Devotion to God

Set-up

Throughout the entirety of Jesus’ public ministry, he has come under attack from various opponents regarding both who he is and the Scriptures. These confrontations come from his opponents having a poor understanding of the Scriptures, including that of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish temple leaders. And here, in the final showdown between Jesus and the religious leaders, each group that makes of the Sanhedrin tries to approach Jesus and put him to the test regarding matters of the law, followed by Jesus putting the religious leaders on the spot with a question of his own regarding the Messiah being David’s Son and David’s Lord.

In our text this morning we have a lot going on within these 31 verses. However, this really breaks down into two themes, and I want to give those to you now before we read through the text. The first theme being looked at within Mark 12:13-44 is looking at matters regarding the law. The Pharisees and Herodians come asking a question regarding the law regarding taxes. The Sadducccees ask a question about the kinsman-redeemer and the resurrection. Then a scribe comes and asks Jesus what is the most important commandment. These along with Jesus’ responding question about whose Son is the Christ all have to do with the Law, the Scriptures and rightly understanding them, making up the first theme of the text today. The Second theme being shown throughout is man’s response once the law is rightly understood and its purpose. Having these ahead of time will hopefully help us grasp what is going on here in the big picture of how Mark wrote this part of his gospel and allow this text to pierce our own hearts in understanding it better. (READ Mark 12:13-44)

Main Point: The law can only be rightly understood through the lens of the gospel; it then frees us from the burden of sin and points us to love God and love others.

Points

The Law

The Duty of Man

The Law

The law of Moses was given on Mount Sinai after the Exodus from Egypt. The purpose of the law was to teach and instruct God’s people in how they were to live and function both in relationship to God and others. In living out the law, those who made up the Sanhedrin were to be the experts, and yet, the various groups of the Sanhedrin here in the remainder of Mark 12 come to Jesus asking questions regarding the law, but show their misunderstanding of the law itself.

The Law and Taxes

The first law question comes from the Pharisees and some of the Herodians. It says there in verse 13 that they came to trap him in his talk. Then in verse 14 we find out that they came with flattery in their attempt to trap him, acknowledging him as a Teacher who is true and doesn’t care about anyone’s opinion or swayed by appearances. On their flattery, Charles Spurgeon said, “Any time a person begins to flatter us, we should be on our guard. If someone tries to commence a conversation by uttering words of excessive admiration, depend on it that that person admires something we have more than he admires us. And therefore, we should be on the watch against him.”

The heart behind their question is terrible and one not to be imitated by any disciple of Jesus. And Jesus certainly did not fall for their trap, for he even acknowledges their attempt to put him to the test there in verse 15. But nonetheless, they ask their question there at the end of verse 14, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” And what is at stake here is that in aiming to trap him, the Pharisees and Herodians were hoping for one of two outcomes. The first outcome would be that Jesus would affirm their need to pay taxes to Rome, proving him pro-Rome and that Israel would turn against him for that. The second outcome would be that Jesus rejected that they should pay taxes and become an enemy of the state, meaning that Roman rule would clearly now oppose Jesus. The trap was set, because of the misunderstanding of the law and government.

For the Jews, they thought the law and the talk about the Messiah was to grant them a political, ethnic nation that was free of any other rule other than that of, guess who, the Jewish leaders and their understanding of the law. They pitted the government's authority and God’s authority at odds with one another. However, that was not at all to be the case. Just notice how Jesus handles this there in verses 15-17, it says…

Here Jesus doesn’t pit the two against each other. In asking whose likeness and inscription is on the coin, Jesus shows that there is a right authority of government and the things that are in their likeness should be rendered to them. In other words, the things that rightly fall under the authority of the government are to be followed. Civil obedience, including that of paying taxes, is to be the norm for a Godly life. The government as we know from elsewhere in the Bible, including that of Romans 13 has been granted its authority from God. Therefore to obey civil authorities is to obey God.

Now, of course there is always the what if they go against God question, and that is answered too in Jesus’ response in saying and to God the things that are God’s. For as Jesus asked whose likeness and inscription was on the coin, we should in that likeness question recall Genesis 1:26. There it says, Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

While the coin belonged to Caesar because it was in his image, mankind is in the image and likeness of God, and therefore belongs to God. Therefore, even when submitting to the government, our overall submission is to God. For we belong to him. And when the government does overstep those bounds, going against God’s given word, then we submit to God who has the greater authority. The problem for the Jews and for us today, this is rarer than we think. One hot topic even in the last two years is the authority of the government regarding healthcare and safety guidelines. Wherever we fall on the mask mandates and isolation, it does not impose on the word of God. And therefore we would be wise to continue to obey government mandates on issues like this. I state this, because we need to understand what is and isn’t opposing God’s word. Things that would cause us to disobey civil government are things such as denying our faith in Christ. Going directly against the commandments of God, such as the harming of other human life. In these moments, then yes it is right to disobey civil authority for the sake of honoring God.

But we must grasp the purpose of the law and civil authority. The two are not intended to be at odds. Instead, civil authority has been established by God for the glory of God. Therefore, the call to godliness is a call to obey that civil authority. And this teaching caused the crowds to marvel.

The Law and Resurrection

The second law issue to come under question was from the Sadducees regarding the law of the kinsman-redeemer and the resurrection. The law of the kinsman-redeemer is found back in Deuteronomy 25:5-10. It says there in verses 5-7,

“If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. And if the man does not wish to take his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife shall go up to the gate to the elders and say, ‘My husband’s brother refuses to perpetuate his brother’s name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband’s brother to me.’

This law was for the purpose of protecting a family name, a line, and the absorption of the land going to outsiders. It was a provision for the widow and her family line. And yet, in the Sadducees question, though they were supposed to be experts of the law and the power of God, missed the point of it in their question. They make it about a question regarding polygamy in all 7 brothers from their illustration, there in verses 18-23, having been married to the woman and whose wife will she be then in the resurrection. They also misunderstand the resurrection here in their question. They presume that the resurrection is simply a continuation of this life. But notice how Jesus responds to this in verses 24-25, it says…

The Sadducees who are supposed to be the law experts are told that they don’t know the Scriptures or the power of God here. The very area they were supposed to be the strongest is where they struggled. They failed to grasp the Scriptures regarding the resurrection. And Jesus makes clear that the resurrection is not a continuation of the present life. The resurrection life is not the present life. It is far greater. We go from a world in which we have and rightly celebrate marriage to a life in which we will no longer be given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. In other words, to be like the angels in heaven isn’t saying we will get wings and become angels as many in our world seem to presume. The like angels here simply implies that we will live like the angels in singleness in the resurrected life and be content and satisfied in that. For the like the angels flows right after saying that those who rise from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. This is the comparison here.

Therefore when we think about resurrected life, we need not think it will be a reflection of this life without the pain, suffering, and death. The resurrected life is a life where all things are made new. Just hear the words from Revelation 21:22-27 and its description of the Celestial City that awaits us in the Resurrected Life. It says:

And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

The Resurrected Life will be about the glory of the LORD and enjoying him forever! We will be like Paul writes about at the end of 1 Corinthians 7 in us being single and fixated only on the things of the LORD. And we will delight in this as we enjoy our God!But, this is not all that the Sadducees are rebuked on. They too are rebuked there in verses 26-27 of our text, which says…

The reason the Sadducees doubted the resurrection was that they started from human expectations that the dead remained dead. And yet, the very promises of God were eternal. And Jesus makes his point by taking our eyes and pointing to the passage about the bush, that is the burning bush found in Exodus 3 in which God reveals himself to Moses. And as he reveals himself, Jesus points out that he says there: I am the God of Abraham, I am the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. The present tense of this statement comes long after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are in the grave. Yet, God says he is the God, presently of them. For in this there is the expectation of life being restored, for God is not indeed the God of the dead, but the living. One commentator writes, “God would not pledge himself to the dead unless the dead were raised to life. Jesus’ argument for the reality of resurrection is based on the assumption that the call of God establishes a relationship with God, and once a relationship with God is established, it bears the promise of God and cannot be ended, even by death.”

And this reality is made even more clear in Jesus’ own resurrection after his death on the cross. Brothers and sisters, by our faith in Christ, we are guaranteed to enter resurrected life where we will be with our Lord forever. For our God is the God of the living, and while we will still taste death in our current body, we can rest in the knowledge and hope of our coming resurrected life where we will be with Christ for all eternity. This is our hope, rest in it and cling to it.

The Most Important

Next, a scribe comes and asks Jesus a question, which commandment is the most important of all? And Jesus sums up the law with what is known as the Great Shema. The Great Shema was something that all pious Jews would have known. In fact, they would for the most part have repeated it morning and evening on a daily basis. The Great Shema comes from Deuteronomy 6:4-5 which is what Jesus says in verse 29-30, the only difference is that Jesus adds with all your mind. And the reason for this addition is summed up in a quote from Jen Wilkin which says, “The heart can’t love what the mind doesn’t know.”

In other words, how is one to love God with all their heart, with all their soul, and with all their strength if they fail to know the God in whom they are supposed to love? In fact, the very reminder in the Great Shema is that God is one. It is the reminder that there are no other gods, no matter the claims of the nations. There is one, the one who created the heavens and the earth. The one who gave his law to reveal himself to his people. The one who continuously has pursued his people for the purpose of redeeming them to himself. This is the one God. Yet, apart from knowing these truths, one cannot love God. Therefore to love God is to love him in heart, soul, mind, and strength, the whole of ourselves. And it is this truth that the first 4 of the 10 commandments point too. For in the first four commandments, it is about loving the one God with all of ourselves, and not other false gods. And then, Jesus adds a second, the call to love your neighbor as yourself. For it is in this that sums of the remaining 6 commandments that make up the 10 commandments. And he puts the two on equal ground by saying there at the end of verse 31, “There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Christian, the whole of the law is summed up with these two commandments, and there is no greater than to love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength. It is this that we will return shortly too as we consider our duty then in understanding the law.

The Scripture on David

Before that though, let’s look at what Jesus now does following all of these questions regarding the law, Jesus flips the tables and there in verse 35 asks, “How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David?” And in answering this question, Jesus quotes from Psalm 110:1 there in verse 36.

For David said that the Lord said to my Lord, with the first Lord being God the Father and the second being God the Son. Therefore, David calls God the Son his Lord too. Yes indeed he is the seed of David, but more importantly what Jesus is saying he is also David’s Lord. Therefore while of David’s line, the Christ far exceeds David’s line for he is the Son of God.

The entirety of the law was never presented to be kept and fulfilled by the people of Israel. It was intended to point to our desperate need of a redeemer, the one Man, the Messiah who has come as David’s Son, but also David’s Lord. For the Messiah, the Christ is the Son of God, Jesus himself. For us to try and live by the law is to die by the demands of the law. Yet, when we see that Jesus as the Lord of David came and fulfilled the law where David himself failed, then we behold the Lamb of God who has come to overturn sin and death by the shedding of his own blood on the cross. Jesus didn’t come as a political Messiah like many thought the Messiah would be. He came as the Messiah King who would fulfill the law and suffer so that we, the guilty, could be made righteous through placing our faith in him.

But the lingering question lies, what now then? Well that is where we turn in our second point this morning as we look at the duty of man.

The Duty of Man

Look back to verse 32-33 at the one Scribes response…

To love God with all heart and with all the understand and with all strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself is our duty. For as the scribe affirms, these are more important than burnt offerings and sacrifices being presented to God. And in his answer, Jesus tells him he is not far from the kingdom of God in this understanding.

Therefore, it is our duty as man to recognize that God is one, and that there are no other gods. Friend, if you are here this morning and you have yet to realize that the God of the Bible is the only god, you need to see that there is one and it is he who made you in the likeness of his image. That he alone is the author of creation. And you are therefore accountable to him. You need to see what he has done for you in Christ and place your faith in Jesus for your salvation. For there is no salvation by any other means. You cannot earn salvation by good works and deeds. You cannot gain salvation through another faith, it is only in Jesus. Believe this and be saved by coming to rest in Jesus.

And for those who have placed their faith in Jesus. We need to see that part of the reason we struggle to love God with all of ourselves is a lack of having all understanding of God, a fail to love God with our minds. If we merely come and try and love God the way we desire to be loved, then we do not love God, but an idol made in our likeness. Instead, we need to love God by growing to know our God. And the way we come to know our God is through his written word. For this is the way that God has chosen to reveal himself to us throughout history. For it is his word that is final and authoritative. And therefore it is his word that we must dive into if we are to know our God and grow to love him. We fail to see that our love for God is to flow from deepening our understanding of the depth of his love for us. For as it says in 1 John 4:19: We love, because he first loved us.

And when we love God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and all our strength, then it will look something like the widow and her offering there in verses 41-44. For here a poor widow comes and puts in two small coins into the offering box out of her devotion and love for God. She gives out of her poverty, not out of her excess. It is here we see what a true love for God is. One who gives of themselves to God in an outpouring of love for him.

Brothers and sisters, if we are to be like the poor widow commended here, then we must stop only giving to God out of what is leftover. And this goes beyond money. To love God with all ourselves is to love God so supremely that everything else is seen as hate in how we view it. This means loving God more than family and friends. To love God with all our heart, sould, mind, and strength is to love God that we eagerly and joyfully spend ourselves for God and the furthering of his glory. But again, this love flows from growing deeper in our knowledge of God.

And likewise, we are called to love our neighbor as yourself. We love neighbor as self in not devouring them like the Scribes did their neighbors. Look with me there at verses 38-40…

Here we see that the scribes loved praise of self more than they did that of praise and honor for God or care of neighbor. For they took for themselves the best seats and places of honor while devouring and robbing others, especially that of widows. They wanted the appearance of being overly religious, but their hearts were not loving God or loving neighbor.

If we are to love our neighbor, then it means preferring them over ourselves. It means caring for them and loving them well. It means that we are to be full of grace and truth with them, compassionate, and patient with them. We are to show them mercy and forgiveness. We are to care for one another. This is what it means to love neighbor. And to love them means to not show any partiality to them, no matter how different they are.

We need a heart check and examine if we truly love God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and all our strength. And likewise if we truly love our neighbor as ourself. And then see, even if we come to the reality that we have been failing in these areas, that Christ is still inviting us more to come to him. For again, this is the mercy that has been poured out on us.

Let’s pray...