These days, it seems like almost everyone has a hot take about
something. You know it's going to be a hot
take when they start off by saying this is kind of a hot
take, but that preface is a warning.
They're letting you know that what I'm about to say isn't
meant to offend you, but it might.
Hot takes could be about anything in sports.
It might be about a new coach, a new player, a new rule in music.
It might be who's underrated or overrated.
In politics or culture, it often takes the form what's really
wrong with our country is this or those people.
The subjects of hot takes can range from totally
inconsequential to some of the most serious issues you could
think of. When someone offers a hot take,
they are sometimes trying to stir up controversy in order to
draw attention to themselves. They want more likes and reposts
on social media. They want more eyes and ears
pointing in their direction. Such a person is a conflict
merchant. They are trying to profit from
dividing people. I'm not a huge fan of hot takes.
Whether giving or receiving, I prefer my takes nice and cool,
even cooler than cool, perhaps even ice cold.
Hot takes are often offered on whatever is the current hot
button issue that's driving the news cycle or dominating social
media. Even when people don't volunteer
their take, there's often pressure on a person or an
institution to weigh in on every issue, to speak out, to make a
statement, to let everyone know where you stand.
If your pastor doesn't say something about blank current
event this Sunday, then you need to find a new church.
Ever heard that one before? I have.
There's a massive cultural trend that we've seen rise and Crest
like a wave and break and even start receding back out to sea,
all in the last few years. It's the trend to demand that
institutions like universities and companies and even churches
make official public statements about current events.
That wave grew especially powerful in the past few years
and sort of reached its crazy height during the COVID years,
but now it's already retreating back out to sea.
You can take Harvard University as an example.
After a series of scandals and protests, after their president
resigned under all sorts of pressures, Harvard officially
decided in May of 2024 that they would no longer make any
official statements on public issues.
They stood to lose too much. If you're a political activist
trying to put pressure on an institution like Harvard, you
only have your job and your reputation to lose.
And going after Harvard might earn you headlines like Joe
Smith takes on Harvard, a David and Goliath story.
You stand to gain a lot and lose little.
But Harvard has a multibillion dollar endowment to protect.
Sometimes people pressure a leader or institution to weigh
in on an issue only because they're trying to get that
leader or institution into trouble.
They're trying to get that leader to say something on
record that will discredit them. They're trying to get them to
say something out in public that they can use to take that person
down. This morning we continue our
series in Mark's gospel with chapter 12, verses 13 to 34.
If you don't have a Bible, you can raise your hand.
Someone will bring you on. If you do have a Bible, please
turn there. Our passage is a series of three
interactions between Jesus and religious leaders in the temple
in Jerusalem. And in the first two of those
interactions, the religious authorities are trying to
pressure Jesus into offering a hot take that will get him into
trouble. As one of my kids put it this
week, they're trying to cancel Jesus.
They're trying to trap him. They want him to say something
on record they can use to take him all the way down.
And though the questions they ask might initially seem
obscure, they actually get it. Some of the most fundamental
issues we could possibly consider.
In other words, the religious authorities are asking for Jesus
hot takes on the highest stakes questions.
So here's the question our passage confronts us with this
morning. What are Jesus's answers to the
highest stakes questions that you could ask him?
What are Jesus's answers to the highest stakes questions that
you could ask Him .1 Question one, Who's in charge?
Who's in charge? That's the question at the heart
of verses 13 to 17. Mark 1213 to 17.
Please follow along as I read those verses.
And they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the
Herodians to trap him in his talk.
And they came and said to him, Teacher, we know that you are
true, and do not care about anyone's opinion, for you are
not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God.
Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?
Should we pay them or should we not?
But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, Why put me to the
test? Bring me a denarius and let me
look at it. And they brought one.
And he said to them, whose likeness and inscription is
this? They said to him, Caesar's.
Jesus said to them, render to Caesar the things that are
Caesar's, and to God the things that are gods.
And they marveled at him, looking at a verse 13 they sent
to him. Who's they?
Just like we've seen in our last couple of passages, it's the
Sanhedrin. It's the full council of
Israel's religious leaders. We've seen Jesus confronting
ever since he entered Jerusalem and cleared out the temple.
We've known since Chapter 11, verse 18, that the Sanhedrin is
looking for a way to destroy Jesus.
And so here they send a delegation composed of an
unlikely alliance. The Pharisees are strict law
keepers. They're zealous for Israel's
ancestral traditions. They're eager to restore
Israel's glory and independence. The Herodians are loyal
supporters of Herod, the tetrarch of Galilee, who is the
ruler appointed by the Romans to govern Jesus home territory up
in the north. And if they're that much in
keeping with the kind of local political rulers, it's likely
they're more worldly, more assimilated to Rome, more
compromised. So this delegation aims to trap
him. The Greek word for trap in verse
13 is the word you would use for trying to trap an animal that
you want to eat for dinner. Their motive is pure hostility.
They're trying to trap Jesus and politically speaking, eat him
for dinner. So their hypocrisy is blatant in
what they say next. They flatter him.
We know that you are true and do not care about anyone's opinion,
for you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the
way of God. Now of course they don't really
think this. If they did, they wouldn't be
trying to trap him and kill him. But by flattering him, they
unintentionally declare the truth.
Jesus really isn't swayed by human opinions.
He will not sacrifice God's truth to any special interest
group. He will not adjust His message
to win people's favor or avoid people's disapproval.
Now they set their trap in their question in verse 14.
Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?
Should we pay them or should we not?
Now the word taxes in verse 14, the Greek word that's translated
there is actually a word for a specific tax.
It's the Greek word kensos from the Latin census.
It refers to a poll tax. It's something that every single
resident had to pay. Now in Judea, in Jesus day, all
taxes were unpopular. There's nothing new under the
sun. But this tax, because it got
added just a generation before in six AD, was especially
unpopular. It was just a new added tax on
top of all the other taxes they had to pay.
And in the very year in which it was added, there was a popular
revolt, an uprising like a military, you know, effort led
by a guy named Judas the Galilean, that was over this
very tax. It was so inflammatory, There's
so much popular resentment against it that it led to a
revolt. Within a year, that revolt was
stamped out, but the resentment continued to simmer.
This is only 25 or so years later.
People hate this tax. Not only that, having to pay
this tax, it's kind of a straw that broke the camel's back was
one of the one of the features, one of the factors that led to
the eventual rebellion by the group called the Zealots against
Rome in 66 AD, which led to Rome stamping out that rebellion and
destroying Jerusalem and the Temple in 70AD.
So to ask Jesus about this tax was to ask about the hottest of
hot button political issues. It's a way of trying to test
Jesus's whole political stance by kind of 1 litmus test.
One question. It aimed to expose Jesus's
stance with regard to this emerging Zealot movement that
advocated armed resistance against Rome.
The question is fundamentally whether loyalty to God required
armed resistance to Rome. The question was framed in a way
that allowed only two options. Either he says the tax is
legitimate or illegitimate. If he says the tax is
legitimate, the Pharisees can denounce him as a compromiser.
They can say, oh, for all his talk about the Kingdom of God,
he's just fine being ruled by Rome.
He supports his blasphemous, idolatrous empire.
What kind of Messiah is that? If he endorses the tax, the
Pharisees can try to turn public opinion against him.
On the other hand, if he declares the tax illegitimate,
then the Herodians, the ones who are in cahoots with the
government, can denounce him to the Roman authorities.
This guy says Jews shouldn't pay taxes.
What do you think about that? Roman authorities?
He's a rebel. He's a threat to public order.
He's seditious sedition. Any active uprising against
Roman authority was a crime punishable by death.
There's not be one quick way to get rid of Jesus, he says don't
pay tax, They say. He's seditious.
Rome takes him out. Be a nice tidy solution.
This is a high stakes question because it implies a potential
conflict between what God demands and what Rome demands.
Who's in charge and what do you owe them?
Even in very different circumstances 2000 years later,
those are fundamental questions. Who's in charge and what do you
owe them? So to all appearances, Jesus has
his back against the wall. There's no room for him to
maneuver. How does he respond?
Verses 15 and 16? But knowing their hypocrisy, he
said to them, why put me to the test, bring me a denarius and
let me look at it. And they brought one.
And he said to them, whose likeness and inscription is
this? They said to him, Caesars, a
denarius is the coin that the tax had to be paid in.
And many of them survived. Today we, we know from
historical records kind of when they began to be made.
So we can be confident about what kind of coin this was.
On one side, it was stamped with the image like the face of
Tiberius Caesar. And just like Jesus asks about
it, it had an inscription and had writing on it.
The inscription read the blessed Tiberius Caesar, son of the
divine Augustus. In other words, on one side of
this coin they're supposed to pay the tax with.
He calls the emperor's father a God, and by saying he's the son
of a God, it's implying the emperor also is divine.
Flip over the coin. There's another Latin
inscription that read punt effects Maximus declaring Caesar
to be high priest among the Roman rulers.
Now 1st century Jews understood all this emperor worship to be
idolatry and blasphemy, and that's one thing that raised
serious questions for them about whether it was legitimate to use
that money or participate in that system at all.
If you were trying to go out of your way to offend the Jewish
people, you could hardly do better than to call a ruler the
son of the divine emperor and high priest and then to make
them pay a coin with that written on it and his image
stamped on it. Here's a little idle coin for
you to pay the tax. And thanks guys, have fun.
Many Jews in Jesus day refuse to use these coins as a protest
against that idolatry. So it's interesting that Jesus
asks them to bring him one of those coins.
He doesn't have one, but it turns out someone in their party
does. If they're so opposed to the
tax, then why do they have those coins jingling in their pockets
right now? Jesus doesn't have one.
They do. It's a little bit of beginning
to undermine their credibility, but then Jesus gives them his
substantive answer. In verse 17, after looking at
the coin, Jesus says to them, render to Caesar the things that
are Caesar's, and to God the things that are gods.
And they marveled at him. What does this have to do with
the fact that the coin bears Caesar's image and likeness,
right? He says, bring it to me.
He asked them, whose image and likeness does it have?
How do those things fit together?
For one thing, the Roman emperor is the one who minted the coin.
It's his money and there are civil benefits that Roman rule
provided in Judea, like order and law and transportation.
Jesus is saying that the coin belongs to Caesar.
To pay it back in the form of a tax is to discharge a debt.
It's giving back what you owe. The payment is not only
permitted, but is in fact due to Caesar.
To withhold it would be to defraud the governing authority.
So they owe to Caesar tax in exchange for services rendered.
Jesus deems the tax legitimate, but that's only half of his
answer, and it's not the most important half.
The most important half, you'll hear it.
Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the
things that are gods. By reminding his hearers of what
they owe to God, Jesus implicitly denies Caesar's claim
to be God. There is only one God, and
Caesar ain't it. So he fundamentally rejects the
whole premise of Roman religion. The coin belongs to Caesar, but
the propaganda on it is a lie. Jesus grants the state a limited
legitimacy while affirming God's absolute supremacy.
Caesar has authority delegated from God, and he will answer to
God like all of us. Caesar lives under God's rule.
Caesar can claim tax. God claims our all.
Jesus doesn't put Caesar in God side by side.
They're not on a level playing field.
Caesar has a partial provisional authority.
God has absolute, total authority, and so Jesus commends
to his hearers and to us a critical loyalty toward earthly
government. The governing authorities
deserve our respect and support and obedience as long as they do
not compete or conflict with God's claims on us.
Jesus teaches that submission to God and submission to government
are not inherently opposed. He implicitly acknowledges that
their claims can conflict, and where they do, God's claims must
win. But wherever their claims do not
conflict, we are to honor and obey earthly governments.
This exact teaching is fleshed out in several places in the New
Testament that teach us how to relate to governing authorities.
On the one hand, we are to submit to them and seek their
good. Romans 13 One.
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for
there is no authority except from God, and those that exist
have been instituted by God. Romans 13 seven.
Pay to all what is owed to them, taxes to whom taxes are owed,
revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect, to whom respect is
owed, honor to whom honor is owed.
First Timothy 21 to two. First of all, then, I urge that
supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings
be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high
positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly
and dignified in every way. You can also look at First Peter
213 to 17 for a very similar statement.
On the one hand, we honor and obey earthly governments.
On the other hand, there are times when we must obey God
rather than man. Here's your rule of thumb for
it. Whenever an earthly authority
commands what God forbids, or forbids what God commands, we
must obey God rather than man. We must disobey the authority in
order to obey God. In Acts 529, when the Jerusalem
authorities commanded the apostles not to preach about
Jesus, Peter and the apostles answered We must obey God rather
than man. The balance of those two streams
of biblical teaching is articulated in our church's
Statement of Faith, Article 15. We also believe God appointed
civil government for the benefit and good order of human society.
Christians should pray for, honor and obey public officials
except in things opposed to the will of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who is the Prince of the kings of the earth.
So this is Jesus first answer to a high stakes question, the kind
of question you don't ask at Thanksgiving dinner unless
you're trying to blow the whole thing up.
Who's in charge? His answer?
Ultimately, God is. God is absolutely supreme.
God is in charge of you and of every human authority.
God has, in his wisdom, appointed civil authorities to
govern and order human society, but those authorities should
never act like they have final or supreme authority.
They will answer to God, and so will you.
Time for round two. Another group, another high
stakes question, another effort to get a hot take from Jesus on
record. Point to what happens when we
die, What happens when we die? That's the question at the heart
of verses 18 to 27. I'll read the whole section.
And Sadducees came to him who say that there is no
resurrection. And they asked him a question,
saying, Teacher Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies
and leaves a wife that leaves no child.
The man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his
brother. There were seven brothers.
The first took a wife and when he died left no offspring.
And the second took her and died leaving no offspring, and the
third likewise, and the seven left no offspring.
Last of all, the woman also died in the resurrection.
When they rise again, whose wife will she be?
For the seven had her his wife. Jesus said to them, Is this not
the reason you are wrong? Because you know neither the
scriptures nor the power of God. For when they rise from the
dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like
angels in heaven. And As for the dead being
raised, have you not read in the book of Moses in the passage
about the Bush how God spoke to him, saying I am the God of
Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob?
He is not God of the dead but of the living.
You are quite wrong. The Sadducees were wealthy a
high status Jewish leaders. Many of them belong to priestly
families. They probably represented the
strongest power block within the Sanhedrin, and they only
recognize the five books of Moses is fully authoritative.
They also rejected any belief in an afterlife.
It's kind of strange, hard to make sense of in modern terms.
Do you want to call them liberals because they deny
resurrection? Well, OK, kind of.
Do you want to call them conservatives because, well,
they only hold to the five books of Moses, which are the oldest.
It's it's weird to try to make sense of their views.
But Acts 23/8 tells us the Sadducees say there is no
resurrection, nor Angel, nor spirits.
Now Scripture teaches all those things in the five books of
Moses and beyond. The Pharisees, the kind of
contrasting party here, believed in all those things, and so does
Jesus. So the Sadducees come to Jesus
with a trap of their own. He believes in a coming
resurrection of all people. They don't.
They try to make his belief look ridiculous.
The hypothetical story they tell takes its point of departure
from a law in Deuteronomy chapter 25 verses 5 to 10.
That law established a custom that came to be called Leverett
marriage. If a married man died childless
in ancient Israel, the man's nearest surviving male relative
was obligated to marry the man's wife, and then the first son
from that union would carry on the family name and inheritance
and line. And so the saddesties try to
draw an absurd conclusion from their made-up scenario.
One woman, 7 husbands, who's she going to be married to in the
resurrection? It's a gotcha question.
It's another trap, but it's also got a very serious issue.
It gets out one of the highest stakes questions you could ever
ask. What happens when we die?
What happens to us in the end? What is our final destiny?
If you're not a believer in Jesus, what is your answer to
that question? I'd be glad to talk about it
afterward at the door. I'd love to hear it.
What do you think happens to us when we die?
In verse 24 we begin to hear Jesus's answer.
Jesus said to them, is this not the reason you are wrong because
you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God.
He accuses these religious leaders of ignorance on 2
fronts. They don't know the Scriptures,
and they don't know God's power. Jesus is about to announce to
them that God's power and God's promise really do give us a hope
stronger than the grave. But before we get there, it's
worth meditating on the pitfall of being ignorant of God's Word
and ignorant of God's power. If you don't know God's Word,
what hope can you have? Where will that hope come from?
What will it be grounded in your own power?
Confidence that the world will get better?
A hope that science will somehow come up with an answer to defeat
death just in time to rescue you from it?
Real hope comes not from your optimism, but from God's
promise. If you don't know the Scripture,
you'll be like the Sadducees and have no real hope.
Hope is grounded not in your power, but in God's power.
God's promise brings something into this world that is far
beyond anything this world could do for itself.
And the only way you receive that promise is by faith in his
word. So Jesus prologue, that's his
setup. Here comes the substance of his
answer. He addresses first the manner of
the resurrection. What is it like?
And then he addresses the facts of the resurrection that it's
really going to happen. In verse 25 he addresses the
manner for when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor
are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
In what sense will those will we be like angels in heaven and the
resurrection? Not that we'll be immaterial,
but that will be immortal, will be deathless, which means we
won't need to procreate to keep the human race going.
And as much as modern culture has tried to ignore and erase
it, procreation is a primary purpose of sexual union.
Marriage and sex are for bringing children into the
world. In the world to come.
We won't need to procreate, which means we won't be married.
As Article Three of our Church's statement of faith says,
marriage and its sexual expression are temporary gifts
that point to the fuller joy of our eternal union with Christ.
So the Sadducee's problem is that they're thinking of
resurrection as if it's just like this life endlessly
extended. The resurrection is more than
that. It's better.
It's the goodness of this life raised into a whole new key.
Jesus teaches that in the resurrection God has something
infinitely better than sex in store for all the redeemed.
So here in verse 25, Jesus appeals to God's power.
God will in the resurrection elevate us into a new mode of
existence beyond anything we can imagine.
Now then, in verses 26 and 27, Jesus appeals to the Scriptures,
and he quotes from Exodus to beat the Sadducees on their own
turf. Oh, you only accept the five
books of Moses? Well then, let's appeal to
Moses. He quotes Exodus 36 from the
passage that I read a little bit earlier.
Here's Jesus. And As for the dead being
raised, have you not read in the book of Moses in the passage
about the Bush, how God spoke to him, saying, I am the God of
Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob?
He is not God of the dead but of the living.
You are quite wrong. Now, if you've read this passage
ahead of time in your devotions or family worship and you've
wondered what's the connection, what's the link, I'll confess
it's been a sort of lingering question of mine kind of for
years. I've sort of had an idea, but I
wouldn't say that I was super confident until I immersed
myself in the question to study for the sermon this week.
So if you're wondering what's going on here, while I'm with
you, I think there's a clear answer, but just to say we have
to get at the logic of Jesus appeal to this passage.
It doesn't explicitly mention resurrection.
Jesus says God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
That has to apply and imply that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are
somehow alive. But in Jesus time and still
today, those patriarchs have not yet risen from the dead.
In whatever sense they're alive, they've not been resurrected.
So what is Jesus's logic? What does he see in Exodus 36
that establishes the resurrection?
The crucial key is God's covenant.
In Exodus 36, God identifies himself by naming the family
that he has freely bound himself to by his covenant of promise.
By that covenant, by that promise, God became the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He pledged himself to them, and
it was in keeping that pledge that he brought their
descendants out of Egypt. God promised them a land.
He promised them an inheritance. And if you think about the
context of Genesis, against the backdrop of the universal spread
of sin and death in Genesis 1 to 11, then in Genesis 12, God
promises Abraham a blessing and a blessing that'll spread to
every family, every nation of the earth.
Even these three names, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, proclaim God's
power to bring life from death. God promised Abraham that a
child would come from his wife's barren womb.
That's Isaac. God brought Isaac into life from
where there was only death, and the same held for Jacob, whose
mother Rebecca had been barren. From the very first act by which
God fulfilled this covenant, he spoke life into existence
against the backdrop of death. So Jesus is saying if God's
covenant is cancelable by death, then it is worthless.
If death could overcome God's covenant, then God isn't God.
If God is the one who gives life, if he's the maker and the
Lord of all, then there's no way death couldn't all his covenant.
God's character and power and promise mean that death will
never get the last word on God and his covenant.
Instead, God will defeat death. God's covenant will conquer and
Vanquish all opposition, including death itself.
The last enemy. What good is a God whose
covenant expires at death? What good is a salvation that
lasts a couple of decades and then you're snuffed out of
existence forever? Jesus asking you what's
stronger, death or God's promise?
What's more powerful? Death, or God's covenant keeping
steadfast love. God has promised his people a
home with him and a life with him that death itself can't
touch. Nothing else measures up to the
depth of our problem. Nothing else would reach all the
way down to the depth of our misery.
But God's love reaches all the way down.
God's power and promise reach all the way down deep enough to
pull up all of our deepest problems by their roots.
That is what God promises to do. That is what he will one day do
to death. He will find its last little
tentacles and tendrils in the soil of this universe and uproot
it and cast it away forever. That's God's promise.
That's God's power. If you don't know that and you
don't know God, and you have no real hope, God's covenant is all
conquering. That's what Jesus sees in Exodus
36. God's covenant will conquer all.
He's not going to give up on Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
He's not going to leave them in the grave.
What kind of a worthless God? What kind of a worthless
covenant is that? So the question is how?
How does God's covenant conquer all that?
The narrative of Mark's gospel tells us through the death and
through the resurrection of Jesus.
Death came into the world as punishment for sin.
Sin is what, excuse me, death is what we deserve for our sin.
Jesus bore that penalty. Jesus died that death.
Jesus suffered that curse. And then when he rose from the
grave, he broke it. He ended it.
He triumphed over it. His resurrection is not like an
add on kind of tacked onto the good news.
If you OK, well, something cool had to happen next.
His resurrection is how God's covenant conquers death.
And if you believe in him, God's covenant will conquer your
death. If you turn from sin and trust
in Him, this fate will become yours.
Resurrection is good news. Resurrection is the best news.
Resurrection is only good news for you if you turn from sin and
trust in Christ. What happens when we die?
Scripture teaches those who trust in Jesus depart
immediately into God's presence in heaven.
Those who don't depart immediately for judgment in
hell. Jesus himself teaches explicitly
that all people will be raised. There's a resurrection of the
just and the unjust. But that resurrection is only
good news if you're coming to God's judgment, clothed in
Christ by faith. So turn from sin and trust in
him. Brothers of brothers and
sisters, members of TBC, Trust. I'm sorry.
I lost my lost my mic here. Give me just a moment.
Just going to pause so it doesn't fall out.
What happened here? Well, it's not falling yet.
We're just going to keep going. Sorry about that.
Reboot. Where are we?
It's God's power, it's God's promise.
He made it, He can keep it. So Jesus teaching by putting the
scriptures and the power of God side by side.
You have to know both. So brothers and sisters, trust
in God's promise of resurrection.
On that day of resurrection, nothing will be worse.
Everything will be better on that day.
Whatever you're missing or lacking now will be more than
supplied. Whatever you're suffering now
will be more than made-up for. Whatever good desire is
unsatisfied now will be more than fulfilled, abundantly
fulfilled, overflowingly fulfilled.
On that day, you'll be perfectly satisfied and perfect.
Fellowship with God and His people.
In whatever ways your earthly relationships are lacking now,
in whatever ways you're burdened by grief or loss, know that on
that day you will be perfectly known and loved.
If you trust in Christ, all your best years are ahead of you, and
those years have no number, no limit, no end.
What happens when we die? Jesus final answer, rooted in
his own resurrection is better than anything anyone in this
world can tell you. Our passage is one more story of
someone sparring intellectually with Jesus, one more high stakes
question. The setup's a little different
from the 1st 2:00, but the question is equally important.
Point #3 how should we live? How should we live?
That's the question Jesus answers in verses 28 to 34.
Look with me at those verses. 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 hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is 1 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's no other commandment
greater than these. And the scribe said to him,
You're right, teacher, you've truly said that he is 1 and
there is no other 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 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 to ask him any more questions.
Here it's not a group approaching Jesus, but an
individual. Matthew and Luke both tell us
that this scribe came to Jesus to test him.
So apparently he starts off as a skeptic.
But here's the thing. In Mark's gospel so far, and
even in this passage, we've seen a lot of bad faith skeptics,
people who ask Jesus questions what their minds are already
made-up against him. But in this scribe, as we'll
see, we meet someone who's genuinely open to Jesus, answers
What's his question? It's essentially how should we
live? And he asks that question in a
distinctively Jewish form, which commandment is the most
important of all. This is a common question for a
rabbi to be asked in Jesus's day.
There's a story preserved about the Rabbi Hillel from around the
time of Jesus where someone came to him and said teach me the
whole Torah while I stand on one foot, meaning boil it down to
its one sentence essence. What's most important?
What's the commandment that makes sense of all the others
and puts them all in their proper perspective?
You'll notice Jesus gives the scribe more than he asks for in
two ways. Instead of simply responding
with a commandment, he responds with a confession of faith.
Then he says the greatest commandment, and then he gives
him another second great commandment.
Instead of 1 commandment. He gives him 2 verses 29 to 31.
Again Jesus answered, the most important is here, O Israel, the
Lord our God, the Lord is 1 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 begins by quoting Deuteronomy 6 verses four and
five. This is known as the Shema from
the Hebrew word, for here it's Israel's essential confession of
faith. It's the most foundational truth
of the Old Testament. There is one and only one living
and true God, whose name is the Lord.
Why does Jesus start with the confession?
It's because the commandment is rooted in the confession.
As God is 1, so must our love for him be.
As God is undivided, so must our souls be in their devotion to
him. If there are multiple competing
gods, you can't afford to give your total devotion to anyone
God. You got to hedge your bets.
You got to keep all these different gods happy.
That's part of the reason modern society is so sick and self
deceived, because we think we are a secular society.
We are in fact a polytheistic society because in reality there
is one and only one God. We must love Him with all that
we are. The terms heart, soul, mind and
strength are essentially overlapping ways of saying all
of you. Everything that you have, your
whole person, every last bit of you, everything God has given to
you, you must give back to Him in glad dedication and joyful
praise. Because there is one God.
The essence of living well is complete devotion and submission
to Him. This one true God is the only
God you can worship and not thereby degrade yourself.
The real God is the only God you can worship without harming
yourself. To worship any other God is to
commit both treason and self harm.
By contrast, to worship God truly is to live life fully.
Anything else, anything less and you've missed the point of your
existence. Talk about a high stakes
question. That's the confession and the
first commandment. By calling it the greatest
commandment, Jesus is saying it's the most important.
It is the gravitational center that puts everything in the
universe of your life into its proper place.
But then Jesus gives one more commandment.
The second is this. You shall love your neighbor as
yourself. There were Jewish teachers in
Jesus time who highlighted the importance of total devotion to
God. It's right there in the Shema.
There were other Jewish teachers in Jesus time who pointed to the
importance of neighbor love. There in Leviticus 1918.
That's what Jesus is quoting. But Jesus is the first Jew to
link these two commandments in this way.
He's pointing out that love of God and love of neighbor form a
unity, and at the same time love of God takes priority.
Jesus is summarizing the 2 tables, the two halves of the 10
commandments, the whole Torah. All 613 commandments boils down
to the 10 commandments as it's summary.
And the 10 commandments boil down to two Love God, love
neighbor. Of course, those two
commandments boil down to one word, love.
Love of God is fulfilled in love of neighbor.
Love of neighbor is rooted in love for God.
You prove your love for God by your love for those who are made
in his image. And only a heart fundamentally
devoted to God can enable you to love your neighbor rightly and
truly. Love for God fuels love for
neighbor. Love of neighbor demonstrates
love for God. These two commandments are the
essence of how we all should live.
They are themselves the path of a good life.
Kids and teens in the congregation.
The whole way the Bible tells us to live is summed up in these
two commandments. Anything you do, anything you
say, anything you are thinking about doing, Jesus gives you a
very simple test to put it to. Does this express love for God
and love for my neighbor? If it fails, one of the two
halves of that test, do not do it.
Don't say it, don't think it, don't do it.
One of the effects of hearing Jesus teaching on this point
should be to convict us of sin. If you're not a believer in
Jesus, you should recognize that this is a standard you have not
kept, cannot keep, and will never keep.
As JC Rile put it, where are the men or women who can say with
truth that they have perfectly loved God and perfectly love
their neighbor? That's none of us.
There's only one person in human history who perfectly loved God
and neighbor, and that's Jesus. The proclamation of his life in
the Gospels shows us that everything Jesus does and says
in all four gospels is an expression of love for God and
love for neighbor. You will find no defect of love
for God and love of neighbor and anything Jesus ever says and
does. Jesus shows us what love for God
and love for others looks like. He lived a fully, truly,
maximally human life. You and I can't, but Jesus did
it for us to redeem us. If you're convicted of how you
fall short of this standard, and you should be, turn from sin and
trust in Jesus. For us as believers, this simple
twofold summary of the law is a mirror we should constantly look
into. That's one reason why
occasionally we do just what we did this morning where we read
this very part of the passage. We use it as a prompt for
confession of sin. We should be looking into this
perfect law as a mirror for our souls.
And what do we do in response? Confess, repent, and experience
assurance of God's forgiveness. That's Jesus answer.
The last bit of the passage shows us the scribes response
verses 32 to 34. And the scribe said to him,
You're right, teacher, you've truly said that he is 1 and
there is no other 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 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 to ask him any more questions.
So the scribe agrees with Jesus. Not only that, but he echoes
some more scripture back to Jesus in his reply.
His his wording echoes passages like First Samuel 1522 and Hosea
66 where God teaches that obedience to him and mercy
toward others are more important than sacrifice.
It's as if it's as if he finds a scripture reference for each
half of Jesus teaching. Oh yeah.
First Samuel 1522 says obedience to God is more important than
sacrifice. Love God.
Hosea 66 says mercy is more important than sacrifice.
Love neighbor. So he's seeing the relative
weight God is giving to these things described as saying, oh
right, love for God and love for neighbor is what God wants more.
It's not that God doesn't care about sacrifice.
It's not that he doesn't care about external observance of the
ceremonial law that was inspired by him and given by him too.
What it is, is that God cares infinitely more about our hearts
devotion to him and our loving treatment of others.
If you have sacrifice without worship, your sacrifice is
worthless. If you have religious observance
without love for God and love for others, your religious
observance is worthless. You could have a form of
religion, and if that form of religion is empty of love for
God and does not lead the love of neighbor, that form of
religion is worse than worthless.
It's harmful because it's acting as a religious substitute for
what God cares about. It's that thing is a kind of
religious vaccine against the real religion God is trying to
implant in your heart so that you devote yourself to Him and
to loving service of others. The scribe agrees with Jesus.
The total devotion to God is the essence of what it means to live
rightly. And so Jesus tells him he's not
far from the Kingdom, not that he's in the Kingdom, but that
he's close. It's because he's grasped the
essence of God's law. And grasping the essence of
God's law is a big step toward trusting in God's gospel.
In all three controversies. Zoom out.
Consider the passage as a whole. Jesus appeals to Scripture.
Jesus expounds scripture. Jesus submits to scripture and
gives the true sense of Scripture. 2 quick applications
for us from that pattern. Jesus teaching number one,
submit to Scripture. Recognize Scriptures authority
over every area of your life. Recognize that scripture is God
himself speaking to you in the infinite fullness of His divine
authority. Second, when dealing with
controversial matters, especially issues that Bible
believing Christians disagree on, one good question to ask
yourself is how explicitly does Scripture speak to this?
Is this a plain teaching of Scripture like the resurrection
of Jesus, or is this a more distant implication or inference
from biblical principles? One part of maturing is a
Christian is developing a sense of the relative weight or
gravity of an issue. Some matters are heavier than
others. That's why Jesus can say there's
a greatest commandments. Another aspect of maturing is a
believer. Another way to put it is
developing a sense of how tightly or loosely you should
hold your opinion on any given issue.
That should depend in part on how directly Scripture addresses
the issue and also on what the practical consequences of the
issue are. How should we live?
Love is the essence, love of God, love of neighbor.
And the key to being able to do both is knowing the God who has
first loved you. Note the result of this whole
exchange at the very end, verse 34.
And after that, no one dared to ask him any more questions.
They failed to cancel Jesus. They failed to get the hot take
on record they would use to try to take him down.
They've pressed him with the highest stakes questions they
can come up with, and He's answered them with untouchable
wisdom. What Jesus offers here is far
more than hot takes. He shows us who deserves our
ultimate loyalty. He illumines our ultimate
destiny. He reveals the ultimate essence
of morality. But it's important to see that
Jesus most important answer to these questions is not just his
teaching, but his life. Not just his life, but his
death, and not just his death but his resurrection.
Who has an answer like that? Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the wisdom you have revealed
to us by this inspired record of these controversies.
We thank You that Christ sealed His wisdom in His own blood and
confirmed it by Himself, becoming the source of eternal
life and resurrection for all who trust in Him.
Father, we pray that we would submit ourselves to You
absolutely. We pray that we would trust in
Your promise of resurrection hope.
We pray that by Your grace and the work of Your Spirit, we
would devote ourselves completely to living for You and
loving others. We pray in Jesus name, Amen.