Mark's Gospel Part 22 - Learning to Love

It would be great if you could turn up Mark chapter twelve.

In a second, I'm going to read from God's words, but it is his words, and we need his help to understand it.

So, first of all, I'm going to pray.

Let me pray.

Our Father God, we do thank you for your word.

Thank you that you speak to us.

Please give us ears to hear what you are saying.

Give us hearts that love what you say and are changed by it.

Help me to speak rightly and faithfully of your words.

And would you be glorified, please, this morning.

Amen.

Amen.

Mark chapter 12, we're actually going to read for now from verse 28 to the end of the chapter.

Mark 12 · chapter mention

From verse 28.

And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another.

The then is the religious leaders and Jesus.

And seeing that he answered them well, asked him, Which commandment is the most important of all?

And 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 neighbour 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 there is no other beside him.

And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbour as one's self 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 David?

David himself, in 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.

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 honour at feasts, who devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers, they will receive the greater condemnation.

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.

And we thank God for his good words to us this morning.

If you could ask Jesus any question, any question, what would it be?

In the lead up to our passage today, we have had three sets of folks, all sort of, they are hoity-toity religious leaders of Jesus' day, come up to him in the temple and ask questions to him.

If you were here last week, we saw the chief priests, the elders, the scribes ask him a question which challenged his authority.

We also saw the Pharisees last week and the Herodians ask him a question about whether they should pay taxes or not.

In verses 18 to 27, which we actually haven't looked at for the time being, there's another group, the Sadducees, come up and ask what they think is a clever question about the resurrection, which they didn't really believe in, and who will be married to who.

And the thread that runs through all of those questions, when they had a chance to ask Jesus a question, any question, what an opportunity, there right in front of you, in flesh and blood, face to face, what a time to be alive, to ask him any question.

But the common thread that all of those questions had is that they were all completely inauthentic.

They weren't asked with genuine hearts or with genuine interest.

They were asked by people who thought they were being clever.

They were asked because they wanted to trap Jesus to get him in trouble.

They were asked because, we read this back here in chapter 11, they were looking for a way to destroy Jesus.

But they were wasted questions.

They weren't able to trap him, and they didn't get what they wanted.

But then, and we started our passage, our reading in verse 28 today, there is one of these religious leaders.

Just one.

Out of all the scribes and the chief priests and the elders and the Pharisees and the Herodians and the Sadducees, all these groups, there is one little scribe.

You can almost sort of see him nervously sidling up to Jesus.

And he's got a question, but one that seems different to the others.

It is genuine.

He is not playing games with Jesus.

And he wants to know, verse 28, what is the most important commandment of all?

And we've got three big things just to think about this morning.

Here's the first one if you're a note-taker or if you've got a good memory.

And it's simple, really.

The most important thing is to love God with everything.

The most important thing is to love God with everything.

So verse 28, this guy is genuine.

You know, we see his motives.

He's not asking to trap Jesus like the others.

He's asking, actually, because he's impressed by Jesus.

He's heard that he's answered well previously.

He thinks there may be something that he can learn from Jesus.

And just as we go on into this passage this morning, it may be the case that there are some here who have found themselves impressed by Jesus.

You like what you hear of him, even if you don't trust him yourself.

If that's you, I'd encourage you this morning just to consider what it is that he says is the most important thing of all.

What is the most important thing Jesus thinks a person can do?

Everyone has their own take on the answer to that question.

You know, Jordan Peterson and his Twelve Rules for Life.

Star Trek's prime directive, if you're a nerd.

Google's AI answer to the question what's the most important thing for people to do is to be kind to yourself and to others.

Listen to the order in that.

Be kind to yourself and to others.

And what does Jesus say?

Well, he tells us in verse 29 and 30, and he's actually quoting from the Old Testament from Deuteronomy, and he says, 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.

Now, Jesus' answer, what is more important than anything else a person can do, it is to love God.

It is to love God.

Now, you may be thinking, well, that sort of sounds obvious.

Of course he's going to say that.

It's Jesus.

They're in the temple.

Of course he's going to say, love God.

But maybe it wasn't as obvious as it ought to have been, because that's actually exactly what the religious leaders of the day were not doing.

It was the reason that the day before Jesus had gone into the temple and chucked the furniture everywhere.

It is notably absurd that there and then it even has to be said that you should love God.

The most important thing Jesus says in life isn't be happy.

It isn't put family first.

It isn't the five British values.

It isn't chase your dreams.

None of those things last.

It is love God.

And when Jesus is talking about loving God, he's not talking about loving God like you love a white chocolate magnum or you love Tottenham or you loved listening to the pulp set at Glastonbury yesterday.

It is whole-hearted devotion.

It is loving God with everything.

And we could get into the ins and outs of what he means by heart and soul and mind and strength, but I think the overall picture is clear, isn't it?

What is there in my life that doesn't fall within one of those categories?

And the answer is nothing.

And it's with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind, all my strength, every fibre of my being, every thought, every feeling, every action.

It belongs to him.

And so it ought to be used out of love for him.

Sometimes, I wonder if our default, even if we don't realize it, is to think of love as a sort of pie chart.

So you've got a pie chart.

And my wife gets 25% of my love, and my kids each get 10%, and my football team gets 5%, and my friends can have the other 20%.

I haven't done the maths on that.

Sort of a pie chart, we split it up.

Or Christians, even, sometimes we maybe split our love up by the days of the week.

On Sunday, I love God and my church family a bit, and maybe on Tuesday evening.

But then the rest of the week, I've got so many other things and people to love that I've got to do that then.

Sunday is the day that I love God.

And Jesus is saying, look, that is not how it works.

We are made to give God the whole pie chart, the whole week.

There ought to be nothing of our works, our affections, that doesn't fall within love for God.

Now that doesn't exclude love for others, does it?

Actually, Jesus goes on to say in verse 31 that the second most important thing you can do is to love your neighbor as yourself.

In other words, love God with everything that you have.

And a huge part of loving God is has got to be loving other people.

Loving those who bear God's image.

That's what the Bible says.

Back at the beginning, God made humans unique, different, special, because he made them in his likeness.

And so it makes sense then that to love God has got to mean loving other people.

There's no competition between loving God and loving people.

I love people because I love God.

And if I don't love other people, can I really claim that I love God?

I don't think so.

And that's something we'll see played out in the lives of the religious leaders in a couple of minutes.

Now, this scribe, Jesus has answered him, and he appreciates Jesus' answer, doesn't he?

Verse 32.

He sees that Jesus has answered well.

He sees the beauty in it, the goodness of it.

He is all ready to get on board with what Jesus is saying.

And Jesus tells him, verse 34, that he's not far from the kingdom of God.

That's pretty huge.

And bearing in mind, see what's going on, that his religious colleagues have basically been told en masse that they are out of the kingdom of God and they are about to be kicked out permanently with the doors bolted behind them.

The whole of Mark's gospel story has, in one sense, been about who's inside and who is outside of God's kingdom.

And this guy is not far from the kingdom of God.

In other words, he's near, he's close.

And what is it that makes him such?

It isn't being good, is it?

We don't know about his track record, we don't know how holy his prayers sound or how well he keeps the Ten Commandments, but he is someone who understands that there is nothing more important in this world than to love the God by whom and for whom this world exists.

That's what Jesus says is the most important thing.

But then this plays out, and we can look at these religious leaders.

So the second big thing is we see a warning about loving yourself.

There's a warning about loving yourself.

Sort of verse 35 to 40.

In this next section, Jesus uh really is still teaching in the temple, uh, but what he's doing, he is exposing the religious leaders of the day for their inconsistency, for their hypocrisy, for their lovelessness.

It is uh always very satisfying, isn't it, when you're listening to Radio 4, uh, if you listen to Radio 4, and there's a politician being interviewed, and they get sort of tangled up in their arguments and they can't quite work out what they're saying anymore.

Did I, or do I really mean that?

Oh, and and they've sort of been caught out by the interviewer, they've been exposed.

Now, that really is what Jesus is doing with the religious leaders in this section.

Jesus asks a question, verse 35 How can the scribes say that the Christ is the Son of David?

Now there's lots of sort of complicated stuff here, but let me just try and sort of break down what Jesus is going on about here.

So, uh the Christ, if you know sort of Bible language, it is the one promised in the Old Testament, God's anointed king who one day would rule his people perfectly with an everlasting kingdom.

And God had said that it would be someone from King David's line, a son of David.

So verse 35, how can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David?

Well, it's because it's in the Bible, and it's worth noting that a son of David is what Jesus is, as he is saying this to them.

He continues, verse 36.

King David, previously mentioned, and for context, uh what he's quoting now is King David speaking in Psalm 110.

That's a psalm that speaks about this Christ.

That this he says that this Christ, this person, was his Lord, someone greater than David, who would rule at God's right hand and come in judgment on God's enemies.

You see that stuff about them being under his feet there in verse 36.

Now, Jesus, a son of David, had been speaking in the temple about judging God's enemies.

And maybe the pieces are starting to fall into place for us as we read in, but it hadn't for the scribes.

And so verse 37, that Christ is both David's greater Lord and his son.

Now, how does that work?

Jesus is asking.

And really, he's getting at two things here in the minds and the hearts of the scribes.

One is that their idea of the Christ is too small.

He's just a son of David.

And they sort of ignore the Lord bit, that he will rule forever, that he will judge God's enemies.

And the other thing is that they refuse to see that Jesus was that Christ.

Those are their problems.

They don't have a big enough picture of the Christ, and they don't get that Jesus standing in front of them is that Christ.

They won't love him, they want to destroy him.

They have made themselves God's enemies.

They've been waiting, they say, for the Christ to for the Christ to come.

You say that's what you want, says Jesus, but here I am, and rather than love me, you want to kill me.

So that's the sort of theological muddle they're in.

But it's not just a theological muddle.

Uh Jesus points out as he carries on in verse 38 that the people need to be warned about these religious leaders, to beware of them.

They who did not recognize Jesus or trust the scriptures which pointed to him.

But the question is, how do you spot the fakes?

How do you spot the hypocrites, the enemies of God?

What gives them away?

Now, some animals give signs, don't they, that you should have nothing to do with them.

So you don't mess around with colourful frogs.

You don't try and stroke a cat that's hissing at you.

These religious enemies of God, they had telltale signs too.

Three of them, I think, if you just look at those couple of verses.

Number one, uh, verse 38, it's selfish ambition, looking for the honour of men rather than that which only God gives.

There's this picture in verse 38 of them deliberately walking round the marketplace in their long flowing robes, in their religious paraphernalia, so that people will greet them, perhaps with a little bow or a good morning, your grace.

We've already seen, if you've been in Mark's Gospel, how much they care about the opinion of the crowd.

That's where they want their affirmation and their glory from men.

And instead of helping those they taught to know, trust, and serve God, they use their position for their own ambition and reputation.

That's first mark.

Second Mark is pride.

Verse 39.

They wanted the best seats and the top table.

This is so clearly the opposite of what Jesus and actually the whole Bible, the Old Testament, taught that the last will be first, that friends of God live to serve, not to be served, just as Jesus came to serve by dying to save people rather than lording it over them.

That true religion is to love God and to love people.

These leaders just love themselves.

They're playing the religion game for what they can get out of it, not serving God and others out of love.

They were proud.

They wanted the trappings of religious respect.

Two signs.

The third sign.

Well, they were greedy.

Verse 40.

It is actually terribly wicked when you read that verse.

You see it, you feel it.

They preyed upon these widows in their grief, in their vulnerability, in their loneliness, these wicked men are playing the parts of God's servants, are taking advantage of them, devouring their houses, we read, ruining them, stripping away their assets, but praying long and impressive prayers whilst they did so, in their long impressive robes.

Greedy, selfish hypocrites.

You can tell they didn't love God because they didn't love others, they only loved themselves.

And Jesus says of them right at the end of that verse, verse 40, that they will receive the greater condemnation.

There is no messing around about that.

They won't get away with it forever, says Jesus.

Their wickedness and lovelessness will be rightly judged as God's enemies find themselves under Jesus' feet one day.

I don't know how you feel about that.

Perhaps something we see of them we actually see in our own hearts too.

Perhaps as we look at these religious leaders, God is exposing to us the true state of what's going on inside, my selfish ambition, my pride, my greed.

And if you're feeling like that, it is worth saying that one of the reasons Jesus came, we saw this last week in the parable of the tenants, in his grace was to warn us, to show us what our hearts are like, that we might not face his judgment, that we might turn away from sin and turn to him and cry out for help, that we might find forgiveness in him, that by trusting in him we might move from being God's enemies to being God's friends, that with his help we might love him rightly and love people rightly.

If you feel some of the sting of that passage, well, today is the day to do something about it.

Elia and Kara and Rory will be baptized in a few minutes.

That great symbol of having been washed clean, of having become God's friends because of the work of Jesus.

And Jesus came to warn us, and in hearing his voice and heeding his warning to help us turn from our sin and to turn to him to find forgiveness, come into his kingdom clean, welcomed, no longer enemies but friends.

Now most of those religious leaders didn't hear that warning.

And God promised that they would face his condemnation.

And these two, just as a brief side point, are also words to apply to teachers of God's words today, I think.

But by their fruits, we know whether they are really true to Jesus or not, whether they come to you offering poison or medicine.

So please do pray for your pastors and leaders.

And be wise about who you listen to.

Do you know what their lives are like?

Can you trust them?

I'd warn you generally against getting obsessed with individual preachers you only hear on the internet.

What do you know about their lives?

Can you trust them?

And it feels like a strange thing to say too, but we can thank God that he will judge the hypocrisy of the religious fakes.

There have been so many recently that have come out in the news in various ways, and it's been heartbreaking, much of it.

But God promises he will judge the religious fakes of those who dishonour Jesus' name and seek to honour themselves and grab things for themselves instead of helping people to love him.

And so Jesus says the most important thing is to love God with everything.

And he wants us to hear the warning about loving ourselves.

But just as we get towards the end, he doesn't end on a downer.

Because at the end of our passage, we get this really beautiful real life picture of loving God.

This is our last big point this morning.

Love in action.

It is giving what you have.

Love in action, giving what you have.

And we get this real juxtaposition, a beautiful comparison.

We see that the leaders have been taking advantage of widows and will be judged for it.

But now we get to look at this one particular poor widow herself, her life.

What is she doing with it?

And we return to the positive of what Jesus was teaching out about.

It is a wholehearted love, it is complete devotion to God.

The scribes, we know about them.

If they gave to charity, you can be sure that there would be photographers there to catch a photo of you know the giant check being handed over.

Do they still do giant checks?

I don't know, because they don't do checks anymore, do they?

But you know what I mean.

Whereas the widows, two little copper coins, they're never going to make it into the newspaper.

Not even the Brentwood Gazette.

But she's not giving it for the sake of appearances.

She wants to honour God when they only want to honor themselves.

And again, this comparison, they have made her poor, and she gives out of her poverty.

Now I think we understand instinctively from Jesus that we are to feel a right indignation about their treatment of people like this widow, and a better feeling and understanding of why they will face the judgment that God promises.

But I think it would also be right to feel joy for the beauty of her quiet devotion.

Some people are giving out of abundance, verse 44, barely realizing that the money's left their bank account.

But this woman gives out of her poverty, and Jesus seems to indicate this is all she has.

These two little coins.

But he doesn't call her silly or short-sighted or financially reckless.

He commends her for the kind of love the super religious are incapable of.

And he commends her for the kind of love that doesn't just give, actually, but if you think about it, it trusts.

It trusts the one she loves to provide for her in her poverty, to care for her, to keep her to such an extent that she can give away her last pennies.

She loves her God and she knows she has good reason to love the God who saves his people, who forgives them, who provides for them, who keeps for them, as we sung earlier, like a shepherd keeps and cares for his sheep.

And so we get these contrasts.

The scribes and the one scribe, the showy leaders and the quietly devoted widow.

Back earlier in our passage, verse 33.

God wants us to know that to love God and to love one's neighbor, it is worth so much more than all of the burnt offerings and sacrifices that the religious can make.

To love God, to love neighbor is worthy of millions of lives of empty religion, of religious observance without love.

And just as we finish, encourage us to think about a couple of things that we might do with this passage as we go.

Number one is to see that there are reasons to praise God here.

Praise God for Jesus exposing hypocrisy, that he shows us what's really going on inside us, tells us about what's going on in the hearts of the human being.

We can praise God for judging hypocrisy.

Because actually we see their wickedness and we do understand, don't we, that it is wrong, that we don't want this to go on forever, that God won't let sin and lovelessness go on forever.

He will judge it rightly.

But also we praise God for rescuing us from hypocrisy.

Jesus came to warn and to save.

He came to die that we might be forgiven.

Everyone who calls himself a Christian today does so because they're hypocrites who have been saved by the Lord Jesus and saved for him.

And so the very last thing to say this morning, really, is obvious, isn't it, from the passage?

Friends, love God.

Love God with all that we have.

Beware the danger of pursuing likes and followers.

Beware of serving because you want people to see you and praise you.

Beware the desire to be in the inner circle.

Beware taking advantage of other people's poverty.

Judgment is coming for that, but love God with everything.

Even if you don't have much to give, love your neighbor as yourself.

Ask for God's help to do that.

There is nothing more important.

You know, we pray this morning for Elia and for Kara and for Rory that as you grow up as baptized people, you grow up bearing the name of Christ for yourself, that you will love him with all that you have.

Instead of loving yourselves.

And we're going to pray that this morning, right now.

There is nothing more important.

Let me pray.

Father God, they are simple words.

Love you.

Love each other.

But we have hearts that find that so hard to put into practice.

We do ask that you would help us this morning to love you, whether it's for the first time or for the millionth time in our lives.

I ask that you would help us find forgiveness in Christ for the love we have not shown.

And I ask that you would help us grow in our love daily, the more we know you, to love you more deeply, and to love our neighbor.

as ourselves.

Amen.