on a New Testament plan for this year and reading it together, just going chunk by chunk in our own personal times through the New Testament. We're all kind of synced up there. And so this passage came, this was a couple of months ago. I went back and pulled it out of there, what I had kind of gotten from that. And, you know, I appreciate the Bible itself. You know, I like devotionals. I think devotionals are good. but I don't think that there can be a replacement for actually digging into the word of God itself. You know, I think everybody, if you have a devotional, great, go with that, but don't neglect actually opening the Bible and reading it and exposing yourself to what it has to say, because you know what? The Bible is our soul source. It is the source of truth. So in my day job, I am a software developer, but I lead a bunch of software development teams, and they write software, mainly medical software, And as developers, we're looking, we're always looking for the best source of data. You know, we're wanting to find, so we're doing patient data, we're looking, where's the best source for this data? You know, there can be multiple sources at times, and sometimes, where's the authoritative source? That's a word we use. What's the authoritative source of this patient's data? And as I think about life, what is the authoritative source of truth for us? It's the Bible. We're not going anywhere else. You know, like I mentioned devote devos are good devotional books great Man can bring good messages, but that's not the authoritative source. The authoritative source for us is the bible I was reading in psalm 119. It says your word is established forever in heaven And that's why we we go to the word of god So we're going to dig in uh into the word and you know one thing i've been reading the bible trying to get through it every year. Um, And as I go through the same passage sometimes, I get different messages. I get a different thing that the Lord focuses on for me. I was thinking about a lady at our church. Her name's Ruth. She's one of my widows that I helped take care of. She's 95 now. She's read the Bible well over 100 times. Last time we talked to her, she said 150, but she's getting a little, I think she's forgetting some things. It was only 100 times a couple years ago now. But I know back whenever she was really with it, we had talked to her many times. It was well over 100 times. And you know what? I can only imagine how she's probably extracting more from the Bible now than somebody new that's reading the word of God. They may read it and miss some things. As she's going through it year, obviously multiple times a year, she's extracting a lot from the word. And so that's what we're trying to really do here. And what I'm always amazed at is how the gospel of Jesus Christ is on every single page of the Bible. So with my teens, Dave and I were talking and we were like, what do we want to have the teens come out of our youth group and make sure they understand? So I thought about that. I didn't want them to get through four years, I teach middle school, of middle school and not really have some basics that they had grabbed onto and it was, it was something that it would say, yeah, after four years there, I understand this. I hit what the gospel is every single message. And I actually asked somebody in there, I said, what is the gospel? They stand up and they will tell me specifically. And I've done it so much now, I can ask multiple people and they'll rehearse it exactly for me, that the gospel is the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and how it applies to giving us newness of life, you know? And I wanna see that gospel on every single page, but I don't wanna, of the Bible, but I don't wanna just see it for my salvation, my ticket to heaven. That's not what we wanna see. We wanna see the gospel as our every single day, how we're applying it every single day of our lives, in every single way, how it brings newness to every single area of our life, whether that's our sin life, whether that's our relationships, it brings newness, it brings life into every part of our, every aspect of our life. So that's what we're going to do today. We're going to look at that. And specifically this passage in Mark that I appreciate it being read out loud there today. This one, I went back into my devotional and I, every time I read a passage, I write a prayer out because I don't want to just read the Bible and be like, okay. And then for later in that day, I have no idea what I read, you know? So I try to write a prayer out and I literally pray that prayer to God. And then I document, I'm kind of, like I said, I'm a software developer. So I'm kind of a nerd. and I like to date, I like to keep things, so I have a little Evernote, note-tracking thing, I keep them out, so I was easily able to read that. Julie, would you be able to bring me my water bottle right there? Otherwise, I'm gonna be pretty dry later. And so I went back and I read this, what I had for this passage, I appreciate it, thank you, ma'am. And I read, it says, Great Father, Often we're gonna see as you read that that you saw they was talking about the love of God being the first thing He says often. I love myself first and foremost Help me to take a backseat and love you above all else and to elevate others So that was what I had gathered during my initial Reading of this but then over the weeks and months after that that that passage kept coming back to me especially that last verse where Jesus talked described we're gonna break into each individual verse there and but I just want, in an introduction, I wanna say the idea of not being far from the kingdom kept coming to me. We're involved with a group of homeschoolers back home, and, because my kids are all homeschooled, and I'm concerned about people who are exposed to the gospel a lot becoming somewhat immune or inoculated against the gospel. I'll be honest, I'm desperately, aware of that with my own children. We talk about the Bible and about the gospel almost every single day in our home. We rehearse it. My kids are in a situation where they're exposed to the gospel, and what my fear would be for them is that they would become immune to it. It would just glaze over. Their eyes just glaze over when they hear about the gospel. And so I wanted to bring, extract from this passage, the idea of examining ourselves. We'll see that. I said I teach teens so I understand I got to be be quick because I lose people if I if I go to a little too long, but but also Not a typical message because the way we teach teens is what we typically do we will Expose the passage of the content and then we'll connect to it and then we're given a choice, you know Anytime you're exposed to the Bible you have a choice of how you respond to that Whether you that choice is to ignore it or that choice is to heat it. Okay, so we're gonna go into I'm gonna break into a these individual verses. Let me grab a sip here real quick. All right, so let's go in our Word. I'm gonna read a couple verses at a time, and then we're gonna break it open. And so, verse 28 there in Mark chapter 12, it says, Now before we get into that, a scribe, a scribe in the Bible was literally that. He wrote. They would, they would diligently transfer the Bible, mainly the first five books of the Old Testament, from one Parchment to another so that it was accurately recorded, so that they could then pass it on. If they made any mistakes, they would scrap that. And so scribes knew the Bible literally by heart. They could memorize the first five books of the Bible by heart, but they knew it very well. And so this scribe who's really seeking to justify himself. He's not asking for his own knowledge here. He's asking to justify himself because these were the religious leaders of the day. Brother BJ and Julia and I were speaking in the car on the way here about how Jesus so often, his message, and Paul as well, their messages were against religious people, speaking to religious people because so often religious people are trying to justify themselves instead of truly seeking after what God has for them. So so this scribe is really trying to do that. He's trying to Justify themselves. He wanted to focus on the law and on self-justification That's it. That's where his question goes to and then moving on to verse 29 I'm gonna read 29 and 30 together because they go there there Jesus initial answer Jesus answered him the first of all commands is hero Israel the Lord our God is one Lord and you will love him with all your You're the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind with all your strength this is the first commandment okay now what Jesus is doing he's specifically referencing Deuteronomy chapter 6 I have it on my phone here I only brought my little New Testament soul winning Bible with us here I have to use my phone but he's referencing Deuteronomy chapter number 6 verse 4 through 7 this is a very important passage to Jews Jews back then, Jews today, Orthodox Jews, this is kind of their motto, their main verse that they go to. In Deuteronomy 6, it says, Here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and thou shalt talk of them when thou sittest in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. Very important passage. So jesus is going right to what this pharisee would say. He understands What the pharisee not sorry not the pharisee the scribe was going to say and he goes he engages his question and jesus Obviously the wisest man, uh, you know the wisest person ever lived jesus Understands how to answer this this man appropriately and so he clay he he agrees. Yes. This is the greatest commandment this is First of all that God is one God Jews were monotheistic now, this is important that Jesus touches on this because previously in this same chapter and later in this chapter Jesus Identifies himself as God as well. And so the the touching this he's really touching on a sensitive area for the Jews because Him being God and then God in heaven makes them to them what seemed like multiple gods. So him saying there's one God he's clarifying Yes, there is one God and really what he's saying is I'm it you know, I am that God he was clear He was declaring himself as God himself But also he was he was touching on Loving God instead of loving self now we could say that scribe loved himself if you're self-justifying that scribe really was seeking to lift himself up, to elevate himself above others. And that's a lot of what was happening in that religious community. The religious leaders, instead of helping the people, were just elevating themselves up and be into the place of God. So Jesus is really saying, no, let's not do that. God, let's put God first, all right? Moving on down to verse 31, there he finishes and says what the second is. The second is like namely this. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There's none other commandment greater than these. And so Jesus saying first, love God. Second, love other people. That makes me think of when I was a kid, we had this, I like to say unacronym, but Ms. Julie always reminds me that it's acronym, not an unacronym. So acronym, J-O-Y stands for Jesus, other, and yourself. Jesus is pointing out the best way to be happy in life is to first put God, others, and then yourself, okay? That's what God is saying all of these other things all the other rules and things that we put on They're all geared toward that end of putting God first putting others and then putting yourself Okay, so Jesus clarifies this let's move on. I think we have some some more to get into here verse 32 Down here. I'm gonna read Says in the scribes can't get said unto him. Well Master you have said the truth for there is one God and there's none other but he so he's clarifying. Yes Yes, you're right. There is only one God. You kind of said before that you were God, but there's only one God. And then moving on to 33, and to love him with all your heart and with all your understanding, with all your soul and with all your strength, to love his neighbor as himself, is more than all the whole burnt offering and sacrifice. So this scribe is basically saying, yes, Jesus, you have passed my test. I was really throwing this question not to get an answer for myself, but really to test you, to see if you were theologically Correct, if you were sound and he's saying okay, you've passed my test you answered well But then but Jesus was not done Jesus then response in response him and this is where we kind of want to focus when Jesus saw that he had answered discreetly He said unto them you are not far from the kingdom of God and no man dare to ask him any more questions so it's important to see Jesus said you're not far Jesus did not say you are in the kingdom of God and you said you're not far from the kingdom of God yes loving God and loving others that's God wants us to move us there that uh toward that direction that's the way we should live but that's not how we get into the kingdom of God okay so how do we connect with this passage today you know this happened obviously about 2 000 years ago how does this today connect with us one i mean we could focus on the love and obedience to God that's a great thing to focus on we can We could extract that, we could dig into that deep, and I think that's worthwhile going over. That's not where I want to go with this. We could talk about the joy of loving other people. We should be doing that. That is obviously what Jesus did and how he lived. We could even dig into Jesus' claim of divinity. Jesus was saying, yes, I am God, and that would be great to dig into, but I want to focus really on that last verse. we can really connect with this. What we need to be doing is checking if we are close to the kingdom or if we're in the kingdom. I appreciate Amanda's testimony about hearing the gospel over and over and then realizing later, oh, you know what, it's not about me doing it over and over again or doing it right, it's about me trusting in the Lord. And I know there's others, I think it was the Dave, he had been in church his whole life and yet it was on a missions trip when you were, how old were you, Dave? 18 years old, lived in church his whole life, 18 years old, realized that he was not saved, realized that he needed to get right with God, to truly trust in the Lord. We actually had a missionary come from, I believe he was somewhere down in the Caribbean, and he realized on the field, Brother B.J., that he was not saved. And he got saved and was able to was able to glorify the Lord in that even in in his ministry. Um, so What I just like the scribe and the pharisees they're so close to it They were saturated by the bible yet. They had missed the point what I don't want to do with my children with my teens with anybody Is have them so close to the gospel so close to the kingdom and yet not Experience the renewal of life that it provides. Okay, so um, so What we want to do is we want to make sure that we're not counting on other things, okay? That we're not counting on our good works. What the scribe was looking for is what kind of works can I do to be right with God? And Jesus, well, here's the works of the Bible. Say, love God, love others. And he's like, okay, good, yes. Those are the right ones. Another thing, and I love our pastor Mike back home. He told us one thing. He was clear to his girls. in is that one day you're going to stand before God. You're going to have to ask why you ought to be led into heaven. And they're not going to be able to point to their parents and say, because my parents faith, they're not going to be able to say, well, my parents brought me to church. My parents read the Bible to me in the home. My parents love you. So therefore, I deserve to get into heaven. We're not going to be able to do that. There's nothing in there in the Bible that expresses because of our parents faith that we will go to heaven. We can't even rely on, and this may sound wrong initially, we can't rely on God's kindness. A lot of people want to say, well, God's kindness means that he's not going to send anybody to hell. He's going to let everybody into heaven because a just God will not, and kind God will not send people to hell. That's not what we're relying on. We are relying on God's goodness, but it's not his kindness to just overlook sin that we are looking on. We are counting on what Jesus came to say, and he said it in all the gospels, he said, you must trust in me. Faith alone, what we like to say is faith alone through grace alone. It's only because of God's grace that we can be saved, and it's only through faith in his plan, in that gospel, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that allows us to be saved. None of these other things, nothing that we can think of, no goodness, no good works, can get us into that kingdom. It is only through having Christ's work apply to us that we can get into the kingdom, okay? And so I wanted to use this opportunity, I know one of the tools in ministry and in soul winning that we've focused on coming here was specifically the three circles kind of pattern of sharing the gospel. And one that we're gonna be using as we go, hopefully we get the opportunity to speak with some people out in the community, but it's really about how to get into the kingdom, how to ensure that you're the the work of Jesus Christ is being applied to you and what that does is the first circle i don't have the thing because obviously if you were in the community you're not going to have a white board or a power point presentation speaking somebody so i just wanted to kind of go through it verbally but first of all what we have to realize is that God had a perfect design when God created Adam and Eve in Genesis 1 and 2 in this world it was perfect and God's design for us was perfect and yet Through sin, the sin of Adam and Eve, and then the sin of all of us that we've done, we've broken God's perfect pattern of design. And that brings us to the second circle, is brokenness. I know I live a broken life, and I have, and I still sin, and have to confess and repent of that. But that sin brings brokenness in our lives. And with that brokenness, we try to fix it through all kinds of things. Try to fix it like the scribe, doing all these good works. You know, there's a lot of billionaires out there. You always see them giving money. They feel the need to do something good because they're like, I got to do something good to atone. We all understand we're sinners in the truth. We all understand that we have erred from God's ways. And so they're trying to atone. And those are good things, but that's not going to get us to heaven. Sometimes we try to fix that brokenness through more sin, through addiction, through substance abuse or other addictions. but that only creates more brokenness. And then we end up in this cycle of brokenness, living these broken lives. But God understood that that wasn't the way. That wasn't the pattern that he had for us. In order to fix that brokenness, from the beginning, God had a plan. We see in the very beginning of Genesis that God's plan was kicked into motion. He already knew it before the world began. He kicked it into motion and explained that one day a savior would come. And in order to fix the brokenness that happened, we need to trust in Jesus, trust in His work, not our own work, not in our parents' work, not in our philanthropy, not in God's kindness to not send anybody to hell. We need to trust in God's work, and then we need to follow Him, and we need to confess, we need to trust Jesus, we need to be following Him in our life, and that's the gospel, that's the third circle, that we are trusting in the gospel. And when the gospel is applied to our life, then it brings those good things that we're trying to do. It brings that growing and going. And if you're looking at, if you were looking at the three circles, it kind of looks like it's going in a loop, but what I like to do is say it breaks that pattern of brokenness. Whenever we have trusted in Christ, we no longer have to live broken lives. We can live holy lives before him, and it breaks that pattern. So that's the gospel. That's what the scribe was missing. The scribe understood that God's design was broken and that we needed to do something about it. What he was wrong in is that he was trying to do it all himself. He was trying to find other means other than trusting in God's Word to be applied to him. And so to end this up here real quick, I know we're running short on time here, but like I said, the Scripture always gives us a choice of how to respond to it. And our choice here is that we can ignore it or we can hear it and apply it. You know, the Bible says, he that has ears to hear, let him hear. So what I like to do is I like to say in response to this, we need to take the 2 Corinthians 13 5 approach. It says, examine yourselves, whether you are in the faith. Prove your own selves. I've been saved since I was, you know, right around the time, I think Amanda said she was seven. Same thing, six, seven, right around there. I was saved, trusted in the Lord. I've had times of doubt, especially as a teenager, but I've gotten that straight. And that's part of my testimony as well, that I would share my doubts. But ultimately, I resorted back to thinking just very similar to the way Amanda did. Have I trust in the Lord? I had to examine myself. Was my faith in my prayers that I was saying very similar, over and over again. I was saying this prayer over and over again, thinking that it was the words I was saying. Did I say it right? Did I did I mean it with all my heart instead of that simple childlike faith of just trusting in Jesus and That's how we prove ourselves one. That's first. I would prove did we truly trust in the Lord was it simple faith? But then we start looking for signs now Miss Julie and I we have we have attempted gardening multiple times and we do not do a very good job of it I know BJ has garden outside there. It looks like they're they're successful at it. We are not successful at it But we keep trying anyways we have we have a little planter garden. It's doing okay. I guess but when you plant a seed You want to see whether that that seed? Really took root and what you the first thing you want to see is whether you see a little sprout You know you see a little thing come up Maybe a little green shoot and then next thing you're going to want to see is you're going to see some little leaves you know simply see one or two leaves start popping up and then as it grows you're gonna start seeing some branches come off. And then hopefully, hopefully you get to that end state where you have some fruit that's able to be extracted from that. And that's the exact way. Jesus uses the example of the seed and bearing fruit to discuss the Word being in our lives. And that's how we look for it ourselves, okay? We want to see whether the Word has truly been applied to us. it's being it's producing fruit in our lives and some of those fruit that we want to look for if we're worried if we're examining ourselves let's look we want to see if there's functional godliness in our lives do we love others and do we love god like we're supposed to is that is there true love are we doing it out of some other reason we can be doing the good things, but not necessarily doing it for the right reasons. Do we have functional godliness there? Do we have a desire to be in the word, to trust, to know more about what the word says? Are we applying the gospel in our lives? Do we have conviction of sin? When you sin, and we all sin, every one of us, there's nobody in here that is without sin or continuing to sin, but when we do that, does the Holy Spirit bring conviction to us? Are you being convicted of sin or are you able to sin and it doesn't even bother you? We got we got to look for that. Are you persevering in the faith? Trials will come though. The Christian, you know, Amanda jokingly said her life was perfect after that. But we all know that that is not the truth. We all know that we are going to have trials. I have a brother at home, not a true brother in Christ at home. He's going through some trials and he honestly he is very honest with me about his. Struggle with the Lord. He is struggling hard with how much the Lord he feels Somewhat abandoned by the Lord. He feels like the Lord is always throwing things in his path To try him and to throw him off and I am expressed. Hey, you got to persevere You know what the Lord is doing it for a reason he understands he knows and I'm not not worried about his faith he's just being honest with me, you know about his what he's feeling but the Lord is gonna allow things to come into our lives. He doesn't necessarily maybe bring all of them, but he allows things to come into our lives, and yet he's always with us. Are we persevering in the faith? And then finally, are we aware of the kingdom? If you're not kingdom aware, if you're not aware of others entering in the kingdom, if you're not aware of their need to be in the kingdom, check yourself. Check yourselves whether you are in the kingdom. If you're not wanting more people to come to the kingdom, check yourself whether the kingdom is really your home, whether you reside in the kingdom. We're not doing these things to save ourselves, but these things are evidences of our salvation, whether we're in the kingdom or not. One day you're going to stand on your own. You're not going to be able to point to your good works. You're going to have to point to the work of Christ. That passage talked about the love of God. and what we are loving for God, but it's not our love demonstration, it's God's love demonstration that we're looking for as to the reason that we will be in the kingdom, okay? So I just wanna close with a prayer. If you feel led to speak with somebody, whether BJ or any of the ministry team, me, Miss Julie, we would love to speak to you about being in the kingdom if you need that clarification, but I appreciate your attention, I appreciate you listening, and let us go ahead and close in prayer. Father, we love you so much. We thank you that you demonstrated love for us. Yes, you want us to love you. You want us to love others, Lord, but it was your love that provided the way for us through Jesus Christ. Lord, if there is one in here, whether they're on the ministry team, whether they're not, or anybody in here that is not sure of their kingdom status, Father, I ask you to help them have boldness, help them to have faith, help the Holy Spirit to convict them and draw them to you, Lord. And then lord, uh, anybody they speak to give them the words to share the that wonderful words of life of jesus christ father We love you, and we thank you so much for all you've done for us in jesus name. Amen