The Search for Truth

Mark 12:28-34

28 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?” 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 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.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” 32 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. 33 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.” 34 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.

Pray

I have heard many of you say that you enjoy the teaching that I bring to you and I am thankful for that. God is moving in this place and that is so encouraging to me. I have also heard several people say that they do not understand the bible when they read it on their own or the bible can be confusing. I will confess that there are certain things that I read that I have to dig to figure out as well. With that being said I want to give you some inside baseball on how I come up with these sermons every Sunday.

First I pray before I read the Scripture I am about to dive into and it is usually a prayer that says, “Lord I need you to give me eyes to see and ears to hear. Help me understand what you want me to teach your people.” Then, for this particular sermon, I read through the text and underline things that stick out to me and I will write notes down in the margin. With this sermon I wrote a series of questions that I needed to get the answers to or things that stand out. Who are the Scribes? Why does this Scribe have a favorable approach to Jesus? Why did the Scribe ask which law is the most important? What is the significance of Jesus’ answer and putting the two together? The Scribe again says that Jesus was correct in His response. Why are the burnt offerings and sacrifices tied in? Jesus says that the man answered Him wisely. Why was he ‘not far from the kingdom’ and why did no one want to ask Jesus anymore questions.

When we read scripture, if we are really seeking the truth of what is being said, we should have questions and then dig to find the answers. In this wonderful time that we are on the earth, we have the internet that we can pose these questions and can find a pretty satisfactory answer in a few seconds. There are a lot of things on the internet so you have to be careful what and who you trust so for some of you it may be better to get a good study bible that answers those questions down in the margins. I like the ESV study bible, I have and use often the Reformation study bible. It helps because it provides maps and historical explanations. This is the best time to be alive to dig into and understand what the bible says.

After I answer those questions, I try to see how these answered questions and the true meaning of the text can relate to our lives today. This is also a question that you should ask when studying and reading Scripture on your own. There are great bible teachers and pastors that can do that for you not just to take their opinion wholesale but to take their view along with other views, so that you can have a rounded view of the text.

You might say, “Boy, that sounds like a lot of work.” To which I would say, “It is.” To be a good father or husband or coworker or friend, it also takes a lot of work. You put in time and work for the things that you love. In order to understand the bible and to know the meaning and how it can apply to your life and change your heart, you have to take the time to understand it. You have to ask the hard questions and be willing to put in the work to figure it out. We are saved by grace through faith in Jesus and anyone who comes to Him will not be turned away, but we are called to know Him deeper and He has given us everything in His revealed Word so that we can intimately know who He is and what pleases Him and what He expects from us. If we believe that Jesus is telling the truth and that He is God in the flesh and through His Spirit He has allowed us to have His Word to guide and direct our life, why wouldn’t we search for the meaning and spend our whole lives trying to know Him better through it?

At this point, you are probably saying, “Can you preach the sermon now?” I have a point with this build up, and it is in my first question that I asked myself at the beginning.

28 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?”

Who is this Scribe? We have seen people basically waiting in line to question Jesus. First is was the Pharisees and the Herodians, then it was the Sadduccees and now it is this lone Scribe. As I researched, the Scribes would have been Pharisaical which means that they would have followed the law of Moses but also the traditions and writings of the Rabbis. Not all Pharisees were Scribes but it is likely that all Scribes were Pharisees. They were lawyers. They knew how to argue all things pertaining to the law of Moses and they were the ones that were the experts of it.

This encounter reads differently than the other two encounters that Jesus has had with the the Herodians, Pharisees and the Sadduccees. In the first two encounters, the opponents of Jesus want to trap Him. They want him to say something that is outside of their orthodoxy so that he will lose credit with His followers or say something illegal so then he will be Rome’s problem. When this Scribe comes to Jesus it is because He answered the questions from the previous two encounters “well”. From that statement, it does not seem like the man is trying to trap Jesus but to actually get to the bottom of what He believes. He has likely heard about what Jesus has done, obviously he has heard how Jesus answered the questions of his colleagues and he wants further information.

If we have an actual curiosity and a want to grow and learn we will ask questions. If we really want the Word to correct us and show us what God would have us do, then we have to take time and dig into what it says and try to find the meaning. How do we do that? By asking questions of the text and doing the work to find the answer and then when we get the answer, we ask the Lord to change our hearts and conform us to how He is calling us to act and live.

It seems as if this Scribe is trying to understand what Jesus was teaching and test him as a teacher, because he was attracted by his previous answers, the Scribe asks Jesus one of his own.

“Which commandment is the most important of all?”

He’s asking Jesus, which commandment is at the heart of all other commandments. Which commandment makes the keeping of all the others both possible and meaningful? What is at the center of the purpose of our existence? This is something that the Scribes would argue amongst themselves. It was a common question. The Jews commonly weighted the commandments on which ones were great and small. The Jews of the time had 613 laws, 248 commands (dos) and 365 negatives (don’ts). They knew they could not follow them all so they followed the ones that were more strictly enforced and on the ones that had smaller consequences they were more lax on. The Scribe is asking Jesus to tell him what He thinks is the most weighty.

29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 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.’

In a world where rabbis and Pharisees and Sadduccees and Scribes were trying to decipher this wildly complicated system of following God that rivals the US tax code, Jesus says the most important of all the laws is what the child recites in the morning and in the evening in every Jewish home. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Is called the Shema found in Deuteronomy 6:4. Jesus continues with the very next verse in Deuteronomy to show the love that you have should invade every aspect of your life. Your heart is your emotions and what comes our of your mouth, your soul is your spirit or self consciousness, your mind is your thought life and intelligence and your strength is all that you physically do. This is your whole self and every bit of it should be focused on loving God. Scottish Theologian, Sinclair Ferguson, says, “God is never satisfied with anything less than the devotion of our whole life for the whole duration of our lives”. Because of this devotion, we are able to be changed by his supernatural love invading our life which makes us want to kill the sin that ensnares us. This love will enable us to perform the duties which the Lord has called us.

Jesus then adds to the man’s question with a second command.

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

If you have your bracelet on your wrist, you will know where this command comes from. Leviticus 19:18. These two commands were something that all of the religious ruling class were failing at. They didn’t love God with all of there heart, soul, mind and strength, they loved their works and their power. They certainly didn’t love their neighbor. In Luke’s account of this story, the Scribe asks, “Who is my neighbor?”

Is this not a great question? If you are trying to gain knowledge to grow or understand someone you have to define the terms that you are using. The Scribe only thought that his neighbor was his fellow Jew, but the word actually means “the one near you”. In other words anyone that is near you that is part of the human family, everyone. This shatters the belief that this Scribe has come to Jesus with in thinking that the Jews were better than all surrounding people. To further drive home this point in Luke’s gospel, Jesus tells of the story of the good Samaritan. I would encourage you to read it but the gist of the story is that a man was robbed and left for dead on the side of the road and a priest and a Levite passed by the hurt man and did nothing. Then a Samaritan passed by and took care of the stranger. Not because he had to but because the Samaritan was moved with compassion for the man.

The Scribe would have been like the priest and the Levite and walked by. He would have considered the injured man unclean and the fact that Jesus uses the Samaritan as the example of the hero in the story would have crushed the Scribe. The Jews and the Samarians were enemies, at the time of the telling of the parable they would have been enemies for more than 500 years. The Jews didn’t like the Samaritans because they were considered “half-breeds”. Their ancestors were Jews that had intermarried with pagans. The Jews would have nothing to do with these people.

Notice that the Scribe hearing these things does not respond with anger, but with acknowledgment of what Jesus says.

32 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. 33 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 knows that these two commandments are the most important and that they are connected. You cannot have one without the other. You cannot love God and not love your neighbor and you cannot properly show love if you do not know where the source comes from. This is a stark difference than his contemporaries of the time. They wanted hard nosed systematic religion. Keeping all of the rules and checking all of the boxes were most important, but this Scribe understood that it was a loving relationship that God was seeking from His people and not just the sacrifices.

1 Samuel 15:22 “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.

Proverbs 21:3 To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.

This Scribe knew that the proper context behind his sacrifices and worship was love and that it should flow out of him to love his neighbor.

There are a lot of commentaries on this passage and as many different views as to if this Scribe was trying to trap Jesus like the many religious folks before or if he was trying to better understand. I think that it can be assumed that this man was trying to get a better understanding of who Jesus was by Jesus’ response to him.

And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

That word in the Greek for wisely means he answered from a sincere heart. Jesus sees that he is searching for the truth and Jesus says that the Scribe is not far from the kingdom of God. When Jesus first mentions the Kingdom of God it is in the first chapter of Mark. He says, “The kingdom of God is at had.” What else does he ask after he makes that proclamation? Repent and believe. He is not telling the Scribe that he has to work harder to be saved, Jesus is saying there is one more step, repent and believe.

I don’t remember what I was doing but somewhere in my growing up as a child, I told my mom that I got close to my objective but I didn’t reach it and she said, “Getting close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.” I’m sure some of you know that saying. This Scribe was close, he had the head knowledge that what God really desired was a relationship with His people, but to have true salvation he would have to turn from his sin and follow Jesus. Follow the one whom the Father had sent. There are some in this room that know what they ought to believe but following Christ and repenting from sin is something they are not willing to do. The reason I started my sermon with how I try to understand is because I want you to know that you don’t have to have years in the pulpit or years in the bible to understand it. You can go through and ask the Scriptures questions. The excuse of not reading your bible because you can’t understand it is probably covering up something that you don’t want to submit to the Lord. There is something that you love, whether it is your comfort or your sin, more than the Lord. My job is to tell you that there is no affliction, sin, oppression that you HAVE to live in. You have been freed from that prison and you can walk out of the doors. God in His grace has given us so many resources that we can find the meaning of any text that is confusing to us in a matter of seconds if we put in the work to find it. The Lord wants you to be free from sin and anxiety and worry. He wants to be the place where you run for peace and He is the only source of life. If you have been a Christian for years and you still feel like you battle with the world just as much as you did when you first believed, maybe it is because you believed but you didn’t repent and turn to the one that can save? There is a response that the Lord wants from us and that is to put to death the flesh. John Owens the great Puritan pastor said,

The vigor, and power, and comfort of our spiritual life depends on the mortification of the deeds of the flesh.

That means we must war against the flesh and I can’t think of any way better to do that then to marinate ourselves in the Word of God. We pray and speak to God and he returns the conversation within His Word. How can we hear from Him if we do not read His Word?

Church, I pray if you are in that boat today and want to know the Lord but think the bible is too confusing, please do not feel ashamed. Come to me or one of the elders and we will help point you in the direction to get answers so that you can feel confident in approaching the bible but more importantly, your salvation.