The Most Important One

12 verses 28-334. One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating, noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer. He asked him. Of all the commandments which is the most important. The most important one answered Jesus is this. Here, O 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 mind and with all your strength. The second is this. Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these. Well said teacher, the man replied. You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength. And to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, you will not far from the kingdom of God. And from then on, chapter 12 verses 28-334. One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating, noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer. He asked him. Of all the commandments which is the most important. The most important one answered Jesus is this. Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this. Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these. Well said teacher, the man replied. You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength. And to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, you will not far from the kingdom of God. And from then on, no one dared ask him anymore questions. The word of the Lord. Welcome. Let me extend my welcome to Dear Village Church and some distinguished visitors and documenters. I want especially welcome the villager here covering this as an event because we like that paper. It's one of these local papers that not just because I can take it into my house and leave it in my kids room and not worry. But because the articles in a villager are very heartfelt and sincere. And they have shown a real concern for this community over their distinguished 70-year history. So welcome. Welcome to you. Welcome if you have just wandered by and have it be sitting here. Let me just tell you, you are sitting amidst a very uncommon group of people. This is the villager's church. We meet down the street normally. We are having our service outside today because, well, because it's a nice day. And it is a nice day, is it not? Can you say amen to somebody? That's right. So welcome here. What we are doing now is we are having a sermon. What we are going to do is just pay attention to that last passage that you just heard read through the microphone there. And I want you to wonder with me about that last sentence that you heard read. After that, after that, from then on, he says, no one dared ask Jesus any more questions. No one dared ask Jesus any more questions. But why after that, this seemed like a real pleasant conversation that was going on here. Why was it at this moment? Why after that story was it said that nobody dared ask Jesus any more questions. As we seem to be reaching some kind of climax here in the book of Mark, in the story that he's telling, there's a change that happens at this moment. Well, what is it that happened? There's some kind of subtext going on here. We've got to look at what that is. Jesus, you see, has been going along and making a lot of corrections. There's a change in Jesus here, too. There's something that silences Jesus and it's something that silences the crowd. If you look back, just to give you some context, you read through this story from chapter 8 through 10 in the Gospel of Mark, you have Jesus' trip to Jerusalem. Jesus is journeying to Jerusalem. He's on a mission. And if you read through that, you'll find that Jesus has to correct his own disciples on the nature of his mission, on the nature of the Messiah. So you read through him correcting them over and over again. Then he gets to Jerusalem in chapter 11. And the people come to him and he starts teaching the people and the leaders start asking him questions. And his answers continue along the same line. His answers keep coming out as, you know what? You misunderstand about taxes. And you misunderstand about marriage. And you misunderstand about who I am. And you know, the whole reason you even asked that question was because you, about the resurrection, is because you don't even understand the power of God. You miss the point of the temple. All these, the same tenor to all these answers. They just kept turning out that way. And so what happens here is a real change because suddenly a man comes along, a scribe, no less, and says something right to Jesus. Folks, this is a rare moment. How often does that happen? Somebody says something right to Jesus. And what I love about this passage, I hope you can see the love here in him. Because what we find is Jesus is able to turn right around and commend a good answer. He hasn't just left things and automatic cruising along here. He's able to turn around and commend this man. Now I hope you see this because, you know, this, what this shows about Jesus. See, when you're correcting people often, it's so easy to fall into an automatic criticism. Just turn on automatics, like cruise control, and let it go. Just keep on correcting people. I notice this all the time with my children. You know, I have some children, and you know, if you have children, you spend a lot of time telling them not to do things. And this is so that they don't kill each other or kill themselves. You know, but I find that, you know, I'm correcting them often. I say, don't do this, and don't do that, and don't do this, and don't do that. And I find that I'm continuing to correct them sometimes long after they stopped doing anything wrong. Not so it's Jesus. Why? Because he's still listening to each person. He's still treating each and each person as an individual listening to what they're saying. So what we find him doing is commanding this scribe, I'll tell you, it's particularly poignant that it's a scribe that he's commending. Because if we read on a few verses later, from this story, we find that Jesus really lights into teachers of the law. He really comes down on them as a group. You know, he's just scathing just a few verses later, but he would not dare break this read. He would not dare snuff this wick. Why? He recognized something that the scribe got. Well, what was it? I'm sure that Jesus could have found some things that were wrong with what the scribe answered him. Okay, for one, Jesus, the scribe in recording Jesus, he takes the very personal, love the Lord your God with all your heart, you know, all your strength. And he changes it to the impersonal, love God with all the heart, all the strength. This doesn't come through quite in this NIV translation we're using. But in the original Greek, the scribe depersonalizes what Jesus said. Jesus doesn't comment on that. Now, he also changes, he re-adjusts, re-quotes Jesus, Jesus's summary of this Old Testament scripture. He says it a different way. Jesus doesn't pick up on that and say, well, you know, I wouldn't quite say love with the, you know, understanding. I would say soul in my nose. Jesus doesn't say that. Perhaps he's addressing Jesus in a slightly superior way, you know, telling Jesus that Jesus is right. You know, perhaps there could have been a tad more respect there in addressing Messiah, you know. Jesus addresses none of those things. Why? Because he saw this scribe, had gotten ahold of something. And what Jesus saw is that what he really needed was to be told, you know what? You're not far. You're not far. You've got something there, pursue that. But what was it? What was it that caused Jesus to do this? To approve what is excellent there? There was something crucial about it. And I'll tell you, if we go back to that question of what arrested the crowd, it's the same thing. Because the answer to what arrested Jesus in his criticism and what silenced the crowd are one in the same answer. You get one, you get the other. Let's get that. Look, what was the scribe's question? You have that, you have the passage in front of you. If you have a bolt in there, you look out. What was the scribe's question to Jesus? What did he ask? Yes, what's the first commandment? What is it really? What's foremost? What's primary? In other words, Jesus, what's it really all about? This religion stuff. What does it really all mean? What does it come down to? What's the issue underlying all the other issues? And it's the ensuing exchange that silences the crowd. There's something about the heart of the matter that scares all the people and their leaders, and it makes them lose their stomach for questions. Jesus says it. Do you want to know what the heart of the matter is? Do you want to know what it all comes down to? Here it is, here it is. God is someone to be in love with. God is someone to be in love with. But you see what he says, love with all your heart, love with all your strength. Love, love, love. It's about a love affair. That's what Jesus is saying. Now, something rippled through the crowd when he made that clear. Something rippled through their hearts and their minds, something dawned on them. And he'd been getting at it and getting at teaching in different ways. Suddenly, it clicked on moss. They understood that Jesus considered God to be someone with whom you have a personal, vibrant, adoring, affectionate relationship. He is not a principal. He is not a political end. He is not a means of good conduct. And he's not far away. That's what the crowd realized. And when they realized that, that Jesus had this love affair, they must have in the next moment realized that they did not. Then they knew, you see, that any question they would ask, any point they would raise, any issue that they would argue would come back to this. They'd come back to this love with God, come back to this issue of their relationship with God. Did they know God? Did they know if God loved them? Did they love God? They did not. And that lack would be revealed in any discussion with Jesus Christ. And from then on, from then on, no one dared ask him any more questions. Now, we all know that sermons are supposed to help people. A preacher is supposed to get up and help us with our problems. And by the way, if you've just wandered in here, we're in the middle of a sermon here. Welcome. We're the village church. We meet down the street. And we know that we have this intuitive sense that somehow we should be being helped by our problems by what's being said. Otherwise, why would we sit here for 25 minutes and listen to one person talk? So you might have issues just like the people in the crowd in Matthew 10, 11 and 12. You might have issues that you're dealing with. Maybe they're marriage problems. Maybe they're money problems. Maybe they are midterm. Maybe there's misery from a relationship that ended. Or that's still going on. You have all these different life issues. And you might be sitting there thinking, well, you know, okay, I have these issues. And what's being said here this morning doesn't really concern me. It doesn't really deal with these issues. And if you say that, you are being like the people in the crowd. But if we would meet Jesus this morning, we would let this text confront us in the same way that his words confronted the people back on that morning. That whatever issue we have that we're dealing with, whatever problem it is, it comes back to this somehow the most important commandment, our relationship with God. Now, he says the second is loving your neighbor as yourself. And that's important. We think of that as very important in this church. That's why we do what we do to visit folks with AIDS, to do service in the community, to try to appreciate and cooperate with the different churches in this area for this community. We think that's very important. But I want to focus on the first this morning because he says it's the first. And, you know, indeed, and coming to talk to you today, a lot of those out there who I don't know, I just, I chose this passage because although I don't know you, I don't know what your issue is. I know that this has to do with you. For some of you, the problem might be this loss of love. You know, it's over at the wing theater. I saw the raft of the Medusa, a fine play, a reminder of AIDS that is still ravaging this community. You know, AIDS doesn't get talked about as much these days, but it is still taking its toll in this community. Maybe you've experienced the loss from that. Maybe, you know, some of us are getting to the AIDS where we're losing our parents. Maybe you're experiencing that loss. Maybe you've broken up recently. You're experiencing that loss. How would you let these words of Christ confront you this morning? Well, how about this? How about a love that you never lose, even in death, even from death? How about a love that outlasts even that experience? Because that's what Jesus is talking about here, this love affair. Maybe your, your trouble is a midterm, an exam or a paper that you have. Well, you know, if you know God as someone to be in love with, then you know that He believes in you and He cherishes you. That you're great on an exam cannot touch that. That you're free to study as hard as you are able and then let it go. Because there's someone who cares very much about you and your future. Get some sleep. Yes, this is, this is, this is healthful. A full of health for us. Maybe your problem is a time crunch. Yeah, even that. If you have this love affair with the father, then, you know, the one that you love owns time. He carries it around in his pocket like change. So if you know that, then you can let God set your priorities. He knows what you need to do. You can let him do that. You know, some of us here today really do. You need to allow this text to ask us, have I ever known God to be someone to love? Have I ever known God to be someone to be in love with? You know, many people walk around and they think that they're all right with God because they don't have conscious animosity towards them. You know, they think, well, you know, things are okay because I have nothing against God. But you know, not having a relationship with God being unreconciled to God most often does not express itself as conscious animosity. Okay, just because you don't wake up in the morning and shake your fist and say, God, I hate you. Well, maybe you do. I don't know, but most people don't. But just because you don't do that doesn't mean that you know God is someone to love. Oh, no. More often, your animosity of God is expressed as the keys put it as politely relegating God to irrelevant in your life. You know, it's like this. You know, I have kids and you know, when I come in, they just want to climb all over me. They want to be with me. You know, in fact, I think, you know, those old cartoons where the wolf or the hunter looks at the rabbit and you see what the wolf, you see what the hunter sees. And the hunter looks at the rabbit and you see a roast coming out of the oven, you know, where the robber looks at the bank vault and they see dollar signs. You know, those old cartoons. Well, I'm convinced. I'm almost sure of this now that when children look in an adult, at least my children, especially, they don't see an adult. They see a mountain that must be climbed. They see a peak beckoning conquest. So they're all over me, you know. Now, supposing I come in one day and even my 11-year-old, he doesn't want to be with me. He doesn't want to show me what he's done. And I'm puzzled and I say, hey, Tab, what's wrong? And he says, I have nothing against you. What? You have nothing against me. That would mean there was something wrong. So that would mean, man, it's time for counseling or something. That would be abnormal. Likewise, dear friends, if you get up in the morning and you don't want to be with God, you don't seek his fellowship and you can go on and on throughout the day with no effect whatsoever, acting as if it doesn't matter whether he's there or not. You're just like a people in this crowd. If you go through all that and then say, well, I have nothing against God, then you are just like these people. Who won't dare ask Jesus any more questions? You're missing the point of what it is. Well, I'm not going to leave you there. I certainly don't want to leave you there. The worst thing I could do in the world is to say, a whole point of it all is to have a love affair with God. You don't have it. So go out there and have one. You miserable villagers. I'm not going to do that to you because Jesus doesn't do that to you. What's the solution? Because if you want to have a love with God, if you want to have a thing with God, whether you felt like you had it and you lost it, or whether you felt like you never had it, the solution is the same. You don't have that love affair, folks, because you don't realize what he has done for you. He makes the way for you to have it. And just a few chapters later, he explains it with words that we're going to be repeating in a few moments when we celebrate the Lord's suffer. You see what the scribe says in verse 33. You notice what he says in verse 33. If you have your bolts in there, if you have your Bible, he says that loving God was better. Then all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. The teacher of the law says that because many of the sacrifices, many of the commands of the Old Testament, concerned making sacrifices for sin. Because sin is always within the way of our love with God. It's always with gets in the way. So a lot of the laws had to do with that. It's always the thing that keeps the relationship with God from happening. But you see, you notice that the scribe doesn't say that those sacrifices meant nothing, or even that they were unimportant, but that they were getting at something beyond themselves. And this is what makes Jesus change gears and stuff as criticism. This is what arrests Jesus. So Jesus recognized that the scribe recognized that our sacrifices couldn't do it. They couldn't make this love affair with God happen. They can't reconcile us to God. And these days, folks, our whole burnt offerings are the good deeds, the good things that we try to do to make ourselves right for God, to make ourselves right with God. Or they're the accomplishments that we give ourselves to to justify ourselves. And so this is what makes me whole. This is what makes me acceptable to God. Those are our whole burnt offerings today. You see what the scribe recognized that they couldn't do it. They can't make this love affair. They can't make us right with God. Trying to love God ourselves cannot establish the love affair. Jesus says, just two chapters later, what it is that does. He says that it's the shedding of His blood. Those whole burnt offerings and sacrifices we make, they can't make that love. They can't make it happen. That's good. That's what the scribe says. Good. You're not far. You're not far. You want to come the rest of the way? It's my sacrifice. It says Jesus. It's my sacrifice that makes the love affair. So shedding of His blood, His dine on the cross, that establishes that relationship with God for those who would receive it. Can you get that? That's why you should wake up in the morning and want to be with him. Because he supplies the love in the love affair. You can't do it. So he does it. That's what makes it a love affair. Not that you love him, but that he loves you. He made the whole burnt offering himself for you. If you don't want to ask you to come up to do communion and if you would allow me to close this time in prayer. Jesus, how marvelous you are with so many of us to deal with, you remain attentive to us as individuals. You refrain from automatic correction, even though there are so many things in us to correct. Rather, you look in us for faith in your sacrifice and you reckon it to us as righteousness. Father, surely you are someone to be in love with. Our sin has separated us from you, but that doesn't change the beauty of your holiness. Your word is clear and it silences us if we do not see you in that way. Holy Spirit, apply the work of the Savior in the hearts of us today. Let all of us here today forsake our own sacrifices and whole burn offerings and accept Jesus Christ's sacrifice on our behalf. To thus see you as someone with whom to be in love and so begin the unraveling of our problems in Jesus' name, Amen.