Title: Series – High Priority! A series on what is most important. Priority 1 – Living completely for God.
Text: Mark 12.28-34
Task: To invite the congregation to make a renewed commitment to priority one – living for God.
Time: 2/01/09
[Title Slide] Today we start a new series on priorities. Priorities help us to focus on what is important in life. Priorities enable us to weigh our time and resources to accomplish that which we deem worthy of our time and effort. As such priorities are important. Listen to what Paul told disciples of Jesus in Ephesus, “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.” (Ephesians 5.15-17)
According to Paul, believers should be concerned with how they spend their time and setting priorities is a good place to start. But with all the priorities people deem as important in life, how does one determine which ones get the time and effort and which ones go to the back seat?
This question is not new. In fact, that is the very question one of the scribes, a Torah teacher, wanted to know in the text we’re going to read. With 613 laws given by God to Moses, the Torah expert and many others had a lot of priorities to be concerned with. And it was overwhelming. And so he did what many did and asked a Rabbi what he thought were the most important ones to be concerned with. He wanted to know if there was a way to simplify all those priorities in a form that would be easier to handle and enable him to faithfully keep all the rest. And so he did what Christ followers should do when trying to determine what to focus their lives on, and that is to ask the Rabbi.
[S] “One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 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: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
“Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33 To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions. (Mark 12.28-34)” [S]
The word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
The man in this passage asked a question that was commonly asked of many Rabbi’s. For example someone once asked Rabbi Hillel, who Jesus would have known or at least known about, “Can you tell me the whole law standing on one leg?” Seems like an odd question doesn’t it? But the thought behind the question was that Hillel would have to give a quick answer because he couldn’t maintain his balance on one leg for long. Rabbi Hillel summarized the Torah saying, “What you would hate having done to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole law, the rest is commentary. Go and learn.” (The Gospel of Mark, William Barclay, pg. 293.)
Interestingly enough, Jesus’ response to the question was not much all that different from Hillel’s nor was it a brand new teaching. When Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, mind, soul and might and to love your neighbor as yourself he was quoting from, Deuteronomy 6.4-9 and Leviticus 19.18.
Deuteronomy is 6.4-9 is Judaism’s core verse. Many religious Jews in Jesus’ day would recite this command every morning when they rose and every night when they went to bed. Jesus, being a Jewish Rabbi most likely recited these words every morning and evening as well. It was also the first words that many parents taught their children when they learned to speak.
And the first two verses go like this, Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (Dt 6.4-5) However, the most authoritative Jewish text reads slightly differently. Instead of Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” [S] it reads, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone!” So instead of it being a statement on monotheism it becomes a command for absolute, complete and total allegiance to the LORD God. And that fits much better with the emphasis on the rest of the passage which emphasizes that a person is to obey God with everything a person is and has. [S]
So, when Jesus was asked what he thought the number one priority was he said, "Listen up, Israel - The Lord is your God, the Lord alone! You should love him with every thought that you think, live every hour of every day for him, be willing to sacrifice your life for him. Be willing to sacrifice your job for him. Worship him every chance you get. Study the Torah every day. Memorize it word for word. Love him with every penny in your wallet, with every possession you have, and everything else you got. And if there’s anything left over, love him with that too!"
Jesus told the Torah teacher that the first priority for everyone is to love God in this way.
A question every Christ follower probably needs to ask is, “LORD, do I love you this way?” Is loving you really my first priority in life? How about the top ten or the top 20? “And if not, then LORD what is keeping me from loving you in this way?” And then let him speak. My guess is that some of us, myself included, need to be given an opportunity to repent for making other objects, persons or ideas a more prominent place in our lives than loving God in this way.
[S] And communion provides us that very opportunity. Communion provides us an opportunity to remember that we are recipients of God’s grace, mercy and forgiveness and a chance to make a commitment to back it up.
In Jesus’ day, when a young man wanted to marry a woman, he and his father would call on her father for a visit. The two fathers would sit down with the young man and broker the marriage. The father’s would determine how much the bride was worth to the young man. The bride price was usually quite expensive. Remember, Jacob worked 14 years for the hand of Rachel. The price for a bride would easily rival what we would pay for a new home. A bride was expensive to get, and as I’ve learned from experience, expensive to maintain. When a price was agreed upon, the father of the groom would poor a cup of wine and give it to his son, who would then hold it out before his bride, and say, “this cup I offer to you.” What he was saying was, “I love you, and I offer you my life.” She now had to make a decision. She could refuse it, or she could take the cup and drink from it which would be the same as saying, “I accept your life, and in return I give you mine.” The giving of the cup was in a very real sense the proposal to a sacrificial life commitment.
[S] Keep that in mind as we think about Jesus and his disciples sitting down to celebrate the Seder meal the night before he would give his life on the cross for them. The disciples participated in the meal just as they had done since they were little Jewish boys. But this would be different especially as the blessing was given over the third cup of wine used in the service.
The third cup was called the cup of redemption or the cup of deliverance and it finds its roots in Exodus 6.6 where God says, “I will redeem you with mighty power and great acts of judgment.” This cup was filled with red wine and mixed with warm water to mimic the sense of warm blood from a fresh lambs sacrifice. It’s interesting to note as well, that the very next day Jesus would be pierced with a spear and the scriptures say, that water and blood poured from his side. As Jesus was celebrating this meal, I think he took this cup and instead of blessing it like he did the others he said, “This cup that is poured for you is the new covenant in my blood.” “Drink from this, all of you.” And then, he extended it to them to see who, if any, would take it.
What Jesus did was to take a cup of wine and offer it to the disciples in essence saying, “I love you and I give you my life.” How would the disciples respond to the cup that was offered to them? To receive it would be to say, “I receive your love, and in return I commit myself and all I have to you.”
What would they do? As the Cup is extended to you through communion today, you will have an opportunity to answer that for you.
