February 10, 2008 First Sunday of Lent
Sermon Title: “The Greatest Commandment”
Series: Extreme Love: The Greatest Commandment
Text: Mark 12:28-34
Dr.
Delivered on February 10, 2008
“When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he
said to him, ‘You are not far from the
The Greatest Commandment
We’re beginning a new series of sermons today that will run through Easter. The series is titled, “Extreme Love: The Greatest Commandment.” In it we’re going to be looking at the “Great Commandment” to love God and others from several different angles to gain new insights from each, and then hopefully apply the truths we discover to our own lives.
Today’s passage of Scripture is the Great Commandment itself, this time reading it from Mark’s Gospel (it also appears in Matthew 22 and Luke 10). Let me read it for you now, Mark 12:28-34 [Read Text].
To give you the context of this passage, Jesus is under attack. If you have your Bibles out look back at verse thirteen of chapter twelve, before where we began reading today, you’ll see the attack beginning there: “Then they sent to him [Jesus] some Pharisees and some Herodians to trap him in what he said.” His attackers immediately begin pummeling Jesus with questions. First about paying taxes to the emperor; then a question about the resurrection, and then the question we read today, “Which commandment is the greatest?” It is interesting to note that in the first two questions Jesus answered his questioners and then followed up with a rebuke. But to this scribe who asked the last question, this man who affirms Jesus teaching, and even adds that loving God and neighbor is more important than “burnt offerings and sacrifices” Jesus replies, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” Then the passage closes with Mark declaring “After that no one dared to ask him any question.”
This week as I
prayed over this passage I racked my brain about I was supposed to say about the
Great Commandment as we begin our study together. I mean after all, you guys
already know that the greatest commandment in the Bible is to love God and love
your neighbor. You also know why love is the greatest commandment; because God
is love and so the only appropriate response to a Creator whose very essence or
nature is love is to love him back (he loved us first). This week I prayed, “God,
they already know this, why preach about it to them again? Why preach to the
choir?” I considered doing a word study on what it means to call something
“the greatest.” I thought about preaching a message on the meaning of “love.” I
really wrestled with God over this. And then, everything began to fall away and
settle like dust in the passage except the words of Jesus to the Scribe: “You
are not far from the
“Not far…” That thought can be a comforting thought. I remember when I was little it seemed like we were always going somewhere in the car, mostly traveling back to Mississippi from all over the United States for a few days around the holidays. That was back in the days before seat belts and I remember getting down in the little space in the back of the car where the back seat passengers are supposed to put their feet and I’d lay there looking up at the stars going by, and napping. Ever so often I’d call out to my dad, “Dad? We there yet?” And my father would reply, “It’s not far son, we’re getting close.”
Of course, distance is a relative thing, isn’t it? You can be “oh so close” and still miss by a mile, can’t you? I read somewhere once that the difference between heaven and hell is about nine inches in most cases. That’s the distance from your head to your heart. In other words, you can know all about how to be a Christian and still live a miserable life and in the end not make it to heaven, or you can have a heart-relationship with Jesus and live the kind of life God intended you to live and then go to heaven. It can be that close – just nine inches.
And so, NewSong
(and Steve Jackson), this morning I believe God wants us to hear those words, “You
are not far from the
THERE IS ONE
GOD
The first lesson
we need to firmly establish in our minds and sink way down in our hearts is
that there is ONE GOD. That thought comes from the first part of the
Great Commandment as Mark records it, “Hear, O
You and I, on the other hand, pretty much grew up with monotheism, so I don’t think that’s the reason this is so important to us. Given the way civilization has evolved the last couple thousand years I believe the message for us is two-fold.
First – we are to realize there is but one God, and that God is NOT us! We may not verbalize it, or even consciously think about this very much, but the truth is, we often forget that there is a God and he isn’t you or me. “Hear, O NewSong: the Lord our God, the Lord is one and you aren’t!” I mean, we could almost cut that verse off at the word “is” – as in “the Lord is.”
But not only do we need to realize there is one God, and he isn’t us. We also need to get it down deep in our hearts that the one God IS God and not one of many. You see, nowadays we practice our own form of polytheism. We worship a multitude of “gods.” Stated with emphasis the sentence would read, “The Lord IS God, not my job, not my family, not my bank account.” The Lord, He is One, He is God.” He is not one of many.
Now I know our culture today does not like to deal in absolutes. We live in a culture that celebrates pluralism. We live in a world that says, “That’s okay for you….but it doesn’t work for me and that’s okay.” But here’s the reality. We need to settle this once and for all. Either the Lord is God in our lives, or he’s not. This point has to do with priorities, allegiance, and obedience.
Over and over in the Bible God is described as a “jealous God” which means He doesn’t appreciate it when we switch horses and make someone or something else “god” in our lives. In fact, God detests this so much it made His top-ten list, in fact, it made the top of God’s top-ten list; it’s the first commandment, “Thou shalt have no Gods before me.”
NewSong, we are
not far from the
THERE IS
The second thing this passage teaches us is that there is only one way to love God, and that is “with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”
This is related to the point we just mentioned, in that it is about exclusivity, and it is about priorities, but more importantly, as I see it, it’s about passion.
What do I mean by that? If I were to do a “man on the street” interview in downtown Cumming and I asked the question, “Do you love God?” I imagine I would hit the high 90 percentile range of folks who would answer that question in the affirmative. But what does it mean to say you love God? I’ve already said I’m not going to do a study on what love means, but we all know the word love has been overused and is subject to all kinds of interpretation. We use that word “fast and loose.” I love pizza, I love football, I love Donna, and I love gummi-bears.”
But when you see love described as Jesus did here, with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, it is apparent Jesus is talking about total and absolute devotion. Jesus is saying this kind of love is the kind where our first and greatest and last thoughts each and every day are of God, where he is the object of our constant attention and affection. He’s talking about the kind of relationship where we find our only peace and satisfaction when we’re with Him or thinking of Him.
Our English word passion actually comes from the Latin word meaning “suffering.” The kind of love Jesus was talking about here involves a kind of suffering because we’re so in love. I know I’ve told you this before, but when I was a teenager and I first met Donna I fell head over heels in love with her almost from the very beginning. I wanted to be with her every minute of the day. I would find her before and after school and between every class so I could hold her hand in mine and walk down the hall. I’d go over to her house after school or else we’d talk on the telephone for 2-3 hours a night. There was a kind of gentle suffering I endured because my love for her was so great – that’s passion, and it’s the kind of love that Jesus says we should have for God. Not romantic passion, but the kind of deep longing for the company of God.
Sadly, I must admit my own love for God often is not this kind of love. My heart frequently wells up in gratitude to God. My mind is often amazed with the beauty and complexity of creation as I recognize God in it. I do things for others in the name of God with my strength and that makes me feel good and I thank God. But seldom do I love God passionately with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. With the kind of exclusive passion Jesus is calling for here.
According to Jesus that’s the only way to love Him. If we’re not loving God that way, we’re missing out. We’re letting Him down. We’re “close, but not quite there.” We must close the distance and learn to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.
ONE EFFECT OF
LOVING GOD THIS WAY
The final lesson I want us to take away from this passage as we begin our journey of Extreme Love is this to look at one effect of loving God this way (with all our heart, mind, soul and strength) and that is that we will love others.
What I’m saying here is that I believe the two portions of the Great Commandment, to love God and love others, are absolutely related. One is primary: loving God. The other is equally important, but flows from the first: loving others.
In fact, I would go so far as to say it’s impossible to love others – at least some others – unless you first love God. Loving God, getting our focus off ourselves and our lives, opens up enormous room in our hearts to love others. The competitiveness that is so rampant in our lives comes to an end. Our “scarcity mentality” that says more for you means less for me, is replaced by an “abundance mentality” which says there is plenty for us all. We begin to see the world through “God-tinted” glasses and that changes everything – all because we have begun to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.
That’s just how it works. I don’t know about you, but I was pretty weak in school when it came to math. I especially didn’t like geometry with all its theorems. You know things like how to get the circumference of a circle: The circumference of a circle = 2 × π × the radius. I didn’t like them, but what makes them important and useful is that they are true every time. Whether or not you believe they are true doesn’t matter. They’re simply true.
That’s the way
it is with this idea that loving God always results in you loving others. It’s
a fact. Because it is so, the Bible warns us that if we don’t have love for
others in our hearts we should wonder if we truly have the love of God in our
hearts. We may have the love of God in our heads, but not in our hearts.
Remember the nine inches. Remember Jesus’ words to the Scribe, “You are not
far from the
This morning we’ve looked at three important lessons to learn from the Great Commandment: There is only ONE GOD. There is only ONE WAY TO LOVE God. And we’ve looked at ONE EFFECT of loving him that way, and that is we will LOVE OTHERS.
But you may be sitting there saying to yourself, I agree with you Steve, but how can I love God this way? Isn’t love something you just have to “feel?” Can we force ourselves to love someone or something?
And my answer to that is that you are absolutely right, you can’t “force love” in the traditional sense of love. For instance there is no way I can force myself to love cottage cheese. But love in the sense Jesus is talking about it here has to do with a choice. It’s a decision we make. It’s more a fact – a heart-felt fact – than it is a gooey feeling.
I can decide to love God first and foremost in my life. I can decide that, no matter what, my loyalty will remain with him. I can decide to obey him. As our discussion guide for this week states, all this begins with a choice. We can choose to live our lives in isolation from others. We can choose to set up our throne with us as king and ruler. We can decide our motto is “look out for number one,” or “it’s all about me.” Or we can choose to put God first in our lives and to love others.
How can I say this so confidently? I can say so because God would not command us to do something which was not in our power to do. That would go against his very nature. In the final analysis, perhaps that’s where I should have started this whole series. After all, it’s not the “Great Suggestion.” It’s the Great Commandment. Look at it again, “you SHALL love the Lord your God…,” “you SHALL love your neighbor as yourself.”
This is a commandment you are capable of keeping, or else God would have never commanded it. The real question then, is one of choice and obedience.
This Sunday, on this first step of many we will journey together towards the cross I want to ask you, “What will your decision be?” Will you crown him Lord of your Life this morning? Will you stop giving him the leftovers of your love and give him your best? And will your love for others begin flowing from your love of God?” I pray that it will. Let’s pray.