hinge Object Lesson
Good morning!
I am needing some help to get us started this morning, so I would like for all of the kids to come up here and have a seat facing me in this square.
[Kids come up.
Pull out covered cabinet and box of hinges.]
Okay, kids.
I have some questions for you, and if you think you know the answer to one of my questions, I want you to raise your hand so that I can bring the microphone to you so everyone can hear your answer.
Got it?
What is a commandment?
Can you name any commandments?
What commandment is the most important one for us to follow?
Did you know that in the Bible, there were a lot of men who knew allllllll the commandments.
In fact, they knew and followed way more than 10… they knew and followed 613 commandments!
That’s a LOT of commandments!
Maybe it’s even too many commandments… Can you imagine if you had 613 rules to follow in your house?
That would be really confusing!
So one of the men who knew alllllll the commandments came to Jesus and asked him which one was the most important one.
29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’
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Jesus said that loving God with all that is in us is the most important commandment EVER.
Everything in the whole entire Bible is about this most important commandment, and loving God is a big part of what makes us Christians, followers of Jesus.
Y’all have been so good up here that I want to give you something.
[Give each kid a hinge or pass one around].
Grown-ups, don’t give the kids any help on this, but I have given them each one of these contraptions.
Kids, raise your hand if you think you know what these things are.
[Get some of their answers].
It’s a hinge!
Very good!
What does a hinge do??? [Get their answers.]
Right.
A hinge holds a door up and allows it to swing open and closed.
It is the thing that makes a door a door.
If there’s not a hinge, a door is just a piece of wood, right?
Wait a minute.
That kind of reminds me of the greatest commandment to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
It’s like a hinge, and we are like the door.
Loving God, our hinge, is what makes us Christians, just like the hinge makes a door a door.
So how many hinges does a door need in order to open and close?
[Get answers.]
I have something to show you.
Here is a cabinet door that is attached with just one hinge.
Do you think it will open and close properly?
[Demonstrate].
So wait a minute.
Jesus said the most important commandment was to love God.
He said that was the hinge!
Is there something else I’m missing?
Let’s see what else Jesus said.
29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’
31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
There is no commandment greater than these.”
()
So Jesus added a SECOND HINGE!
What was it?
Do you think 2 hinges is enough to make the door work right?
Let’s see.
[Show second door].
You were right!
Jesus said that the most important thing is kind of two things: love God and love people!
Everything in our lives as followers of Jesus hinges on these two things, and does it work if we just have one?
Nope!
Thank you, kids!
I’ll take your hinges back, and you can go with Miss Shelly to Children’s Church.
Familiarity of Passage
Okay, grown-ups.
Was your mind just blown by that illustration?
I would be really surprised if it were, and I know that every illustration breaks down at some point, so don’t over-analyze my theology.
My point is that this passage is sooooo familiar to us, right?
Most of us could probably quote it because we’ve read it and heard it a million times.
We understand what it means.
We know that as believers we love God and we love our neighbors.
We even know who our neighbors are because we are equally familiar with the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
And this has been the great challenge and frustration for me in preaching from this text because we already know this.
But here’s another familiar saying--familiarity breeds contempt (or, at least, indifference).
“I know that.
I do that.
Done.
Moving right along.”
The power for us in this passage today will be in hearing it with new ears while taking an honest look at our lives.
So let’s start with the context of this passage in Mark’s gospel.
Jesus is moving purposefully toward Jerusalem and toward his death.
In , we have the Palm Sunday Triumphal Entry, where people are waving their palm branches and hailing Jesus as Messiah.
And this intensifies the conflict between Jesus and the Jewish religious leaders.
So Mark tells this series of stories that depict the Jewish religious leaders challenging Jesus and the conflict continuing to grow.
The groups of religious leaders come, one after another, and throw out these highly debated theological questions to Jesus to see what he says and whose side he is on.
First they question his authority.
Then they ask him about whether or not they should pay taxes to Caesar.
Then they ask him about marriage at the resurrection.
And these religious leaders are not painted in a good light at all.
They are portrayed as conniving, trying to trick Jesus or back him into a corner.
Their motives for approaching him are to discredit him as a teacher and even find legal grounds to prosecute him.
But every time, Jesus comes back with some amazing answer that puts them all in their place and then he really calls them on the carpet about their hypocrisy.
Uniqueness of Passage
The encounter we’re looking at today is the last in that series of stories, and it is markedly different.
The scripture says that 28 ”One of the teachers of the law came and heard them [Jesus and the religious leaders] debating.
Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
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He approaches Jesus favorably, honestly, without the ulterior motives that drove his colleagues.
He really seems to want to learn from Jesus, which was not the case for the other religious leaders.
And he positively affirms Jesus’s answer to his question.
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