#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.
• The first 4 commandments deal with loving GOD (have no other gods before Me, make no graven images, do not take the Lord’s name in vain, keep the Sabbath).
• The remaining 6 deal with loving YOUR NEIGHBOR (honoring your parents and the prohibitions against murder, adultery, stealing, bearing false witness, and coveting).
• All the other laws in the Old Testament Law also fall under one of these two broad categories.
As The Bible Knowledge Commentary puts it, “Jesus’ answer is comprehensive to the nth degree.”
Later, the commentator goes on to say, “What powerful teaching this was! This marvelous symmetry of devotion—loving God and loving man—could not be gainsaid [which means contradicted or denied]. The way Jesus said it had never been put so well, or so Scripturally, as now! It was brilliant! It was perfect! It truly encompassed the whole Law. And the obvious ethos of Christ’s person (he was living it!) made it all so compelling.”
III. NEXT, IN VERSES 32-33, WE OBSERVE AN UNEXPECTED REPLY. –
Look first at verses 32-33 – “And the scribe said unto him, ‘Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he: 33 And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbor as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.’”
After the conflict narratives of the 3 Sanhedrin attacks, this scribe’s response is wholly unexpected—and refreshing! His reply reveals a heart that is open and receptive, rather than the typical reaction of previous Sanhedrin emissaries who had uniformly revealed closed mindedness, opposition and a determination to do Jesus harm. He confesses that Jesus had spoken truth and that His summary of the law into two comprehensive scriptures was spot on.
The end of verse 33 showed that he was working out the implications of what Jesus had taught when he said to Jesus that to follow these two commands was more than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices. There has always been a tendency to rely more on outward ceremonialism than on heart love for God, and there are several scriptures that condemned this focus.
Proverbs 21:3 says, “To do righteousness and justice Is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.”
God said in Hosea 6:6, “I desire mercy [or literally “steadfast love”] and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.”
This theme is found in other scriptures as well. (E.g., Jeremiah 7:21-23; Micah 6:6-8)
What the scribe realized is that even the most sacred duties must not take precedence over love of God and love of man.
IV. FINALLY, IN VERSE 34 NOTICE JESUS’ ENCOURAGING RESPONSE – “And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said unto him, ‘Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.” And no man after that dared ask him any [other] question.”
This scribe had the kind of spiritual understanding and openness to Jesus that caused him to be near to accepting the kingdom of God, God’s spiritual rule of those who have placed their faith in Him.
Mark does not tell us any more about this scribe. Did he, like the rich young ruler—who also had a “close encounter” with the kingdom of God—turn away, or did He then or later come to faith in Messiah and become a follower of Jesus? We don’t know. Mark leaves the question open-ended, as if to say to us: Which will it be for YOU? Will you turn away from or accept Christ and enter His Kingdom?
CONCLUSION
Mark tells us the story straight up, but he doesn’t give us the implications. That’s what we want to think about now. What does this two-fold command mean to us in our lives personally? In this passage of scripture, Jesus teaches us to love 5 ways:
First Jesus said you are to love God with all your HEART.
Your heart is the innermost part of your being. It’s who you are on the inside. We naturally love our spouses, our children, and our extended family, but God calls on us to also love Him, and it must be so all-encompassing that all other love relationships take a backseat to our love of God.
The New Testament even has a special word for this kind of love. It uses the word philía when talking about “brotherly love,” the kind of attachment you have for your close friends. It also uses the word storge' to refer to the love we have for our parents, children, siblings, and our extended family members. Although not found in the New Testament, the Greek language had another term for the kind of physical love felt towards one’s spouse, eros. But there’s a fourth kind of love and it’s the word Jesus used in our text—AGAPE love.
This is the highest form of love. It’s the kind of love God loves us with—a selfless, sacrificing, deep and constant love that loves even the unlovely and underserving. God showed this kind of love by sending His Son to earth to die for our sins. Jesus showed it every day during His earthly ministry by giving Himself selflessly to others and ultimately giving His life for our salvation.
In the Great Commandment, Jesus is calling us to love Him with the same intense love as He loves us…with all our heart. It is to love Him passionately.
Today, to love God with such passionate abandon is looked down upon. It’s okay to be passionate about sports or movies or celebrities and if we’re passionate about any of these, we’re called “fans.” But if you show the slightest degree of passion about God, you’re immediately identified as a FANatic! But you know what?—It doesn’t matter what the world thinks; Christ calls us to love God with all our hearts.
Second, He calls you to love God with all your SOUL.
The soul is the center of our will. It’s where we make choices. The reason you got out of bed this morning and came to church is because your soul made the right choice.
Loving God is a conscious CHOICE. We aren’t robots; we have a choice to love God or not to love Him as we should. We have to purposely decide to surrender our lives to Him and obey Him.
Illus. – We have so many choices in our lives today that it’s mind-boggling. When I was in the States in May, going to Kroger or Walmart was overwhelming to me. First, because I didn’t know where everything was, being set up differently than things are in the commissary and PX. But once I got to where I wanted to go, there were just too many choices for my “hunter-gatherer” method of shopping.
When I grew up, we only had three choices on TV—CBS, NBC and ABC, and sometimes only two of them when the antennae on the roof got blown in the wrong direction. – Today we have scores of choices on TV, and most of them are basically garbage!
We had three choices of ice cream when I was coming up: Vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. – Today there are tons of flavors.
But with God, it’s simple: In any given moment, you are loving God or you aren’t. And when you aren’t, God says to love Him with all your soul, with all your volitional power. So you make a conscious choice to self-correct and obey God in that moment, for it is in obedience that we most show our love to God.
Third, Jesus says you are to love him with all your MIND.
Interestingly, this one is not in the Shema in Deuteronomy 6:4. Jesus adds it here to show the comprehensive nature of the kind of love we’re to love God with.
Some people believe that when Christians come to church, we check our brains in at the door. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s true that faith SUPERSEDES intellect, but faith BEGINS with intellect. Faith is not believing things anyway that we know are not true; it means being convinced that the teachings of Scripture and the words of God are true, leading us to faith in the God who said them.
Not everything in the Christian life is easy to understand, but what you fill your mind with from books and magazines, TV and movies and even music will either feed your intellect things that reinforce your faith or chip away at it. To love God with all your mind is first of all to devour God’s Word. But you can also love God with your mind by reading books that defend the faith (known as apologetics), biographies of great Christians and good, wholesome books, magazines, TV and movies—Christian or secular.
Fourth, you are to love God with all your STRENGTH.
Our heart, soul and mind are the invisible parts of who we are. Our strength involves our body, our muscles, our feet, hands, eyes, mouth, ears. Agape love starts from within, but it will engage the body in loving service.
You can tell your spouse you love him or her till the cows come home. But for them to know you really love them, you must go beyond mere words to ACTIONS. To love God with all our strength is to do what Paul said in Romans 12:1 – “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”
Not a DEAD sacrifice, like Jesus did for us, but a LIVING sacrifice…a sacrifice of our bodies for service, which Paul says is only reasonable. Ask God to take your hands and your feet and your mouth and use them for His glory in service of others.
Last, Jesus says we are to love our neighbor as yourself.
Now we don’t have to be told to love ourselves. That comes naturally. Our default tendency is to focus on ourselves. Jesus says that the same love we have for ourselves, we’re to love our neighbor.
Now the question is, who is our neighbor? Luke tells us a detail Mark doesn’t, that the scribe asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” In answer to his question, Jesus told the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritans were despised by the Jews, but the parable says that a Jewish man had been robbed and left for dead. A Jewish priest comes upon him, and later a Levite, but both avoid him, leaving him in the condition they had found him. But then, of all people, a hated Samaritan finds him, bandages and medicates his wounds, takes him to an inn to recover and pays for his expenses for the following weeks of his recuperation.
Jesus’ message was essentially this: Even our ENEMY is our neighbor and therefore, EVERYONE is our neighbor.
But the parable of the Good Samaritan teaches another truth that we have already discussed in relation to our love for God. That is that love is shown by ACTION, by good works toward our neighbor. Who would believe that the Samaritan demonstrated love for his neighbor if all he did was talk to the man and say, “Well, I’m so sorry you’re in this mess. I’ll be thinking of you. Please get well soon. Goodbye.”
No, love to his neighbor was revealed by concrete ACTIONS to help the wretched man. How do we “love our neighbor?”—By SHOWING love to others through good deeds and loving acts.
May our lives be characterized by passionate, genuine love for God and others. May we love all 5 ways, and when we aren’t loving God with all our being or when we’re not loving our neighbor as ourselves, may we repent and immediately make a course correction.
