Top Priority
Mark 12:28-34
28. aOne of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and brecognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, “What commandment is the 1foremost of all?”
29. Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘aHEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD;
30. aAND 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.’
31. “The second is this, ‘aYOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
32. The scribe said to Him, “Right, Teacher; You have truly stated that aHE IS ONE, AND THERE IS NO ONE ELSE BESIDES HIM;
33. aAND TO LOVE HIM WITH ALL THE HEART AND WITH ALL THE UNDERSTANDING AND WITH ALL THE STRENGTH, AND TO LOVE ONE’S NEIGHBOR AS HIMSELF, bis much more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
34. When Jesus saw that he had answered intelligently, He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” aAfter that, no one would venture to ask Him any more questions.
(Mark 12:28-34)
The deep and profound truths are not necessarily the most complex. It is true that life itself can be complex. The problems we face can be complex. Sometimes there are no simple answers. Therefore, it seems that the weighty matters of life must be filled with complexity.
Often we are surprised when the most simple of concepts turn out to be the most profound. Yet, that is often the case. For instance, take love. It is so simple, yet defies a simple definition. If there ever was a topic which could qualify as the most thought about, written about, talked about, sung about, it is certainly love. Love has been defined as "a many splendored thing," "a flower," "a rose," and as a thing that "the world needs now." The love story has not only been told, but written about in poetry, in quality works of literature, as well as in romance novels and screenplays.
But for all this talking and writing and reading and watching and listening and thinking, people are still confused about love. It defies simple definition. However, in spite of their confusion, one thing is universally clear. Everyone knows that love is profound, it is something they need, and all of us want to be loved.
People have tried everything to find real love. They’ve even tried "free love," which wasn't free at all. It cost many not only their purity, but their self-respect. We've searched for that "perfect person" to love us, only to find there was no such human being. But there is one affair we do need. In fact, it is a love affair Jesus prescribed and is found on the pages of our text today. It is a love affair with our Lord. In fact, the Bible has much to say about love. Today, we will see in Jesus' encounter with the scribe that a love affair with God is needed in all of our lives. In fact, it should be the top priority for each of us. I wonder, what is the top priority in your life?
Undoubtedly the scribe in our passage today had given that issue serious consideration. But there is evidence here that while he understood it intellectually, he had never experienced it for himself. He knew about God, but it wasn't enough. It brought him close, but it didn't get him into the Kingdom. You see, we might know about God, but being close to the Kingdom is not enough. We must enter the Kingdom by making our top priority loving God fully. To fall short of experiencing a full love for our Lord is to fall short of the fullness of the Kingdom.
Let's look at the priorities our text reveals should be at the top of our list.
The Top Priorities of Relational Love
For some time, Jesus had been engaged with the various religious leaders as they put question after question to Him, attempting to trick Him into a wrong answer. Over and over, Jesus had baffled them with a dazzling display of knowledge and wisdom. There was a scribe who had been impressed with Jesus' answers. He came to Jesus and put a very important question to Him, "What commandment is the foremost of them all?" This may have not been a trick question at all, but the scribe's own question. Here was a man truly interested in cutting through all the word games and getting to the real meat of the issue. He was asking Jesus to explain, in a nutshell, the bottom line of what it meant to follow God.
In His reply to the Scribe, Jesus pulls together two well-known passages of Old Testament Scripture. One concerns itself with love for God; the other with love for your neighbor. We have dubbed them the great commandments. They speak of the top priorities of relational love. All the law and the prophets boiled down to these great commandments, and the key is found in verse 30:
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.
This is the top priority. This is where we begin. Without a love for God, we will never go on to love our neighbor. This is where we need to focus our thinking for the next few minutes.
Why is it that so many churches are dead and dry? Why are so many believers listless and apathetic? Personally, I believe it's because their love has grown cold. We find such a church at Ephesus in the book of Revelation. There, Jesus speaks to the church in Ephesus and says,
2 ‘I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false;
3 and you have perseverance and have endured for My name’s sake, and have not grown weary.
4 ‘But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.
5 ‘Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place—unless you repent.
(Revelation 2:2-5)
A church can be large and powerful. A church can be doctrinally pure and hard-working. But when a church loses its first love, it is all for nothing. Without a love with God, all that we do becomes meaningless. There is a desperate need today for a passionate, hot-hearted, intense, consuming love with God.
But how is that love relationship to be worked out? Jesus gives us four ways. He tells us first that we must "love the Lord your God with all your heart." To love the Lord with all your heart means to love Him with pure devotion. It's not enough to give Christ a place in our hearts. We are called to love Him with all of our heart. We are all familiar with how it was when we met that one who captured our heart. We've all seen two dreamy-eyed young people looking longingly at one another. We've all heard of the "look of love." When you love someone with all of your heart, you think about them almost all of the time. You long to be with them. They are the priority in your life. We call this being "in love" and it is wonderful.
When we first become Christians, we experience that kind of pure devotion for Jesus. The Scripture here calls it our "first love." When we meet Jesus for the first time, the thrill of getting to know Him becomes a passion in our lives. We experience His grace and forgiveness, His unconditional love and acceptance. We find it so easy to love the one who has done so much for us. We never have to forfeit that first love. The Scripture calls us to constantly and continually love Him with all our heart.
But the love we are to have for God has another characteristic. We are not only to love God with all our heart, we are to love Him "with all your soul." The soul speaks of our emotions. To love God with all our soul means that our love for God ought to be full of passion. Indeed, when we think of a love affair, we think of passion. And we are all people of passion. While we may try to deny our emotions, to stuff them into a box, clamp a lid on them, lock them away, they have a way of rising to the surface. Emotions are good. God created them, and channeled the right way, our emotions can be very positive indeed. And we need to say that it's OK to express them, especially as we express them in the context of a love for God. We ought to be emotional about our love for God. Now, I'm not talking about a sloppy sentimentalism. I'm not talking about emotion simply for emotion's sake.
Unfortunately, our culture is growing more cynical every day, maybe you are, too. I’m pretty sure that I am. Many people are disillusioned and have become apathetic. You know, the word apathetic literally means "without passion." I remember a Peanuts cartoon in which Charlie Brown was talking to Lucy. He remarked about the tragedy of so much apathy in the world today. Lucy responded, "Yeah, it's terrible. But who cares?"
We cannot afford to be apathetic about our love for God. We must be excited about our relationship with Jesus. We must be passionate. In the Song of Solomon, we hear about the passionate kind of love we ought to have for God. It is likened to the love between a man and a woman.
"May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. For you love is better than wine."
Again, we hear: "Let me see your form; let me hear your voice."
And again, "You have made my heart beat faster with a single glance of your eyes."
And then again, "I am my beloved's and his desire is for me."
Real love is passionate love. To love God with all our soul means that we must be involved with all our emotions in our relationship to Him. And when you've really given Jesus all of your heart, then it's easy to become excited about following Him.
Our love for Christ begins with a pure devotion and expresses itself by being full of passion. But there is yet another element. Jesus tells us that we are to love the Lord our God "with all your mind." This is a comprehensive love. Loving Jesus doesn't simply mean turning cartwheels and rolling around in the aisle. While we ought to be excited about Him and express our emotions, we are not talking about an emotional expression which bypasses the mind. There is a certain brand of Christian teaching which contends that the mind can get in the way of your relationship with God. It is true that when people rely on their own intellectual capacity to figure out God, they always come up short. God cannot be figured out by human minds. And if you wait until you've figured it out, you may not get in on the blessing in the process. Our minds can be a hindrance. But they can also be a help.
It is clear from the Scripture that God fully intends for our minds to be involved in our love for Him. In Romans 12, we are told that our minds need to be renewed. In 1 Peter we are told to prepare our minds for work. And here, we are told to love God with all our mind. A mind committed to Christ and being transformed by His renewing power can be a tremendous asset to the Kingdom. Christianity makes sense and anyone who thoughtfully considers the plan of God will soon be able to effectively communicate just how reasonable Christianity really is. Further, I believe that a mind committed to God will become a mind into which God will pour His wisdom and His knowledge. Think about it: we have a relationship with the God of the universe. He has all wisdom and all knowledge. And as we commit our ways to Him, even our thought processes, He will begin to impart His wisdom and His knowledge to us. All of our spiritual and mental ability ought to be dedicated to God. When it is, I believe He will show us how to really think and understand. It is said we only use about 10% of our brain. Perhaps God is the one who must activate the other 90%, and imagine what He can do with that.
Not only are we to love God with all our heart, all our soul and all our mind, we are to love Him with "all your strength." Christianity is not just a heart dedicated to God, a soul full of passionate love for Jesus, and a mind committed to thoroughly consider the whole word of God. Christianity must be fully lived out. To love God with all our strength means to love God in all that we do.
In Colossians 3:17 it says,
Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.
Again in that same chapter, verses 23 and 24 says,
23. Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men,
24. knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve.
Christianity which is just in the heart and in the head may be either sentimentalism or intellectualism. For Christianity to be alive, it must be lived out, not for what we get out of it for ourselves, but for the relationship that we have with God. This is what makes the Christian faith the most powerful force in the world.
There is a notion propagated by some civil libertarians in our country that it is OK to believe whatever you want, as long as you don't try to practice what you believe in the public arena. But that is not religious liberty at all. To tell a man that he can believe anything he wants is, in itself, nonsense. Of course he can believe what he wants. Who can stop him? What you believe in the privacy of your own heart cannot be dictated by others. You can believe what you want in the most atheistic society in the world, but you may not be able to live out that faith in practice. For the Christian faith to be a life-changing, world-altering force, it must be lived out in the lives of those who say they believe. Otherwise, it doesn't make any difference at all.
To truly love God, you must love Him in all you do. A distinctive Christian lifestyle must be evident in the way you live your life, conduct your business, function on the job, and deal with your wife or husband or children. James tells us that we ought to be "doers of the word." Christianity becomes powerful as it's lived out in the marketplace of this world.
The Tragic Philosophies Of Religious Logic
When the scribe came to Jesus, Jesus told him what the top priority in life was. It all begins with loving God. That love for God then extends to loving one's neighbor. In fact, if you love God in the way Jesus described, you will love your neighbor. Love for neighbor depends upon love for God. Jesus was describing the top priorities of relational love. But the action of the scribe reveals the danger of the tragic philosophies of religious logic.
The scribe commented that he understood this great commandment and that keeping this commandment was more important than all the burnt offerings which could ever be offered. This was a tremendous insight. It indicated this scribe had given the nature of the Kingdom of God some thought. He had come to understand what all the other religious leaders questioning Jesus had failed to see. In fact, this scribe was light years ahead of his contemporaries. He understood that the sacrificial system of burnt offerings was a pale substitute for true, full, passionate love for God. He had comprehended this intellectually.
Jesus makes an interesting reply to the scribe. Commenting on the scribe's insight, Jesus says, "You are not far from the Kingdom of God." An interesting statement indeed. Notice that Jesus did not say that he was IN the Kingdom, but simply that he was NOT FAR from it. The scribe was not in, but not far from the Kingdom.
You see, it's not enough merely to intellectually believe in the truth of God's word. We must be willing to act on it, to commit ourselves to follow it. The scribe was not far from the Kingdom, but he was not in. Not far, but not in. Unfortunately, this accurately describes the situation of so many in religious circles today. This describes the tragic philosophy of religious logic.
Most of what passes for modern, mainstream Christianity is found symbolized in this scribe. He had given mental assent to the facts of God's word, yet he had never given himself to God. We see it all too often in our churches. Every Sunday people who have an intellectual faith, but not a faith lived out in daily life. They come to church, throw a few dollars in the offering plate, sing some songs, nod occasionally to something the pastor says, and go home. There is no passionate love for the Lord, no real desire to spend time serving the Lord, and no power in their lives. They are like the people in Jesus' home town. They've grown up with Him and have a certain familiarity, but they've never experienced the power of the living God by committing themselves to Him. The powerlessness of a church is because so many whose names are on their rolls are not far, but not in.
This is characteristic of religious philosophy and religion in general. The study of religion does not produce religious people. Hanging around a church doesn't make you a Christian any more than sitting in your garage makes you a car. Subscribing to a creed doesn't mean it makes a difference in your life. It can all be mere intellectual pursuit, it makes you feel smart. It is the commitment of your life to Christ that makes the difference. Parroting the right words means nothing. Having your name on a church roll doesn't put it on the roll that will be called up yonder. Not far, but not in. So many are so close, yet being close is not being in.
What a tragedy it would be to be so close to the Kingdom, and yet, on that great Day of Judgment have God say to you, "Depart from Me; for I never knew you."
An English minister writes, "When, after safely circumnavigating the globe, the Royal Charter went to pieces in Moelfra Bay on the coast of Wales. It was my melancholy duty to seek to comfort the wife of the First Officer, made by that calamity a widow. The ship had been telegraphed from Queenstown and the lady was sitting in the parlor expecting her husband, with the table spread for his evening meal when the messenger came to tell her he was drowned. Never can I forget the grief, so stricken and tearless, with which she wrung my hand as she said 'So near home, and yet lost!' That seemed to me the most terrible of human sorrow. But, ah, that is nothing to the anguish which must wring the soul which is compelled to say at last, 'Once I was at the very gate of heaven and had almost entered in; but now I am in hell!'"
The top priority for human existence is loving God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength. To simply believe it may bring us close to the Kingdom, but leave us outside its gates. We must live it. We must commit our lives to it. We must surrender all that we are to all He is, and dedicate ourselves to live for Him. That is the top priority.
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