Jesus in Mark: Wk 16

Intro:

Greatest of All Time Conversations

GOATS:

NBA: Michael Jordan? Magic Johnson? Larry Bird? Wilt Chamberlain? Bill Russell? Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? LeBron James? Kobe?

Who is the greatest baseball player ever: Babe Ruth? Willie Mays? Ted Williams? Ty Cobb? Hank Aaron?

Who is the greatest football player ever: Jim Brown? Jerry Rice? Joe Montana? Walter Payton? Tom Brady?

Chicken Sandwich: CFA, Popeyes, KFC, and others.

This question is a fun conversation and often breaks out into a lively debate, as we just saw...

But this isn’t a new development, maybe we just now started saying GOAT in this way, but the question and debates around the greatest things and people of all times goes WAY back!

Hillel The Elder - a famous Jewish religious leader, sage and scholar in history:

One famous account in the Talmud (Shabbat 31a) tells about a gentile who wanted to convert to Judaism. This happened not infrequently, and this individual stated that he would accept Judaism only if a rabbi would teach him the entire Torah while he, the prospective convert, stood on one foot. First he went to Shammai, who, insulted by this ridiculous request, threw him out of the house. The man did not give up and went to Hillel. This gentle sage accepted the challenge, and said:

"What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation of this—go and study it!"

This question is often on our minds when we think about the Bible, when we think about all that it teaches us, all that Jesus said on earth, all that we hear about in Church. It is easy to get so overwhelmed with lessons, rules, and studies that we are left frustrated, asking: “what is this all about? What is the Point?”

Jesus is faced with a similar situation in the passage we will look at tonight. Like Hillel, he narrows it way down for the person he is talking to, but he does a much better job of answering this question: What is the greatest Commandment of God of all time?

His answer: Love God Completely. Love People Genuinely.

Turn with me to Mark 12:28 tonight!

As you do that let’s get caught up, because we are a whole chapter ahead of where we left off last week.

In Chapter 11, Jesus enters into Jerusalem with his disciples, this is known as his triumphal entry. He enters with a very humble royal entry and is greeted by crowds hailing him as the Messiah of Israel. They shout hosanna, and welcome him.

He curses a fig tree for not producing the fruit that it should have been. Very much pointing to the Jewish religious leaders not leading the people to true worship of God.

Then, along that line, He goes in and clears out the temple because they had turned it into a marketplace instead of a place of prayer and worship!

Next begins the section that we find ourselves at the end of. It is a series of challenges by the religious leaders. They are obviously upset by his entry into Jerusalem, and overturning the temple. So they begin trying every tactic they can to trick and trap Jesus by asking him difficult and intentionally deceptive questions.

Jesus of course handled every single instance with wisdom and love. And here we find the very last instance of this happening. Read with me in Mark 12:28-34

Mark 12:28–34 CSB

One of the scribes approached. When he heard them debating and saw that Jesus answered them well, he asked him, “Which command is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is Listen, Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is, Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other command greater than these.” Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, teacher. You have correctly said that he is one, and there is no one else except him. And to love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself, is far more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And no one dared to question him any longer.

We see one of the religious leaders, a scribe, likely one of the Pharisees, steps forward to Jesus in this moment. He has heard Jesus answering them, notices that He is doing an incredible job of holding his own against the attacks of the religious leaders and teachers. This makes him interested in hearing his answer to the GOAT question.

This was actually a regular practice for these religious groups. They would often sit around and debate what the most important laws were in the Torah.

The rabbis had studied the old testament and counted 613 commandments in the books of Moses. They classified 365 as prohibitions and 248 as commands. They further divided the commandments into weightier and lesser commands- based off of how harsh the punishment was for disobedience.

This was basically a way to make the OT fully intellectual and legalistic, all about following the right rules, the right way. Unfortunately, this is why they missed the heart of it, why their leadership wasn’t leading Israel to a place of worship when Jesus arrived.

So, this scribe wants to know what Jesus thinks. What is the GOAT commandment?

How does Jesus respond?

He doesn’t give him one command, but two that he says are greater than anything else! Look at verse 29 with me.

Mark 12:29–31 CSB

Jesus answered, “The most important is Listen, Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is, Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other command greater than these.”

Jesus begins with The Shema. A famous Jewish prayer that we have talked about before. Shema just means hear or listen like the first word of the verse says. Its from Deuteronomy 6 right after Moses reminded them of the laws God had given to them. Let me read it there quickly in context. Deuteronomy 6:4-6

Deuteronomy 6:4–6 CSB

“Listen, Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart.

See. Even in Deuteronomy it was clear that obedience to the Law came OUT of their love for God- out of knowing Him and Loving Him, not the other way around. Know the Lord, Love the Lord, with all you’ve got, so these words will be in your hearts!

Here’s the point about the law:

God’s Law is Meant to Point to God’s Love!

God gave the Israelites all the laws and commands, traditions, festivals, and standards because HE LOVED them and wanted them to be able to draw close to Him as they loved Him too!

The scribes and pharisees had belittled the law down into rules to be argued about, ideas to debate, when it was meant to point to God’s love.

God’s love is not meant to be argued and debated over, it is meant to be experienced and lived out by God’s people!

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Heart was referencing emotional being, soul your core, consciousness, mind your intelligence and thoughts, and strength- effort and action!

Loving God is not just emotional, it’s everything!

The law taught the Israelites how to live a life of LOVING GOD! Worshiping Him with all they’ve got! Every ounce of their being. And Jesus came to fulfill the law and teach us how to love God by following HIM.

You can’t debate or argue love, it must be experienced and lived out by every individual. So, What’s the GOAT? LOVE God!

So, Jesus begins to answer the GOAT question with the Shema- Love God completely, with every ounce of your being!

But that’s not the end for Jesus. He continues in verse 31 witha second, equally great command:

Mark 12:31 CSB

The second is, Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other command greater than these.”

Yes, love God completely, AND love people genuinely!

Why would Jesus tie these two commands together? First the Shema is in Detueronomy 6, then loving our neighbor as ourselves comes from Leviticus 19:33–34

Leviticus 19:33–34 CSB

“When an alien resides with you in your land, you must not oppress him. You will regard the alien who resides with you as the native-born among you. You are to love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.

Again, we see it is tied to WHO God is. I am the Lord your God, so LOVE. but This time we see it is about our love for people.

And not just people close to us, or similar to us or friendly to us. WE could wrongly assume that based off of just the statement love your neighbor. And we see people do that all the time. Non christians are capable of being kind and even loving towards others, but we specifically see the Love of God in people when that love and kindness extends beyond our comfort zone. That passage in Leviticus was actually specifically about non-Jewish people, loving people that the Israelites previously would’ve viewed as enemies and adversaries, not friends and family. God called them to love them as if they are Jewish- because the Jews knew what it was like to be strangers and slaves in Egypt!

Jesus has all of this in mind when he makes these statements to the scribe in Mark. Love people genuinely because God has loved you and you have experienced His love in your life, and it should overflow into your love for others.

This is simple to talk about but difficult to live out.

Let’s just be honest, it is much easier to just show up to church, “ do church” and go back to our every day lives and honestly try to avoid people more than love them.

How many of you would admit it is easier to avoid people at school than to truly connect with them and love them well? I mean I’ll admit that. It’s definitely easier!

I get it. I do. It’s what our world conditions us to default to. Look down at your phone, put in airpods and ignore the peope around you. this is not love! That’s not even life! That’s a miserable isolated existence.

No, we can’t help but love people and talk about God’s loe for them because we have expereinced it for ourelves. WE have tasted and seen that the Lord is good and His love endures forever.

Jesus said we will be known as His disciples by our love for each other.

John in 1 John said we love because God first loved us.

When we know God, we love God and we can’t help by love others when we love God.

We no longer see them as enemies, competition, or adversaries, we see them are fellow Image Bearers who need to know God’s love for them, and we can show them!

Jesus sums all this up by saying the GOAT Commandment is love god completely with all you’ve got. And love people genuinely- truly see them, and seek after them to show them God’s love!

As a bishop named William Temple put it:

Love of God is the root, love of our neighbor the fruit of the Tree of Life. Neither can exist without the other, but the one is cause and the other effect.

William Temple (bishop)

The Scribe hears all of this that Jesus has said and is blown away.

He says, wow, teacher you are right. God is one, and there is no one like him. and loving him with all we’ve got and loving others as ourselves- it is better than all of the burnt offerings and sacrifices.

He gets it. He sees what all the religious leaders had been focused on- the outside things- looking good, performing the perfect rituals, ceremonies and traditions, following all the rules from the torah and what they had made up for themselves and then holding it over everyone around them. And he sees their total lack of love for God and love for people.

He realizes what Jesus has said is true, those things had their place but they do not matter more than loving God and loving people well!

Jesus looks at him and says “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

This man was understanding why Jesus came. To make away for people to truly love God and love people through Himself. No one, not even the Jewish leaders could perfectly obey the law. But Jesus did! He did it for us, so that we could understand even better how much God loved us. So that we in turn could love God completely and love people genuinely.

This is the GOAT Commandment.

So, what do we do with this. We’ve heard it before and many of us try to live it out. I believe for many of us it is a place to constantly be reevaluating.

You need to catch yourself if you are ever going through the motions, or getting burdened or burnt out by your church life or spiritual life. And check- wait is Love still the most important thing to me in all of this. Is loving God and Loving people still what I am focused on. Because many times we drift off from that.

We get caught up in playing church, or keeping up appearances and looking a certain way for our parents, or just coasting.

We can’t coast when we love God and love people.

So, Every day we should be focused on 3 things:

1. Knowing the Love.

Know God and how much He loves you. SPend time in the Bible and time in prayer just soaking up an understanding of how much He loves you and worship Him for it! He is worthy. He loves you so much he sent his son to die for you and raise from the dead so you could walk in brand new life in His love.

This is why we need the Bible and prayer- to know and soak up God’s love for us.

2. Growing In Love

As we know God’s love we have to grow in it and experience it in our lives and with other believers. This is why the Church is essential. We get to grow in god’s love together. It takes turning from sin, working through non-loving tendencies and attitudes, and continually responding to God’s love in Worship. We have services like this for you guys so that we can celebrate, soak up, and grow in God’s love for us.

Know the love, grow in the love and finally:

3. Showing the Love.

As we said, the proof of our love for God is revealed in our love for people. Do you want to know how Much you love God? Honestly ask yourself how well you genuinely love the people at school, on your team, in your neighborhood and even in this room. your answer will show you both how much you understand God’s love for you, and how much you truly love God.

If you are honest and say, hey I’m not very loving- that’s ok its not to make you feel guilty, but it is a call to know God’s love for you and grow in it.

Know God’s Love for You, Grow in your Love for God. how that love to every single person you can! That is why we are here, that is the way of Jesus, that is what ALL OF THIS is about.

Love God completely. Love people genuinely.

Let’s pray.