The Greatest Commandment

Reading from the word of our Lord.

Mark twelve, twenty eight through thirty-four.

And one of the scribes came up and heard him disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asking him, Which commandment is the most important of all?

Jesus answered, The most important is hear, O Israel, the Lord your the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your height, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.

The second is this you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

There is no other commandment greater than these.

And the scribe said to him, You are right, teacher, you have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him.

And to love him with all the heart, 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.

This is the word of our Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

And we are continuing our sermons through the gospel according to Mark.

And today we arrive at the end of the questioning of Jesus while he is at the temple.

And he is asked what becomes his the final question.

After this question, no one dared to ask him any more questions.

And then Jesus will begin speaking and teaching and will approach probably the most difficult passage interpretively in the Gospel of Mark, which is Mark 13.

But for now, today, we're talking about the greatest commandment.

So let's pray that we might receive this.

Holy Father.

To hear that the highest call for us, the greatest commandment, is to love you with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength.

It's so glorious and so heavy.

And so simple.

And the hearing of it is humiliating.

Lord, you are worthy of the fullness of our love.

That all of us and everything that we are doing ought to be an expression and demonstration of our love for you.

Lord, but as we explore this in our hearts, it becomes so plain that that is not the shape of our of our hearts.

It's not the goal of our souls.

It's not what we study with our minds.

It's not what we do with our strength.

So, Lord, I pray that as we approach this text, that we would receive your mercy and we would approach it in the presence of your mercy, that you are the one who first loved us.

That we might see the glory of your love towards us, the freedom of the grace that you offer us.

And Lord, we ask that you would send your spirit to strengthen ours, that we might love you as we are called to.

Father, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So, as I said, the final questioner is sent to Jesus.

Jesus has been interrogated by the Pharisees, by the Sadducees.

He's been uh asked all kinds of little traps and riddles throughout his time uh in the temple.

And each of the questions we've we've seen have been not real questions.

They aren't asking because they're wondering or because they're curious of what Jesus' answer might be.

They're asking him these questions because they think they can trap him.

And so they're barely questions, they're more like riddles or or traps.

But each of the questions that Jesus has asked, has answered from the Pharisees and scribes and the Sadducees has uh proven that the traps that they set for him, they just fell right into.

And Jesus's answers have gone far beyond any of what their questions, any of what their questions were.

But this final question is a real one.

It's an authentic question, and perhaps that's why it's the final question that gets asked.

Let's just go ahead and look at our text and see what it is.

In Mark 12, 18.

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?

The other questions, the people were sent.

And this has been sort of a plague on Jesus' ministry through throughout his whole ministry, no matter where he was.

It's just especially intense here in Jerusalem.

But when Jesus is ministering in Galilee, he has people that are sent from Jerusalem to ask him these trap questions and to kind of pester him in these ways.

But each of the questioners, they're not really asking their own question.

They're asking the question that they've been sent forward as the champion of their group to ask.

And so they're sent forward not to ask a question to learn an answer.

That's not what their question is doing.

When they ask the question, what they're doing is saying to the rest of their group, I represent you.

They're signaling to the group, I'm a part of you.

So when the Sadducees, as we saw last week, send forward someone to ask a question to trap Jesus in a contradiction regarding the resurrection, because the Sadducees didn't believe in the resurrection, the Sadducee goes forward and poses this question with a theological veneer and says, uh what he's really doing there, what that Sadducee is doing is saying, I'm really a Sadducee.

I'm first and foremost a Sadducee.

That's the point of the question.

It's not to get an answer.

But this question, the man isn't sent.

He's not like the Pharisees who are saying, look, there's only two ways to think about taxes in Caesar.

Which one are you picking?

He's not like the Sadducees, it says there's only two ways to think about the resurrection.

Which one are you picking?

And so they're sent forward by those groups.

This man, it says, and one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another.

So Jesus is this this he's of the member of the scribes, but he comes up himself and he hears the disputes that are taking place.

And he notices, he says, and seeing that he answered them well, he hears the questions, and then he hears Jesus' answers, and he notices that these were good answers.

And this also shows us what the dynamic of the space that Jesus is talking in is.

Because it might feel to us like Jesus is just facing adversary after adversary, and everyone is just being more and more united against him.

And that is true at one level.

That's true with the people who are coming and asking Jesus, but there's another group present, the ones who are just listening in.

And I think it's important to notice that this is the group that Jesus is really teaching.

Jesus is not just there to own the Pharisees or drink his mug of Sadducee tears.

He is doing that.

But he's speaking to the people that are listening.

When he's answering these questions, he knows there are real listeners here, and they can really be taught and understand.

And this scribe is among that number, and that's why he asks a question which is a real authentic question.

Now, I want I want us to just recognize the risk that that is, especially as a scribe.

Like he's he's identified with a group that has skin in the game to stand against Jesus because Jesus is a threat to their authority.

And so when a person like that asks an authentic question, meaning a question that is beyond just signaling the group that he is a part of, but one that risks receiving a true answer that could disrupt his own station, this is a sign of real courage in this man.

And he does that.

He he asks a question which could reframe his own position in the group.

And then if he agrees with it, then what he's saying is, I I think Jesus is the one who's right here.

And to to the scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees, that signals they they see Jesus and they just see stumbling block.

So the one to be avoided, the only one in the room that we all know you're not allowed to agree with.

But this scribe, if he sees the answer as being a good answer, then he sees Jesus and he says, he sees perhaps cornerstone.

Perhaps these are the right answers.

Perhaps this is the right way that scripture ought to be framed.

And that means that that his hope of just, you know, it's the beginning of a holiday week, it's exciting, all the scribes are getting together, they have their scribe conference before this, it's always right before.

And uh you go out to um, you know, the taverns in Jerusalem after meeting together for the day, and you talk and you look forward to catching up.

Well, if he's the guy in the room who heard Jesus and said, I think that was right.

Well, he knows what those conversations are gonna be like.

It's not gonna be comfortable anymore.

It's not going to be this, you know, we've got this new sort of unity and agreement between scribes and Pharisees.

Well, that's all disrupted now when he hears this.

You see that I just want us to understand the social risk of asking a question of Jesus so that you might receive his actual answer.

There is a huge risk there.

He's saying, My whole life might be disrupted, but it's worth it to hear the answer of Jesus.

So he asks him this question: which commandment is the most important of all?

Now that's a wonderful question.

The other questions that the uh Pharisees, for example, when they gather together with the Herodians and they ask Jesus about paying taxes to Caesar, well, that sort of question has the has their entire entire interpretive framework built in.

Because the the Pharisees and the Herodians, they're they're in this position where they're they're able to say, there's either rebellion against Caesar or there's accepting all that Caesar says and all that Caesar requires of us.

So, Jesus, that's the way the world is.

Where do you fit in our world?

That's the frame of the question.

I know where, I know exactly how the world is structured, I know how to categorize people and where to put them in.

So, Jesus, here's the shape of the world.

You tell me, where do you fit into my world?

Or the question of the Sadducees regarding the resurrection.

They come and they say, the Sadducees are the experts in the scripture, and I can prove to you that the doctrine of resurrection creates a contradiction with the teachings of Moses.

And there's only two ways to understand this: either Moses is right, or there is something as a true resurrection.

Here is the shape of the world.

I know the shape of the world and where the priorities are.

So, Jesus, where do you fit into the shape of my world?

That way I can properly categorize you.

Do you see that's the that's the form of all of these other questions?

I know the way things should be organized.

I know where the right people should be should be put and where they would fit and how they could be categorized, and then I know how to relate to them.

Because I I'm just wondering, Jesus, where you fit in my scheme.

And then we'll all know where you fit.

And then we'll be able to put you there, and uh our questioning will be done.

The ordinary, everybody will just take their places and recite their lines, and we all will have known, we will all know nothing.

This is what the this is kind of it's kind of we know what these dynamics are like.

I just want these dynamics to feel ordinary because um if there's a any national tragedy, like just go online and you know what happens.

Everybody just takes their places and they repeat their lines, and we all learn nothing.

We know it's very you don't need to, you don't even need to look.

It's like, yeah, I know exactly what everybody is going to say because we're not saying.

We're just we're we're we're not there's not like an exploration or a discovery or or a sense of curiosity.

Uh we're just saying we're just sent forward as champions of the group.

That's not I'm not saying that's not necess that that's necessarily bad or that there's necessarily an evil in that.

What I'm saying is if Jesus is paradigm breaking, if he is who he says he is, then you have to expect your whole framework to be broken and rebuilt by Jesus.

And that that is an incredible risk.

So this question, this question opens up the possibility for the man to receive an answer that creates a whole new framework.

And why is that?

It's because it's a question of priority.

All of the other questions presuppose that they know what the right priority of scripture is.

But this man comes up and he's he's not saying, look, we all know how to think about the scriptures.

Do you fit in with this group of how to think or with this group of how to think?

This man comes up and he says, Teach me how to understand the scriptures.

What is the greatest commandment?

What is the right priority that I should be thinking about the commands of the Lord?

He's saying, I don't know.

There are competing ways of thinking about this.

At that time, of course, there are competing ways of thinking about this.

There's just like in almost every discipline, there's lumpers and splicers.

There's the people who are trying to reduce the whole of the law to one thing, that's the lumpers, that we can put everything together.

And then there's people that are saying we have not parsed far enough, and we we need to understand the particulars of this command right here more completely before we can understand it all.

And that's kind of that was the shape of this conversation.

But he's saying, give me the right priority of understanding.

That's what the that's what the question means.

To give me the right priority of understanding.

And that's what makes the question so good.

Because he's the priority of understanding is how you think about things.

To interpret rightly is to give the right things the right proportion.

And so the greatest things are given the greatest proportion, and the and the the least important things are given the the least proportion, and then you now you're able to think wisely.

It's more this is what this is what it means to be rational.

Rationality is giving the right things the right proportion.

You can hear it in the word rational, right ratio.

It's the it's thinking with the right ratios.

It's like cooking.

You know, that that's true rationality is is like the meal works because the ratios, the ratios came together.

And if you're able to think in those right terms, now you're interpreting correctly.

And this man is saying, teach me how to interpret correctly.

I the the question the I'm spending so much time on this because I uh I'm getting my proportions perhaps a bit off, but uh I'm spending so much time on this because I want us to see like how radically open this question is as compared to the questions that we've seen before, and the incredible risk that that is.

Because he's not just saying I already know how things are.

That's not what a question of priority means.

Like a question of priority for the interpretation of scriptures is one of the most important, it's one of the most fundamental questions you could ask.

He's saying, Lord, I see the scriptures, teach me how to understand them.

So Jesus answers.

In Mark 20, 12, 29 to 30, Jesus answered, The most important is it's a very direct answer.

The most important is, and then he quotes from Deuteronomy Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.

Now, this answer, this probably wasn't earth-shattering.

The call to love the Lord is central to the life of the Christian, to the life of the Jew who would have grown up in the synagogues reciting this like we recite it now in our church, like we recited it this morning.

Here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one.

It's called, it has a name, you know, it's called the Shema, which is a very typical Jewish way of naming things.

You just take the first word, you call it that.

Shema is just the Hebrew word for hear.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

And this is the central prayer, it's the central doctrinal statement of the faith of the Jews.

So it is this command to understand who the Lord is, and then with the fullness of who you are, to love him.

That is the highest priority of all the commands of Scripture.

So let's walk through it.

The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Well, I guess I should say something about Hero Israel.

Hero Israel, hearing is the mechanism by which we by which we receive faith.

Faith comes from hearing.

And that's a it's interesting because hearing is like the most passive thing.

Because try and not listen to me right now.

Close your ears.

Everybody, close your ears.

You know, it's just a sorry.

My my nephew has cochlear implants, and so he can just take them out and just turn us off.

And it is like the biggest power move I have ever seen a nine-year-old play.

Of just like, I'm not listening.

It's like that's pretty cool.

But but the hearing is hearing has this passive quality.

And that means it that's because the voice is is authoritative.

It's like you hear it whether you like it or not.

And so, hear, oh Israel, the people of God, the ones who God named, gave Jacob the name Israel to mark them out as his people.

We talked about this a lot last week.

God puts his name upon us.

He even takes the names of his people for his own name.

This is what you will call me then.

God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.

Such is the depth of his covenant promise, his love shown and his promise towards us.

So Shema comes from that hear, and it it by it being hearing, it draws us to see that it's the medium of faith.

This is something, this is a truth which we receive.

The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Now, of course, that's a claim to monotheism.

But uh I don't think that Moses, by the Holy Spirit, is first of all thinking like, what category of religion will this be in our comparative religions classes?

This will be in the monotheist category of God.

It's not that's a we're we're bouncing up into a category that doesn't do enough explanation.

Because what they're saying when they're saying the Lord is one, is they're saying that he is an absolute unity.

And that means that he is the source of all things.

And therefore, he is the end for which all things were made.

And he is the one who upholds the existence of all things.

So that means that that existence itself, behind existence itself, is this absolute unity.

And that means that all of existence is headed towards this absolute unity.

It means that if you were to describe the attributes of God, which we're able to do, what is God?

God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

And if we were to take those attributes, justice, what is the justice of God?

Eventually, what we would what we would have to say is that the justice of God is who God is.

What what is so finally, what is justice?

God is is what justice is.

So his truth.

What is truth?

It's a famous question.

Truth.

God is the things that God says are true, okay?

Well, why are the things that God says true?

Well, because he's the one that says them.

And who determines what is true or not?

Well, God determines what is true or not.

Well, is it like he says something and then he comes over here and then he assesses it to determine whether it's truth or not?

No, it's it's true because he says it.

He is the metric of truth, because he is truth.

So all of the attributes of God can only be described.

They ultimately, and this is why theology at this level, it gets just kind of weird.

You feel like you're just walking in these circles all the time.

Because, like, are we saying anything other than all the time than just like God is God?

It's like, what is love?

Reminds me of a song.

No.

It's been a long time since I've seen a night at the Roxbury.

Probably doesn't hold up, fair to bed.

But to my high school self, totally held up.

What is love?

Useless now.

The only way that we're able to when we when we get to the end of that conversation, finally what we're saying is God is love.

So so how are we to understand love and what what love is?

Well, God is the definition, he is the fullness of what love is.

It is him.

God is God.

You see, that that the absoluteness of who he is, and that when we are experiencing any of the characteristics of who God is, any of the attributes of who God is, his love, his justice, his mercy, his truth, his goodness, then what we're experiencing is the fullness of him.

When we experience his justice, we are we are experiencing who he is.

You know, famously, uh the Plato's problem of the Mino, is it is it good because the gods command it, or do the gods command it because it is good?

So it is are the gods up in the heavens and they're like, we'll command only good things.

And we know what good things are because there's a list of good things that we keep taped to the side of Mount Olympus as we eat our ambrosia.

And so they test it against something else, you know, they test it against the goodness.

Or do we just say whatever the gods command, that's what's good.

And good is just the definition of the things God commands.

Well, there's a certain arbitrariness to that.

You know, I don't know the Olympian gods were uh morally suspect.

Hero Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.

He what is good, he is.

He is the creator of the good.

He is the fullness of what goodness is.

When you are dealing with goodness, you are you you finally and ultimately are dealing with him.

And so what is good, God is.

So is it good because he commands it?

Yes.

Does he command it because it's good?

Yes, but not because there's something outside of him that is good.

He's always expressing and doing the fullness of him.

The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

If you describe the attributes of God, finally you are saying, This is this is who he is.

Okay, so that's here, hero Israel, the Lord our God, but the Lord is one.

So now that we see this absoluteness of the oneness of God, the fullness of his attributes expressed in his in his unity, what is the command?

How ought we to respond to this, the Lord our God?

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 requirement of the creature towards the oneness, the absolute who is the source of us all, is to love him.

It's to love God.

You are required, commanded, the expression of the fullness of what it means to be a person, to be rightly oriented towards God is to love him.

This is the highest calling.

The one who is the source of all things, the one who upholds all things, the one that we are aiming towards in all things, that all things are arcing towards, the requirement of your life is to love God.

This is what it means to be a Christian people.

This is the highest of the Christian ethic.

You must love God.

So do you love goodness?

This is what's amazing about Christianity.

Okay, Plato says something very similar to this.

I know shocker.

I'm just kidding.

I just said that and and it felt important to me, and then all of your faces said, okay.

But Plato is saying you we the the the shape of our ethic and the and of a true a true life is to love the good.

You love you love the good.

And so you you seek to love the highest good.

So, like, what's good?

A good cup of coffee is good.

But if you dedicate your whole life to loving a uh this is the only thing that gives you pleasure, and this is all the goodnesses you can possibly experience, then you'll you'll probably just, you know, not get much sleep.

And then you won't be able to love much else.

Because your love was too narrow.

But if you go up the chain and it's like, well, what is it about the coffee that I love?

I love the the craft in it and the care in it, and I love the socializing that takes place over it.

I love where it fits in my day, and it and it actually supports all these other things that I love.

And then you go up the chain, and it's like, well, I love the relationships that it brings, and I I what do those relationships amount to?

Well, those relationships amount to the feeling of a full life, and then that even requires sacrifice of me.

And it but I love the joy of laying myself down for others, and there's a higher good there, and it if it, you know, you can go up the chain and it's like, what am I ultimately loving?

I'm loving the good itself.

But here's here's the problem.

The good is a principle.

It's just an idea.

And it doesn't love you.

When we describe that the Lord is one, we are not saying he is this absolute principle.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord, our God.

Our God.

You hear the relationship in that.

The Lord is one.

Only Christianity has at its center a personal absolute.

He is absolute.

All things are from him and through him and to him.

Absolute.

As absolute as the principle of the good, completely absolute.

But he is a person, and that means he is a right object of our love, which we can actually relate to.

And then there's real love there.

Because there's a reciprocity of this love.

So I'm saying that the commands of Plato are there's this wonderful insight in them and the priority, but they're ultimately unworkable.

Because you cannot finally love a principle.

A principle is not a sufficient object of love.

A person is.

So this requirement of love with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, this means, because of who God is and the absoluteness of his being, this means that we are to love the Lord more than ourselves, more than our families, our countries, our children, our parents, our spouses, our careers, our money, our intellect, our potential, our comfort, our prosperity.

God is to be loved beyond all things.

He is the one who finally deserves the ultimate expression of our love.

And so this is to be done with the fullness of who we are.

Your heart, love the Lord your God with all your heart.

This is the center of your being.

All that a person is flows from the heart.

Your soul, you can think of as like the seat of your affections.

This is what you're drawn towards or repulsed by.

This is what you find lovely and beautiful, and you assess the goodness of.

Your mind is you'll rank the proportion of your loves with this.

He's asking a sort of a mind question.

Give me the rationality of this.

Show me the proportion of the commands of God.

Your strength is all of which you embody in the world.

Now, all of these faculties, the point is not to just parse the differences in the faculties.

The point of this overwhelming list is to say all of who you are, all of what you do, the fullness of your being and of your life is to be loving God.

It's to love him.

To love the one who created you.

To love the one who put you in this life.

That he might receive the fullness of your love, everything you do, all your thoughts might finally result in the love of God.

But the man gets more than he bargained for because he is not just given this one command.

He's given a second.

And the second is this.

It's strange, right?

Because he says, What's the greatest commandment?

And Jesus gives him two.

The second is this you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

There is no other commandment greater than these.

How wonderful.

You ask an authentic question, you get a bonus answer.

And you can see how the second commandment flows so so wonderfully from the first commandment to love God.

Well, then by implication, even we could say, we could say, then I must love the ones who are created in the image of God.

So this is the these are the commandments, love the Lord your God, and then love your neighbor as yourself.

They flow perfectly.

And it also prevents this um Jesus, if he had just left it at the one commandment, just love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, then you you might think that the love of God looked like you alone in a room.

Because you may even be thinking, like, how do I love God?

Like, where do I go to do that?

Where do how do I go participate in that and in loving God?

And it and you would what you would end up doing is you would go off to like uh the one of the mountains here, and you would go to the top of it, or you would go down by a river.

There's two options.

The top of a mountain or down by a river, and then you would sit there and you would go, I'm loving God.

I'm loving God, I'm loving him with the fullness of who I am.

I'm loving him with the posture that I put myself in, and I'm loving, I'm loving God right now.

And you there'd be, and eventually you would love God so fully and so completely with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength that you could be set in the middle of a world of catastrophes and be none the wiser with regards to them because you would be so fully and completely caught up in the love of God.

Now, I'm not saying that wouldn't be a nice afternoon, but it is not sufficient to describe the life that a love of God requires of us.

And that's why he links it with this second commandment, which is love your neighbor as yourself.

And this is showing that the love of God requires us to love the things which he loves.

When we love him, we are participating in his love towards us.

If we are loving this God, then we would love the things he loves.

And he loves the ones that he has created in his own image.

And then he even places it in this wonderful frame, which is like a it's this glorious heuristic.

Because there it he doesn't just say he doesn't say love everyone.

Because you know what it would look like for someone to love everyone?

They'd be down by a river or up by a mountain, and they'd be thinking over and over again, I love everyone.

I love everyone.

There's this great line by Ivan Kramazov and the brothers Kramizov, it where he says, I find in myself this strange thing where the more that I love humanity universally, the less I find myself capable of loving anyone in particular.

Yeah, I know.

Dostoevsky, he's pretty good at that.

And so Jesus, the the the wisdom of this, he doesn't say love everyone.

He says love your neighbor as yourself.

You know what that means?

He says, love the people that are in proximity to you.

The ones who, by the providence of God, are there in your way.

And there's a there's that means you're loving people particularly.

You're loving that person with all their quirks and features.

If anybody spends time on automotive YouTube, they'll know what I'm talking about.

And it's just me.

So the the um the um you you it's your it's your neighbor.

It's your neighbor.

So that means there's a priority to that.

You know, who's who's your neighbor?

You may be wondering if you're, you know, a lawyer questioning Jesus in another story in the Bible.

And what we see is um your neighbor is not everyone.

Because there, where do you go to love everyone?

There's you you can't go you can't be done.

It's not the type of thing you are.

God can do things like that.

You can't do things like that.

But it is anyone.

The story of the Good Samaritan shows us.

When the the question of the story of the Good Samaritan is, who is my neighbor?

And the story of the Good Samaritan shows us it could be anyone.

It's not everyone.

Don't try and do that.

You'll end up loving no one.

It could be anyone.

So there's some things that you know right off the bat, it's certainly certainly you should honor your mother and father.

Certainly you should love and care for your children.

The man who doesn't provide for his own family is worse than an unbeliever.

It's an expression of love.

But it's also those who are in proximity in your life, those who providentially are brought into your life in all kinds of ways, from the uh waiter at the restaurant to the person at the checkout line, just kidding.

Those are robots now.

To the uh who you happen to be w sitting next to in a coffee shop or your coworkers and the the office office spaces are wonderful places for this because you all just kind of found yourself there.

You didn't got hired with all these different stories, and then bam, this you know who you're required to love?

Those people.

Those people right there.

Why?

Because they're in the image of God.

And you love God.

And what does what did God do?

How do you know what love is?

Well, you look and you see what God is like.

And what did he do?

He came down from the heavens.

You know, the heavens are a great place.

To love everyone.

Because, you know, you get such a broad view.

But Jesus came down and he got in proximity with people.

And he touched them and was inconvenienced by them, was woken up by them, was asked these pestering questions by them.

Look at the way your God, who is one, loves us.

Jesus doesn't answer with just one commandment, he answers with two.

Because he's teaching us how to understand what these commands really are.

They're showing us how to live our lives with the right priority.

Because your life, whether you like it or not, is going to be guided by your loves.

Your life will be determined by what you love the most, and then what you love the second most.

Saint Augustine is probably the most famous for pointing this out.

His Ordo Emiris, the order of our loves.

In his book, The Confessions, he describes all these things which capture us in our love.

And they're all good things.

He says, Gold, that's something that people love.

Beauty, something that people love.

Honor, that's a lovely thing.

Goodness, social status, friends.

If Augustine prioritized anything in his life too much, that guy loved his friends almost more than anything else.

And those are all good.

Gold is good.

Social status is good.

Honor is good.

These are good things.

Then Augustine notices.

It's like, why is this why is it so dangerous then to live in a world of all these good things?

This is what Augustine notices.

He says, yet sin is committed for the sake of all these things, and others of this kind.

In consequence, why is the sin committed?

In consequence of an immoderate urge towards those things which are at the bottom end of the scale of good.

We abandon the higher and supreme goods.

That is you, Lord God, and your truth and your law.

So what is the Christian life?

It is one which is rightly ordered towards God as the highest good.

Because here, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.

Love him.

And if you love him, then you'll be able to rightly love others, because you'll see that the only satisfaction of the human heart is in our God who is one.

That is the only and truest, highest, best satisfaction of the human heart available.

So if you so if you love people so that they might love him, then you're actually loving them.

And then you're able to pursue the good things of the world in ways that honor him, because they only find their goodness insofar as they tie up into the glorying of him.

Why?

Because the Lord our God is one.

So if there is goodness, it is because it is goodness that is sourced from him.

And it must find its ultimate purpose in him.

So this is why love is not love.

Love is good in so far as it has its right object, in its right proportion.

And the highest and best object of our love is God.

And then what does that imply?

Then we must love one another, our neighbors, as ourselves.

Because how did he love us?

Well, we see it in Jesus Christ.

He entered in, he spoke truth, he healed, he prayed with and for, he fed, he cried with.

He encouraged.

He laid his life down on their behalf.

So now the Christian with this ethic, we can no longer consider that our lives are just with ourselves as though we are just these pits of needs, and we move through the world so that our needs will be satisfied.

And then the people around us are good or bad, inconveniences or good friends, insofar as they satisfy those particular needs.

That is the ordinary mode of being, and it is the one that you are trained to live in.

And you will make this constant and perpetual self-assessment of how you are doing.

How are you doing in a world that is full of these dangers and things that are tearing you down?

Look, I hope you're doing great.

But that's not the most important command.

It's good to do great.

It's good to be doing well.

I hope you are.

Much more than that.

I hope you are loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Hope you're loving your neighbor as yourself.

That is the command.

Let me wrap up.

And the scribe said to him, You are right, teacher.

And you can tell that the scribe gets it because he starts immediately thinking with these principles.

Because he makes this conclusion.

He says, You're right.

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

Love your neighbor as yourself.

He says, Is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.

You can tell he he saw what Jesus was doing with the two commandments, because now he's looking back over the scriptures and he's thinking through it with the right priority, the rationality that came from Jesus.

So he is able to draw these conclusions where he says, you know what's actually more important?

They're standing in the temple at the Passover in front of scribes, Sadducees, and Pharisees, the folks that run the temple that are about to perform the sacrifices as their highest moment of worship of the year.

And he's saying, you know what's more important than that, that I can tell because of Jesus' teaching?

It's to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.

And if we do all of these right sacrifices, but we don't do that, it all amounts to nothing.

Paul obviously understood this as he explains to us love is the highest virtue.

And Jesus sees that.

The man answers wisely, and he said to him, You are not far from the kingdom of God.

You're getting it.

You're getting who God is.

You're getting that all of life is to be ordered towards him.

But he's not far because, but, but notice he's not in it.

Because if you're hearing this and you're thinking over the totality of your life and what your soul is like, and the things that you give your attention to, you will very quickly recognize that you do not love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

You do not love your neighbor as yourself.

We need a new spirit to be able to participate in this command.

Our only hope as sinners to participate in the glory of this command is that we are atoned for before God in our breaking this command, and that we are given his spirit so that we might be brought back to life, to love him, to be strengthened and empowered to love him in the way that we ought.

This is a spiritual act.

But soon I think this man will see Jesus' death and resurrection.

I think he will be in the kingdom of God.

Because he will see the fullness of God's love demonstrated towards us.

And that Christ lays himself down for us when we don't deserve it because of his love.

And his life is raised up to newness of life because of the love of the Father, and we participate and receive the fullness of his grace from that love.

And because of that, we love him and one another.

We love him because he first loved us.

So I want you to see the heights of these commands, how crushing they are, because they are they do not leave you alone and you cannot meditate your way out of this one.

You're gonna have to get some skin in the game and actually love the people around you.

That's way harder.

Way harder.

That's the way Jesus loved us.

Do you see that is the way that Jesus loved you?

You.

He gives us his spirit that we might love him in return.

Um, I'm I I ran over, so I'm just going to skip over to communion.

No, so no question today.

Paul writes, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Jesus, on the night before he was betrayed, took the bread and he broke it, and said, This is my body which is broken for you.

And he took the cup, and he said, This is the cup of the new covenant in my blood.

And he gave it to his disciples to welcome them into this new covenant.

And this new covenant means that Jesus died on behalf of sinners who did not love God but hated but hated him.

And remember, God is one.

So if you do not love God, it is not as though you just don't love him, but then you just go love other things.

No, it means you are lost and dead in a world without hope.

Because there is only one hope of salvation.

Only one hope for the fullness of what you were meant to be as a person, a creature of him.

And that is God Himself, who is one.

But this God took on flesh, made us his neighbors, broke his body, and poured out his blood on our behalf, so that in him we might be saved, and welcomed by the freedom of his grace into the fullness of his love.

So come to this meal and love him in return, and then love those around you.

This is the fullness of the Christian ethic, and it's shown to us most completely in Jesus Christ.

Holy Father, I pray that you would bless this meal, that we would be strengthened and encouraged by it, that we would remember the depth of your love that you have shown to us.

And that in seeing the depth of your love towards us, because you first loved us, we would love you in return.

And in loving you, we would be drawn to love those around you, Lord.

Let us obey your commands.

What are your commands?

But to love you and to love one another.

Lord, by your spirit, which is our only hope of doing this, Lord, by your spirit, would you make that happen in our hearts, our hearts, our souls, our minds, and our strength.

Father, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.