Dwell in the Word Mark 12:28-34
Dwell on these questions as we look at Mark 12:28-34:
1. How does Jesus' response to the scribe's question about the most important commandment emphasize the fundamental importance of both our relationship with God and our duty towards fellow human beings? How does this reflect the essence of the Ten Commandments?
2. In what way does the scribe's recognition that loving God and one's neighbor is more significant than burnt offerings and sacrifices reveal the potential danger of religious rituals becoming empty routines? How does Jesus' affirmation, "You're not far from the kingdom of God," provide insight into the scribe's understanding?
3. Pastor Mark highlights the crucial distinction between performing religious acts for the sake of appearances versus doing them out of genuine love and gratitude towards God. How can believers ensure that their actions and devotion stem from a heartfelt response to God's love rather than a desire to earn righteousness? How does this understanding impact one's relationship with God and others?
Transcript:
And so, we get another opportunity to see Jesus answering a question. So a scribe sees them debating, sees them weighing back and forth and talking about these different topics, and he has a question himself. It's an important question, which commandment is the most important of all? Jesus goes back to scripture. The first thing he says is, Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. This is known as the Shema. In Hebrew, the word Shema means here. This is a confession of who God is, that the Lord God, He is one. He is not many gods. He is not all these different deities all over the place. No, he is one. He is God. He is the only true God. Then Jesus answers with more scripture, and it's a summary of the law. You should love the Lord God with all your heart, and with all your soul, with all your mind, and all your strength. And the second, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And so Jesus gives this man the summary, as I said, of the law. We divide it into two tables. We look at the law, and we see that there are laws that are about our duty to God, and then, there's another group of laws in the Ten Commandments that are our duty to our fellow man.
The first table is commands one through four. You shall know the guys before me, shall not make an idol, not take the Lord's name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. That is our duty to God. Well, after that, we have the fifth through the 10th commandments, and those are our duty to our fellow man. That's the second tablet. Those are summed up very easily here. We can see this, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and strength, those four first commandments fit that description of the first tablet of the law. Then Love your neighbor as yourself, that sums up the second table of the law. This is a great answer. Obviously, it's coming from Jesus, but this is a great answer because it sums up the idea of what the Ten Commandments were driving at, that we have a duty to God, and we have a duty to our fellow man because of who God is and what he has done for us. And so, this scribe is impressed. He says, You're right, teacher. You've truly said that God is one. Yep, there's no one beside him.
Love the Lord. The summary of the law there is great. But look at what this scribe has to say in verse 33. To do all this is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. That was part of the issue. So often in the Old Testament and even into this time, while Jesus is on earth, the issue was that the people, their hearts were far from God, but they were doing all the sacrifices. They were checking the boxes. They were doing those things that they thought merited them righteousness, but they weren't concerned with their duty to God or their duty to their fellow man. They were just going through the motions, doing the religious duty. And so, Jesus was, I guess, impressed, you have to say, with this man understanding what he has to say. And notice what he says, You're not far from the kingdom of God. Compared to all those other scribes and all those other Pharisees who have been dogging me this entire Book of Mark, you're not far from the kingdom of God. In other words, you are getting it. You are seeing the point. You are seeing what I am after here, that God wants to make you right in your heart.
He wants you to love Him. He wants you to love your neighbor. And so, Jesus understands that this man is looking for something more than just the rituals he has always done. He's looking for this devotion to God. He wants to understand God more. He wants to seek after him. And so, it's important that we remember this. Now, the problem is not in and of itself religious devotion by itself. Those things are meant to point us to loving God. The things that we do in worship are designed for us to hear the word and to believe and to repent. But if we're not doing them for that reason, if we're not doing those things because we love God and because we want to better love our neighbor, then we're just doing it to go through the motions. Again, it's a heart issue. Am I believing we're that I am earning righteousness before God because I'm doing these things? Am I scoring points with God because I think these are the things that God wants? Or do I truly understand how much God has loved me in Christ? And so, I'm responding in gratitude. I'm going and I'm praising him in gratitude for what he has done for me.
Am I loving my neighbor because I realized that God first loved me in Christ? That's the question we need to ask ourselves, and that's an important application for this passage for us each and every day. Why are we doing the things that we do? Are we doing them out of a response? Because we love God, because he first loved us? Or because we somehow think that we can use those to climb the ladder to God? Well, we know the truth of the matter. We can't climb the ladder to God. And so, may we seek out Him and have our devotion and have our love pour out from His love, because that's what He desires us to do.
