What's the Heart of It All?

Now, it’s a great sound to hear everybody greeting each other and fellowshipping and making the connections. And for real, to all of our guests and those that don’t normally worship with us, really, really grateful that you’re here. And like I said a few minutes ago in the welcome time, we really, man, we had a great weekend with the students. I got to be up here for a couple of the sessions with them, got to dominate in some kickball. I won’t tell you who kicked it the farthest, but I didn’t kick it the shortest. I’ll tell you that. We had a really good weekend.

And I think when it comes to moments in our lives or experiences we have, we are obsessed with ranking them, right? Like, man, this was really good, but that time was better. Or, hey, you got to go to Agaves for the fajitas, but if you go to this food truck, it’s actually even better. Or we always want the greatest of something. We want to know the worst of something else. SportsCenter on ESPN, they’ve got the top 10 and they’ve got the not top 10. And the not top 10 is all the plays where it doesn’t quite work out. You know, the guy dives for the ball and misses it, you know. The top 10 is okay, but the not top 10 is a little bit better. Al, you know what I’m talking about, right? There we go.

We are obsessed with talking about great things. And that has even transpired into the greatest of all time debates. We call these the GOAT debates. Anybody ever heard the term the GOAT? Who’s the GOAT of something? I’m not talking about the goats that you guys have, Ludens. I’m talking about, like, who’s the greatest of all time? All right, so the greatest quarterback of all time. We’ll put it on the slide. The greatest quarterback of all time. Tom Brady or Patrick Mahomes? Who knows? You know, Tom Brady, he’s had two Hall of Fame careers. I don’t know. Or maybe even the greatest band of all time. Some would say the Beatles. Others may say the Rolling Stones. Any Stones fans in the room? Anybody ashamed to say they’re a Stones fan? Or even for us, as we’ve moved down here to Charleston, I’m wondering, what’s the greatest low country seafood dish of all time? Oyster roast or shrimp and grits? We have… All right, guys. Okay. I’m glad y’all get the point. Thank you.

We have always been asking these GOAT questions because we are obsessed with this stuff. And we are even obsessed with the GOAT questions about spiritual things. Guys like me, as pastors, we talk about who are the greatest preachers of all time. Who are the greatest evangelists of all time? The greatest pastors of all time. We are always asking these questions. And one day, a man approached Jesus with a GOAT question. And I think, I know, that will transform us a little bit more as we study that. So how about this? I’m going to pray for our time and then we’re going to look at a passage with a GOAT question. Pray with me.

Lord, thank You. Christ, there is no debate. You are the greatest of all time. You’re the greatest man of all time. If I can say it this way, the greatest God of all time. We know You’re one of only, but You’re the greatest idea of whoever anybody has ever thought of God. The greatest healer. The greatest teacher. You gave us Your Spirit. Holy Spirit, I am begging that You would get a hold of our time right now. God, it’s fun and it’s cute to talk about Patrick Mahomes or Tom Brady or oyster roast. But Father, it’s a totally different thing to think about what does it mean to live in respect to You and Your greatness. God, I pray You would get a hold of our time. That You would move me out of the way and that You would speak through this. And that at least one of us, God, would walk from death to life. That one of us would have the eyes of our heart opened. That one of us would be saved as they see You in Your glory and Your goodness. God, we do love You. And it’s in Your name that I pray. Amen.

Well, hey, if you have your Bibles, you can open them up or turn them on to Mark chapter 12. Mark chapter 12. The scripture will also be on the screen, but it’s better in your lap. So Mark chapter 12. I’m going to read verse 28 of the passage and then pull out of it. Mark chapter 12, verse 28. It says this. One of the scribes approached Jesus and he heard them debating and saw that Jesus answered them well. He asked Jesus, which command is the most important of all? The scribe comes up to Jesus and lays a goat debate on Jesus.

Now we have to figure out where we are in the gospel of Mark. We’ve been walking through the gospel of Mark for a few months now looking at Christ, who is the king, establishing His kingdom. And back in chapter 11, verse 27, it says that they, Jesus and His folks, came to Jerusalem. And as Jesus was walking the temple, the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders came up and they start peppering Jesus with questions.

Everybody is circling around this moment where Jesus, the traveling itinerant rabbi, teacher, and healer, and minister. He’s in the temple. He’s in the very epicenter of Judaism. And all these Jewish leaders and teachers and scribes encircle Jesus and start firing off questions. And He is just answering them one by one. And He is asking them to answer your question. And they are asking them to answer your question. word for instruction and law for the Old Testament.

And there’s a lot of instructions and laws. There’s actually 613 laws in the Old Testament that they have to narrow down. Of those 613 laws, 248 of them are positive. Do this, be that. And 365 of them are negative. Avoid this, don’t do that. That’s a lot you have to distill down into one major commandment, right?

There’s this guy, his name is Rabbi Hillel. He lived at the turn of the millennium about the time that Jesus was a boy. And this is the answer that He gave to that very same question. He said, what is hateful to you, do not to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah, while the rest is just commentary thereof.

This is a goat question for a reason. This is the greatest question of all time because it concerns the greatest being of all time. God Himself. You see, if God exists and is loving and holy and has personally revealed Himself to us, then a life well lived in response to Him is the greatest concern and hope we could ever have.

Do you believe that God exists? And He does exist. Do you believe that God is loving? He is loving. Do you believe that God is holy? He is. Do you believe that God has personally revealed Himself to us? Psalm 19 puts it this way, not Job 19. Psalm 19 puts it this way. The heavens declare the glory of God. The expanse proclaims the work of His hands. Day after day, they pour out speech. Night after night, they communicate knowledge. There’s no speech. There are no words. Their voice isn’t heard, but their message has gone out to the whole earth. Their words to the ends of the world.

In the heavens, He, God, has pitched a tent for the sun. It’s like a bridegroom coming from his home. It rejoices like an athlete running a course. It rises from one end of the heavens and circles to the other end, and nothing is hidden from its heat.

The Bible says that God has revealed Himself in a general way to all people through the things He has made. So we look at a sunrise, and we say, how could there not be a God? Or we look at the birth of a newborn child and say, there must be a creator, because this little bundle of joy must be a miracle.

God has revealed Himself generally in this world, but He’s also revealed Himself specifically through His word. God’s word is more desirable than gold. An abundance of pure gold, sweeter than honey dripping from a honeycomb. In addition, your servant is warned by them. In keeping them, there is an abundant reward. How else could you respond than to say these words? May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to You. Oh, Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Friends, there is a God. He exists. He loves us, and He wants a relationship of love with us. And He has revealed Himself in His word. The scribe’s question is the greatest of all time because it concerns the written word of God.

So he comes to Jesus, and he says, which command is most important? Jesus says this in verse 29. The most important is, listen, Israel. The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Jesus begins by quoting from the Shema. You’re going to say Shema with me?

Shema is simply the Hebrew word, listen. This incredible statement. In my Bible, it’s bolted. There’s a number beside it, and there’s an asterisk to identify the fact that this is taken from Deuteronomy chapter 6. The Shema would have been the kind of call to prayer. It would have been the everyday kind of cadence of the Jewish heart. It would have been the calibration system for somebody of the Jewish faith. It says, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. It would have been this ideal prayer. It would have been this truth you set your heart on, kind of like the Lord’s prayer is for us.

We say the Lord’s prayer after baseball games. We say the Lord’s prayer sometimes before meals. We say it at church. It would have been the same thing for them. Jesus starts His response by saying, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And when Jesus says one, He says that God’s oneness is not just about who He is internally, but who He also is exclusively. God is central to all things. If I can say it this way, God is the goat. Which would mean that He is the sun around which the entire universe revolves. He is most important. So why else? Why not concern yourself with a life well lived in response to Him?

What Jesus says next about the commands, I think, will offend some of us and relieve others of us. I truly believe that. I think this depends on how you feel about rules and Christianity. I think this will either offend the rule keepers or it will relieve the weary. Here’s what I mean. Oftentimes we want to make our faith, our Christianity so much about the rules. We want to make it about all the stuff that I do for God. We want to make it about the stuff that I’m supposed to avoid for God. We want to make it about the stuff that I got to keep myself clean from. We want to make it about how much money I’m going to drop in the offering plate or how often I attend Sunday school. We want to make it about the morals you have to keep up. And Jesus is going to, He’s going to slash all of that down.

But some of us are weary because we’ve been trying. We’ve been trying to keep up the rules. We’ve been trying to keep up the facade. We’ve been trying to keep ourselves clean. We’ve been trying to present well. We’ve been trying to get here as hard as we can. And we are just weary of rules. And Jesus says, oh, I’ve got good news for you. Because He puts it like this in verses 30 and 31. Love, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this, love your neighbor as yourself. There’s no other command greater than these.

Jesus takes the entirety of the law. He takes all of the Old Testament. He says it boils down to one word, love. He solves the goat debate about God’s word. He says, love God supremely. If you’re a note taker, I want you to write that down. Love God supremely. He says all four times. And He attaches it to heart, soul, mind, and strength. That’s the entire, it’s the entirety of your existence. From who you are inside to outside. From what you control to how you influence people around you to how you perceive things. Everything you do ought to be driven by love for God. You ought to love Him supremely. That means that God gets your full devotion, your full attention, your full affection, your full direction, your total being and existence.

And this is not new to me at all. Abraham Kuyper was a guy that lived back in the 1800s. He was a believer, Bible commentator, evangelist extraordinaire. He was even elected to be the prime minister of the Netherlands. And he wrote this. Oh, no single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest. And there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry mine.

Here’s the deal, folks. And don’t get it twisted. There is a God and He is good and He is central. And because He is central and good and God, He gets to claim every part of you, but not to abuse you, not to hurt you. He wants to love you and direct you. And like a good parent, there is discipline. But that discipline is always out of love. God gets full claim over you. I’m not going to be a good person. You might remember in Luke chapter 10, Jesus teaches the parable of the Good Samaritan. Does that sound familiar to anybody? The parable of the Good Samaritan. Somebody comes up to Jesus and says, “Hey, who’s my neighbor?” And Jesus says, “Let me teach you a parable about that.” And He begins talking about who or how the Jews were supposed to treat the Samaritans. For us, 2,000 years and 20,000 miles removed, that may not mean a whole lot. But for the people of Israel, the Samaritans were hated, despised, looked down on, distrusted, and intentionally avoided. Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself. Love your Samaritans as yourself. Love your enemies as much as you love yourself.” If you’re being honest with yourself before the Lord, I’d be curious, who are the Samaritans in your life? The folks that you might avoid? The people that you distrust? Bies? We could be real, right? Like this is, this ought to be the most real place that you are all week. Just be real. And to think, who are the Samaritans of my life? The people that I treat poorly because they have different political views, different family background, different religious preferences, sexual orientation, economic status, skin color, health issues. Who are the Samaritans for you? Because that’s your neighbor. Not just the guy that lives a quarter mile down the street or 10 feet away if you live in Poplar Grove. Who are the Samaritans, the neighbors of your life? Jesus says that loving those folks sacrificially is more important than any other religious activity you could do here at Saul. He says the entire law, the entire heart of obeying God is to love Me supremely and love people sacrificially. That’s the heart of it. Jesus’ point is that loving God and others is the core of what it means to follow Him. Jesus says that loving God and others is the core of what He is. And He says that loving God and others is the core of what He is. The scribe understood that Jesus was speaking straight. He understood the reality of things. He understood that loving God supremely and others sacrificially is the heart of the commands. And the scribe affirms Jesus and what He says. What Jesus says next, I would say, is even more crucial for us. Let’s finish the passage with verses 32 through 34. The scribe said to Jesus, “You are right, teacher. You have correctly said that He is one and there is no one else except for Him. And to love Him with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.” Wow, that is far more important than all burnt offerings or sacrifices. When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” No one else dared question Him any longer. Jesus affirms the scribe. He shuts down the goat debate. He puts a period on it. And then He puts a period on it. I just want to sit silent for a second. If you will, just close your eyes with me. I just want you, by yourself, before the Lord, ask God, God, do I love You supremely? Now ask Him, do I love others sacrificially? Now, God, if I don’t love You supremely and others sacrificially, You help me take that first step right now. Lord, I’m the first to confess that every ounce and fiber and moment of my being is not directed to You. God, I wish I could say that everything I ever do is for Your glory and Your glory alone, but Lord, I’m not going to lie to these people or to You or myself. God, I’m asking, begging, Lord, You would help me. God, help me not to make a rule out of love. But Father, as You have loved me, help me to love others as well. God, for those of us in the room that are being honest with You, God, thank You for that. Pray that You would speak with them in the next few moments as we close our service. God, for those in the room that don’t think they love You supremely, maybe have never loved You before. God, I pray You would get a hold of them and You would begin to woo and call them to Yourself, please. Help those who do not yet love You to see how deeply You love them and help them just to embrace and receive them. And God, for all of us, help us to love our Neighbors sacrificially, Lord, truly to give up our preferences and our conveniences and our comfort for their good, so that they would know the love of Yourself, Your own goodness and Your own glory and Your own kindness and Your love and Your mercy given to them in the Son. Please, Lord. God, this Easter season, I am begging. God, I’m begging You get a hold of us individually and corporately, and that You would do something here. Trust You to move. Thank You, Lord. Amen.