Series: The Pursuit – Love God

By Philipp Meinecke, Guest Preacher

Today is a special Sunday in many respects as there are several things coming together all at once. For one, according to the liturgical church calendar today is the first Sunday of Lent – a preparation time for Easter in about six weeks. It’s a season during which we give up certain things and replace them with a more intent focus on our relationship with God. If done right, its spiritual merits become visible not only during this time, but more especially when we allow the events around Easter to impact our lives in a fresh, new way.

For our church, this Sunday is special in that our kids are going to embark on a four-week study on the Gospel message and how this message relates to their lives. This will be a focused time of learning about the relational aspects of the Gospel message, a time that will be greatly enhanced by the various conversations that can and will be shared with their families at home.

As a church body, for us this Sunday kicks off a sermon series, which I pray will be a month of focused time spent on what it means to be a disciple – with all the denominational variants stripped away, with all the cultural interpretations put aside, and with all the traditional tenets weighed against what the Bible says. We want to use this time to allow the Bible to shape and conform our thinking, to inform our hearts, and then let the outflow bleed into our day-to-day actions.

Now, before we dig into our passage for today, I would like to share the format for us this month: over the next five weeks, Pastor John and I will address one of four aspects of what the Bible teaches us what a disciple is. As we will see in our passage today, there is an innate bent in all of us to take what God has intended and make it into something more manageable, measurable, and workable. Our default fall back in many areas of our faith experience is to turn them into a coded, systematized format without giving another thought to them. This then has ramifications on the larger scale, such as denominational differences on doctrine and practice. However, it also has much more personal consequences as well.

Consider these questions:

• How is a person saved? Specifically, what must he or she do or believe? Is there a process?

• What is the meaning of baptism? Which role does it play in the believer’s life?

• What is involved with “discipleship”?

• Are you truly following what Christ had in mind? Are you truly following the Christ or a version of him?

Our answer to these questions may vary depending on your upbringing, religious experience, and denominational preference.

So, in order for us to have a baseline from which all of us can work, we have set aside this series to discover together what the Bible has to say. Additionally, we have provided each one of you a devotional guide that will then take you deeper into the subject for that week. What I want to ask you is to take this exercise seriously and dig deeper into it yourself. With that being said, I also want to ask you one big favor: if at all possible, be here every Sunday for this series. We will record the messages so you can listen to them again and review what has been talked about, so you don’t lose the train of thought. But you will get the most out of this series when you consider its implications in the context of community. We need to have conversations, dream together, and encourage each other. Share what you are learning with others. Consider this time as a time of investment by the church and for the church. I ask you to pray for this season: for the kids, the youth, our families, and our guests. Ask God to speak to you, to challenge you, and to establish you.

I would like to start our time by giving you a biblical definition of what it means to be a disciple. It is an attempt of summarizing all that the New Testament has to say about Jesus’ teaching on discipleship and how the apostles lived it out in practice as well as in their writings: A disciple is someone who pursues Christ in relationship by loving God, uniting with believers, serving the world, and entrusting the Gospel.

Please note that discipleship is defined as a pursuit of a relationship with Christ. It describes both a process (a pursuit) with all its implications – my motivation, my intentionality, and my energy – and a goal (a relationship). This definition also answers the question of how this pursuit is to be lived out: by loving God (focus), uniting with believers (community), serving the world (mission), and entrusting the Gospel (message).

With the definition in place, let’s look at our passage for today. It is found in the Gospel of Mark 12:28-34. As you find your place there, I want to speak on the subject Loving God: My love relationship with him makes all other relationships possible.

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?” 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 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.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” 32 And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. 33 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.” 34 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.

Now, I understand that what I have shared so far can be a bit overwhelming. The definition alone would be enough to chew on, let alone navigating all the pieces that have been introduced so far. When I thought and prayed about the passage we should look at, there was only one passage that came to mind, which is the text I just read to you. Admittedly, it is fitting since it does talk about loving God explicitly.

However, this passage raises many questions in my mind, which I am sure have been triggered in your mind as well:

• How does this passage possibly relate to me and my circumstances today?

• If it has relevance, how could I possibly understand it?

• This passage seems to be talking about the Law but don’t we live under grace?

• I cannot relate at all to what is being said: sacrifices, offerings, commandments, kingdom, etc. – it all sounds very foreign to me. • This reads like expert-level religious talk – even if I tried, I couldn’t make sense of it all, because of what appears to be my limitations to understanding of Scripture.

• If what I do understand about this passage is true, then it feels burdensome, impossible, and unattainable. At the very least, it looks very time-consuming.

• Maybe you have read this passage so many times that you may have become so familiar with it that it doesn’t impact you. It is difficult for you to lay aside what you “know” it is saying an you cannot approach it with fresh eyes.

If these are some of the thoughts that are rumbling through your head, then you are in good company. You are not alone. I am sure you feel like you just walked into the middle of a movie, where you don’t quite understand the conversation, because you don’t know anything about the setting, the players or the storyline. Trust me, I get it.

So here is what I want to do. I want to show you how the text fills in the missing pieces for us, discover what the text is saying, and then draw application for you and me today.

I want to start with the one key truth from our text I want you to walk away with today: for the believer, loving God is not optional; rather, it is essential in that it defines, instructs, and enables all other relationships.

Let’s discover together how our text fleshes this truth out. We begin with the players in this story: we see the mention of four different groups of people:

1. Jesus (v.28)

2. The scribe or, as he is called in Matthew’s Gospel, a lawyer (v.28) – that is someone who is well-versed with the Law of Moses and regularly teaches what it says and how it is to be applied along with the traditions that had been handed down.

3. The third group that is also mentioned in verse 28, which is those, who had been disputing with Jesus prior to the scribe’s arrival (v.28)

4. Finally, there is everyone else, who wouldn’t dare to ask Jesus any more questions (v.34)

Next, here is the plotline: also in verse 28 we discover that this is a serious discussion between an expert of the Law and Jesus, whose teachings have led to a series of disputes with some of the other groups (v.28). In a nutshell, the lawyer asks Jesus, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” and Jesus answers that question by not only giving the most important law, but also the second most important law (vv.29-31). The lawyer validates Jesus’ answer and agrees with him (vv.32-33). The passage ends with Jesus affirming that the lawyer was not far from the kingdom of God and from that time on nobody else was asking him any more questions (v.34).

Now we need to fill in some of the background information in order for us to arrive at the meaning of the text. There are things that have happened beforehand that help us understand not only how we got to this conversation, but how this conversation becomes instructive for you and me today.

A cursory reading of Mark’s Gospel account will show you very quickly how the teachings of Jesus and the ministry of Jesus challenged the religious system of the day and the religious establishment promoting that system:

• In Mark 1:16-20, Jesus upsets the norm of the Rabbi-disciple relationship by calling people to follow him rather than them coming to him. • In Mark 1:40-45, Jesus touches and heals a leaper without defiling himself; what’s more, he sends the healed leaper to the priest to show that God was at work.

• In Mark 2:18-22, Jesus exempts His disciples from the practice of religious fasting

• In Mark 2:23-3:6, Jesus intentionally heals on the Sabbath and challenges the legalistic and ritualistic practice of the Pharisees.

• In Mark 4:10-12, Jesus reveals to His disciples why He was speaking to the religious elite in parables instead of talking to them straightforward.

• In Mark 5 & 6, Jesus proves His authority over the demonic realm, over sickness, and over death. He also transfers that same authority to His disciples to do the things He did.

• In Mark 7:1-13, Jesus publicly accuses the religious establishment of hypocrisy and of forsaking God’s law and turning the proper worship of him into a self-serving observance of men’s traditions.

• In Mark 8:11-21, Jesus refuses to give into the religious establishment’s demands and unequivocally warns His followers of their teaching and religious practice.

• In Mark 11:1-11, Jesus enters Jerusalem with a triumphant entry befitting a king.

• In Mark 11:15-19, Jesus violently cleanses the temple, charging the religious establishment of having turned the “house of prayer for all the nations” into “a den of robbers.”

• In Mark 11:27-33, Jesus is challenged by the religious leadership on the authority by which He is doing these things and He publicly embarrasses them by not giving into their demands

• In Mark 12:1-11, Jesus goes on the offense and speaks a scathing parable against the religious establishment, accusing them of their willful rejection of him as Messiah against better knowledge and proven authority.

Just to show you how systematized things had become in Jesus’ day, listen to this commentary:

“The rabbis counted 613 individual statutes in the law, 365 which were negative and 248 were positive. Attempts were made to differentiate between the “heavy,” or “great,” and the “light,” or “little,” commandments. The rabbis also made attempts to formulate great principles from which the rest of the law could be deduced. i ”

There was no way they could keep all of them, so they decided to focus on the “heavier” ones in order to satisfy God’s demands. It shows their preoccupation with religious rituals, ceremonies and tradition while totally missing the true heart of God’s revelation of himself. When Jesus challenged that, they “…were seeking to arrest him but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away. And they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians, to trap him in his talk” (Mark 12:12).

• First, they try to trap Jesus on the issue of paying taxes (vv.14-17). Jesus’ response left them marveling.

• Then, they try to trap Jesus on his stance of which portion of the OT had more authority (vv.18-23). Jesus response shows them that they neither knew Scripture, nor the power of God.

Having heard what was going on and “…seeing that Jesus had answered them well,” the lawyer asks Jesus, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” If Jesus answers it wrong – for example by emphasizing one at the expense of the others – they would have had him.

We have looked at the players, we have looked at the plotline, we have clarity on the background and setting. Now we want to look at the message for you and me:

Jesus answers the lawyer’s question, which commandment is the most important one with a portion of Scripture, every Jew would have recited twice every day: “‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 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.’” (v.30).

This portion of Scripture is taken from Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and it gives …

… the command – I am to love God.

… the motivation – because of who God is and the nature of my relationship with him.

… and the means – with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength – loving him.

The Motivation: “The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” In Hebrew this literally reads, “Yahweh, our Elohim, Yahweh is one.” For us, this may be at best a weird-sounding array of words, but to any Jew this is the penultimate doctrinal statement: The covenant-God, our creator God, the Covenant-God – he is one in number. It is a declaration that there is but one God, the one who created everything. It is a declaration of monotheism and so much more. It is a declaration of allegiance, of belonging, of security, and of strength. Why? Because this God this almighty, all powerful Creator-God – this God has revealed himself as the I am that I am, the God of covenant, who has bound himself to His people. We could probably spend another hour or so unpacking this, but I think you see the importance. My motivation behind loving God is that he has chosen to enter into relationship with me. And because of all that He has done to make that even possible, my only response is simply this: to love him back. I love him, because He first loved me.

The Command: the command is to be understood in light of this motivation: “you shall love the Lord your God …” I needed to explain the motivation at length, because otherwise the command cannot be fully understood. As is your experience, you cannot command a person to love someone else. Part of it has to do with our working definition of what love is. Part of it has to do with our inability to solicit an emotional response by simply ordering it. Mark’s choice of the word for “to love” describes the type of love that rests in a choice, not in an emotion. It’s the same word Jesus uses elsewhere when he said, “if you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15) – here, too, Jesus is not saying that I keep the commandments so I can earn his love. No, out of the overflow of my love for him, the natural outflow of that will be that I do what he says.

The Means: how am I to love God? “…with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’”

• With all your heart: in the Hebrew understanding, the heart is the core of who a person is (his identity). In Mark 7:20-23, Jesus explains to His disciples just how important the issue heart is when he said, “… “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” If then we are to love God with all of our heart, we want to take special care of its condition before God – so that we can love him with all of it, not just the portions that are “clean enough.”

• With all your soul: I am to love God from the core of my being, but also with my all of my emotions. My soul can be stirred up (Acts 14:2), it can magnify the Lord (Luke 1:47), it can be sorrowful (Matt.26:38), it can love (emotionally, Mark 12:30). I want to bring all of my affections to bear when I love him. I love him when I “feel like it” and when “I don’t feel like it.” I love honestly with all that I am.

• With all your mind: I am to love God with all of my thoughts, my intentions, my knowledge, my memories, my will, and my purposes. I love the fact that we serve and worship a God where we can engage our minds fully and not check them out at the door. Our faith is one that engages the noblest of minds as well as the simplest. But when it comes to loving him, I am to bring all of my faculties to bear.

• With all your strength: this speaks to energy, effort, and function. I am to be stretched in my love for him – never content with what I bring now.

In short – how do I love God? With every aspect of my being – all day, every day, all of it. No area in my life disengaged. All of it brought to the table. Why? Because He is my God.

Let’s bring back our key truth one more time: for the believer, loving God is not optional; rather, it is essential in that it defines, instructs, and enables all other relationships (x2)

It is not optional. Rather, it is commanded, and it is the only proper response to what he has done to make relationship with him possible. This answer would have sufficed. But Jesus goes a step further with the lawyer when he gives him a second command: “The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (v.31). Please don’t miss this. Jesus starts by properly relating to God and then he moves to properly relating to my neighbor. He brings both commandments together and says, “There is no other commandment greater than these.”

If I understand and apply the first command, I can then fully follow through with the second. In Luke 10:25-27, Jesus answers the question who my neighbor is: it’s not just fellow Israelites, resident aliens, and those who had converted to Judaism. A neighbor is someone with whom you have any dealings at all.

When I love God properly, I can relate to others perfectly. In other words, my relationship with God is so essential in that it defines, instructs, and enables all other relationships. It shows me who my neighbor is and tells me how to love him; it brings all other relationships in the right order of priority; it allows me to deal with people graciously; it invites me to relate to others with intentionality; and it invites me to love them with the same love with which I am loved myself.

The lawyer agreed with Jesus’ response: “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, 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.”

When I love God properly and when I relate to others perfectly, I will have done more than any whole burnt offerings and sacrifices can accomplish.

Let’s bring all of these pieces back together. We began with a definition of what a disciple is: A disciple is someone who pursues Christ in relationship by loving God, uniting with believers, serving the world, and entrusting the Gospel. The choice of words is key. I am pursuing a relationship with Christ. That is my objective. I want to look at his life and watch how he related to his Father. There are several other arenas in which that pursuit takes place. Today, we looked at this first one: I am pursuing Christ by loving God. As believer, loving God is not optional; rather, it is essential in that it defines, instructs, and enables all other relationships. As you guessed already, there are plenty of ways in which we could go deeper. Over the course of this week, I want to invite you mull over what we have talked about and personally take it deeper by spending five of the seven days in our devotional guide aptly entitled The Pursuit. Take your time and process this topic of Loving God.

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Walter W. Wessel, “Mark,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew, Mark, Luke, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 8 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984), 736–737.