Mark 12:28-34 March 5, 2006 (first of Lent)
The Greatest Commandments
Apprenticing Under the Master
Through Lent, we are going to conclude the series in Mark that I’ve titled “Apprenticing Under the Master.” We’ve tried to look at Jesus’ life like an apprentice would look at the work of a master tradesman and learn. Through Lent, we’ll be looking at the last week of Jesus’ life before the cross. I’m not able to preach from everything in that week, but we will look at some highlights.
Lead up to passage
Mark deals with the last week of Jesus’ life from Chapter 11 to chapter 15. In chapter 11, Jesus enters Jerusalem triumphantly ridding on a donkey to the chorus of “Hosanna!” In all the gospel accounts, it looks as though he is trying to pick a fight – it is almost as if he is arranging his own death. He goes to the temple and clears our the people who are changing money and selling sacrificial animals in the court of the Gentiles, It is at this point that the religious leaders have had enough of him, and they begin to plot his death. Jesus tells stories; parables, which are obviously directed against the religious leaders. The leaders respond by asking Jesus trick questions. The first question is a question with no right answer, like “When did you stop beating your wife?” It has to do with paying taxes to Caesar. It’s a no win question – the people hated the tax, but if he spoke against it, he would be killed by the Romans for sedition.
But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. "Why are you trying to trap me?" he asked. "Bring me a denarius and let me look at it." 16They brought the coin, and he asked them, "Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?"
"Caesar’s," they replied.
17Then Jesus said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s."
The next question has to do with the Resurrection – it was really just a trick of logic that was designed to make Jesus look stupid, but he answered it with great insight and wisdom as well.
The next question is different than the others. It seems that one of the scribes forgot that he was supposed to be trying to trick Jesus, and he asked an honest question. We can ask all sorts of questions – we can ask questions that are meant to teach the person that we are asking something. We can ask questions that are meant to trick like these other questions. We can ask questions that are meant to prove our point, or show that the other person is wrong. We can ask questions that are designed to show everyone how intelligent we are. I like a good honest question. Honest questions are what they are, there is no ulterior motive, they are asked jut to receive some information or wisdom that we do not already have. We say in Alpha that there are no stupid questions; maybe there are, but there are no stupid honest questions.
The scribe asks a good, honest question, this is how it goes…
Read passage
There is scene in the movie “The Dead Poet ‘s Society” where Robin Williams who plays an eccentric English teacher has his boys come out in the courtyard and march in a circle. He compares the way that each of them walks with their character and what motivates them in life. He talks about one boy who really wants to get it right, but the exercise is so strange, that he doesn’t know if he is right. He is walking “am I doing it right?” “I think I’m doing it right,” “no wait I might be wrong,” “No, I must be right,” “am I doing it right?”
Are you the kind of person who wants to make sure that they are doing it right? This is the perfect passage for you. Jesus tells us how to get it right. All the Law and the prophets hang on these two commands – Love God, Love you Neighbour. If you can’t remember all the things that God wants you to do and all the things that he doesn’t want you to do, if you can remember to love Him and to love your neighbour, then you will likely do alright.
If you have decisions to make in your life and you aren’t sure about the will of God, these are the first filters that you can put the decision through: does this plan help me to love God with my whole being? Does this plan show love to my neighbour? If you have actions or behaviors in you life that you are not sure about, this is a good filter; does this behavior show love to God and my neighbour?
Let’s look at the two commands in more detail
1) Love God
Jesus says that the first command is to love God with our whole Heart, Soul, Mind, & Strength. It is most likely that we shouldn’t get too caught up with each individual word. Jesus is saying that we need to love God with everything we’ve got – lock, stock and barrel
Love God with your whole self; do not hold anything back from him. We cannot have areas of our life that we say, that is for me and for me only, God you are not allowed to come in here to this area. We cannot say, I’ll love you on Sundays, and in the evenings, but not while I’m at work and not on Saturdays. I’ll love you all the time except when I’m at parties, that is my time. God want’s all of you, lock stock and barrel
All our love for God is a response to his love for us, and since he shows his love to us through his Son Jesus, we show our love to him through Jesus as well.
God’s love is shown to us most through Jesus his Son.
Romans 5:8
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Love the Son
- John 5:23. “He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.”
- 1 John 3:21-24 “…we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them.”
There is a story of a rich art collector who had one of the greatest collections of art in the world. It was full of such beauty that you would think he would have been one of the happiest people in the world. But in fact that wasn’t the case. His only son had been killed in a car accident at a young age and the father had never really gotten over it. You see, he had loved his son so much and was proud of him when he graduated from the University. He had great plans for the boy to follow in the family business. When the son died the father was devastated. So he put all his energy into compiling the best art collection he could mange in memory of his son. Finally the man died without an heir and when the will was read it was announced that his art collection would be auctioned off. On the day of the great sale, art dealers came from far and wide hoping for a bargain and desiring to own part of this fabulous collection. There were people on mobile phones, the Internet connections had been made and everyone was prepared. The first item for auction was a painting by an unknown artist, it was a portrait of a young man and it wasn’t a particularly good portrait. None of the dealers was interested in it. They were waiting for the real art to come up for sale. The auctioneer called for bids…and there was silence. Not a hand moved. He lowered his suggested amount. Eventually an old man in the back bid a small amount for it. He was the art collector’s butler. He realized that the portrait was that of the man’s son, whom he too had loved. It had been painted just before the young man died. He valued the painting, not for its great artistic value but for its sentimental value. The art dealers all breathed a sigh of relief. That was out of the way, now they could get on with the real sale. But the auctioneer announced, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I am required to read the following clause of the will. It reads ‘whoever buys the portrait of my son gets everything else as well.’ The auction is now over.” Whoever has the Son has everything!
To love the Son is to Love the Father
Although I said earlier we shouldn’t get caught up in the individual words, I think that it might be useful to take a look at the nuance of each word before we look at the second command
Heart – seat of 1) feelings, desires and passions, 2) thought and understanding, 3) the will, 4) religious centre – determines moral conduct
Soul – what gives life, whole person, place of feeling, true life – “I love you with the very air I breathe”
Mind – understanding
We do not often tell people that we love them with our whole mind! But we are to love God with our mind – this means using our minds to bless him
2 Corinthians 10:5
“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
Strength- power, - physical strength, political power
We can love God by worshiping him with our whole body in everything we do, but we can also love him by giving all the power that we weld in our lives over to him, and say “Your love has conquered me, I am yours through and through.”
Jesus says in John 14:5, "If you love me, you will obey what I command.”
And then in the same discourse he says this: “This is my command: Love each other.” - John 15:17
Part of the way that we love God is to love each other, which is the second greatest command:
Love Your Neighbour
We must love our neighbour, but we must always start with God.
Ray C. Steadman says, ”We are to solve our problems by responding again and again to God’s love. When we start with God’s love, then we are ready to turn to our particular problem -- our relationship to our wife, children, neighbor, friend, or boss. Then we are freed to love our neighbor as ourselves. The same process that reached us and won a response from us, we are now to pass on to somebody else. We can show them the same love that we ourselves have received. Our response to God’s love makes it possible. If we start with our neighbor, we get so wrapped up with all the hurts, difficulties, and friction that we start responding in the same way they treat us. But when we start with God and we have experienced his love and responded to it with love, then we can pass it along to our neighbor. It never works when we start with "love your neighbor" first, as we always are trying to do. All the social humanities of our day teach us that we ought to love our neighbor and they are right. But if we start there, without loving God first, we find ourselves incapable of loving others.”
When Jesus pares these two commands in Luke account, the one who asks also asks “Yes, but who is my neighbour?” He was trying to limit the amount of people he had to love. In response Jesus tells the story of the good Samaritan.
In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ’Look after him,’ he said, ’and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"
The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."
Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."
Jesus didn’t really answer the question “who is my neighbour, he instead said, “be a good neighbour”
We are a good neighbour when we see a person in need and help them with what we have. Jesus extended the notion of neighbour to include the hated Samaritans. It thing that in the media age, our neighbourhood has greatly expanded to include the whole world, even those we might consider our enemy – so if we see them in need and are able to help them. We obey God by showing them love.
Sometimes it is harder to practically love those neighbours that we share a fence with than it is to love people in Afghanistan. Distant love is nice and theoretical, it might include only opening our wallet and possibly praying for them, while loving the next door neighbour is very practical, and it comes with response that we might not appreciate. God calls us to both.
A final note before we leave this passage. Do you see what the Master does with the man who asks the honest question? When the man agrees with Jesus, Jesus says “you are not far from the Kingdom of God.” I love that statement. Jesus says it to many different people. As apprentices of the master, we need to learn to find out where people are close to the Kingdom and point it out, rather than discovering where they are far from the Kingdom and pointing it out. That is part of what it means to love our neighbour.
This is the 100 proof stuff – this is all the commands of God distilled down to two. Love God with all that you got, and love your neighbour as yourself.
