He says this, so let's start with the most awkward of the awkward questions. I don't really care about this question particularly much, but I get this question a lot, which is, as a Jew, how does it feel that there are other religions that don't think you're getting into heaven? So let me ask you, what's the Catholic view on who gets into heaven and who doesn't? I feel like I lead a pretty good life, a very religiously based life in which I try to keep not just the Ten Commandments, but a solid 603 other commandments as well. I spend an awful lot of my time propagating what I would consider to be Judeo-Christian virtues. So what is the Catholic view of me? And from there, the conversation goes downhill. It's a good question. But not a very good answer. The Catholic Bishop says that even atheists can be saved, as he says, atheists of goodwill, provided that they essentially follow their conscience. If you follow your conscience, whatever religion you are, you are going to get in. But the brief Jewish answer that we saw was not on target either. He says that he follows the 10 commandments plus 603 other commandments. Life through law keeping. Is that the answer to our problems? And of course we realize and understand and recognize as Christians the folly of trying to gain life through obedience to the law. It just cannot be done. Those who try and earn God's favor through law keeping are called legalists. Each one of us, by the way, and before we go and say legalist, legalist, legalist, each one of us has a legalistic impulse in our own hearts. And we are dependent on God's grace to free us from that impulse. I would venture to say that most legalists are blind to their vain efforts to earn the favor of a thrice holy God. They don't see how woefully inadequate their little deeds are in God's eyes. Nevertheless, by God's grace, some legalists begin to see how incapable they are of adding up. They begin to see that they have been weighed in the balance and have been found lacking. But there's something else that legalists must live with. There's a certain kind of coldness in a brand of adherence to the law that is impersonal and disconnected from God himself. Legalism separates the rules from the rule giver, the law from the law giver. There's almost a mindless adherence to rituals and customs and traditions, which is devoid of any relationship or personality. And so we ask ourselves the question, is that what Judaism is? Has Judaism detached obedience to the commands of God from God himself? And the answer to that question is it depends. It depends on whether you are asking about biblical Judaism or man-made Judaism. And of course we could say the same thing for Christianity, biblical Christianity versus man-made Christianity. Certainly we see from an introductory illustration such as the one we began today with that modern Judaism is very works-based and legalistic. But was that the intent? was the intent of the law and Judaism to keep God and man at a distance from one another. And of course, we have to answer that question with a resounding no. How do we know that? Well, numerous Old Testament passages reveal that truth to us. For instance, Deuteronomy 10 verse 12, and now Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you but to fear the Lord your God and to walk in his ways, to love him? to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul love Joshua 22 verse 5 only be very careful to observe the commandment in the law that Moses a servant of the Lord commanded you to love the Lord your God to walk in all his ways and keep his commandments and to cling to him and to serve him with all of your heart and with all of your soul. Psalm 31, 23, love the Lord, all you his saints. These commands to love God breathe life into what would otherwise be dry regulations. For example, the Jews were required to build, by law, a parapet around the roof of their house, basically a barrier or a fence type thing, so that people would not fall off the roof, because they would go up onto the flat roofs. By connecting this command back to the command to love God, life and meaning is breathed into the command to build a parapet on your roof. How does love for God relate to barriers on roofs? The Jew builds a parapet on his roof because he loves what God loves and values what God values. He sees in the command a desire by God to preserve life so that someone will not fall off of this roof and die. And he sees a desire by God to care for the well-being of others. By loving God, I love those who are made in His image, and I don't desire harm to come to them because it pains me when an image-bearer hurts. My affections and desires are changed, crucified, and channeled to being all about Him and what He loves. And so love of God breathes life into the commands of God. But dry Pharisaical legalism doesn't make that connection. Now the first century Jews should have known better. They should have known that the law was given meaning and life through the love of God according to the parallel account in Luke's gospel, which we're gonna get to Mark's account in just a minute here. But according to the parallel account in Luke's gospel, after Jesus says, love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, Jesus says this in Luke 10 28. He said to him talking now to the scribe you have answered correctly do this and you will live That is to say love God with all your heart soul mind strength, and you will live If this is true, then it's so simple Right just love God, and you're good to go Not so fast Ken The unregenerate soul love God. Can the unregenerate soul do that? Can someone who is outside of Christ and who is apart from God, who is an unbeliever, can that person love God? Romans 8 in verse 7, for the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot. It can't. The unregenerate soul is, by its very nature, hostile to God. We can't even love God in our own strength. And so we begin in today's text with two seemingly opposed realities. Reality number one, do this and live. Reality number two, you can't. And it is with this thought that we begin the text today, Mark chapter 12, starting in verse 28. And one of the scribes came up to him and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, which commandment Most important of all Jesus answered the most important is hero Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one 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 The second is like that is it is this you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these and And the scribe said to him, you are right, teacher. You have truly said that he is one and that there is no other besides him. And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding, with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. 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 ask him any more questions. This is the fourth question that Jesus has received in an effort to discredit him. The religious leaders will stop at nothing to see Jesus destroyed. We know that this scribe, or lawyer as they were sometimes called, was out to discredit Jesus because of Matthew's account of the very same story, Matthew 25, 35. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. But admittedly, we don't feel the hostility in this account. Especially by the end of the account, the scribe agrees with Jesus and praises Jesus's wisdom. I personally think the scribe found himself on the fence here. He knows that his buddies behind him are wanting him to discredit Jesus, and yet somewhere inside of him, there is a love for truth. In other words, not only is he kind of wrestling through with the fact that he's supposed to stick to the party line, But he also is a man who I think is genuinely moved by what Jesus says and genuinely cares about truth. And so Matthew says he comes to discredit Jesus. In Mark's account, we see that he kind of wraps it up with, you know, he praises Jesus. And so he's kind of struggling, I think, internally in his own spirit about who is Jesus and what did he come to do. And so we have this scribe who is listening to Jesus. He's impressed with the answer. And then he proceeds to ask his own question to Jesus. He says, which commandment is the most important one of all? Now, a couple of clarifications are in order. This question was a popular point of discussion in religious Judaism. We do similar things today. We like to organize things into larger categories, laws into different categories. So we may talk about how much of our sin and much of our problems come from a worship disorder. They kind of funnel down to something at the root that's causing these other things. We talk about the priority of love and the necessity of desiring God and these principles are biblical principles and yet we would also acknowledge that those principles, many other principles flow out of those things. Those are things which stem, are rooted and grounded in other concepts. There's one famous story in the Talmud, which is, of course, Jewish teaching, commentary on the Old Testament, additional kind of traditions. The Talmud says this. There was an incident involving one Gentile who came before Shammai and said to him, convert me on the condition that you teach me the entire Torah while I am standing on one foot. Shammai pushed him away. So what does this Gentile do? He goes to Hillel, and the Talmud continues, the same Gentile came before Hillel. He converted him and said to him, so teach me the whole law while I'm standing on one foot. So Hillel says this, that which is hateful You do not do to another. That is the entire Torah, and the rest is its interpretation. Go study. In other words, we know the golden rule is do unto others. Well, this one rabbi says, he basically reverses that. Don't do what others would you wouldn't want done to you. He says that's the summation of the entire law. It wasn't the only instance or attempt to funnel down the law into basic commands. Another section in the Talmud says this, Isaiah then established the 613 mitzvot, laws or commandments, the 613 commandments upon two. As it is stated, so says the Lord. Observe justice and perform righteousness. So that's what he's funneling down, justice and righteousness. That's how you funnel the whole lot. Amos and Cain established the 613 mitzvot upon one. As it is stated, so says the Lord to the House of Israel, seek me and live. All of the law on that one. And then another rabbi disagrees with him and says, rather say, Habakkuk came and established the 613 mitzvot upon one. As it is stated, the righteous person shall live by his faith. All the law funneled down to this one command. So this was a common thing in Judaism to try to determine, how can I funnel down the laws into its most basic component, its most essential, its most important commandment? What was the entire law founded on? Now, don't misunderstand this question either, because it can be a helpful question. We cannot accuse, he could have been doing this, we don't know, but I don't think that we can fairly accuse this scribe of wanting to throw away all of the other commandments, as if, just tell me the one thing and then I'll just forget about the rest of them. Rather, I think what this question does is it helps us to understand which command gives life to the other commandments. Which commandment is really that which ties together all of the other commands in scripture. It can be a helpful hermeneutical and interpretational tool to see what is the most foundational thing that God requires of us and what is the implications that we have in regard to the other laws. And so the question is legitimate. It's useful. Because it's coming from a motivation, though, to test Jesus, he could be hoping that Jesus tells him something that's not in the law so he could say, aha, Look at what you did, Jesus. You just totally ignored the law. So the stage is set. Question is asked. Jesus now responds, as usual to these kinds of questions, with complete brilliance. Verses 29 through 31. Jesus answered, the most important is, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 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. The second is this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. Jesus doesn't tell the man he's wrong. He doesn't say, what are you trying to do? There's no greatest commandment. He gives the most important command in the law. which means that there are some commands that are more important than others. 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. Proverbs 21, 3. To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice. Hosea 6 6 for I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings and even after we find ourselves in the New Testament Jesus himself says something similar in Matthew 23 23 woe to you scribes and Pharisees hypocrites for you tithe Mint dill cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you have ought to have done without neglecting the others. Again, it would be a mistake to think that Jesus was promoting that we discard certain portions of the law. That's not what these passages are teaching. We know that because Matthew 23, the passage we just read, Jesus says, these you ought have done without neglecting the others. In other words, do all of them. Don't just, don't, don't, don't, but do these most important ones. So while Jesus affirms there are weightier matters, he also affirms that all of it must be obeyed, James 2.11. For he who said, do not commit adultery, also said, do not murder. If you do not commit adultery, but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So we recognize that while we may identify some commands as more foundational, or perhaps as more life-giving to other commands, we also recognize that to break one part of the law is to break all of it. Jesus was anything but nonchalant towards the law. Matthew chapter 5, verse 19, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus says, even the smallest command is important. Nevertheless, Jesus does give us perhaps a ranking of sorts of the laws. And he gives to us the most important one, in fact, the most important two. Deuteronomy 6, 5, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. The second one comes from Leviticus 19 in verse 18. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. By quoting these two passages, Jesus informs this scribe, as well as us as the readers, that mere outward conformity to the law is insufficient. It's not enough. To just do this command is not what the law requires. One can live a moral life externally, but that tells us nothing about the heart. By the way, moralism is sending just as many people to hell as the worst sins that you can ever conjure up. Morally, we have to be, when we engage our culture, we engage our culture with the gospel, not just do better and do nice things and be kind to people. That will not save anyone. One can live a moral life externally, but we don't know anything about the heart. Jesus tells us that the heart of the law is for the heart of the person. It's going after the heart. But there's more. Because I only quoted verse 5 of Deuteronomy chapter 6. Jesus starts in verse 4. Deuteronomy 6, 4. Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. It is absolutely fascinating. What's the most important thing in the law? Jesus says, love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. But he starts with the Lord your God is one. Why does Jesus do this? Why does Jesus begin with a theological statement about the nature of God? Because right behavior requires right theology. In the introduction to his systematic theology, that all of you men will be part of soon, in our men's theology study on Saturday, January 12th, as a side note, John MacArthur says this, Theology is not fully finished. until it has warmed the heart, the affections, and prompted the volition or the will to act in obedience to its content. Theology is going somewhere, and we say theology is boring and dry and dull, and that's just for people to pontificate in their ivory towers. While some people do abuse theology, but that doesn't mean that we abuse it too in a different way. Theology is to warm the heart and the affections. And when Jesus responds to this scribe, he starts out with a theological statement about the unity and the nature of God before he goes into love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Jesus' answer begins with theology because of what we discussed in the introduction today. You cannot separate the commands of God from the nature of God. The commands of God are personal. They come from a person. They have personality in that sense. If you want to obey God, you must know God. And by declaring the unity of God, this passage sets God apart from the plurality of gods of the pagans. Monotheism is declared. And because he is the only God, therefore all of our affections belong to him and to no one else. No other god, no other being. The unity of God, the exclusivity of God alone, monotheism. impacts love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Because guess what? If there were 1,000 gods, then how do you divide up who you love and how much you love them? But because we have the unity of God, my theology informs the way in which I love. It informs my affections. It informs my desires. It informs my will. And it gives me life to go and do what I'm supposed to do. We also observe in this text that this love for God that is really made known to us through theology, this love for God is logically prior to love of neighbor. That's why it's first. Worship flows from love. Worship is not right until love for God fills all of our senses. Did you know that when you sing hymns here at Crossview Church, that it's actually supposed to move your heart and your soul and your mind? And that it's not supposed to be a dry, dull repetition? That it's supposed to be, I am meditating on the truth of the words of this song, and my soul loves God for who he is and what he's done for me. Worship flows out of love. Worship without love is dead worship. It is dead works. And so worship must flow out of a genuine love for God. And that love is supposed to be comprehensive in scope. We read that here because we are to love with the entirety of our heart, with the entirety of our soul and our mind and our strength. One author perceptively notes that the word that's translated in our English ESV here as with is the Greek word ak, which is really out of or from. The Lexham English Bible captures this idea when it translates this phrase from your whole heart. One author comments and says this, thus we are commanded to love God not simply with our whole heart but from Our whole heart the love for God is to be birthed out of our heart It is supposed to be consuming my heart in my soul by including heart soul mind and strength he speaks to our entire being and It is the very identification of who I am that is wedded to a love for God. It's not that I do this over here, and then all these things are done outside of my love for God. I sweep floors. I mop floors out of a love for God. I go to do my nine to five because I love God. Connect it to your theology. Connect it to your love for God. I devote myself fully to the pursuit of knowing and loving God. I am engaged in loving God with all of my emotions, with my will, with all of my strength or my energy. You can superficially obey the commands of God without loving God, but you cannot genuinely and truly obey and worship God without loving God. True worship begins with a love for God. On the other side, you can't love God if you don't love your neighbor. Love of neighbor is evidence that you do, in fact, love God. See, that's the second command. Love God, love others. It's the greatest thing in the law. John 4, 11, or 1 John 4, 11. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. See the connection there? God loved me, I love others. It's tied together. 1 John 4, 19 through 21. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, I love God and hates his brother. He is a what? A liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother. God gives to us a very visual and practical way an indicator of whether I love God. Do you love others? And if you're a person who does not love others, you need to ask yourself, do I really love God, or do I love some pretend image of God that I've created out of my own heart? Do I love the true God, as is revealed to us in scripture, or do I love myself projected on something else? This is why Jesus gives to us a second commandment, even though the scribe didn't ask for it. Love for others is love for God visualized. Don't go around claiming to love God, and then you never love others. That's a lie. And when we say others, we mean everyone. The parable of the Good Samaritan reveals us. You know that story? Well, who's my neighbor, right? I mean, go love others. Go love your neighbor. Well, I mean, he's not my neighbor, is he? I love him. And what does Jesus say? Good Samaritan. And who does he? The Samaritans were hated by Jews. And that story reveals to us that neighbor is not just defined as Jew, as they thought, or insert person not like me here for all of us. My neighbor is anyone who is an image bearer of God, which means everyone. And because Jesus says, as yourself, love him as yourself. Some have taken this to mean that we are to pursue a variety of self-love. Our culture uses the phrase self-esteem. I was fascinated to find out that John Calvin was wrestling with self-esteem back in the day. He says this. Again, when Moses commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves, he did not intend to put the love of ourselves in the first place, so that a man may first love himself and then love his neighbors. But as we are too much devoted to ourselves, I don't think anything's changed since Calvin wrote this. As we are too much devoted to ourselves, Moses, in correcting this fault, places our neighbors in an equal rank with us, thus forbidding every man to pay so much attention to himself as to disregard others. And by correcting the self-love which separates some persons from others, he brings each of them into a common union, and as it were, into a mutual embrace. Here we conclude that love is justly pronounced by Paul to be the bond of perfection. To God, we owe love. To others, we owe love. To self, we owe denial. We have to deny ourselves. We are to sacrifice ourselves and to serve others, not because we are compelled by impersonal law-keeping, but because we are compelled by a relentless love for God and others, an all-consuming love. Nowhere else in the Jewish writings that we know of did anyone bring these two commands together, love God and love others. Now after Jesus said this, Jewish writings put together love of God and love of others. But before this time, we don't know of any account where these are put together. So as far as we can determine, this is the first time that love of God and love of others is brought together. And this impresses the scribe. He responds in verses 32 to 34. The scribe said to him, you are right, teacher. You have truly said that he is one and there's no other beside him. 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 the burnt offerings and sacrifices. 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 ask him any more questions. A scribe agrees with Jesus. This is the first in the Gospels. But the scribe also draws out an implication from Jesus's statement. The implication is that love for God and love for others is what? What does he say? Is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. Jesus didn't say that specifically, but the scribe understood that as an application of what he said. And so for this statement and this understanding, Jesus commends the scribe in verse 34. Mark records for us that Jesus saw that he answered wisely. The scribe's implication, application, understanding, it was correct. And then Jesus gives a profound statement. He says, you are not far from the kingdom of God. Which means that it's possible to be close, but not in. Jesus does something fascinating for us. He ties two things together. He weds two concepts together. They're related to one another that I don't know if the scribe was thinking these terms or not. Jesus ties this man's understanding of the priority of love. He takes this And he ties it to his eternal destiny. He takes those things, and the scribe is off talking about, yes, we should love God with everything that we have. Yes, it's more important to burn our sacrifice. And Jesus makes an application of that about the eternal destiny of his soul. You're not far from the kingdom of God. So how are they connected? How is a knowledge of the primacy of love connected to an eternal destiny. How do those things get wedded together? Because this is the gospel. The scribe understands that a loving relationship with God is the most important thing there is. Is that not the gospel? The gospel is reconciling God to man. The gospel is relationship between God and man. The gospel is how can I, who is an enemy of God, be a friend of God? How can I, who was at enmity with God, love God? That's what the entire gospel is about. To have God is to be saved. But in connecting these two realities together, and by saying he's not far from the kingdom, it brings us to the reality that you can know truth, but reject it still. What did this man, this is a question, what did the man lack? He said, you're not far from the kingdom of God. Well, what was the next practical question? Well, what was it that he didn't have, that he needed in order to get that? What was it? He had the intellectual knowledge, he just needed to embrace it through repentance and belief. Hell is gonna be filled with many people who had sound theology. Knowing things intellectually. What do we read in James chapter two? The demons also believe in what? Tremble. He didn't mean they believe in the sense that they trust in and are relying on Christ. He meant they believe in the sense that they understand all of the theological implications. They understand theology. In fact, I would suggest to you that demons are probably, in terms of intellect, they know a lot more theologically than many people. Theologically, they know who God is. They know what their destiny is. They know these things. You can be close, but not in. You can have knowledge, but have failed to embrace that knowledge through repentance and belief. You can sit here week after week and listen to the Word being preached. I don't know, I mean, I'm assuming that we're in a group of people who have all professed faith in Christ. I can't say that I know everyone's hearts in here. I hardly know my own heart, okay? It's hard enough to figure out. You can sit here week after week and listen to the word being preached, but if you have not repented and believed on Christ yourself, you may be close, but you are not in. Do you know the gospel? Great. Now submit to it. Did this scribe ever repent? We'll probably never know in this life. I don't know why Mark left that open-ended. I mean, we don't ever know what happened to the scribe. Perhaps it's to cause us to have our own hearts and souls provoked to say, what will I do with the knowledge that I have of Christ? Will I repent? After this, nobody asks him any more questions. Why? because Jesus is victorious. No one can stumble him or cause him to mess up or have an error. He couldn't be trapped in his words and so everyone was silenced by Christ. For those of you who are listening to this today and you say, this idea of loving God and loving others sounds elusive, it is. It is like grasping the wind. We began with this truth. Romans 8, 7, for the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God. We can't do what God commands. And even as Christians, we don't love God as comprehensively as this text demands. We all know that. Let me ask you a question. Do you love God at all? We ought to love God to the highest degree. But let me ask you this. Is there any love of God in you, even to a small degree? Do you desire his word or prayer or worship? Do you love the things he loves? Do you desire the things he desires? Do you know something? If that's true, and you genuinely do have love for God in you, that wasn't manufactured by you. is given to you by God. I don't love God like I ought. Stop and think about that for just a second. Weep over your lack of love and dedication to God. Lament that you have not always done your duty. Mourn over the reality that you did not teach your children enough about a love for God. Regret your failures, bemoan your sin, bewail your weaknesses, and then dry your tears and read Deuteronomy 30 in verse 6. And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring. so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul that you may live. Who does that? You say, it's too hard to love God to that degree of purity. I know. I feel it, too. I know the struggle and the carelessness and the depravity of my own heart. But God comforts us by his immeasurable grace in that he provides that which we cannot produce. Our love is made possible by and is initiated by God himself, 1 John 4, 19. We love because he first loved us. It was a brand of love that we could not generate ourselves. It was a brand of love that required God to initiate it. It required God to circumcise our hearts so that we would do it. Oh, fellow sinners and miserable wretches, cast yourselves on the mercy and love of God. He is good. He is kind. He is love. Do you find yourself lacking in your love for Him? Run to Him and hide in His warm embrace, and He will give you grace to change your desires. He is sufficient. The glory goes to Him. A couple of points of application today. The first one is this love God by running to God for grace to love Him. Love God by running to God for grace to love Him. The grace to love is something that we can get from God. Number two. Warm your heart and your soul before the fireplace of sound theology. That's what Jesus did here, started off with theology. The unity of God, the oneness of God impacts the way that I love God. Number three, love others sacrificially. And number four, if you are close, but not in, repent and believe on Christ. You can drive out of here today and your life could be over. If you're close but not in, repent and believe on Christ. God, we thank you for your grace to us and the love that you give to us through your son, Christ. We rejoice in the gospel and we rejoice in the hope that it provides for us and we find ourselves so needy And yet, you have met all of our need in Christ. We can't manufacture what you've called us to do. We can't have life through the law because we don't even begin to obey it like we ought to. And every time we try, another roadblock is there. We fall, we stumble, we sin, we rebel, We can't do it. We can't. That is why we're so grateful for the fact that we love you because you first loved us. Thank you for that love of initiation. You initiated that in our own hearts. We pray that you'd help us, God, to walk out of here encouraged and walk out of here grateful for who you are and for what you do. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.