The Greatest Commandment
Download MP3If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to Mark chapter 12. We are continuing our study through the gospel of Mark, and as you are turning there, let me ask you this. If your house was on fire, and you could only save one thing, not counting people, what would that be? What would be that one thing that you absolutely could not live without, To prepare my kids for that scenario, I used to play a game with them. When they were little, I would just burst into their rooms, and I would yell out, a flood is coming.
Joel Brooks:Everything's going to be destroyed in 2 minutes. They're gonna be in therapy someday for this, and, and I'd say the only safe place is the Playford. So get what you can. Get the Playford, and they would just be running around like crazy grabbing stuff, and what they didn't know, in the play for it, I would have games. It's my way of just spending the afternoon with them and forcing them to be there.
Joel Brooks:But, so they would grab what they could, they get in there, and then I would say, okay, let's take inventory. And my oldest, Caroline, she would have, duct tape, rope, water bottles. I mean, she the the girl came prepared. My my second daughter, Natalie, she just brought a lot of snacks. Then you had Georgia, and she brought her 2 baby dolls, Chuck and Brenda.
Joel Brooks:Because Chuck and Brenda, she just could not imagine her life apart from them. What would you have grabbed? Like, what would have been the the one thing that you would have grabbed that you absolutely could not imagine your life without? Maybe that one thing that kinda defined even who you were. That's close to what we're gonna be looking at this morning when the scribes asked Jesus something about the law.
Joel Brooks:They're like, if we could just have one law, Jesus, if you could just boil it all down into just one thing, what would it be? So let's look at Jesus' answer here. Mark 12 verse 28. And 1 of the scribes came up to came up and and 1 of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that Jesus 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.
Joel Brooks:The Lord is 1. 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, and there is no other commandment greater than these. And the scribe said to him, you are right, teacher. You have said that he is 1, and there is none other besides him.
Joel Brooks: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. And as Jesus taught in the temple, he said, how can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of God? 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.
Joel Brooks:David calls him lord. So how is he his son? And the great throng heard him gladly. This is the word of the lord. Thanks be to God.
Joel Brooks:You pray with me. Father, I pray that through your spirit, you would, bring clarity and conviction to this text. You would write these things on our hearts. I pray that my word would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. Lord, may your words remain and change us.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. So if you remember, Jesus has been getting a lot of questions, trick questions. He's been asked questions by the Pharisees, the Herodians, the Sadducees, all trying to trap him, into something. This time, he's asked another question by a scribe, but it seems to be genuine.
Joel Brooks:It it doesn't seem to be a trap. This scribe has seen how Jesus has answered these other questions wisely, and so he is wondering if Jesus could answer a pretty difficult question that he had been pondering. What is the most important commandment in all of scripture? This wasn't a new question. It was something that many sincere Jews were were pondering at the time.
Joel Brooks:There were 613 commandments in the Torah, ranging from do not murder to do not eat barn owls in Leviticus 11, in case you're wondering. There there's a whole lot of laws out there. It's it's hard trying to keep all 613 laws in your mind, and try to obey them. So if it was possible to reduce it, like, to just maybe give one summary statement, boil it down to just just a sentence, or maybe just one commandment that encapsulated them all, well, that would be huge. And so many Jews tried to do that at this time.
Joel Brooks:Jesus seemed like the perfect person to ask. Jesus, he answered by quoting Deuteronomy 6, verses 45. He says the greatest commandment is hear, oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, and with all of your soul, and with all of your mind, and with all of your strength. This commandment is known as the Shema.
Joel Brooks:And it was the John 3 16 of its day. It it was what everybody knew. Football players were writing Deuteronomy 64 here. The the rainbow afro guy was was writing it across his chest. Everybody knew Deuteronomy 64 through 5.
Joel Brooks:It was by far the most well known verse in all of Judaism. Faithful Jews, they would get up every morning, it'd be the first thing they said. Before they went to bed at night, it'd be the last thing they said. So Jesus giving this answer would not have been a shock. Lauren and I, we actually have Deuteronomy 65, we have it painted over our door, on our door frame there.
Joel Brooks:And when our house was, destroyed in a storm 16 years ago, when the entire front of our house was ripped off, and we tried to salvage, save one thing that we could, we found that Bible verse. We found that part of the door frame, there. It was broken, but we mended it. It's the one thing we tried to save, to put up there, because we saw the importance of that. To love the Lord your God with all of your heart, your soul, and your strength.
Joel Brooks:Now because everybody knew the Shema, that answer would have surprised no one. But I want you to notice what Jesus does. He doesn't stop there. The scribe asked Jesus to give him one commandment. Jesus gives him 2.
Joel Brooks:And he says the second is this. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. This time, Jesus, he quotes from the most beloved book in the bible, Leviticus. And he doesn't just quote from, any chart.
Joel Brooks:It's it's gotta go towards the end. All the way out there in Leviticus 19, he draws from that well. To love your neighbor as yourself. If you wanna understand why both right wingers and left wingers claim Jesus, well, here's your answer. Look at Jesus' two answers to this question of what is the most important commandment.
Joel Brooks:You see, there's many Christians out there who primarily think of their faith, in just spiritual terms, theological terms. It's all about loving God. And then we have other Christians who primarily think of their faith in social terms. It's all about loving your neighbor and social justice. Jesus here, he's the first ever to fuse these 2 together.
Joel Brooks:No one had ever done that before. Jesus, he sees these 2 commandments as distinguishable from one another, but inseparable from one another. We love God by loving our neighbor. We love our neighbor because we love God whose image they are created in. So we do both.
Joel Brooks:They're indistinguishable, but they're inseparable. I actually love how, Luke tells a story. This is for free. I didn't tell the other two services this. But but if you go through Luke's account of this, right after Jesus gives that answer, Luke follows it up with 2 stories.
Joel Brooks:The first story is the story of the Good Samaritan, in which you see how you love your neighbor. The story right after that is the story of Mary and Martha. Now Martha is busy doing all these things, but Mary, she chose what was right. She's just sitting at the feet, listening, and adoring Jesus. And you see both these sides here.
Joel Brooks:Loving God with all your heart, soul, and strength. Loving your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus fuses those together. This wasn't particularly controversial. It wasn't controversial then.
Joel Brooks:I don't believe it's controversial now. I think that most people in the world would agree that if everybody were to do these things, the world would be a vastly better place. You'd probably get rid of the majority of the world's problems overnight, if people would simply love God and love their neighbor. However, I think people probably have very different ideas as to what that would actually look like. So I want us to take a closer look at each one of these commandments.
Joel Brooks:First, let's look at what it looks like to love God. We're commanded to love God. But actually, you're not commanded to just love God. Notice you're commanded to love the Lord, your God. So you don't just love God, you love the Lord, your God.
Joel Brooks:In other words, you are not commanded to love some vague, distant, supernatural being that you can never know, but you're commanded to know the God who has revealed himself to you, who's worked on behalf of you. He's your God. And as we saw last week, when he is your God now, he is your God forever. So this is a God who loves us, who longs to have a relationship with us, who's revealed to us his name. He's the Lord.
Joel Brooks:And we are to love the lord our god with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Now if, you're really good at kind of catching some things in scripture, you might have caught something here when Jesus quoted from Deuteronomy 6. He actually adds a word. Deuteronomy 6 does not have the word mind. It just says that we are to love the Lord, our God, with all of our heart, and soul, and strength.
Joel Brooks:And then Jesus adds the word mind. But He's not really adding to scripture. He's He's more of making something explicit, which was implicit in the shema. That's what it means when we're to love the Lord our God with all of our strength. That means we're to love him with everything, including our mind.
Joel Brooks:That word strength there, it's the Hebrew word, meod. Meod. It's used over 300 times in scripture, and it almost never is translated as strength. It's actually an adverb. And it's translated elsewhere as just meaning very or much.
Joel Brooks:Or you could say very much. I guess the definition is muchness. Very muchness. It's used to describe, someone who is mioed angry, mioed happy, mioed good, mioed wealthy. And it just means that they're very good, or they're very wealthy, or they're very happy.
Joel Brooks:It's a way of intensifying a meaning. So in this context here, we're told to love God intensely with our very muchness. Jesus, he says, that's with everything. Your heart, soul, your strength, your mind. It's every part of our body.
Joel Brooks:We love God very, very much. Jesus then he says that we are to love our neighbor as ourself. So we don't just love our neighbor, we love our neighbor as ourself. Now confession, I I I spend a whole lot of time I shouldn't say a whole lot. More time than I should looking at myself in the mirror.
Joel Brooks:Perhaps you do the same. You know, you look, you kinda you know you know where every pore is. You you know if you're losing hair, if it's parted the right way or not. You you you look at yourself to see if you've gained weight or anything like that. Y'all are looking at me like I'm crazy.
Joel Brooks:Y'all do that too. I mean, I I know you're like, oh, how dare you look at yourself in the mirror. You you guys do it. I mean, I I know you're always looking at yourself. If some If you're in a group with your friends, and somebody takes a picture of all of you, and you're to look at it, who's the first person you look at?
Joel Brooks:You look at yourself. And if your friend next to you is fits the most beautiful picture you have ever seen of them, but it's not of you, what do you ask? Can we take it again? Because you don't care about your friend. You you care how you look.
Joel Brooks:You love yourself. It's not a bad thing to love yourself. But what Jesus is reminding us of is we're actually commanded to love others just as much as we love ourself. And that means that we care for others, we respect others, we are thinking of others just as much as we think of ourselves. Now, I don't think anybody would argue that the world would not be an intensely better place if we did that.
Joel Brooks:Man, I think if I were to go right outside here and just randomly pull people in the street, you know, walk up to some dude and be like, hey. Do you think do you think we should love our neighbors? He's gonna say, yeah. Get away from me. You're creeping me out.
Joel Brooks:But, you know, he would he would he would agree. Yes. I think we all would agree with that. However, I'm not sure everybody actually agrees what loving our neighbor looks like. Actually, I think our culture has a lot of confusion over what it looks like to love our neighbor, because I think we too often confuse empathy with love.
Joel Brooks:Empathy and love are related, but they are not the same thing. And so I want us to just look at 2 2 ways in which empathy is not love. Two mistakes I think our culture is making, but two ways in which empathy is not love. Empathy is not love when we detach it from action. And empathy is not love when we detach it from truth.
Joel Brooks:So let's look at both of these. 1st, let's look at empathy detached from action. Since we've already been talking about houses on fire, I just want you to imagine that, someone in your neighborhood, their house caught on fire. It burned to the ground. They're okay, but they lost absolutely everything.
Joel Brooks:When you heard the news about that, you were just devastated. I mean, your heart ached for that person. You thought of how terrible it must be that they lost everything. I'm like, oh. That's just That's terrible.
Joel Brooks:Hey, what do you mean? Do you wanna go eat lunch? You just move on. You do nothing about it. That's empathy, but that's not love.
Joel Brooks:Love requires an action. It doesn't matter how much your heart breaks for your neighbor if you do nothing. Is that how you would want to be loved? If you lost everything, you would want people to just feel bad for you, but not do anything for you? Would you think that's an expression of love?
Joel Brooks:No. Love demands that we act. James actually teaches us this in his letter in the second chapter when he writes, what good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone says that he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, go in peace, be warm and filled, without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?
Joel Brooks:So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. Empathy is not enough. Love demands an action. Another way that we confuse empathy with love is when we detach it from speaking the truth. Here are some examples.
Joel Brooks:Perhaps one of your neighbors is in a unhappy marriage. Just miserable. And this results in him having an affair with someone who's who's just gonna treat him with respect and make him happy. And so as he is telling you this, you empathize with that person. Because who doesn't want to be treated with respect?
Joel Brooks:Who doesn't want to be happy? And so you say nothing. And the person thinks that you're just giving approval. Or perhaps you know someone who won't forgive one of their friends because they were just cut so deep by that person. And you empathize with your friend because you know what it's like to be hurt in that way.
Joel Brooks:And so you affirm this person's feelings, your friend's feelings, but you say nothing about their need to forgive. Or perhaps you know someone who's living out a sexually sinful lifestyle, and you empathize with that person because you know what it's like to to want to be loved or to have a strong sexual desire. So once again, you affirm their feelings, but you do nothing to point them to the truth. Feeling empathy for people is not a bad thing. It's it's a good thing.
Joel Brooks:It's it's a great starting place. But empathy detached from truth, and speaking that truth has terrible consequences. And actually, if you really read Leviticus 19 and its context, the author of Leviticus points that out for us. You'll you'll actually find that immediately rebuke them, lest you share in their guilt. Love your neighbor as yourself.
Joel Brooks:Most people don't know that's the context within there, of Leviticus 19. Sometimes, rebuking people can be an act of love. Now, can I say I grew up in a generation, or at least I grew up in a youth group, that was like this? I don't wanna speak for my entire generation. But I grew up in a youth group in which we did not have empathy for people who were struggling with sin.
Joel Brooks:We were all about some truth. And we loved going around throwing some truth bombs at people. So we would launch some truth grenades at those who were struggling with addiction. Some truth grenades at those who are in sexual sin. Truth grenades at those who struggle with same sex attraction.
Joel Brooks:Or truth grenades at atheist over there. And we are just we're throwing them, just throwing this truth, and there's just carnage. But there was no empathy. And, and that wreaked a lot of destruction. But love demands both here.
Joel Brooks:I think our pendulum has swung, into where we are highly empathetic, but, actually, we have a very hard time ever speaking the truth. Loving our neighbor demands both. So love requires action. Love requires speaking truth. Now after Jesus gives this scribe His answer that we're to love God and we're to love our neighbor, the scribe says, you're correct.
Joel Brooks:You're correct. And not only does he say you're correct, but he goes on to say that actually, much it's much more important than all of burnt offerings and sacrifices. That's a really impressive answer by this scribe. This man, he understands that loving God and loving people is more important than just going to church. It's more important than all the religious activities, going through the motions, singing the songs, giving, your offering.
Joel Brooks:More important than all those things is actually the affections of our heart towards God. We have to love God. We have to love people. That's more important than everything else. This man's not like the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians, who they're trying to trap Jesus.
Joel Brooks:He actually seems to be really sincere with Jesus, appreciates his answer. And notice, Jesus seems like he actually likes this guy. And that's what makes what happens next so shocking. After that person affirms Jesus' answer, he looks at him and he goes, you know what? You are not far from the kingdom of God, Which sounds like a compliment, but it's not.
Joel Brooks:You know, you're so close to getting in, but you're not in. That's what Jesus is saying. You're so close to getting in, but but you're actually still an outsider. That's shocking, because look at all that this man knew. He he obviously knew his Bible really well.
Joel Brooks:He knew that there was only one God. He knew that this God was after his heart, wanted more than sacrifices, more than going to synagogue every week. He knew that he was to love his neighbor. He respected Jesus. He actually seemed to like Jesus.
Joel Brooks:He's sincere in his faith. And Jesus looks at a man like this and says, you're so close, but you're not in. How can a man like this not be in the kingdom of God? I mean, what'd he get wrong? And if he can't get in the kingdom of God, can anybody get into the kingdom of God?
Joel Brooks:I mean, what more does this man need? Well, Jesus tells us next. After Jesus has these conversations, you know, with all of these religious leaders, and they are asking him all these questions, he finally puts an end to it, and he says, Now it's my turn. I ask the questions. And so he goes into the temple that he's just cleared out.
Joel Brooks:He goes into the temple and he asks everyone there a question. How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? And before we talk about what that means, just first, let me ask you this. Who is this question about? It's about the scribes, and it's about the Messiah.
Joel Brooks:So he was just talking with the scribe. This is a continuation of that conversation. He's he's answering this scribe. You wanna know why you're not part of the kingdom of God? Listen up.
Joel Brooks:And now I'm gonna ask some questions to get you thinking along those lines about who I am. So this is about the scribes and what they are saying about the Christ. Amidst this, is the Christ just the son of David, or is the Christ more? That's really what this is about. Is the Christ the son of David, or is he more?
Joel Brooks:Let's read verse 35 and 36. And as Jesus taught in the temple, he said, how can the scribes 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 calls him Lord, so, how is he his son? It's a little confusing argument for us.
Joel Brooks:He's quoting from Psalm 110, which was one of the most popular psalms in the early church. And it's a riddle. It'd be like, you know, how can the king say to my king? You know, like, wait. I thought he was the king.
Joel Brooks:But yet, he's now calling another person king. How can David refer to his own son as his Lord? Is is the Messiah David's son? Or is the Messiah the Lord? That's the riddle.
Joel Brooks:Is the messiah human, or is the messiah God? That's the question that Jesus puts out there. And of course, the answer is he's both. That Jesus, as the messiah, he is both fully human and he is fully God in the flesh. You wanna know why that person, that scribe, was close but not in?
Joel Brooks:He didn't recognize that Jesus was Lord. How can you love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, and strength if you don't recognize the person in front of you is the Lord? You're close, but you're not in. It's not enough to just like Jesus, to like His teachings. It's not enough to give your time and your money to the church.
Joel Brooks:It's not enough to be loving to your neighbors. You have to recognize that Jesus is Lord, and you surrender your life to him. That's what the scribe was missing. He's close, but he's not in, which makes me ask, could anyone here be close, but not in? I grew up in a church tradition, where we had, what was known as an altar call.
Joel Brooks:We would sing I surrender all, or sometimes just as I am, all 8, 10, 20 verses of those songs. And and if you grew up in this tradition, you know what I'm talking about. I mean, I surrender all. It just goes on and on and on. And our pastor, he would go, and he would stand in front of everyone, while that was playing.
Joel Brooks:Everybody's singing. And here is the thing. The service would not end until someone came forward. Anybody else grow up in that tradition? Like, it just it wouldn't end.
Joel Brooks:And so, so it's go it's going on and on, and by time we're at verse 8 or verse 10, I'm looking at my friend. I was like, dude, you gotta take a bullet for us. You gotta go. Like, somebody has to do this. And he's like, not me.
Joel Brooks:You go. And, like, we're debating. We're doing rock, paper, scissors. Finally, poor the sweet lady, her name was Gwen. She came forward, like, 20 times out of the year.
Joel Brooks:She took a bullet for everybody. She would always go forward. I don't know what they talked about up there because she wasn't getting saved 20 times every year, but she took one for the team, and the service would be over. Why do we why do we do that? I mean, why why do the pastor feel the need to do that?
Joel Brooks:It's easy to criticize, to see some of the negatives of that. You know, that you could be playing on people's emotions, it's manipulative. But why do it? I think it's because my pastor then knows exactly what I know now. That in a room like this, there are people, good people, sincere people, People who want to love God, want to love their neighbor.
Joel Brooks:People who respect Jesus, respect his teachings. They give. They they make sacrifices. And yet, they don't recognize Jesus as Lord and have surrendered their life to him. That people are lost in a sea of religiosity.
Joel Brooks:That might be you. Have you ever felt your heart strangely warmed in its affection towards Jesus, and you realize in that moment, Jesus is Lord, and he's the only one who can save me, and you lay your life down in complete surrender to him. If you haven't done that, this is your opportunity. Pray with me, church. Jesus, right now, through your holy spirit, may those who have never truly come to lay their lives before you in a sweet surrender, acknowledging you as the Lord, would you bring them to that moment?
Joel Brooks:May they sweetly hear you calling, and may they surrender all. We pray this in the sweet name of Jesus. Amen.
