How Can We Obey the Greatest Commandment?

Mark, chapter 12, verse 28,.

Mark 12:28

One of the scribes approached and when he heard them debating so Jesus has been talking to various people, pharisees and Sadducees and political people.

So when he heard them debating and saw that Jesus answered them, well, he asked him which command is the most important of all?

And Jesus answered the most important is listen, o Israel, the Lord, our God.

The Lord is one.

Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.

And the second is love your neighbor as yourself.

There is no command greater than these.

Then the scribe said to him you are right, teacher.

You have correctly said that he is one and that there is no one else except him.

And to love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is far more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices.

And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him you're not far from the kingdom of God.

And no one dared to question him any longer.

While Jesus was teaching them in the temple, he asked how can the scribe say that the Messiah is the son of David?

David himself says by the Holy Spirit.

The Lord declared to my Lord sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.

David himself calls him Lord.

How can he be his son?

And the large crowd was listening to him with delight.

He also said in his teaching beware of the scribes who want to go around in long robes and who want greetings in the marketplaces, the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets.

They devour widow's houses and say long prayers just for show.

These will receive harsher judgment.

Sitting across the temple treasury, he watched how the crowd dropped money into the treasury.

Many rich people were putting in large sums.

Then a poor widow came and dropped in two tiny coins worth very little.

Summoning his disciples, he said to them truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others, for they all gave out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.

Well, when a young couple gets married or an older couple for that matter it often involves some kind of vow of undying love, a vow at least until death do us part.

But with 30% of marriages ending in divorce.

Sadly, it doesn't always quite work out like they hoped.

Then there are the marriages that don't end in divorce.

That's 30% of first time marriages.

There are the marriages that don't end of divorce, but you couldn't exactly call a happy marriage.

So what is it that makes a successful, long-lasting, committed marriage, if it's not just promises of undying love?

Well, of course, it's all about the execution of the marriage, and I don't mean one partner executing the other don't get to make shortcuts I mean the execution of a plan to carry out the practices of love.

So, as we approach the end of our journey in this Gospel of Mark, jesus' last public interaction is with one of the groups that he'd often crossed verbal swords with the scribes.

Now, the scribes were the Bible scholars of their day.

You might think of them as sort of, I guess maybe the equivalent of Bible college professors, although they didn't have the same sort of institutional structure.

But in Jerusalem they were probably connected with the Sanhedrin and scribes had an important place in Israelite societies.

Jews were expected to rise when a scribe went past and greet them respectfully.

And having a scribe at your special banquet if you had a I don't know a bar mitzvah or a big celebration or something.

Having a scribe there was a bit of a status symbol for you, and so the scribes were really treated with a lot of respect.

Now, while Jesus was usually running up against the scribes in his interactions, we see here a rare occasion where he has a genuine dialogue and agreement with a scribe.

This scribe was really impressed with Jesus' previous interactions, and so he asks us what is the greatest commandment?

Well, evidently this must have been some topic of discussion among religious leaders, or else we can hardly expect him to have asked Jesus about it.

But regardless of where anyone stood on the topic, you could hardly argue with Jesus' answer, because the reply he gives is with what's called the Shemaar, which means.

Shemaar is a Hebrew word for listen or obey, and it's so important that it has become a daily prayer.

In fact, devout Jews will pray this twice a day.

It's taken from Deuteronomy 6, verses four to five, which says listen, israel, the Lord, our God.

The Lord is one.

Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength.

And Jesus adds mind as well.

So the Shemaar teaches us about love for God, but then isn't it interesting that Jesus connects it with another command, love your neighbor as yourself, which is taken from Leviticus, as if he's saying you can't love God unless you also love your neighbor, which will surprise exactly no one who's familiar with Jesus' teaching.

And so the scribe enthusiastically endorses Jesus' answer in a way that indicated that he actually got it.

He knew where Jesus was coming from.

He understood the heart of it.

This scribe's heart seems to have been in the right place and he seems to have had godly wisdom.

And so Jesus says to him you're not far from the kingdom of God.

Now it seems like there's a little bit of a verbal interplay going here.

The scribe thinks he's questioning Jesus, and then Jesus becomes sort of the one in authority here, judging the other one's heart.

I wonder, do you think the scribe actually made it into the kingdom of God?

Wonderful, see him.

Thing is, it's one thing to say that we love God, but, like in a marriage, every Christian knows that it's another thing to actually live it out.

So what does it take to cultivate a life that loves God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind and with all our strength, and that loves others as ourselves?

Well, it's interesting that, even though he's just had a pretty positive interaction with the scribe, jesus then sort of turns on them and warns the crowd about them, and perhaps Mark is recording this just as an indication of how not to love God and neighbour.

Jesus accuses the scribes, or at least some of the scribes, of abusing their privilege.

They love the honour that comes with their position, and one of the things that may seem strange to us is that, despite all the honour that they had in society, scribes are often actually quite poor not all of them, but they could be.

See, they weren't allowed to sort of charge for doing their jobs, and so what some of them would have then is a patron who would look after them, essentially help support them so that they could devote themselves to the study and teaching of Torah, and some of these Jesus is talking about when he accuses them essentially of sponging off even poor widows.

The thing is, in that society there was no welfare system.

If you were a widow, you hadn't been able to remarry, perhaps not having children, you could be quite poor, you were certainly vulnerable, and perhaps some of them, for the sake of piety, might try to support a scribe beyond their means.

I have to tell you, as a pastor, this makes me really nervous.

Nowadays, pastors in Australia don't have the same sort of status in our society that the scribes had in theirs.

Maybe that's a good thing, but we still have a lot of influence in our position and in our words, and in recent years, of course, we've seen a slew of high profile pastors who have fallen into scandal, and there are many others that you and I will never hear about.

So there's a warning here for me as a pastor.

But I think there's also a warning here for you and for me as well, as believers, because I sometimes hear people talk about their favorite might be television preacher or an internet preacher.

I've got to admit I get a little bit nervous.

Maybe it's because I've had my favorites as well and it hasn't always ended well for them.

It's very easy for us to idolize people, but just because someone is a dynamic speaker with a lot of influence and a big audience, and maybe a mega church or a mega YouTube channel, doesn't make them a good pastor.

And do you know what?

Sadly, it doesn't even make them very good at theology all the time.

And this is what Jesus was saying of the scribes they weren't necessarily great at their theology.

You see, like all of Israel, the scribes eagerly awaited the coming of Messiah, but Jesus said they had no idea what they were actually talking about.

How can the scribes say that Messiah is the son of David when David calls him Lord?

They were looking to a human redeemer.

And Jesus says actually, this idea of Messiah is so much bigger than what you can imagine.

They seem to be impressive teachers, but they were missing the mark.

And so just because someone has deep sounding theology doesn't actually mean they're speaking the truth.

One of the things Jesus tells us each elsewhere is that you will know a prophet, a true prophet, by their fruit.

How are they living their lives?

We've seen this fruit of the scribes didn't always add up, and so, before Making heroes of our favorite preachers, we need to ask questions like well, what's their lifestyle actually like?

What's their character actually like?

What about their theology?

It's just so easy for us to give our favorite preachers a free pass.

I'm going to pick on someone because there was a whole podcast made on him and it's no status Anyone here of Mark Driscoll.

Back in the 2000s, mark Driscoll had, yeah, a few hands going up.

He was immensely popular, still is.

He's still a pastor, but he was pastoring a mega church in I think it was in Seattle, called Mars Hill.

He was writing books.

They were good books and a lot of people left up his ministry because they were already cracks starting to show in his ministry and because he was so successful and so popular, people sort of gave him a pass and gave him another pass until it all just came crashing down.

And it didn't actually come down crashing down because of a sexual scandal or anything like that.

It was matters of integrity.

Sometimes pastors get picked up because of really bad theology that ends up coming out.

So we need to be asking, most importantly, do these people they need to have?

If you're a teacher, you have to have good theology, you have to have a good knowledge of the Bible.

But what about their character?

What about their love for God in neighbor is lived out, and here's the thing you're probably not going to see that on TV or on YouTube or on a podcast.

It comes from relationship.

So if scribes and pastors, sadly, aren't necessarily the best examples of love for God, then what is?

How do we cultivate love for God?

Well, in an ironic twist, we discover that well, the seemingly pious scribes aren't the model of devotion.

A widow is sort of people that they're sponging off vulnerable, poor, actually often despised in that society.

Can you believe it?

As Jesus is watching people come past the temple, he sees people bringing their offerings to the temple.

Now, there were taxes, people had to pay.

But people would also bring big offerings to church to pay for the upkeep of the temple and the priesthood and everything.

And apparently what they tell us from the day is that there were these big sort of receptacles people would pour their money into big trumpets shaped things made of metal.

So you can imagine it must have been very satisfying for Mr Moneybags to come along and tip all his metal coins into the metal receptacle and hear that.

You've heard the sound of coins pouring out, maybe at a bank or what's a bank anyway now, but you know that sound and sort of almost showing off their generosity.

Then comes along this widow tosses in two pennies.

In that context, what are two cents going to achieve?

The barely by a loaf of bread.

And yet Jesus says this woman has given more than everyone else combined.

Why?

Because she gave all she had.

She actually could have got away with just giving one coin.

No one would have known, no one would have cared, frankly.

But she gave it all.

Maybe all those pennies could buy was a loaf of bread.

Now she's going to go hungry.

Her gift was an act of complete devotion to God.

Now, you know, this isn't about money, right?

Well, it kind of is, but it's not.

Money was an expression of devotion, but it was a state of her heart that prompted the sacrifice.

And for this woman, this wasn't just an inconvenience, this was a real cost.

She didn't have much to give, but she gave what she had.

So what does love for God look like?

No, it's not just giving out of our abundance, but sometimes, often, maybe all the time, it's giving out of our poverty.

And poverty isn't just about money.

I know some of you are time poor.

You have busy jobs, you have a young family.

You might say I don't have much time to give to God.

What are my few minutes that I can snatch to read the Bible or give someone a phone call?

What is that?

What does it even matter?

Well, the little time you do give becomes a great expression of love to God, a giving of your whole life.

Some of you perhaps feel you don't have much in the way of talents or gifts or anything to offer.

Maybe you lack confidence and stepping out and serving God, serving His church, in some small way, becomes an act of great faith.

Some of you don't have much money.

What difference is it going to make if I put a few dollars in the offering?

Sometimes we see in the box up the back just a couple of dollars, but given with a heart of love for God, that makes a big difference to God's heart.

So Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.

These represent the totality of our lives, our affections, our will, our assets and abilities, our very selves.

And so it's in giving ourselves that a gift becomes an act of love, and in particular, time and money or proxies for our lives.

Don't we spend a lot of time earning money?

Some people will give their lives away so they can have the six or seven figure income.

And some of the things we spend that money on actually is essential, isn't it?

Food, clothing, housing, health, education, summer, discretionary hobbies, entertainment, more food, bigger house, fancier clothes?

A poor widow might have become bitter to God for the lot He'd given her, but she's prompted not only to give her discretionary spending.

If I've got to give something to God here, well, was it 10%?

Let me, can I cut this coin in half?

But no, she doesn't give her discretionary, she gives her essential.

So how do we cultivate that sort of love, a love that not only gives my spare time but my me time, a love that not only gives up a night at the movies so I can give it to compassion or something, but maybe gives up a meal so that I can give more, and gives it up joyfully, not just dutifully, because if it's not joyful it's not going to be sustainable.

If it's only out of duty and not from the heart, it's not really an expression of love.

So here's the thing.

It's a bit of a paradox, but our affections are often formed out of our daily habits where we focus our attention, and this has certainly been my experience.

Just a little story story.

So anyone reading listening to the Bible project I keep coming up with the Bible project.

I want to see if more hands go up, a few more.

The Bible project it's fantastic, I love it.

So here I'm giving it away so you can listen to the Bible project for free.

I've got a lot of resources.

Now.

They have seminary level or Bible college level teaching that you can access for free and everything.

So you do not have to pay a cent and you will get everything that's on offer.

But you listen to the end of a podcast or something that says they're supported by people like you.

So why would people support the Bible project?

Because I started becoming a supporter of the Bible project even though I can get it all for free.

I don't get anything extra for that, I don't even get my name at the end of the credits or anything.

But why?

Because I have been investing myself, I guess you could say, into the Bible project.

I listened to it, I really enjoy it, I've come to love it and I want to do this Now.

I'm not giving my essentials to support it, but that act of supporting the Bible project has come out of my engagement with the Bible project.

Going back to the example of marriage what makes a successful marriage?

Well, it's often the small things, isn't it Giving flowers or buying your spouse their favorite chocolate, and he's like why don't you do that more often?

Affirming and encouraging them, going on date nights together, doing the dishes or making the bed for them?

Here's the thing If you think these things only flow out of love, you only do it if you feel it.

Let me challenge you to flip that around.

What if the love flows out of doing these things?

As you invest in it, as you do acts of love, you start to grow love, and I think it's the same often with God.

Now, when we come to God, we do need a supernatural work of God in our hearts.

It's the work of the Holy Spirit.

The paradox is that performance religion doesn't impress God, but the daily habits that sometimes can look like a performance, but that are designed to cultivate a heart of love for God.

Doing those things does please God.

So we talk about engaging with spiritual practices, or what we sometimes call spiritual disciplines.

When we use that word discipline, it can sound like drudgery, can't it?

But it's not.

If it's done with the right motive, then it can start to form our affections for God.

You know, I think you're never going to learn to love the Word of God If you never engage with the Word of God.

You will never learn to hear God's voice If you never stop to listen to God in prayer.

We learn to love, we learn to hear, we learn to grow in Him by doing.

The light comes from engagement.

So many of the scribes and those people who were putting their money bags into the temple offering boxes had a performative love, if you like, for God.

It looked good.

A lot of it was really about them, but the widow displayed a real devotion to God by giving all she had, and that kind of devotion can only come from a heart that is set on God, the kind of heart that's not formed by public performance but by personal practices.

This kind of practices that cultivate love.

As we head into Easter, we have the opportunity to reflect on the love of God in Jesus Christ that he poured out for us.

What kind of love would drive Jesus to the cross to die for us?

What kind of practices sustained Him through His earthly ministry, knowing what was ahead of Him and we see some of them in the Bible what kind of practices can we develop to cultivate a life that loves God with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our soul, with all our strength, and that loves our neighbour as ourself?

We haven't really gone there much this morning.

How can we cultivate a devotion that, like the widow, gives all we have, not reluctantly, and I don't want you to go away and hear me saying I have to go and do this or else I don't love God.

No, what I want you to do is to cultivate a heart where that becomes natural.

That involves a supernatural work of God as well.

God ultimately comes to a joyful giving of ourselves out of love for God.

Let's pray, father.

We thank you for the love that you have for us.

Your love is the inspiration and the model for us as we come into this Easter season.

Over the next week, Lord, we just pray that we will be more inspired by you and more challenged in our love.

Help us to grow in the disciplines of love that that can turn into affection for you, and that these sacrifices that we read about and feel challenged by, that seem so impossible and overwhelming, now become things that are just natural and flow out of lives that are devoted to you.

Fill us with your Spirit, fill us with the knowledge of Christ, fill us with love for you.

We pray in Jesus' name, amen.