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Please turn with me in your Bibles
to Mark chapter 12. Mark chapter 12, our sermon text
for this evening is from verse 28 through verse 34. Please give your careful attention
to the reading of God's holy word. One of the scribes came and heard
them arguing, and recognizing that he had answered them well,
asked him, what commandment is the foremost of all? Jesus answered,
the foremost is, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.
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. The scribe said to him. Writes
teacher, you have truly stated that he is one and there is no
one else besides 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 himself is much more than all burnt offerings
and sacrifices. When Jesus saw that he had answered
intelligently, he said to him, you are not far from the kingdom
of God. After that, no one would venture
to ask him any more questions. thus far the reading of God's
holy word. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our
God, the Lord is one. A fundamental statement in the
life of Israel under the Old Testament that was properly basic
to their understanding of who God was, that there is only one
God, and that God is the Lord who had revealed himself to them
and who had delivered them from Egypt. And this has been fundamental
to the Christian faith as well, which is the true successor to
the Jewish faith, that we have confessed from the early church
that we believe in one God. In fact, this is how the Nicene
Creed begins. I believe in one God. And as it proceeds, it states
belief in one God, the Father, but also in Jesus Christ, who
is of one substance with the Father, and in the Holy Spirit,
who is together worshipped and glorified together with the Father
and Son. So we believe in a triune God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and yet these are not three separate
gods. The Father is God, the Son is
God, the Holy Spirit is God, yet these are one undivided deity,
one undivided Godhead. As we continue in our sermon
series, we are picking texts based on the doctrines as they
are set forth in our shorter catechism. This evening, the
occasion for this sermon text is the question, are there more
gods than one? And the answer is, quite simply,
there is but one only. the living and true God. This
is a basic statement that we accept and believe as Christians,
that there is but one only, the living and true God. And yet
this is a statement that is under attack, called into question
by so many of our neighbors around us. I find it somewhat interesting
that the manner in which the question is stated is asking,
are there more than one? Is there more than one God? Yet
for many of our neighbors, perhaps the question would be, is there
any God at all? And so from one direction comes
the attack, or at least the question, is there any God at all that
exists? Yet from other directions, there come the statements such
as the following, that there are many gods, that all of the
religions are basically the same, that there are multiple valid
ways to reach God, whether you try to approach him through Islam,
if you believe in Allah or whether you believe in the Christian
God or whether you believe in a sort of world spirit as in
some of the pantheistic religions. This most fundamental tenet of
our faith is something that we need to hold onto to preserve
and to continue confessing even when it's not popular. even when
all around us our neighbors are saying one way or the other that
this is not the case. We must hold forth the Christian
faith, as part of that Christian faith is the confession that
we believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So this evening we will consider
that statement that there is but one God only, the living
and true God, and then we'll look at a couple of implications
that flow from that doctrine. So first consider that there
is a God. There is but one only, but there
is. This provides an answer to those who are questioning or
doubting the existence of a God at all. the most developed view
philosophically would be atheism. Atheism which would assert that
the non-existence of God. Our age is one in which what
we would call metaphysical atheism. Atheism that denies the metaphysical
existence of God has gained a great deal of traction and seems to
many people to be quite plausible. Even if they haven't been persuaded
intellectually, they relate to the world in such a way that
sometimes even Christians struggle with this question, is there
a God? And if so, why don't I feel? Why is it not immediately obvious
to me that God exists? Why do I have to sort of talk
myself into belief sometimes? Richard Dawkins has written this statement, we
are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever
believed in. Some of us just go one god further. That is to say, Mr. Dawkins would
look at Christians and say, well, you deny the Norse deities, you
deny the Greek deities, you deny all of the other deities that
people have worshipped throughout all of history. I'm just going
one step further. I'm just taking to the logical
conclusion what you've already begun and already done 99% of. So how might we respond to a
question like this? We have for us Jesus' statement.
Here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, drawing from
the Old Testament, Deuteronomy chapter six, reasserting that
most basic teaching, that God's people must confess the unique
identity of the Lord as the living and true God. And as we are called
to love him with all of our minds, we are also equipped to respond
to challenges to the oneness and existence of God. And so
we might, for example, recognize that Mr. Dawkins' statement is
not logically consistent. The conclusion doesn't flow from
the premises. It would be as if I were to say,
Well, you deny the existence of East Virginia, I just go one
step further and deny the existence of a West Virginia. Or it would
be to say that you deny the existence of unicorns, I just go one step
further and deny the existence of narwhals. You deny life on other planets
in our solar system, I just go one step further and deny that
there's any life on Earth. You cannot conclude from the
non-existence of a being that does not exist and move to the
conclusion that the living and true God does not exist. You cannot conclude that Tom
Sawyer as a fictional character disproves the existence of any
particular red-haired boy living in Missouri in the 1840s. In other words, we can recognize
that the Christian faith, while we hold to this confession that
the Lord is one on faith, is also, we have a faith that is
intellectually robust and capable of addressing unbelief when we
encounter it. And so we are called to use our
minds and intellect in the service of our God. Now, in saying that
we believe in one God, I do want to make clear that this does
not mean we deny the existence of other supernatural created
beings. Paul, writing in one of his epistles
to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians, deals with the question of idols
and food sacrifice to idols. And he says that there are demons
behind those idols. And yet we would recognize that
in, speaking of these demons, we recognize that these are created
beings. These are not beings who exist
alongside of God as uncreated, omnipotent, or eternal beings,
but rather that they fall well on this side of the line of the
creator-creature distinction. And so we, in confessing the
existence of one living and true God, we also recognize that there
is a spiritual realm inhabited by principalities and powers,
and that the so-called gods of the pagan nations really do have
behind them demonic entities that might exert an influence
upon humans. So that's one direction that
this doctrine might be challenged. Another direction, though, is
in some ways from the opposite end, which would be pluralism,
this idea that there are many gods and it's all basically the
same. I believe that all religions
lead to God, one might say. Don't all the paths when you
go hiking lead to the same mountain peak? It's just that some follows
the trail by switchbacks and the other one goes straight up
to the top. But don't we all arrive at the same place in the
end? Someone might say, can't we just
as well be Muslim or Christian or Buddhist or Hindu or neo-pagan
or atheist? And don't we all arrive at the
same place in the end? Of course, confession of the
Christian faith requires us to say no, that there is but one
way to the living and true God through his son, Jesus Christ,
that we have GPSs in our cars for a reason and on our phones
because we know that not all roads lead to the same destination,
that there is a specific road that we need to take to get to
where we want to go. And the road that leads us to
the living and true God, the road that leads us to what we
were made for, the road that leads us into the kingdom of
God, is Jesus Christ himself, who has come to be the savior
of sinners, to die for sinners, and to give them access to the
Father. Again, in our country, this sort
of pluralism makes this sort of belief in multiple ways to
God seem plausible to a lot of people. In the public sphere,
all religions are given equal footing, equal opportunity to
be expressed and propagated, and no matter how pagan, and
no matter how contrary to true religion, And so we must recognize that
we are going to encounter neighbors who are going to want to challenge
us on this, who are going to want to challenge that there
is but one only. And yet this is, when Jesus is
asked, what is the greatest commandment? He doesn't just first give the
commandment, but he gives a statement which grounds that commandment.
There is only one God, there is the Lord, who is the Lord
of Israel. Now finally, there is a third
danger that, or a third way that belief in the one and only God
might be challenged. And that is to confess that there's
one God, and perhaps only one God, but to substitute for that
one God, not the living and true God, but a generic or vague or
unknown God. Again, this is something that
we see so much around us on our money. We have written, in God
we trust. And often we might hear politicians
say, God, bless America. But how likely do you think it
is that we would ever hear a politician say, may the triune God, Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit, the living and true God, bless America. We are perhaps comfortable within
the civic sphere of expressing a belief in a generic deity.
But the question is, who is this God? Is this the unknown God
that we saw last week? This God that is so nondescript
that we might predicate, we might say that he is the God of any
or all religion. Or is this specifically the Christian
God who has made himself known in Jesus Christ? So this is our calling to confess
one God and one God only, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And this
confession gives us a foundation for our Trinitarianism as we understand the scriptures, that
there is the Son and the Holy Spirit, and we find that the
scriptures speak of the Son and Spirit as fully divine, and how
do we reconcile this with the monotheism of the rest of the
scriptures? And it leads us to the doctrine
of the Trinity, which will be developed next week in next week's
sermon. But at this point, rather than
developing further the doctrine of the Trinity, I would like
to stick with our text here and look at some of the implications
of the fact that there is but one God only. The scribe has
come to Jesus and he has asked him what is the greatest commandment,
and Jesus has led off his answer by stating that, Here, O Israel,
the Lord our God is one Lord. And then he gets into the commandment
itself, the commandment proper. And so rooting this commandment
is the oneness of God, but the implication of that is that we
are called to love God with the totality of our being. With all of our heart, with all
of our soul, with all of our mind, and with all of our strength.
And furthermore, that we are to love our neighbor as ourself. and that this moral law that
is here expressed has its root and its foundation in the fact
that there is one living and true God. And if you take away
belief in one God, the living and true God, you also take away
what flows from that, morality, love of God and love of neighbor. So, for example, the atheist
finds himself bearing a terrible burden. There was one French
philosopher of the 20th century who recognized the implication
of atheism. He said that men are condemned
to be free. Men are condemned to be free
if you take away belief in God. And what's meant by that is that
there's no longer any objective meaning. That you are not a man
who is created in the image of God or a woman who is created
in the image of God. You do not have a purpose in
life. There is no end towards which you are journeying or striving.
And what you are is totally self-constructed. It is totally up to you to make
meaning of your life because it lacks any intrinsic meaning
of itself. And what a terrible burden that
those who reject belief in the one true God must bear. That I have no meaning in everything
that I do I must construct by myself. That they have denied and rejected
or not found man's chief end to glorify God and to enjoy him
forever. That we do have a purpose that's given to us already. and
that God has made a way for us to reach this blessed end. And
instead, the center is lost. And those who would reject the
one true and living God must turn in on themselves and engage
in a burdensome process of self-constructed identity. But likewise, in pluralism, we
also see that this duty of loving God and neighbor also falls apart,
there's no guidance. It leads to doing whatever you
feel like doing. Even if there is overlap in some
of the moral teachings of various religions, it takes away from
the first and greatest commandment to love the Lord, to love the
living and true God. And so any religion which might
teach you to do right by your neighbor, but which also teaches
you to worship a false deity, is one which necessarily violates
the first and greatest commandment. So again, belief in the true
God as living and true and as the only God provides us a foundation
for our ethics and moral teaching. But there is finally a further
implication of the one living and true God that our text shows
to us, and that's this, that belief in one God as such and belief
in a love and an agreement with loving that God with all one's
heart, soul, mind, and strength is insufficient for entering
the kingdom of God. That monotheism, nakedly speaking,
bare monotheism just by itself, in agreement and affirmation,
that monotheism requires of us that we should love God with
all of our being and to love our neighbor as itself, is not
sufficient to enter the kingdom of God. that it may bring us
close, that we may not be far from entering, but there is something
still further that is needed. The scribe agrees with Jesus'
answer, and Jesus sees the scribe and sees that he answers intelligently,
and he tells him in verse 34, you are not far from the kingdom
of God. The scribe answers that to love
God and neighbor is more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. By this he distinguishes himself
from the other scribes and Pharisees who are so attached to the temple
that it will lead them to reject Jesus. And this scribe understands
that no, there's something more that is entailed with the true
worship of God, the true love of God, than just the outward
practice of these sacrifices. And so it may seem that he will
not stumble over Jesus, and yet simply assenting to these truths
doesn't quite bring him all the way home. It doesn't quite bring
him into the kingdom. something more is needed. And that is faith in the living
and true God as he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. That to love God and to love
neighbor, if it is to be what brings us into the kingdom of
God as the condition or the requirement for us, is also burdensome. Who can enter the kingdom of
God if the prerequisite is that you must have first loved God
perfectly with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all
of your mind, with all of your strength, every moment of every
day perfectly, and to have loved your neighbor as yourself in
every instance? If these things are the condition
by which we may enter into the kingdom of God, we might find
ourselves close to entering the kingdom, but of itself, those
commands do not have the strength to carry us in to the kingdom. Something more, someone more
is needed. The someone more that is needed
is none other than that one living and true God of whom we have
been speaking. Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity,
come in human flesh to fulfill these very commands. Who in his
life loved his father perfectly with the totality of his being.
Who with his life loved his neighbor as himself, who loved you as
himself, giving his life for you. Perfectly fulfilling all
righteousness. so that we might have entrance
into the kingdom of God. And so as we vigorously maintain
our Christian confession, as we vigorously maintain the Nicene
Creed, that we believe in one God, we must not forget the totality
of what is essential to the Christian faith, that the one God has revealed
himself in his son. and that it is through that son
that we come to a true and right knowledge of the father. And
it's through that son that we have entrance into the kingdom
of God. And so this leaves us in a position
where we are able to engage our neighbors, even as they question
or deny belief in the one true and living God. We may hold forth
to them that God as he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. We may
hold forth to them that that life which is obtained in the
kingdom of God as a free gift through faith in God's Son. And so let us continue to hold
fast to all that we confess as Christians. Belief in the one
true and living God and belief Specifically, in Jesus Christ,
the Savior, who is of one substance, with the Father and with the
Holy Spirit, one God, blessed forever. Amen. Let's pray together. Our God, Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, we do confess you the living and true God, and besides
you there is no other. We pray that if there are ever
moments of doubt which would overcome the minds of people
here, that we would turn again to the scriptures, to you as
you have revealed yourself, that we would behold Jesus Christ,
who is the way, the truth, and the life, the one through whom
alone we are able to come to the Father. We pray that you
would strengthen our faith. Jesus has called us to believe
in God and also to believe in himself. So, Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, we ask, strengthen our faith, we pray. Help our
unbelief. In Jesus' name we ask, amen.
A Shorter Catechism Worldview #5
Series 2024 Shorter Catechism
| Sermon ID | 31024236255279 |
| Duration | 28:01 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - PM |
| Bible Text | Mark 12:28-34 |
| Language | English |
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