Mark 12:28-13:3 (January 29, 2023)

The Greatest Commandment and the Shema

Well if you have your Bibles, you can turn to Mark chapter 12. Mark chapter 12. We're going to be in verses, starting in verse 28 and we'll go through chapter 13 verse 2 this morning. So Mark 12, 28 through 13 to, I want to begin by reading the first section there, verses 28 to 34, and then we'll pick up with the other sections as we go along.

But let's read beginning in Mark 12, 28. And this is the word of the Lord to us this morning. 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 that there is no other besides him.

And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding, with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself is much more than all the 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. And then this is the Lord's word to us. We see here that once again, Jesus is being addressed, he's being questioned, he's being challenged.

We saw this last week in three different challenges. Now it's not clear whether this scribe is coming to try to trap him like the ones we saw last week. He doesn't seem to be antagonistic like the Sadducees were, or the Pharisees were.

He saw that Jesus answered the Sadducees well, and so he asked his own question. Which of the commandments is the most important of all? Now this could be a loaded question, right? I mean, when all of God's commands are perfect, how do you choose which one's the most important?

And remember, it's a pretty tense situation in Jerusalem during this week. Everybody's a little bit high-strung, everybody's on high alert, they keep trying to trap Jesus. And so what will his answer reveal?

What will his answer show? Will it show some imbalance in his theology and in his belief systems? If he chooses one commandment over others, will it reveal some imbalance? Or by choosing one commandment over the others, will he target one specific group or another?

We've seen the Pharisees and the Herodians and the scribes and the Sadducees, these different factions. Will he tip the balance of power in Jerusalem with his answer? Will he step on anyone's toes and get himself in trouble?

So what's at stake here? The answer, of course, is no. Because again, Jesus gives an answer dripping with wisdom, one that doesn't leave the door open for his opponents to manipulate his answer against him.

What does he do? He quotes from the Shema, from Deuteronomy chapter 6, and says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Every Israelite knew the Shema. It was their creed. They recited it morning and evening. It hung on the door. And the devout, they wore it on their foreheads and on their wrists in a little prayer box.

They knew the Shema. And so, Jesus quotes that to them. And by referring to heart and soul and mind and strength, he shows that this commandment is requiring people to be totally devoted to God in all of their being.

And he says, The second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. And so, by this answer, he then connects love for God and love for people. They can't be separated. Because if you love God, you're going to love those who are made in his image.

We see this in 1 John 4, 21. Whoever loves God must also love his brother. They're connected. And so, we see the brilliance of Jesus' answer here, because he rightly ranks and prioritizes.

The commandments of God.

Out of 613 commandments in the Old Testament, Jesus brings love for God and love for those made in God's image to the forefront. But he does it in such a way that it includes all of the commandments. You see, he answers this question in such a way that he rightly prioritizes the commandments of God and does it in such a way that he doesn't exclude any of them.

Here's what I mean. All the commandments of God are included in these two. Love God and love people is a summary of the entire law. The great commandment acknowledged by Jesus here, love the Lord your God and love your neighbor, we can see it's a summary of the ten commandments.

You see, the first four commandments of the ten, often called the first table of the law, well, these have to do with our love for God. No other gods before me, no use of images in worship, don't take the Lord's name in vain, keep the Sabbath holy.

These are vertically related commandments that have to do with our relationship to God.

And how we love God.

So we have a summary of the first table of the ten commandments in the commandment to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, mind. And then the next six commandments of the ten, it's often called the second table of the law.

Well, this has to do with how we relate with other people, has to do with how we love our neighbors as ourself. Honor your father and mother, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not covet.

Have to do with our relationships, horizontal relationships with other people. And so the great commandment, love God and love people, love neighbor, we see it's kind of refracted out into the ten commandments, summarizing them.

And if you keep reading your Bible, what you'll see is that the ten commandments are then refracted out into more specific commandments. And so it's like a, you know, Russian nesting dolls, see them a lot of times at Christmas.

I want you to picture like a big Santa Russian nesting doll. And you can have the one big doll sitting there or you can open it up and start taking out more and keep taking them out and keep taking them out until you have a whole table full of them, right?

This is like the commandments, the great commandment is like the one big one and then you get the specific commandments throughout the scriptures, like all the little ones, but you can put all that back together and just summarize it.

Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself. God's law can be expressed in this similar way. You can state the summary or you can state the specifics. The old catechisms were really good at teaching the commandments of God this way.

They were really good at taking and showing what the large commandment is and then what are all the specific applications and so I want to demonstrate that with an example from questions 118 through 121 of one of the old catechisms, an Orthodox catechism.

And I want you to see just how the law unfolds. And so the first question there is, what is the sixth commandment? And the answer the catechism gives is, you shall do no murder. The next question, what does God require of you in the sixth commandment?

And the answer is that neither in thought nor in gesture, much less in deed, I reproach or hate or harm or kill my neighbor either by myself or by another and that I cast away all desire of revenge. Furthermore, that I do not hurt myself or knowingly cast myself into any danger, God has armed the magistrate with a sword as a deterrent to murder.

You see how it kind of unfolds a little bit. It's not just do not murder, but it's also even going to your desire for revenge is included in that commandment. The catechism goes on, but does this commandment forbid murder only?

No.

In forbidding murder, God further teaches that he hates the root, namely anger, envy, hatred, and desire for revenge, accounting them all as murder. We see Jesus teaching in accordance with this in the Sermon on the Mount.

It's not just the physical act of murder, but it's also our anger, our envy that keeps unfolding.

One more.

Does this commandment only require we harm no one?

No.

When God condemns anger, envy, and hatred, he requires that we love our neighbor as ourselves. We must use tenderness, courtesy, patience, and mercy towards him. We must also protect him from whatever may be hurtful to him as much as we are able.

Indeed, we must be so effective in mind that we do not hesitate to do good even to our.

Enemies.

Do you see the nesting doll at work here? How that bound up in the one commandment, do not murder, is also commandments against hatred and envy and revenge, and also requirements for tenderness and patience and mercy.

You see, the one big commandment is refracted out into specific ones so that we see a brilliant answer from Jesus when he summarizes the entire law in these two commandments. He answers in a way that rightly ranks and prioritizes the commandments of God, but he does it in such a way that he excludes none of them, for all of them are summarized and included in the great commandment.

We also learn from this answer that love for God cannot be separated from obedience to.

God.

That love for God and obedience to God go together. That is, to love God is to keep his word. We demonstrate our love by our obedience, or you might say it like this, our love spills out into obedience in our lives.

Love for God and obedience to God go together. So Jesus gives a brilliant answer and the scribe agrees with this answer.

He says, you are right, teacher.

You have truly said. He agrees with him. And then he even adds to what Jesus says and notes that obedience to the commandments is greater than sacrifice. He says, it's much more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.

And Jesus commends him for his wise answer, telling him, you are not far from the kingdom.

Of God.

Now, on the one hand, this is a compliment. This is much better than he told the Sadducees, right? He was kind of abrupt with the Sadducees we saw last week. But on the other hand, being near the kingdom is not the same as being in the kingdom.

So let's look a little bit further at this interaction between Jesus and the scribe. You may remember back in chapter 10 that the Pharisees had challenged Jesus with a question.

About marriage.

And then right after that, Mark tells the story of the rich young ruler who inquired of Jesus about eternal life. And they too had a discussion about the commandments of God to which the young man agreed.

But he went away from Jesus sorrowful because he was unwilling to part with his great material wealth. And Jesus remarked about the difficulty it is for those who have wealth to enter the.

Kingdom of God.

Now, we skip ahead back to our chapter in Mark 12. And again, Jesus gets a question about marriage. We saw that last week. He gets it from the Sadducees this time. And again, on the heels of that, Jesus is questioned by a man, this time a scribe rather.

Than the rich young ruler.

And again, they discuss the commandments of God. And again, the man is favorable to what Jesus says. And again, the man has not yet entered the kingdom of God. He is near, but he's not in. So what accounts for that?

The rich young ruler had great material wealth, and he would not part with it. Is it possible that the scribe who had great wealth of spiritual and theological knowledge and pedigree, that he was not yet willing to part with that to follow Jesus?

Jesus the Son of David and the Son of God

Let's keep reading verses 35 through 37 and see if we can get to an answer to this. God's Word says,. And as Jesus taught in the temple, he said, How can the scribe say that the Christ is the son of David?

David himself and the Holy Spirit declared, The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet. David himself calls him Lord, so how is he his son? And the great throng heard him gladly.

Now, it's Jesus' turn to ask a question. If the Christ, if the Messiah is the son of David as the scribes say, then why does David himself call the Christ Lord? He quoted from Psalm 110 verse 1, where David calls the Messiah Lord.

And so the point Jesus is making is that the Messiah, the Christ, is not just a son of David genealogically. He's also the son of God. He is the son from the parable of the vineyard and tenants that we read last week.

He is the heir of the vineyard and he is the heir of the entire world. And Jesus is making the claim here that he is the Messiah. And so the question before the scribe who asked Jesus about the greatest commandment, and the question before all the scribes and the crowd that were gathered is this,.

What do you do with Jesus?

Do you have loyalty to Jesus? Do you call him Lord? The scribe was near the kingdom because he knew the commandments. And he had a right understanding of the commandments. And he even knew that obedience was greater than sacrifice, which is all the more interesting and important because of the context where Mark puts this in his gospel.

It's in this large section where Jesus is prophesying the end of the temple, the destruction of the temple where the sacrifices are offered. And so he knows these things, but he's not yet in the kingdom because he did not yet have loyalty to Jesus as Lord.

You see, what you do with Jesus makes all the difference in the world, and in the world to come. So in a pluralistic society that we currently live in, with friendships and neighbors and co-workers, maybe family members, coming from all sorts of different backgrounds and perspectives and belief systems, you're going to face temptations to kind of paper over the major differences in an effort to avoid conflict, whether real conflict, maybe psychological or emotional conflict.

But what someone does with Jesus matters. We can't just paper over it. Loyalty to Jesus matters. It is the difference between being in the kingdom and being just near the kingdom. You see, pledging allegiance to Jesus is not just a boutique belief, like being a vegan or being a fan of a certain sports team.

No, it matters.

So let me ask you the question. Are you loyal to Jesus? Maybe you have the theological knowledge, maybe you have the spiritual pedigree, maybe you're favorable to the Christian worldview, you have habits befitting a Christian, you go to church, you avoid vulgar entertainment, you vote Republican, whatever it is.

But do you have Jesus?

Are you loyal to Jesus? Because you can be near the kingdom and not be in it. So have you submitted to Jesus as Lord, where His Word goes? Where He's the captain and He calls the shots? He has the authority.

You see, it would be a shame, it would be a travesty to spend your whole life on the outskirts of heaven only to die and go to hell. Turn to, trust in, believe Jesus. Give Him your loyalty. Pledge allegiance to Him and be saved forever.

Do not settle for near when all in is available. Be all in by faith. Let's continue reading verses 38 through 40. And in His teaching He said, Beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers.

They will receive the greater condemnation. Here Jesus warns about what one commentator called predatory leaders. These leaders make a show of their religious life. They don their robes, they yuck it up in the marketplaces, they take the seats of honor.

In other words, they fashion themselves as the cream of the crop, as God's chosen servants on earth. And yet, what do they do? They devour widows' houses. They make pretense at long prayers, but their spiritual life is lacking.

And it's all a charade, it's all a podicum village, it's a Hollywood set, it's a whitewashed tomb. Yeah, they have the robes, and they have the prayers, and they have the seats of honor, but it's all a cover for devouring widows' houses, for taking advantage of the weak and the vulnerable, and for exploiting those they are charged to care for.

The Widow's Offering and the Coming Down of the Temple

Like the widow in verses 41 through 44, let's read. And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums, and a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny.

And he called his disciples to him and said to them, Truly I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.

Now there's a lesson here in this, in these verses about joyful and sacrificial giving, but the main thrust of why Mark puts this in here at this point, the main thrust of Jesus telling this story is to give an example, Exhibit A, of the corrupt and predatory leadership of the scribes, and the chief priests, and the elders.

Because they are taking her last coins, and they're using it on their own extravagance. It's like she's tithing off her social security check, and they're blowing that money at the rents. This is a story about corrupt religious leadership, and what does that bring?

Verses 13, 1 and 2. And as he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, Look teacher, what wonderful stones,.

What wonderful buildings.

And Jesus said to him, Do you see these great buildings? Talking about the temple here.

Do you see these great buildings?

There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down. Jesus has been inspecting things since he entered the city. And he sees this corrupt religious establishment, and he delivers his verdict.

The whole thing is coming down. Because they do not bear the fruit of righteousness, what we saw a couple of weeks ago. Because they deny Gentiles access to God. Because they use the temple rituals as a fig leaf cover for their own sin.

And because they use their prestigious positions to prey upon and exploit the weak and the vulnerable. Because of all this, if I can quote Johnny Cash again,.

Like I did a couple of weeks ago,.

God's going to cut them down. The temple will become rubble. They devoured widows' houses, and now he's going to devour theirs. So there's some warnings here for us. The first warning really is to me.

As your pastor, I am in a position of Christian leadership. He is confronting the religious leaders here in this passage. So one of the temptations for pastors is to live a Hollywood-set kind of life.

That is when you're on camera, when you're on the platform, when you're in the pulpit, when interacting with church members for your life to look like one thing, and then it not match when no one is watching.

Life at home.

I read a story in a book this past week about a pastor who early on in an earlier part of his life in ministry, his anger at home about ruined his marriage. All the while, his public ministry was incredibly successful.

Thankfully, the Lord led him to repentance before the whole thing imploded. But this is something Christian leaders must guard against, and so when you pray for me, and please do pray for me, pray that there is alignment, congruence, harmony between public life and private life.

Of course, that's not just a warning for pastors, it's a warning for all church leaders, deacons, committee chairmen, Sunday school teachers, and really for all of us. We won't have the same character in private when no one is watching as we do when anyone and everyone is watching.

And so we need to be warned against hypocrisy. There's also warnings here for how we deal with and steward God's money, to take care that we're being fruitful but not wasteful, effective but not extravagant.

And so on this topic, I'd like to praise the financial transparency of our church. So I've only been here six months, but I've noticed that you all are very transparent with financial dealings, and I think that is to be commended.

Your deacons, your finance committee, your committee chairmen are all cognizant of the need for wise financial stewardship. I would like to extend a special word of gratitude to Mr. Charles Tate. He leads our finance team.

You'll need to know Mr. Tate puts in a lot of work to protect and track and steward the financial resources of our church. He has records going back a long time, I believe. He keeps a careful eye on spending.

He's diligent to make sure our church members are aware and in control of our church's financial situation so that none of you are exploited for anyone's selfish gain or anyone's foolish decisions. So Mr. Charles, I want to thank you for how you've led and served this church for many years in the realm of finances.

And I want to say that for two reasons. One, I want to give honor where honor is due. And I know Mr. Charles isn't the only one. There's a finance team and others who have served on that team over the years, and I just want that gratitude to be representative to all of you who have served the transparency of finances in our church.

So honor where honor is due. But also, say that because we have people that are visiting, we have people who have been regularly visiting for some time now, and I want you to know that we take care in this area.

We want to be above reproach and above board with our finances. And then lastly, one more warning for us, to take heed. And I want to put this one in the form of a question. Why do you serve God? However it is that you serve God in the church and in your life, however you serve God, why do you serve God?

Do you do it because you love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength? Do you do it because you love your neighbor as yourself? You love your church member as yourself? Or do you serve God as a pretense, as a cover for selfish ambition?

And so a good diagnostic question to ask yourself is, are you serving God to give something away, to give yourself away, or are you serving God in order to get something for yourself? One of those is in obedience to all the law and the prophets and invite the blessings of God upon you.

And one of those is in direct contradiction to the law and the prophets and will bring the temple stones down on your head. You see, it's always blessings and curses, life and death that are before us.

So choose this day whom you will serve and why you will serve him. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

This is the law and the prophets. This is the greatest commandment.

Let's pray together.

Our Father in heaven, Lord, I pray that you would protect us from this type of corruption that we read about in the book of Mark. Lord, I pray that you would deliver us from evil, the evil within, our sin nature.

Lord, we know that we are inclined in our flesh towards sin. Lord, I pray that we will mortify that and put it to death. Deliver us from that which tempts us towards selfishness and deceitful gain. Deliver us from that which wants to use other people rather than to serve other people.

Instead, Father, I pray that we would walk by the Spirit. That you would enable us, make us to walk by your Spirit, loving you with all of our hearts and souls and minds and strength. And that we would love whoever you put in front of us.

This week, whoever you put in front of us. We would love them as ourselves. That we would act for their good as your word defines good, even if it costs us something. Father, I thank you for this church.

I pray that you would bless us, that you would keep us, that you would make your face to shine upon us, and you would give us peace.

And we ask it in the name of Jesus.

Amen.