Put To the Test (Mark 12:13-34)

These days, it seems like almost everyone has a hot take about

something. You know it's going to be a hot

take when they start off by saying this is kind of a hot

take, but that preface is a warning.

They're letting you know that what I'm about to say isn't

meant to offend you, but it might.

Hot takes could be about anything in sports.

It might be about a new coach, a new player, a new rule in music.

It might be who's underrated or overrated.

In politics or culture, it often takes the form what's really

wrong with our country is this or those people.

The subjects of hot takes can range from totally

inconsequential to some of the most serious issues you could

think of. When someone offers a hot take,

they are sometimes trying to stir up controversy in order to

draw attention to themselves. They want more likes and reposts

on social media. They want more eyes and ears

pointing in their direction. Such a person is a conflict

merchant. They are trying to profit from

dividing people. I'm not a huge fan of hot takes.

Whether giving or receiving, I prefer my takes nice and cool,

even cooler than cool, perhaps even ice cold.

Hot takes are often offered on whatever is the current hot

button issue that's driving the news cycle or dominating social

media. Even when people don't volunteer

their take, there's often pressure on a person or an

institution to weigh in on every issue, to speak out, to make a

statement, to let everyone know where you stand.

If your pastor doesn't say something about blank current

event this Sunday, then you need to find a new church.

Ever heard that one before? I have.

There's a massive cultural trend that we've seen rise and Crest

like a wave and break and even start receding back out to sea,

all in the last few years. It's the trend to demand that

institutions like universities and companies and even churches

make official public statements about current events.

That wave grew especially powerful in the past few years

and sort of reached its crazy height during the COVID years,

but now it's already retreating back out to sea.

You can take Harvard University as an example.

After a series of scandals and protests, after their president

resigned under all sorts of pressures, Harvard officially

decided in May of 2024 that they would no longer make any

official statements on public issues.

They stood to lose too much. If you're a political activist

trying to put pressure on an institution like Harvard, you

only have your job and your reputation to lose.

And going after Harvard might earn you headlines like Joe

Smith takes on Harvard, a David and Goliath story.

You stand to gain a lot and lose little.

But Harvard has a multibillion dollar endowment to protect.

Sometimes people pressure a leader or institution to weigh

in on an issue only because they're trying to get that

leader or institution into trouble.

They're trying to get that leader to say something on

record that will discredit them. They're trying to get them to

say something out in public that they can use to take that person

down. This morning we continue our

series in Mark's gospel with chapter 12, verses 13 to 34.

If you don't have a Bible, you can raise your hand.

Someone will bring you on. If you do have a Bible, please

turn there. Our passage is a series of three

interactions between Jesus and religious leaders in the temple

in Jerusalem. And in the first two of those

interactions, the religious authorities are trying to

pressure Jesus into offering a hot take that will get him into

trouble. As one of my kids put it this

week, they're trying to cancel Jesus.

They're trying to trap him. They want him to say something

on record they can use to take him all the way down.

And though the questions they ask might initially seem

obscure, they actually get it. Some of the most fundamental

issues we could possibly consider.

In other words, the religious authorities are asking for Jesus

hot takes on the highest stakes questions.

So here's the question our passage confronts us with this

morning. What are Jesus's answers to the

highest stakes questions that you could ask him?

What are Jesus's answers to the highest stakes questions that

you could ask Him .1 Question one, Who's in charge?

Who's in charge? That's the question at the heart

of verses 13 to 17. Mark 1213 to 17.

Please follow along as I read those verses.

And they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the

Herodians to trap him in his talk.

And they came and said to him, Teacher, we know that you are

true, and do not care about anyone's opinion, for you are

not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God.

Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?

Should we pay them or should we not?

But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, Why put me to the

test? Bring me a denarius and let me

look at it. And they brought one.

And he said to them, whose likeness and inscription is

this? They said to him, Caesar's.

Jesus said to them, render to Caesar the things that are

Caesar's, and to God the things that are gods.

And they marveled at him, looking at a verse 13 they sent

to him. Who's they?

Just like we've seen in our last couple of passages, it's the

Sanhedrin. It's the full council of

Israel's religious leaders. We've seen Jesus confronting

ever since he entered Jerusalem and cleared out the temple.

We've known since Chapter 11, verse 18, that the Sanhedrin is

looking for a way to destroy Jesus.

And so here they send a delegation composed of an

unlikely alliance. The Pharisees are strict law

keepers. They're zealous for Israel's

ancestral traditions. They're eager to restore

Israel's glory and independence. The Herodians are loyal

supporters of Herod, the tetrarch of Galilee, who is the

ruler appointed by the Romans to govern Jesus home territory up

in the north. And if they're that much in

keeping with the kind of local political rulers, it's likely

they're more worldly, more assimilated to Rome, more

compromised. So this delegation aims to trap

him. The Greek word for trap in verse

13 is the word you would use for trying to trap an animal that

you want to eat for dinner. Their motive is pure hostility.

They're trying to trap Jesus and politically speaking, eat him

for dinner. So their hypocrisy is blatant in

what they say next. They flatter him.

We know that you are true and do not care about anyone's opinion,

for you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the

way of God. Now of course they don't really

think this. If they did, they wouldn't be

trying to trap him and kill him. But by flattering him, they

unintentionally declare the truth.

Jesus really isn't swayed by human opinions.

He will not sacrifice God's truth to any special interest

group. He will not adjust His message

to win people's favor or avoid people's disapproval.

Now they set their trap in their question in verse 14.

Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?

Should we pay them or should we not?

Now the word taxes in verse 14, the Greek word that's translated

there is actually a word for a specific tax.

It's the Greek word kensos from the Latin census.

It refers to a poll tax. It's something that every single

resident had to pay. Now in Judea, in Jesus day, all

taxes were unpopular. There's nothing new under the

sun. But this tax, because it got

added just a generation before in six AD, was especially

unpopular. It was just a new added tax on

top of all the other taxes they had to pay.

And in the very year in which it was added, there was a popular

revolt, an uprising like a military, you know, effort led

by a guy named Judas the Galilean, that was over this

very tax. It was so inflammatory, There's

so much popular resentment against it that it led to a

revolt. Within a year, that revolt was

stamped out, but the resentment continued to simmer.

This is only 25 or so years later.

People hate this tax. Not only that, having to pay

this tax, it's kind of a straw that broke the camel's back was

one of the one of the features, one of the factors that led to

the eventual rebellion by the group called the Zealots against

Rome in 66 AD, which led to Rome stamping out that rebellion and

destroying Jerusalem and the Temple in 70AD.

So to ask Jesus about this tax was to ask about the hottest of

hot button political issues. It's a way of trying to test

Jesus's whole political stance by kind of 1 litmus test.

One question. It aimed to expose Jesus's

stance with regard to this emerging Zealot movement that

advocated armed resistance against Rome.

The question is fundamentally whether loyalty to God required

armed resistance to Rome. The question was framed in a way

that allowed only two options. Either he says the tax is

legitimate or illegitimate. If he says the tax is

legitimate, the Pharisees can denounce him as a compromiser.

They can say, oh, for all his talk about the Kingdom of God,

he's just fine being ruled by Rome.

He supports his blasphemous, idolatrous empire.

What kind of Messiah is that? If he endorses the tax, the

Pharisees can try to turn public opinion against him.

On the other hand, if he declares the tax illegitimate,

then the Herodians, the ones who are in cahoots with the

government, can denounce him to the Roman authorities.

This guy says Jews shouldn't pay taxes.

What do you think about that? Roman authorities?

He's a rebel. He's a threat to public order.

He's seditious sedition. Any active uprising against

Roman authority was a crime punishable by death.

There's not be one quick way to get rid of Jesus, he says don't

pay tax, They say. He's seditious.

Rome takes him out. Be a nice tidy solution.

This is a high stakes question because it implies a potential

conflict between what God demands and what Rome demands.

Who's in charge and what do you owe them?

Even in very different circumstances 2000 years later,

those are fundamental questions. Who's in charge and what do you

owe them? So to all appearances, Jesus has

his back against the wall. There's no room for him to

maneuver. How does he respond?

Verses 15 and 16? But knowing their hypocrisy, he

said to them, why put me to the test, bring me a denarius and

let me look at it. And they brought one.

And he said to them, whose likeness and inscription is

this? They said to him, Caesars, a

denarius is the coin that the tax had to be paid in.

And many of them survived. Today we, we know from

historical records kind of when they began to be made.

So we can be confident about what kind of coin this was.

On one side, it was stamped with the image like the face of

Tiberius Caesar. And just like Jesus asks about

it, it had an inscription and had writing on it.

The inscription read the blessed Tiberius Caesar, son of the

divine Augustus. In other words, on one side of

this coin they're supposed to pay the tax with.

He calls the emperor's father a God, and by saying he's the son

of a God, it's implying the emperor also is divine.

Flip over the coin. There's another Latin

inscription that read punt effects Maximus declaring Caesar

to be high priest among the Roman rulers.

Now 1st century Jews understood all this emperor worship to be

idolatry and blasphemy, and that's one thing that raised

serious questions for them about whether it was legitimate to use

that money or participate in that system at all.

If you were trying to go out of your way to offend the Jewish

people, you could hardly do better than to call a ruler the

son of the divine emperor and high priest and then to make

them pay a coin with that written on it and his image

stamped on it. Here's a little idle coin for

you to pay the tax. And thanks guys, have fun.

Many Jews in Jesus day refuse to use these coins as a protest

against that idolatry. So it's interesting that Jesus

asks them to bring him one of those coins.

He doesn't have one, but it turns out someone in their party

does. If they're so opposed to the

tax, then why do they have those coins jingling in their pockets

right now? Jesus doesn't have one.

They do. It's a little bit of beginning

to undermine their credibility, but then Jesus gives them his

substantive answer. In verse 17, after looking at

the coin, Jesus says to them, render to Caesar the things that

are Caesar's, and to God the things that are gods.

And they marveled at him. What does this have to do with

the fact that the coin bears Caesar's image and likeness,

right? He says, bring it to me.

He asked them, whose image and likeness does it have?

How do those things fit together?

For one thing, the Roman emperor is the one who minted the coin.

It's his money and there are civil benefits that Roman rule

provided in Judea, like order and law and transportation.

Jesus is saying that the coin belongs to Caesar.

To pay it back in the form of a tax is to discharge a debt.

It's giving back what you owe. The payment is not only

permitted, but is in fact due to Caesar.

To withhold it would be to defraud the governing authority.

So they owe to Caesar tax in exchange for services rendered.

Jesus deems the tax legitimate, but that's only half of his

answer, and it's not the most important half.

The most important half, you'll hear it.

Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the

things that are gods. By reminding his hearers of what

they owe to God, Jesus implicitly denies Caesar's claim

to be God. There is only one God, and

Caesar ain't it. So he fundamentally rejects the

whole premise of Roman religion. The coin belongs to Caesar, but

the propaganda on it is a lie. Jesus grants the state a limited

legitimacy while affirming God's absolute supremacy.

Caesar has authority delegated from God, and he will answer to

God like all of us. Caesar lives under God's rule.

Caesar can claim tax. God claims our all.

Jesus doesn't put Caesar in God side by side.

They're not on a level playing field.

Caesar has a partial provisional authority.

God has absolute, total authority, and so Jesus commends

to his hearers and to us a critical loyalty toward earthly

government. The governing authorities

deserve our respect and support and obedience as long as they do

not compete or conflict with God's claims on us.

Jesus teaches that submission to God and submission to government

are not inherently opposed. He implicitly acknowledges that

their claims can conflict, and where they do, God's claims must

win. But wherever their claims do not

conflict, we are to honor and obey earthly governments.

This exact teaching is fleshed out in several places in the New

Testament that teach us how to relate to governing authorities.

On the one hand, we are to submit to them and seek their

good. Romans 13 One.

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for

there is no authority except from God, and those that exist

have been instituted by God. Romans 13 seven.

Pay to all what is owed to them, taxes to whom taxes are owed,

revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect, to whom respect is

owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

First Timothy 21 to two. First of all, then, I urge that

supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings

be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high

positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly

and dignified in every way. You can also look at First Peter

213 to 17 for a very similar statement.

On the one hand, we honor and obey earthly governments.

On the other hand, there are times when we must obey God

rather than man. Here's your rule of thumb for

it. Whenever an earthly authority

commands what God forbids, or forbids what God commands, we

must obey God rather than man. We must disobey the authority in

order to obey God. In Acts 529, when the Jerusalem

authorities commanded the apostles not to preach about

Jesus, Peter and the apostles answered We must obey God rather

than man. The balance of those two streams

of biblical teaching is articulated in our church's

Statement of Faith, Article 15. We also believe God appointed

civil government for the benefit and good order of human society.

Christians should pray for, honor and obey public officials

except in things opposed to the will of our Lord Jesus Christ,

who is the Prince of the kings of the earth.

So this is Jesus first answer to a high stakes question, the kind

of question you don't ask at Thanksgiving dinner unless

you're trying to blow the whole thing up.

Who's in charge? His answer?

Ultimately, God is. God is absolutely supreme.

God is in charge of you and of every human authority.

God has, in his wisdom, appointed civil authorities to

govern and order human society, but those authorities should

never act like they have final or supreme authority.

They will answer to God, and so will you.

Time for round two. Another group, another high

stakes question, another effort to get a hot take from Jesus on

record. Point to what happens when we

die, What happens when we die? That's the question at the heart

of verses 18 to 27. I'll read the whole section.

And Sadducees came to him who say that there is no

resurrection. And they asked him a question,

saying, Teacher Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies

and leaves a wife that leaves no child.

The man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his

brother. There were seven brothers.

The first took a wife and when he died left no offspring.

And the second took her and died leaving no offspring, and the

third likewise, and the seven left no offspring.

Last of all, the woman also died in the resurrection.

When they rise again, whose wife will she be?

For the seven had her his wife. Jesus said to them, Is this not

the reason you are wrong? Because you know neither the

scriptures nor the power of God. For when they rise from the

dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like

angels in heaven. And As for the dead being

raised, have you not read in the book of Moses in the passage

about the Bush how God spoke to him, saying I am the God of

Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob?

He is not God of the dead but of the living.

You are quite wrong. The Sadducees were wealthy a

high status Jewish leaders. Many of them belong to priestly

families. They probably represented the

strongest power block within the Sanhedrin, and they only

recognize the five books of Moses is fully authoritative.

They also rejected any belief in an afterlife.

It's kind of strange, hard to make sense of in modern terms.

Do you want to call them liberals because they deny

resurrection? Well, OK, kind of.

Do you want to call them conservatives because, well,

they only hold to the five books of Moses, which are the oldest.

It's it's weird to try to make sense of their views.

But Acts 23/8 tells us the Sadducees say there is no

resurrection, nor Angel, nor spirits.

Now Scripture teaches all those things in the five books of

Moses and beyond. The Pharisees, the kind of

contrasting party here, believed in all those things, and so does

Jesus. So the Sadducees come to Jesus

with a trap of their own. He believes in a coming

resurrection of all people. They don't.

They try to make his belief look ridiculous.

The hypothetical story they tell takes its point of departure

from a law in Deuteronomy chapter 25 verses 5 to 10.

Deuteronomy 25:5–10

That law established a custom that came to be called Leverett

marriage. If a married man died childless

in ancient Israel, the man's nearest surviving male relative

was obligated to marry the man's wife, and then the first son

from that union would carry on the family name and inheritance

and line. And so the saddesties try to

draw an absurd conclusion from their made-up scenario.

One woman, 7 husbands, who's she going to be married to in the

resurrection? It's a gotcha question.

It's another trap, but it's also got a very serious issue.

It gets out one of the highest stakes questions you could ever

ask. What happens when we die?

What happens to us in the end? What is our final destiny?

If you're not a believer in Jesus, what is your answer to

that question? I'd be glad to talk about it

afterward at the door. I'd love to hear it.

What do you think happens to us when we die?

In verse 24 we begin to hear Jesus's answer.

Jesus said to them, is this not the reason you are wrong because

you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God.

He accuses these religious leaders of ignorance on 2

fronts. They don't know the Scriptures,

and they don't know God's power. Jesus is about to announce to

them that God's power and God's promise really do give us a hope

stronger than the grave. But before we get there, it's

worth meditating on the pitfall of being ignorant of God's Word

and ignorant of God's power. If you don't know God's Word,

what hope can you have? Where will that hope come from?

What will it be grounded in your own power?

Confidence that the world will get better?

A hope that science will somehow come up with an answer to defeat

death just in time to rescue you from it?

Real hope comes not from your optimism, but from God's

promise. If you don't know the Scripture,

you'll be like the Sadducees and have no real hope.

Hope is grounded not in your power, but in God's power.

God's promise brings something into this world that is far

beyond anything this world could do for itself.

And the only way you receive that promise is by faith in his

word. So Jesus prologue, that's his

setup. Here comes the substance of his

answer. He addresses first the manner of

the resurrection. What is it like?

And then he addresses the facts of the resurrection that it's

really going to happen. In verse 25 he addresses the

manner for when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor

are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.

In what sense will those will we be like angels in heaven and the

resurrection? Not that we'll be immaterial,

but that will be immortal, will be deathless, which means we

won't need to procreate to keep the human race going.

And as much as modern culture has tried to ignore and erase

it, procreation is a primary purpose of sexual union.

Marriage and sex are for bringing children into the

world. In the world to come.

We won't need to procreate, which means we won't be married.

As Article Three of our Church's statement of faith says,

marriage and its sexual expression are temporary gifts

that point to the fuller joy of our eternal union with Christ.

So the Sadducee's problem is that they're thinking of

resurrection as if it's just like this life endlessly

extended. The resurrection is more than

that. It's better.

It's the goodness of this life raised into a whole new key.

Jesus teaches that in the resurrection God has something

infinitely better than sex in store for all the redeemed.

So here in verse 25, Jesus appeals to God's power.

God will in the resurrection elevate us into a new mode of

existence beyond anything we can imagine.

Now then, in verses 26 and 27, Jesus appeals to the Scriptures,

and he quotes from Exodus to beat the Sadducees on their own

turf. Oh, you only accept the five

books of Moses? Well then, let's appeal to

Moses. He quotes Exodus 36 from the

passage that I read a little bit earlier.

Here's Jesus. And As for the dead being

raised, have you not read in the book of Moses in the passage

about the Bush, how God spoke to him, saying, I am the God of

Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob?

He is not God of the dead but of the living.

You are quite wrong. Now, if you've read this passage

ahead of time in your devotions or family worship and you've

wondered what's the connection, what's the link, I'll confess

it's been a sort of lingering question of mine kind of for

years. I've sort of had an idea, but I

wouldn't say that I was super confident until I immersed

myself in the question to study for the sermon this week.

So if you're wondering what's going on here, while I'm with

you, I think there's a clear answer, but just to say we have

to get at the logic of Jesus appeal to this passage.

It doesn't explicitly mention resurrection.

Jesus says God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

That has to apply and imply that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are

somehow alive. But in Jesus time and still

today, those patriarchs have not yet risen from the dead.

In whatever sense they're alive, they've not been resurrected.

So what is Jesus's logic? What does he see in Exodus 36

that establishes the resurrection?

The crucial key is God's covenant.

In Exodus 36, God identifies himself by naming the family

that he has freely bound himself to by his covenant of promise.

By that covenant, by that promise, God became the God of

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He pledged himself to them, and

it was in keeping that pledge that he brought their

descendants out of Egypt. God promised them a land.

He promised them an inheritance. And if you think about the

context of Genesis, against the backdrop of the universal spread

of sin and death in Genesis 1 to 11, then in Genesis 12, God

promises Abraham a blessing and a blessing that'll spread to

every family, every nation of the earth.

Even these three names, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, proclaim God's

power to bring life from death. God promised Abraham that a

child would come from his wife's barren womb.

That's Isaac. God brought Isaac into life from

where there was only death, and the same held for Jacob, whose

mother Rebecca had been barren. From the very first act by which

God fulfilled this covenant, he spoke life into existence

against the backdrop of death. So Jesus is saying if God's

covenant is cancelable by death, then it is worthless.

If death could overcome God's covenant, then God isn't God.

If God is the one who gives life, if he's the maker and the

Lord of all, then there's no way death couldn't all his covenant.

God's character and power and promise mean that death will

never get the last word on God and his covenant.

Instead, God will defeat death. God's covenant will conquer and

Vanquish all opposition, including death itself.

The last enemy. What good is a God whose

covenant expires at death? What good is a salvation that

lasts a couple of decades and then you're snuffed out of

existence forever? Jesus asking you what's

stronger, death or God's promise?

What's more powerful? Death, or God's covenant keeping

steadfast love. God has promised his people a

home with him and a life with him that death itself can't

touch. Nothing else measures up to the

depth of our problem. Nothing else would reach all the

way down to the depth of our misery.

But God's love reaches all the way down.

God's power and promise reach all the way down deep enough to

pull up all of our deepest problems by their roots.

That is what God promises to do. That is what he will one day do

to death. He will find its last little

tentacles and tendrils in the soil of this universe and uproot

it and cast it away forever. That's God's promise.

That's God's power. If you don't know that and you

don't know God, and you have no real hope, God's covenant is all

conquering. That's what Jesus sees in Exodus

36. God's covenant will conquer all.

He's not going to give up on Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

He's not going to leave them in the grave.

What kind of a worthless God? What kind of a worthless

covenant is that? So the question is how?

How does God's covenant conquer all that?

The narrative of Mark's gospel tells us through the death and

through the resurrection of Jesus.

Death came into the world as punishment for sin.

Sin is what, excuse me, death is what we deserve for our sin.

Jesus bore that penalty. Jesus died that death.

Jesus suffered that curse. And then when he rose from the

grave, he broke it. He ended it.

He triumphed over it. His resurrection is not like an

add on kind of tacked onto the good news.

If you OK, well, something cool had to happen next.

His resurrection is how God's covenant conquers death.

And if you believe in him, God's covenant will conquer your

death. If you turn from sin and trust

in Him, this fate will become yours.

Resurrection is good news. Resurrection is the best news.

Resurrection is only good news for you if you turn from sin and

trust in Christ. What happens when we die?

Scripture teaches those who trust in Jesus depart

immediately into God's presence in heaven.

Those who don't depart immediately for judgment in

hell. Jesus himself teaches explicitly

that all people will be raised. There's a resurrection of the

just and the unjust. But that resurrection is only

good news if you're coming to God's judgment, clothed in

Christ by faith. So turn from sin and trust in

him. Brothers of brothers and

sisters, members of TBC, Trust. I'm sorry.

I lost my lost my mic here. Give me just a moment.

Just going to pause so it doesn't fall out.

What happened here? Well, it's not falling yet.

We're just going to keep going. Sorry about that.

Reboot. Where are we?

It's God's power, it's God's promise.

He made it, He can keep it. So Jesus teaching by putting the

scriptures and the power of God side by side.

You have to know both. So brothers and sisters, trust

in God's promise of resurrection.

On that day of resurrection, nothing will be worse.

Everything will be better on that day.

Whatever you're missing or lacking now will be more than

supplied. Whatever you're suffering now

will be more than made-up for. Whatever good desire is

unsatisfied now will be more than fulfilled, abundantly

fulfilled, overflowingly fulfilled.

On that day, you'll be perfectly satisfied and perfect.

Fellowship with God and His people.

In whatever ways your earthly relationships are lacking now,

in whatever ways you're burdened by grief or loss, know that on

that day you will be perfectly known and loved.

If you trust in Christ, all your best years are ahead of you, and

those years have no number, no limit, no end.

What happens when we die? Jesus final answer, rooted in

his own resurrection is better than anything anyone in this

world can tell you. Our passage is one more story of

someone sparring intellectually with Jesus, one more high stakes

question. The setup's a little different

from the 1st 2:00, but the question is equally important.

Point #3 how should we live? How should we live?

That's the question Jesus answers in verses 28 to 34.

Look with me at those verses. 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 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. There's no other commandment

greater than these. And the scribe said to him,

You're right, teacher, you've truly said that he is 1 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.

Here it's not a group approaching Jesus, but an

individual. Matthew and Luke both tell us

that this scribe came to Jesus to test him.

So apparently he starts off as a skeptic.

But here's the thing. In Mark's gospel so far, and

even in this passage, we've seen a lot of bad faith skeptics,

people who ask Jesus questions what their minds are already

made-up against him. But in this scribe, as we'll

see, we meet someone who's genuinely open to Jesus, answers

What's his question? It's essentially how should we

live? And he asks that question in a

distinctively Jewish form, which commandment is the most

important of all. This is a common question for a

rabbi to be asked in Jesus's day.

There's a story preserved about the Rabbi Hillel from around the

time of Jesus where someone came to him and said teach me the

whole Torah while I stand on one foot, meaning boil it down to

its one sentence essence. What's most important?

What's the commandment that makes sense of all the others

and puts them all in their proper perspective?

You'll notice Jesus gives the scribe more than he asks for in

two ways. Instead of simply responding

with a commandment, he responds with a confession of faith.

Then he says the greatest commandment, and then he gives

him another second great commandment.

Instead of 1 commandment. He gives him 2 verses 29 to 31.

Again Jesus answered, the most important is here, O Israel, the

Lord our God, 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.

There is no other commandment greater than these.

Jesus begins by quoting Deuteronomy 6 verses four and

five. This is known as the Shema from

the Hebrew word, for here it's Israel's essential confession of

faith. It's the most foundational truth

of the Old Testament. There is one and only one living

and true God, whose name is the Lord.

Why does Jesus start with the confession?

It's because the commandment is rooted in the confession.

As God is 1, so must our love for him be.

As God is undivided, so must our souls be in their devotion to

him. If there are multiple competing

gods, you can't afford to give your total devotion to anyone

God. You got to hedge your bets.

You got to keep all these different gods happy.

That's part of the reason modern society is so sick and self

deceived, because we think we are a secular society.

We are in fact a polytheistic society because in reality there

is one and only one God. We must love Him with all that

we are. The terms heart, soul, mind and

strength are essentially overlapping ways of saying all

of you. Everything that you have, your

whole person, every last bit of you, everything God has given to

you, you must give back to Him in glad dedication and joyful

praise. Because there is one God.

The essence of living well is complete devotion and submission

to Him. This one true God is the only

God you can worship and not thereby degrade yourself.

The real God is the only God you can worship without harming

yourself. To worship any other God is to

commit both treason and self harm.

By contrast, to worship God truly is to live life fully.

Anything else, anything less and you've missed the point of your

existence. Talk about a high stakes

question. That's the confession and the

first commandment. By calling it the greatest

commandment, Jesus is saying it's the most important.

It is the gravitational center that puts everything in the

universe of your life into its proper place.

But then Jesus gives one more commandment.

The second is this. You shall love your neighbor as

yourself. There were Jewish teachers in

Jesus time who highlighted the importance of total devotion to

God. It's right there in the Shema.

There were other Jewish teachers in Jesus time who pointed to the

importance of neighbor love. There in Leviticus 1918.

That's what Jesus is quoting. But Jesus is the first Jew to

link these two commandments in this way.

He's pointing out that love of God and love of neighbor form a

unity, and at the same time love of God takes priority.

Jesus is summarizing the 2 tables, the two halves of the 10

commandments, the whole Torah. All 613 commandments boils down

to the 10 commandments as it's summary.

And the 10 commandments boil down to two Love God, love

neighbor. Of course, those two

commandments boil down to one word, love.

Love of God is fulfilled in love of neighbor.

Love of neighbor is rooted in love for God.

You prove your love for God by your love for those who are made

in his image. And only a heart fundamentally

devoted to God can enable you to love your neighbor rightly and

truly. Love for God fuels love for

neighbor. Love of neighbor demonstrates

love for God. These two commandments are the

essence of how we all should live.

They are themselves the path of a good life.

Kids and teens in the congregation.

The whole way the Bible tells us to live is summed up in these

two commandments. Anything you do, anything you

say, anything you are thinking about doing, Jesus gives you a

very simple test to put it to. Does this express love for God

and love for my neighbor? If it fails, one of the two

halves of that test, do not do it.

Don't say it, don't think it, don't do it.

One of the effects of hearing Jesus teaching on this point

should be to convict us of sin. If you're not a believer in

Jesus, you should recognize that this is a standard you have not

kept, cannot keep, and will never keep.

As JC Rile put it, where are the men or women who can say with

truth that they have perfectly loved God and perfectly love

their neighbor? That's none of us.

There's only one person in human history who perfectly loved God

and neighbor, and that's Jesus. The proclamation of his life in

the Gospels shows us that everything Jesus does and says

in all four gospels is an expression of love for God and

love for neighbor. You will find no defect of love

for God and love of neighbor and anything Jesus ever says and

does. Jesus shows us what love for God

and love for others looks like. He lived a fully, truly,

maximally human life. You and I can't, but Jesus did

it for us to redeem us. If you're convicted of how you

fall short of this standard, and you should be, turn from sin and

trust in Jesus. For us as believers, this simple

twofold summary of the law is a mirror we should constantly look

into. That's one reason why

occasionally we do just what we did this morning where we read

this very part of the passage. We use it as a prompt for

confession of sin. We should be looking into this

perfect law as a mirror for our souls.

And what do we do in response? Confess, repent, and experience

assurance of God's forgiveness. That's Jesus answer.

The last bit of the passage shows us the scribes response

verses 32 to 34. And the scribe said to him,

You're right, teacher, you've truly said that he is 1 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.

So the scribe agrees with Jesus. Not only that, but he echoes

some more scripture back to Jesus in his reply.

His his wording echoes passages like First Samuel 1522 and Hosea

66 where God teaches that obedience to him and mercy

toward others are more important than sacrifice.

It's as if it's as if he finds a scripture reference for each

half of Jesus teaching. Oh yeah.

First Samuel 1522 says obedience to God is more important than

sacrifice. Love God.

Hosea 66 says mercy is more important than sacrifice.

Love neighbor. So he's seeing the relative

weight God is giving to these things described as saying, oh

right, love for God and love for neighbor is what God wants more.

It's not that God doesn't care about sacrifice.

It's not that he doesn't care about external observance of the

ceremonial law that was inspired by him and given by him too.

What it is, is that God cares infinitely more about our hearts

devotion to him and our loving treatment of others.

If you have sacrifice without worship, your sacrifice is

worthless. If you have religious observance

without love for God and love for others, your religious

observance is worthless. You could have a form of

religion, and if that form of religion is empty of love for

God and does not lead the love of neighbor, that form of

religion is worse than worthless.

It's harmful because it's acting as a religious substitute for

what God cares about. It's that thing is a kind of

religious vaccine against the real religion God is trying to

implant in your heart so that you devote yourself to Him and

to loving service of others. The scribe agrees with Jesus.

The total devotion to God is the essence of what it means to live

rightly. And so Jesus tells him he's not

far from the Kingdom, not that he's in the Kingdom, but that

he's close. It's because he's grasped the

essence of God's law. And grasping the essence of

God's law is a big step toward trusting in God's gospel.

In all three controversies. Zoom out.

Consider the passage as a whole. Jesus appeals to Scripture.

Jesus expounds scripture. Jesus submits to scripture and

gives the true sense of Scripture. 2 quick applications

for us from that pattern. Jesus teaching number one,

submit to Scripture. Recognize Scriptures authority

over every area of your life. Recognize that scripture is God

himself speaking to you in the infinite fullness of His divine

authority. Second, when dealing with

controversial matters, especially issues that Bible

believing Christians disagree on, one good question to ask

yourself is how explicitly does Scripture speak to this?

Is this a plain teaching of Scripture like the resurrection

of Jesus, or is this a more distant implication or inference

from biblical principles? One part of maturing is a

Christian is developing a sense of the relative weight or

gravity of an issue. Some matters are heavier than

others. That's why Jesus can say there's

a greatest commandments. Another aspect of maturing is a

believer. Another way to put it is

developing a sense of how tightly or loosely you should

hold your opinion on any given issue.

That should depend in part on how directly Scripture addresses

the issue and also on what the practical consequences of the

issue are. How should we live?

Love is the essence, love of God, love of neighbor.

And the key to being able to do both is knowing the God who has

first loved you. Note the result of this whole

exchange at the very end, verse 34.

And after that, no one dared to ask him any more questions.

They failed to cancel Jesus. They failed to get the hot take

on record they would use to try to take him down.

They've pressed him with the highest stakes questions they

can come up with, and He's answered them with untouchable

wisdom. What Jesus offers here is far

more than hot takes. He shows us who deserves our

ultimate loyalty. He illumines our ultimate

destiny. He reveals the ultimate essence

of morality. But it's important to see that

Jesus most important answer to these questions is not just his

teaching, but his life. Not just his life, but his

death, and not just his death but his resurrection.

Who has an answer like that? Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the wisdom you have revealed

to us by this inspired record of these controversies.

We thank You that Christ sealed His wisdom in His own blood and

confirmed it by Himself, becoming the source of eternal

life and resurrection for all who trust in Him.

Father, we pray that we would submit ourselves to You

absolutely. We pray that we would trust in

Your promise of resurrection hope.

We pray that by Your grace and the work of Your Spirit, we

would devote ourselves completely to living for You and

loving others. We pray in Jesus name, Amen.