Mark 12:28-34 - The greatest commandment is to love God -

What is the appropriate way to offer a bull as a sacrifice for sin? Where are you supposed to bring the bull? What are you supposed to do with it? How is it to be killed? What parts are supposed to be burnt on the altar? Do you know all the regulations involved? Do you know that if you forget any of the regulations, that your life is at stake, you could be killed? Leviticus 1 tells us to do this to obey God. We want to obey God. But we don't know how.

Or maybe that’s too archaic, too ancient of an example. Let’s bring it up to today. What are we supposed to do when someone misuses God’s name, uses it as a cuss word? Do we scold them? Do we keep quiet in order to keep the friendship and maybe have an effect later? Do we just walk away? We want to obey God, but how? How about worship? What songs should we sing, and what songs shouldn’t we sing? Hebrews tells us to offer a sacrifice of praise, but how exactly do we do that? What are the regulations involved? How do we obey?

I’m going to assume that we want to obey God. If there is someone here that doesn’t really care about what God has to say to them, then we need to talk afterwards. There are some eternal consequences at stake.

But we do want to obey God, right? We want to do the right thing. We want to be the holy people God created us to be. We want to be sin-free. Just like the teacher in our passage this morning, we want to get it right. And most of us have heard God’s list of commandments, His Ten Commandments, probably as often as the teacher did. We want to get them done.

But maybe we’ll be surprised, like the teacher, when we hear what the most important commandment is. It’s not to not murder. It’s not to not commit adultery, even though we treat that one as the biggie. It’s not even to have no other gods but the one true God. It’s to love God. To love God.

We’ve just spent two weeks hearing about God’s love for us. We’ve heard that nothing can separate us from His love, not angels or demons or life or death or present or future or anything else in all creation. We’ve heard that God…is…love, and He cannot NOT love. We’ve let it soak for two weeks that God loves us, and He can do no other. That He loved us before we loved Him. That He showed His love by sending His Son to die on the cross.

And there’s a reason we heard about God’s love for the first two weeks. If we switched it around, if we spent time talking about how we need to love God, and then we heard about His love, we’d get it wrong. We’d think that we need to love God so that He loves us. That’s exactly wrong. God loves us. God loves us first. So, naturally, of course, in response, we love Him. And when we love Him, then we obey Him. That order. God loves us. We love God. We obey God. Mix this order up, and we’re not really obeying the way God wants us to obey.

The teacher in our passage wanted to obey. He’s been listening in on some conversations, some debates. The Pharisees have been debating with Jesus about how much taxes to pay and who they should pay it to. The Saducees have been debating with Jesus about marriage in heaven. And the teacher has been impressed. Jesus is doing well in the debates, he thinks. But he wants to get to the heart of the matter. He wants to talk about what he thinks is the most important. Verse 28:

Let’s cut to the chase. What’s the bottom line? If we can get the most important commandment right, then we’re off to a good start, and maybe the rest of the commands will fall into line.

But Jesus response is a little unexpected. With as much emphasis as we’ve put on the Ten Commandments, you’d think He’d pick one of those. Maybe the first one, not having any other gods. That sounds right. But it’s not. Jesus answers, in verse 29:

Stop a moment. What’s the most important thing that God wants? He wants us to love Him. To love Him. More love to Thee, O Lord, more love to Thee. Stop and let this sink in. Many of us will have a tendency to move too fast through this. We’ll hear "Love God" but we’ll think "obey God." We even have biblical support. Jesus said, in John 14:15:

But we can’t go to fast through this. See, it’s possible to have obedience without love, but it’s impossible to have love without obedience. Let me say that again. It’s possible to obey without loving. The Pharisees did it, and we can have a tendency to do it, too. We want to obey God, we want to. But we want to out of fear. We want to obey so that God doesn’t get us. That is not the kind of obedience God is wanting from us.

My parents are here this weekend, and it’s great to have them. We like to visit them, too, a couple of times a year. And I think they want us to come. But I don’t think they want us to come because we have to, because we’re afraid of what they’ll think if we don’t come and visit. I think that if fear, or duty, was the reason we came and visited, they’d tell us to just turn around and go home. Because they want us to love them.

That’s God. Of course He wants us to obey. Of course He wants us to carry out His commands. But first He wants us to love Him. To obey, not out of fear, but out of love. Remember last week, from 1 John 4:

And God wants us perfectly loving Him, with all of our hearts and with all of our souls and with all of our minds and with all of our strength.

But here’s where our minds can get off track again. We hear that the greatest command is to love God, and so we think, "Well, great, now I have to get that done. I’d better love God, I’d better try really hard to create the attitude of love somehow." But that’s not really love, is it? That’s duty. That’s obligation. Our love for God comes from somewhere else, rather than obligation.

Which brings us back to the last two weeks. We’re not going to love the Lord our God with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength until we know God’s love for us first. We’re not going to want to serve Him until we see that He wanted to save us.

Do you want to obey the first and greatest commandment? Do you want to love the Lord with all of your heart and soul and mind and strength? Then be loved by the Lord. First, accept the fact that Jesus came and died for you, and then came back to life for you. Accept this. Own this. Ground your life on this. Never move beyond this.

And keep coming back to God’s love. Stop what you’re doing in the middle of the day, and be loved. Bow your head over your meal, and accept His love. Crawl under the covers at night, kick them off in the morning, enjoying His love. At coffee time, take a moment to lift your eyes and smile at God, because He’s smiling at you. When you get in the car, be loved. When you enter your house, be loved. God is loving us, constantly, and we can more and more be aware of His love.

And something will happen. When you go back to what you were doing, when you lift your head at meal time, when you begin your day, you will be loving God. Remember His face beaming toward you? You’re face will be beaming towards Him. Your heart will be filled with gratitude. You’ll rejoice that He is close. You’ll thrill as you live under His gaze. He’ll be gazing towards you in love, and you’ll be gazing back.

You’ll be loving with all of your heart and soul and mind and strength. Jesus uses these four words to encompass all of us, all of who we are. Since God loves us, all of us, then we love God, all of us. Our minds love God, intellectually. It makes sense, it’s reasonable to love God, considering what He’s done for us. Our souls love God, considering it’s our souls that are most like God. We are spirit, like God is spirit, so not only with our minds, but with our spirits, we love God. But not just with mind and spirit, but also with emotions, our hearts, the place of desires. It makes sense, it’s rational to love God, but our love for Him is deeper than rational. We’re drawn to Him. We miss Him when we haven’t spent enough time with Him. We enjoy His company. We want to love Him.

So, we’re loving Him with hear and soul and mind, and then also strength. We show our love for God. Which brings us to verse 31. Jesus continues with His answer to the greatest command:

Jesus uses bad English here. He says there is no greater commandment than these. But the bad English makes a point. These two commands go together. The teacher asked what was the greatest command, and Jesus gives two answers. Love God and love neighbor. They go hand in hand. You can’t have the one without the other. In fact, Paul writes, in Galatians 5:14:

And now we can arrive at "If you love Me, you will obey My commandments." Once again, let’s not move past our love for Him. We ground our obedience on our love for Him. We love Him first, with all of our being, we take pleasure in our life with God so much that we naturally want to do what God wants us to do.

The teacher in our text has the order right. Verse 33:

To love is more important than offering sacrifices. To love is more important than obeying. Loving God comes first.

But loving God always, inevitably leads to obeying. There was a verse last week in our text, in 1 John 4:11, that said:

Since God loves us, and since we love God, we ought to love one another. We ought to show our love by our obedience. It ought to work. I've done enough home improvement projects that haven’t gone right, where I connected the electrical wires, flipped the switch, stood back and scratched my head and said, "It ought to work. The light "ought to be" on. The current ought to be flowing.

And if God loves us, and if we love God, then we also ought to love one another. We ought to love one another so much that we honor our parents, and every other authority in our lives. We ought to love human life. We ought to love our husbands and wives, and nobody else in the same way. We ought to love our neighbor, and not take from them or even covet what belongs to them. We ought to love each other so much we’re willing to tell the truth. We love God so much we obey.

Now, those commands are clear. We know the Ten Commandments. But what about situations like we began with, situations where we just aren’t clear, we just don’t know. Well, the early church father Augustine had a good teaching that follows Mark 12. He simply said, "Love, and do as you like." Love God, and everything else will fall into place. Love God, and the obedience will come. Love God, and we’ll know what to do. Love God and you’ll be able to see the flaws, the dangers with some choices. Loving God is a way of living. It creates patterns of life, and when those patterns of life are so normal to you, when loving God is so natural, the anything that doesn’t match God’s holiness will stand out. You’ll be able to see it.

Which means that, if there are gray areas, if you’re stuck, just not sure of what to do, maybe you haven’t spent enough time loving God lately. Maybe you’ve been focusing so much on getting the obedience done you forgot about the loving. Maybe we haven’t spent enough time being loved, which means we’re not loving back, which means we have a hard time obeying.

Are you stuck? You just are not sure which direction to go? Go back to the beginning. We start with God’s love for you. He loves you, remember. He can’t stop loving you. His Son died for you, and you know that, which means God loves you. Which means that you love God. It’s a joy to be in His presence. It’s a thrill to read the book He wrote. It’s a thrill to hear Him speak to your heart. The best way to spend the day is watching Him watching you.

Now, with God loving you and you loving God, what do your actions look like? What matches your love for Him? What contradicts your love for Him? Maybe, are you loving with your heart and soul and strength, but not your mind? Maybe, are you loving with your mind, but not your heart? The love we have for God will clarify, help us make the right decision.

And sometimes, if the decision is not clear, then the love makes it okay to move ahead without an answer. God loving you and you loving God is enough. You’ve thought it all out, you want to obey, you’re not sure, but you go ahead. And even if you’ve made the wrong decision, that doesn’t change God’s love for you.

God loves us, we love God, and we obey God. That order. The teacher in Mark 12 got it right. Verse 34:He He

And if we get the order right, if we love God, and if we show that love for Him by obeying, by loving, then we’re where we’re supposed to be. We’re living the way God wants us. And we know it. We’re happily confident. We’re not shook. We’re not distracted. Don’t you love the last line of our text?

Because our lives are sure, they’re pointed in the right direction. God loves us and we love Him. What could be better?