Well, it was either September or October of last year in my time of devotions that I came upon a particular text. I'm sure this has happened to you as well. And the Lord really impressed it upon my heart, and I couldn't stop thinking about it. And I prayed that the Lord would give me an opportunity to, at some point, be able to preach that here. And so this is the Lord's doing. I am grateful for it, and I pray that it will be helpful for everyone here. The text that I would like for you to turn with me to is Mark chapter 12. verses 28 through 30. Again, Mark chapter 12, verses 28 through 30. In the context of this passage, Jesus is teaching in the temple in Jerusalem, and the religious leaders are doing everything that they can to get him into trouble. They are trying to get him to say something that will give them an excuse to arrest him. So the Pharisees and the Herodians tried to trap him by asking him a question about the lawfulness of paying taxes to Caesar. And after that, the Sadducees want to try to get him to trip up somehow by asking him about the resurrection. And then when the Pharisees see that he answered them well, according to the parallel text in Matthew, the Pharisees got together again, hashed out a new game plan, and we see here in our text that a scribe, who's described by Matthew also as a lawyer and a Pharisee, poses to Jesus a new question, which is the question that we're gonna consider this evening. So with that being said, let me go ahead and read our text. And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another. And seeing that he answered them well, asked him, which commandment is the most important of all? Jesus answered, the most important is here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. Well, these are the words of the living God. Let us go to him in prayer and ask for his help to properly understand them. Gracious God, we come to you and ask in this hour that you would speak to us. Lord, there are many here that we want to see walking in the truth. And so we pray for the sake of your son and for the sake of us parents, by your word and spirit, convert Please, as one of the hymn writers said, revive your work, oh Lord. Your mighty arm make bare. Speak with the voice that wakes the dead and make your people hear. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, oh God. You are our rock and our redeemer. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, as humans, we are often fascinated with people or things that are considered the best. There is a book many of you are familiar with, the Guinness Book of World Records. And it's all about people and things that have broken records by being the best at something. There is a record for the tallest man living. He is eight feet tall. in case anyone was curious. There is also a record for the fastest marathon runner in about two hours. And then there was a man who hiked Mount Everest more times than anyone else, 24. These things grab our attention and they fascinate us. And that is because we are created in God's image with the capacity to be amazed by such things. And in our passage, we actually see something similar going on. According to many commentators, rabbis had counted up how many different commandments there were in the first five books of the law, or in the first five books of the Bible, rather. And their count was about 613. Jesus here, knowing this, says that this particular commandment is the first, if you look at the King James, or the foremost NASB, or in the ESV, which I wrote, wrote, read, the most important. And for that reason alone, it warrants our attention. So I wanted to focus our time this evening on answering three questions. Very simply, number one, what is the greatest commandment? Number two, what is our great problem? And number three, what is our only hope? So what is the great commandment, what is our great problem, and what is our only hope? Starting with what is the greatest commandment, just wanted to briefly touch upon why Jesus actually says that this is the greatest commandment, or how we can know that he means that it is the greatest. In verse 29, Jesus does say that this is the first, or the foremost, or the most important. In verse 31, he goes on to say that there is no other commandment greater than this, and the second which is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself. And then in verse 34, after the scribe summarizes Jesus' answer, Jesus approves of this summary. And the summary was that to love the Lord your God with all of your heart and soul and mind and strength was, quote, much more than all of burnt offerings and sacrifices. And then if that wasn't convincing enough, in the parallel account in Matthew chapter 22, Verse 40, Jesus says that upon this commandment, the greatest commandment, and the second, depend all of the rest of the law. Depend all the law and prophets. So the word depend that is being used there literally means to hang upon or depend upon utterly. So we can deduce from this that the greatest commandment gives us the context with which we are to understand the whole rest of the law. So if we are, well, let's say this. Upon the greatest commandment hang the 10 commandments. And then upon the Ten Commandments, you go further down and you have the specific applications of those given in the rest of the law. And so if you want to think of it in an illustration, you have in a cave, you have the ceiling of the cave, okay? In this illustration, the greatest commandment and the second are the ceiling. Then you have the stalactites, which hang down, which are mineral deposits. If anyone doesn't know what they are, you should Google them sometime. They pretty much look like large rock ice. Sickles. Just rock looking icicles hanging down from the ceiling. So you have the ceiling is the greatest commandment. You have the 10 commandments being kind of the bulky section of the stalactites and then they get narrower towards the bottom and then that's kind of what we can see as the rest of the law. So I believe that's what what is being taught by our Lord Jesus Christ here concerning this commandment and its great importance. So, with that being said, since our society has some very interesting ideas about what love is, it would be very helpful to dig in here and see what exactly is meant by, you shall love the Lord your God. The word here, and I consulted a few different lexicons, means to give God your undivided affection. your undivided affection. Because since we are made in God's image, we are naturally going to give our affections to something or someone. And so, in the context of Deuteronomy, chapter six, when this command was first given, Israel was reminded of the fact that there is one God, in this polytheistic context. They were delivered from Egypt, where they were used to seeing all of these different gods and goddesses. They're going to Canaan, and on the way to Canaan and in Canaan, there's a whole bunch of other people who worship multiple gods. And God is saying, no, you are to love the Lord, Yahweh, your God, who has delivered you from Egypt. Loving God is further explained, actually, by the first four commandments. How do we love God? We love Him by worshiping only Him. We love Him by worshiping Him the way that He commands. We worship Him, we love Him rather, by hallowing His name, by not taking it in vain in our everyday life. And we love Him by worshiping Him, especially on His day. So just by looking at the first four commandments, we can have a much better understanding of what God means here when he says we are to love him with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength. Now, they were also, of course, in the context of Deuteronomy 6, Moses was giving Israel one of his final sermons of sorts before they were to enter the promised land. And Moses warns them ahead of time You are about to go into this land full of great and good cities that you did not build, with houses full of good things that you did not fill, vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant, wells that you didn't dig, et cetera. And he warns them, their temptation is going to be to set their affections on those things. And so when he is saying, to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. This means that they were exhorted and we are exhorted not to set our affections on any other material things, on any material things. Jesus later teaches, I believe it's in the Sermon on the Mount, you cannot serve two masters. And that's what's being gotten at here. God is demanding our wholehearted allegiance. Other things that Israel would have been tempted and were tempted to love more than God, we actually see a picture of that later in Mark chapter 12. In verse 38, Jesus says, beware of the scribes. who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers, they will receive greater condemnation. And so here is a group of people who are primarily devoted towards reputation. towards what man thinks of them. So there's a temptation to love reputation more than God, to love more what other people think about us than about God. And then another temptation, which Jesus also warns about, is it is a good and a holy thing to love our family. But he does say that our love for our family should look like hatred in comparison to our love for God. Our love for God comes first, even above those who are born of our flesh and blood, even by those who are biologically related to us. God is supreme. He is to be our supreme, the recipient of our supreme affection. And so, again, thinking of another illustration, if you think of our affections as water that must be poured into the filter of God, love for other people and other things should flow from that. Okay, so you're pouring, we have a Berkey filter at home, so this is what I'm picturing. You pour the water, which is our affections, into the filter, the filter representing love for God. In other words, you're giving God everything, pouring everything into Him, and out from that properly flows the love for everything else, okay? May not be the best of illustrations, but what I'm trying to get at is if you're going straight to your love for other things, It's idolatry. And that's what is being warned against. Our love for other things can only take place in the context of loving God first. And that is why this is the first commandment. So just to get a little bit more practical, what does this look like? Again, in the context of Deuteronomy chapter six, Moses tells the people, and these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. And what were they to do with them? They were to teach them to their children. and the next generations. They were to meditate on the words of the Lord. They were to consider and contemplate and apply these things. When I was trying to explain this in my Bible 1 class, I drew a silly picture on the board and called it Bible Man. And it's just a picture of a Bible, a little figure, a stick figure. illustrating that the Word of God, if we are to love the Lord supremely, the Word of God must be central to us. It must be what directs everything that we think and say and do. That is the picture that we're given in Deuteronomy chapter 6. You talk of these things, the Lord's words, when you lie down, when you rise up, when you walk by the way, when you I forget the other things that are mentioned. You can look it up. It's in Deuteronomy chapter six. But what does this look like? It looks like being saturated in God's word. If we love him supremely, how can we not go to the source of how we hear more about him and what he has done for us in Christ and what he requires of us? So word saturation is one picture that we're given. And then, of course, another thing is that Jesus says, whoever loves me will do what? He will keep my commandments. So us loving the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength is so much more than just feeling good about God. It is responding to his word in humility and obedience. Whoever loves me keeps my commandments. And of course, the Apostle John makes the connection between our love for God and our love for our neighbor. If we love God, he asks us, how can we not love those who are made in his image? We have not seen God. face-to-face. We have seen those who are made in His image. And so if we love God, we ought to love those who are made in His image. And as a matter of fact, that second commandment, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, that's better explained by the second six commandments of the Ten Commandments. And so you see why there are times in the New Testament where, I forget who it was who said this, maybe James, all the law is summed up in this one word, love your neighbor as yourself. And so as strange as it sounds, our love for God is demonstrated in our love for our neighbor. And if that's not challenging enough, Jesus takes it even further and he says, guess what? Not only shall you love your neighbor in general, but you gotta love those people who hate you. You must love your enemies and pray for them and do good to them. So I hope that already you're beginning to see that we have a very big problem here. But before I go on to that, let me just remind us where we've been. The great commandment, the greatest commandment means that we are giving to God our first and foremost, our undivided love and affection. And just a couple of applications of that. Number one, we ought to take sin a lot more seriously than we do. We have the tendency, don't we, to sometimes, especially if we're tired and exhausted, we have the tendency to nurse particular sins. I'll deal with that later. Well, this is a sin, I recognize that, but we're just gonna put that aside, deal with it another time. Or, yes, this is a sin, but it's not as bad as those other things that I don't do anymore. So God will be patient. It's fine if I don't get to it till later. Brothers and sisters, that line of thinking goes completely contrary to what God is saying here. Love Him with all of your heart and soul and mind and strength. Can we love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength while also clinging to sin? I think it was Derek Thomas who used this illustration. Instead of nursing our sins, we ought to be taking our sins by the neck and strangling it until it's dead. That is what we are called to. We are in a battle day by day. The desires of the flesh are opposed to the desires of the spirit, and we are called to put our sins to death. So we should take our sin more seriously, and then relatedly, we can't be selective about what commandments of God we're going to obey and which ones we're not. We must have it all. If we must have all of God, if we're called to give our all to God, that means there is nowhere that we can hold back, so to speak. So, obviously, this sets us up to understand the very big problem that we have, and that, of course, is we can't keep this command. I hope that's especially apparent, not just to the adults of us, but to the kids. You hear us talk about obeying God all the time. This is a commandment that God has given that we cannot obey. And we're gonna talk about why that's important. Because if Jesus says that this is the most important command and we can't keep it, this is the greatest problem that we could ever have. So quickly, why is it that we can't keep this great commandment? Well, our heart. What does the Bible teach wholesale about our heart? That it is deceitful, Jeremiah 17, nine, deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Genesis 8.21, in the context of the aftermath of the flood, the inclination of the human heart is evil from its youth. Psalm 58.3, the wicked are estranged from the womb. And let me read to you very quickly something else that Jesus said. from Mark chapter 7, when he was getting harassed because his disciples were not washing their hands before they ate. Starting in verse 20 of Mark chapter 7, he says, what comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and they defile a person. So if it's not clear, What I'm trying to show you is that the device that we are being told to love God with supremely is faulty. It doesn't work. It's like trying to turn on the TV with the wrong remote control. It's not gonna happen, okay? This is the illustration of our heart. It cannot do what God requires of it because Instead of loving the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength naturally, we love sin with all of our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our mind and strength. Sin was our master before Christ. Why is this the case? Well, I'm gonna try and skim this down a little bit for the sake of time. Adam, Adam failed to love God supremely. Adam failed to love the Lord his God with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength. Would he have reached out and taken that fruit if it were otherwise? He coveted what God had not given him. God was not enough for him. He wanted something more, and he got it. And the rest of us are paying for it, as he did. He took, he ate after coveting, and then he plunged all of creation into the fall. And since it infected Adam and Eve, sin, the sinful nature, is now passed on down generation to generation. And it will continue to do so until Jesus returns. Romans 5.12 says, sin came into the world through one man. and death through sin. And so death spread to all men because all sinned. In other words, we have the same genetic heart disease that Adam passed down. And it's even worse than that, because not only do we have that sinful nature from Adam and his guilt, but we also have condemnation because of it. Romans 6.23, the wages of sin is death. First Corinthians 15.22, the first part, and Adam all die. So that genetic disease that we have that has been passed down to us is going to kill us, is going to lead us to condemnation unless we get a heart transplant. In other words, we can't do what God has commanded us to do because Adam sinned and because we need a new heart. Which means, well, hold on to that for a second. Why would God give us a command? This might sound confusing or cruel to someone. Why would God give a command to us knowing that we can't do it? And the answer is because of the purpose of the law to point us to the only one who can keep the law. It was always to reveal Israel's inability to obey and our inability to obey. So we need someone who can do this for us. And the law points us to that. Which leads me then to this last question. What is our only hope? And our only hope is that the second Adam, Jesus, obeyed this commandment perfectly. It's one thing to say that, and everyone here would agree about it, but just consider the extent of his supreme love for God. He lived perfectly as a child, He obeyed mommy and daddy when they told him to do things, even if he didn't want to do them. He always, he never said a rude thing to his sister or brothers. He obeyed. He obeyed as a child, and then he obeyed as an adult, not just in his words or his actions, but even in his thoughts. He did not covet when he was tempted in the wilderness. Satan showed him things that would tempt any other man, but what was more precious to Jesus was God, his Father. What was more precious to him was loving his Father and accomplishing his mission. So he did what Adam did not do, He paid the penalty for what Adam did do, which means that he obeyed because we can't, and he died in our place and suffered the condemnation that we deserved. And then it got even better. He went on to defeat our three great enemies, sin and Satan and death. when he rose from the dead on the third day. So, but then just taking a step back, someone might ask, well, what is what one man did 2,000 years ago? How does that have anything to do with me? How does that matter? Even if he lived this great, perfect life that you claim, how does that do anything for me? borrowing from the kid's catechism, if you are sorry for your sin, and you hate and forsake it because it's displeasing to God, and you trust in Christ alone for your salvation, the Bible says you will be saved. What this man, what this God-man did was to provide salvation for you. So if we repent and if we believe, we can receive a new heart. And the Holy Spirit who gives us that heart. Jesus purchased for us a new heart and he gave us a surgeon to replace the old with the new. Our genetic heart disease is no longer going to kill us. We will still die at some point, yes, but instead of, I believe Pastor Sam mentioned this a few weeks ago, instead of death ushering us into judgment, instead, it will be more like sleep until the resurrection. That is what Christ has done for us. And then, of course, how does that translate to us? Well, if we've been given this new heart, scripture says, 1 John, I think it's in chapter four. He says, we love, we love because God first loved us. So with this new heart, now we can actually start to obey God. With the Holy Spirit indwelling us, we can keep his commands. Not perfectly, because there's still a battle that we are engaged in every day. but now we can kill sin by the power of the Spirit. And of course, after Jesus returns, we will receive glorified bodies, which will allow us to commune with God and live in His presence forever. In other words, our situation will be even better than Adam's situation because we won't be able to fall from it. That is what Christ has done. So just to recapitulate a little bit, we can now do what God commands us to do because of the second Adam, Jesus, who loved God perfectly on our behalf and purchased for us a new heart, and sent us the Holy Spirit as our helper and the one who has sealed us for the day of redemption. Well, we have now seen that God, number one, requires us to love him supremely. We have seen that we are not able to do that by ourselves with our sinful nature. And number three, Jesus loved God supremely on our behalf, and he is now fitting us to love and obey him forever. So just a couple of concluding applications. If you don't know him, it is so very important that you understand You have a Savior perfectly suited for your needs and your weaknesses. You know the sin that you have in your heart. If you don't know the Lord, you still know that you have sin. And there is a Savior who has done everything on your behalf. Not only did Jesus love God perfectly, but the Bible also says, God sending Jesus was also an act of his love for us. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believe in him should not perish, but have eternal life. So come to him. Jesus says, whoever comes to me, I will not cast out. He is the Good Shepherd and He will not suffer any sheep to be snatched out of His hand. If you come to Him, He will not let go of you. And how could you not want to love such a Savior? Do you not see the wickedness of your sin and your inability to do anything about it? He has done it all. So seek Him while you still can. And then lastly, one final application. Considering all these things, as the people of God, as Christ's bride, we ought to be a lot more humble than we are. We should be a people marked by desperation. Apart from him, we can do no good thing. We cannot even breathe apart from the help of the Lord. I believe it was Paul Washer who was making that point. If we truly understood how weak and how helpless we were, we would pray a lot more. We would seek him in his word a lot more. We would seek fellowship with other brethren in the church a lot more. There is no place for pride in Christ's church because there's nothing to be proud about. What have you done or what do you have that you did not receive? It has all been given to you by the father of lights, the good heavenly father up above. Whatever you know, you only know because the spirit of illumination. We have nothing to boast in except as the apostle Paul said, Christ and his cross. And so let us boast in him and him alone. Let us pray. Oh God, won't you let your word have its full effect in our hearts that we would be complete, trained for every good work, lacking in nothing? Lord, won't you renew our zeal to die to sin and live to your righteousness. Slay the sin and save the heart of the sinner, we pray. And God, may we be a humble and obedient people, waiting and hastening your return. Help us, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.