#51 Love God – Love Others Series

#51 Love God – Love Others

Series: Mark

Chuck Sligh

August 22, 2021

TEXT: Please turn in your Bibles to Mark 12:28

INTRODUCTION

You know, kids have some funny ideas about love, but some really get it.

Illus. – Listen to these definitions of love by kids:

• Karl, age 5, says “Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.”

• 4-year-old Ann said, “Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.”

• Lauren, age 4: “I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.”

• This is my favorite: Bobby, age 5 said: “Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and just listen.” – Isn’t that great? He gets it!

Today we’ll look at two of the most important and influential commandments in the Bible. And they both revolve around love. Without further ado, let’s jump into our text:

I. FIRST NOTICE WITH ME IN VERSE 28, A SINCERE SCRIBE’S QUESTION – “And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, ‘Which is the first commandment of all?’”

We’ve seen in the last 3 sermons that members of the Sanhedrin came to question Jesus, trying to trap Him and get Him in trouble with either the people or the authorities. One group that made up the Sanhedrin were the scribes. They transcribed old records and were the intellectual class of Jewish society. They meticulously studied the scriptures, developed rules for copying them and were considered experts in interpreting the Law. The problem was that in time, the words of the scribes became more important than the words of the scriptures themselves. And the scribes had a passion for public recognition and were, as a class, as haughty and self-righteous as the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

But not all of them, apparently. While the groups from the Sanhedrin came to Jesus with hostility and closed minds, this scribe appears not to have been sent, but to have just been in the crowd that day. Having heard Jesus’ answer to the Sadducees about marriage in heaven, this scribe thought Jesus had answered them well.

And he had a sincere question. He wanted to know how Jesus would answer a question that for centuries had been a preoccupation among the Jewish scribes—namely, what was the first or the greatest or the most important commandment in the Old Testament Law? The scribes counted 613 commandments in the Law, 365 which were negative and 248 positive commands. They believed that all 613 of them were binding, but they made a distinction between weightier statutes and lighter ones. So they tried to sum up the whole law in a single unifying command. This scribe had heard how the great scribes of the past had answered this question, and he wanted to know what Jesus thought.

II. SECOND, TAKE NOTE OF JESUS’ BRILLIANT ANSWER IN VERSES 29-31.

He did not disappoint this apparently sincere scribe. Jesus broke God’s laws down into two parts, quoting two Old Testament passages of scripture.

The first is quoted directly from Deuteronomy 6:4 – Verses 29-30 – “And Jesus answered him, ‘The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: 30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.”

Every Jew would have recognized this quotation from Deuteronomy. It’s known even today as the Shema Israel [pron. Sh-má Isra-él] and was a prayer repeated at the opening of every synagogue service. It was also repeated by pious Jews every day—morning and evening. The most devout wore a small leather box on the forehead and wrist while in prayer with the Shema (Sh-má) inside of it, and observant households hung the prayer on their doors in a small round box called a Mezúzah.

Next, Jesus took one phrase taken out of Leviticus 19:18, which Jesus quoted in verse 30 of our text: “And the second is like it, namely this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.’”

This too was familiar to most Jews. But it was one tiny phrase from the whole Law of God.

My commentaries pointed out that Jesus putting these two well-known verses together to serve as one unifying summary of God’s Law was brilliant. How so? If you look at the Ten Commandments, you can easily summarize the commandments in terms of 2 basic principles: Love God and love your neighbor.