"Love God" Sermon: Mark 12:28-34 (manuscript)

 

“Love God”

[Mark 12:28-34]

November 29, 2020 YouTube

            Today is the first Sunday of Advent.  We have entered a liturgical season of anticipation – the anticipation of the remembrance of the Incarnation of the Son of God – the birth of the baby, Jesus.

            As we begin our shopping and hanging of wreaths and lights and garland, and picking out a Christmas tree – as we send out Christmas cards – I got my first Christmas card this week – put on the Christmas music, make eggnog and hot chocolate and all the goodies of the season, let us remember Who we are anticipating – not Santa, not Saint Nicholas, but Jesus, the Incarnate God, Who has come to earth and will return again.

            This morning, we are looking at a question Jesus was asked and the answer He gave.

            First, love God.

“And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, ‘Which commandment is the most important of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The most important is, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 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.”’

We know from the Gospels that many of the Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, and scribes hated Jesus and were looking for any way they could trip Him up so they could accusing Him of some sort of sin and get rid of Him.

In the passage before this one, the Pharisees and Sadducees (who normally hated each other) gang up on Jesus and ask Him if a woman marries a man and he dies, and then she marries each of his numerous brothers, and they all die, and then she dies, who will she be married to in the Kingdom.  Jesus tells them if they had ever taken the time to read the Scripture, they would know there is no marriage in the Kingdom.

There was a scribe who heard this interchange, and he was impressed with Jesus’ answer, and that brings us to this morning’s text.  This is one of the rare times when one of the leaders of Israel comes to Jesus to ask Him a serious question that is not a trap.  The scribe really wants to know what Jesus’ answer is.

And the scribe asks Jesus, “Which is the most important commandment?  Which commandment of the over six hundred in the Scripture should be my main focus?  If I were only to keep one, which should it be?”

The scribe is asking Jesus, “Which of the commandments has the greatest weight and dignity?  Which of the commandments is fundamental to obedience?”

Jesus quotes a well-known and important text from Deuteronomy: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.  You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.  You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9, ESV).

These words are initially directed to the nation of Israel, but apply to all believers

The text begins by calling to believers – announcing to them that the Lord God is One God.  This is reminiscent of the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before Me.”  Why?

There is only One God.  We know that to be true and we believe in Him Alone.  This sets Israel and us apart from the rest of the world who embrace idols.  God is the Omnipotent – He has all power and authority and ability.  No idol can do anything.  Only God creates.  Only God sustains and gives salvation and judges the world at the end of the age.

And this goes into the second commandment as well, “You shall have no graven images.”  This does not mean that pictures and statues are wrong – it means that worshipping anything other than God is a sin.

Isaiah speaks of the insanity of idols -- manmade gods – gods that are no god – they are not real.  They are impotent.  He says of a piece of wood a man has gathered, “Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, ‘Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!’ And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, ‘Deliver me, for you are my god!’” (Isaiah 44:16-17, ESV).

These pagan notions continue to this day – as the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, recently said that global warming is occurring because the earth is angry with us.  No, the earth is not a being.  The earth is not a god.  It has no emotions.

“And you shall love the Lord your God.”  This is not the Beatles, “all you need is love.”  This is as Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15, ESV).  Love of God is obedience to God.

“with your heart and soul and mind and strength”  The first and most important commandment, the foundation of all the commandments, the root of all the commandments is this:  we are to love God – we are to obey all that God has said – all of His commandments – with the totality of our spiritual being, with the totality of our emotional being, with the totality of our intellectual being, with the totality of our physical being – with everything that we are, we are to obey God’s commandments in every way possible which is loving God.

In worship that means that we obey everything that God has commanded us to do in worship.  With everything we are, we are to worship God as He commands us to worship Him – with the totality of our spiritual being – with everything that believes in Jesus and strives to become holy and in thanks for our salvation – with the totality of our emotional being – with our emotions – showing how we truly feel in joy and sorrow before God knowing that He Alone can satisfy us – the totality of our intellect – thinking through what we are singing and all that is in the liturgy – looking to understand the Scripture and understand everything the minister is preaching – using our minds to the fullest extent – the totality of our bodies – singing, sitting, standing, speaking, drinking, eating, touching each other in greeting and compassion.

We love God when we use everything, we are to strive to do everything He has commanded – which is the love of God.  If we love God, we will focus everything we are in every way to the fullest extent to glorifying Him – telling Who He is and what He has done.

Love God.

Second, love neighbor.

“The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.’”

You may have thought that loving God seemed familiar – one God, no idols, proper worship.  These are the first four of the Ten Commandments – called “the first table.” 

The “second table” is about loving others: honor your parents, don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t bear false witness, and don’t covet other people’s stuff.

Jesus says the second commandment in His list of two is to love your neighbor as yourself.  How do you love yourself?  Do you want to be honored if you are a parent?  Would you rather not be murdered?  Would you rather your spouse not commit adultery?  Would you rather not be robbed?  Would you rather people not lie about you?  Would you rather people not covet your stuff?  The answer to all of these is “yes,” isn’t it?  You love yourself in the way that God says we are to love others.

So, we ought to obey God by loving others in the same way that we love ourselves, and, if we obey God in this, we love God.

And we may wonder about that creepy person – or the person everyone knows did something horrible and unforgiveable – whatever it was.  Do we have to love them?

In addition to obeying God – showing God we love Him by loving others – as we find in the Ten Commandments and elsewhere – we ought to remember that every person in existence is created by God.  Do we have the right to not love someone God creates?

Every person that God creates is a bearer of the Image of God.  So, not loving them would be spurning the Image of God.  We may not like everyone or what they have done, but we must love someone who bears the Image of God – or be acting against God.

We are also called – as believers – to glorify God by telling people Who Jesus is and what He has done to secure salvation for all those who will believe.  We are commanded to go throughout the world – in love of our neighbor and God – to let them know that God came to earth in the person of Jesus on that first Christmas, that He lived a perfect life – meriting and giving us His righteousness, died for the sins of everyone who will ever believe, rose from the dead, ascended back to the Father and reigns from His throne over all and has promised to come again as Judge and to bring His people into His everlasting Kingdom.  That is the greatest way we show love to our neighbor.

Third, a proper understanding of the Old Testament prepares the way for Christianity.

“And the scribe said to him, ‘You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.’”

The scribe hears Jesus out, and when Jesus is finished explaining that the weightiest and root commandment is to love God – the second being love neighbor (which is actually another way we love God) – he agrees with Jesus.

“You’re right, Teacher.  There is only One God – idolatry is madness – we are rightfully set apart as the people of God.  And to love God with all of our heart and mind and soul and strength is the greatest of all the commandments – and to love your neighbor as yourself.”

And then he draws a conclusion from this that is profound – and we need to remember that the entire culture of Ancient Israel was centered around the Temple and the offering up of sacrifices to God.  The scribe says that to love God with everything in our being and to love our neighbor as ourselves is greater – more meaningful – more weighty – gets to the root of what God wants from us – “than all of the burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

This is a revolutionary statement – a revolutionary understanding.  Despite the fact that the burnt offerings and sacrifices were central to the lives of Ancient Israel, there is something greater that God wants – that God expects from us love, which leads to obedience, and obedience, which reveals love.

The life of Jesus on earth is the passing of the Old Testament to the New Testament.  It is the passing of shadows and symbols.  The author of Hebrews shows that a proper understanding of the Old Testament prepares the way for Christianity:

“Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.  For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him” (Hebrews 9:23-28, ESV).

The author of Hebrews explains that the Old Testament sacrifices are fulfilled in Jesus and Jesus’ Sacrifice is better and of more worth than the burnt offerings of the Old Testament.  Why?

In the Old Testament, the high priest went into the Holy of Holies once a year to ask for the forgiveness of the people of God.  Now, Jesus is in the Holy of Holies and we have direct access through Him to the Father and forgiveness all the time.

In the Old Testament, sacrifices had to be offered constantly and repeatedly, but Jesus offered up Himself for the forgiveness of sins once, and no other offering needs ever to be offered.  All the sins of the believer are forgiven through Jesus.  Period.

And just as we learn in the Old Testament that each person lives, dies, and is judged by God.  In the New Testament we learn that each person lives and dies, and each person who believes in Jesus will not face judgment for his sins, because Jesus has already paid the debt for them.

Can we see, then, if we understand how the Old Testament sacrificial system works – for example – we can look at what Jesus did to save His people and see how obvious that the Old Testament sacrifices are shadows or types of what Jesus would do – so that someone who properly knows the Old Testament should find himself prepared to hear the Gospel and believe?  (And Christians can understand Who Jesus is and what He did and look back at the Old Testament and see how God prepared the people for Jesus’ coming – and ways we might explain the Gospel using the Old Testament – especially to our biblical Jewish friends.)

Anyone who properly understands the Old Testament will be prepared for Christianity, and, if God is willing, he will believe – understanding how Jesus has fulfilled all that God has said.

“And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.”

Jesus is impressed by the scribe’s understanding – he was not a believer yet – but, Jesus said he is well on his way to believing – and, Lord willing, he did come to faith in Jesus.

As we go through these forty days of anticipating reimbering the coming of God the Son in the person of Jesus, let us remember that the people of God waited for four thousand years for God to send the Son, and in that time, God gave His people the Old Testament, and everything in it points to Who Jesus is so He would be known and believed.

Let us love God with everything that we are and love our neighbors in the way we love ourselves, and for both reasons, let us tell people the Gospel.

Let us pray:

Almighty God, we thank You for the gift of Your Son for our salvation.  We thank You that He told us that to love God and our neighbor are the greatest commandments, and we thank You that Jesus lives that out for us in the pages of the Bible.  We thank You that all of Scripture points to Who Jesus us, and we ask that the Holy Spirit would prepare us and open our mouths that we would love You and others by proclaiming the Gospel, for it is in Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.