The First and Last Question (Mark 12:28-34)

A sermon preached on August 1, 2010 at Hebron Baptist Church, Denham Springs, Louisiana by Pastor Joe Alain.

Scripture Reading: Mark 12:28-34
If you lived during biblical times and had an opportunity to talk to Jesus, you might ask Him any number of questions. But if you were sincerely seeking to know God, you might ask Him the kind of question that the scribe did in our text today.

An Important Question (12:28): “What really matters to God?”
A teacher of the law (a scribe, or lawyer) had overheard Jesus’ conversation with the Sadducees. The scribes job was to know and apply the oral law. He was impressed with Jesus’ “good answer.” Now, this man asked Jesus a question. “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” Which is the first or foremost commandment in the Bible? He’s asking “What really matters to God?” This was a pretty important question considering he had quite a list of commandments that he was trying to keep up with.

How the Law Was Viewed
In Jesus’ day the teachers of the law had taken the Ten Commandments and turned them into 613! Sammlai, a Jewish Rabbi taught that Moses received 613 precepts on Mount Sinai, 365 according to the days of the sun year, and 248 according to the generations of men. They even divided them further into “heavy” and “light,” i.e., more important and less important. Jesus was about to whittle all of them down to just one.

The question that the scribe is asking is a pretty important question, what really matters to God? He is to be commended for that – he is asking the right question. People today are asking questions but are they asking the ones that matter? The questions that are important as they relate to God?

A recent demographics study of people living within a 1.5 mile radius of our church shows a considerable number of people who consider themselves spiritual. Now this is good news but it also presents a challenge. Good news because what we will find as we try to reach out to people in our community is that there is already present a built-in receptivity to spiritual matters. The challenge though is that some of our neighbors may not be asking the right questions, questions like the one this man asked, “what really matters to God?” Our challenge will be to direct the spiritual impulse of people to the questions that matter.

This is no easy task because much spirituality today is human-centered. It’s about what God can do for me, how He can help me become (Fill-in-the-Blank). And here’s where this great text speaks so clearly. Life, fulfillment, occurs when we become God-centered in our thinking. And that’s what Jesus is calling us to do. It is A Challenge to Become God-Centered in Our Thinking and in Our Living.

So what did Jesus say was the most important commandment? “The most important one . . . is this”
I. Love the Lord Your God (12:29-30; Deut. 6:4-5)
Answering the scribe, Jesus quoted a passage of Scripture from the book of the law, Deuteronomy 6:4-6, “Here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.” That single sentence is the real creed of Judaism. It is called the Shema, so called from the first word in the sentence, a verb “to hear.” It was the sentence with which the service of the Synagogue always began and still begins. The full Shema is found in Deuteronomy 6:4-9; 11:13-21; Numbers 15:37-41.

The three passages of the Shema were contained in Phylacteries (see Matt. 23:5), little leather boxes which the devout Jew wore on his forehead and on his wrist when he was at prayer. The Shema was also contained in a little cylindrical box called the Mezuzah which was and still is affixed to the door of Jewish homes and the doors within their homes. This is to remind the Jew of God in his going out and coming in.

Only Mark’s account has Jesus quote the opening words of the Shema. Why here?
1. An affirmation of the oneness of God (v.29) (monotheism)
Jesus affirms the oneness of God which would have been important because the Jews saw followers of Jesus as being polytheistic. This was especially true later on in the growing Christian community. Implications of this monotheistic confession can be seen throughout the NT (e.g., Rom. 3:29-30; Eph. 4:5-6; 1 Tim. 2:5).

2. A call to love God with your whole being (v.30)
What is the greatest or the most important commandment? Jesus says it is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (v.30). The first question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism states, “What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” To glorify or to honor God is to know Him and to love Him, to be devoted to Him. And this we are to do with all that we our, no halfhearted commitments here but pure devotion. These expressions are piled up as a way of saying love God “with your whole being.”

This is the starting point for all of our thinking about God and us. “With all your mind” suggests that there is a need to reflect on our service to God with our mind. We love God with our minds too. Students, as you return to school, you have an opportunity to be good stewards of your minds. Using your mind well is an aspect of your worship and love for God.

Jesus then goes on to say that this love for God has a practical expression.
II. Love Your Neighbor As Yourself (12:31; Lev. 19:8)
1. Love for God is expressed by loving others (1 Jn. 3:18)
Jesus quotes from Leviticus 19:18. The scribe would have interpreted this in the narrow sense of loving other Jewish people. Loving God and loving others are like two sides of one coin. Loving others flows from our relationship with God. When the vertical relationship is intact, the horizontal relationship will be too. The love of God and others is to be like that of Jesus, “not in word or speech but in deed and in truth”(1 Jn. 3:18). Love for God is expressed by loving others.

2. Keeping the right order in perspective
There is however, a priority or an order that is apparent here. Loving others follows loving God. There are several extremes to be avoided as unbiblical views.

Loving God alone – Extreme separatism
Evangelicals, Bible-believing people like ourselves may be guilty of emphasizing the personal nature of salvation to the exclusion of any humanitarian or social efforts. As a result we can become separated from the people that we are to reach with the Gospel. Clearly though, the evidence that we have believed the Gospel of Jesus Christ means that we now demonstrate love where we may not have before.

Loving others alone – Extreme secularism
The other danger is to think that our humanitarian efforts are a substitute salvation. We need to be very clear on this. It is not our efforts, our goodness, our humanitarian efforts that secure salvation. And we do not want to lead people to think that being good is what is required. This would be a works salvation. Salvation is not through human effort, regardless of how praiseworthy that human effort might be. Many people today are seeking approval from God through their human efforts. And yet our human efforts can never make us righteous before God. Instead, “He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy” (Tit. 3:5).

You can be a great humanitarian and be a committed atheist. But you cannot be a committed Christian and not be a humanitarian in the sense that you are for people. The cure for both an anti-God stance and an anti-human one is found in practicing the balance that Jesus presents here. Notice also how these two sides of the one commandment fulfill the intent of the 10 commandments. To love God is to fulfill the 1-4 commandments. To love others is to fulfill commandments 5-10.

3. Loving “as yourself”
What do we make of this idea of loving self? There is a real sense that you are not able to love others until you love yourself and you cannot love yourself rightly until you allow God’s love to come in to your life. On the other side, as John Calvin and others have stated, “self-love can never be right or good, but must be reversed and turned into love of God and neighbor. He argued that “we are too much devoted to ourselves.” When you view Western culture today, it’s easy to agree with Calvin. In many instances, religion has become subjective and personalized. One biblical scholar suggested that today “We use the Bible and God to achieve desired psychological states or attain moral ends which, on a variety of grounds, we perceive to be good.” But is that what Christianity has become? Is God and the Bible only something we use for our benefit?

So what does self-love means? The text commands that we love others in the same way that we love ourselves. “That is, we are to be tolerant of, have time for, be interested in, make excuses for, deeply desire the welfare of our neighbor in the same way that we have these attitudes toward ourselves.” (Interpretation)

Love God, love others – Jesus presents a vision of life that we cannot attain, an understanding of God’s demands that we can not achieve. The commandment alone to love God and love others does not help me do these things, it only makes me feel more guilty because I do not do these things as I should. What then is the solution? How does this passage bring good news to me? It is only as we see the cross of Jesus as the gift of His life “a ransom for many” that can we bear to hear his word about the great commandment. The power of the cross enables us be loved and to love. Christians have a new life, a resurrected life. As we allow Christ to live His life in and through us, we will be empowered to love God and love others (See Galatians 2:20; Romans 6:4).

Commendations and a Call to Commitment (12:32-34)
The scribe commended Jesus and Jesus commended him. The scribe realized it wasn’t ritual that made him righteous, but loving God and loving others fulfilled all the commandments of God. No wonder Jesus said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” By saying this Jesus encouraged him to go the remainder of the way by wholeheartedly following Jesus. Go the distance! Act upon the truth you now know – follow Jesus! Do that, and you too will be in the kingdom.

What about you? Are you not far from the kingdom? Why not go the distance! Act upon the truth that you now know. Follow Jesus with your whole being!

For His Glory!
Pastor Joe