Mark 12:28-34 Letting Your Faith Show 11/4/18-am All Saints Sunday

Transcription

1 Mark 12:28-34 Letting Your Faith Show 11/4/18-am All Saints Sunday Our passage from the Gospel of Mark today records a time when the Pharisees were trying to trip up Jesus with their questions - The topic heading in your Bible may call this section The Greatest Commandments The Pharisees in Jesus day had determined that the Jews were obligated to obey all 613 commandments in the law - There are 365 negative commands which might be called the Thou shalt nots - The other 248 are all positive - Things that are excellent to do John MacArthur notes that, Those laws were also divided into heavy and light categories, with the heavy laws being more binding than the light ones. The scribes and rabbis, however, had been unable to agree on which were heavy and which were light. 1 One of the Pharisees favorite exercises was discussing which of these divine commandments was the greatest - And here Mark records a time they invited Jesus to join that debate If we only had Mark s account, we might think that this Pharisee s question was sincere - But Matthew 22:35 records, And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 2 The lawyer may have intended to trap or test our Lord - But his response reflects that he was impressed with Jesus answer Our Lord quoted Deuteronomy 6:4-5, which is the great affirmation of faith that even today pious Jews recite each morning and evening - It is called the Shema from the first word of the verse which means hear Then He quoted Leviticus 19:18, which emphasizes love for one s neighbor - Jesus taught that love is the most important thing 1 The MacArthur Study Bible, John MacArthur author and editor, 1997, (Word Publishing, Nashville, TN) 2 Scripture quoted has been taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, 2001 by Crossway (Good News Publishing, Wheaton, IL) Page 1

2 In the words of Romans 13:8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. Warren Wiersbe said, If we love God, we will experience His love within and will express that love to others. We do not live by rules but by relationships, a loving relationship to God that enables us to have a loving relationship with others. 3 Jesus said much about love - In addition to today s passage He taught us that as His disciples we are to be defined by love - John 13:34-35 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. If you have a Life Application Bible, you have access to a great chart called What Jesus Said About Love which pulls together all 21 different passages where He taught about love - They are obviously more numerous than could be covered in a single message Yet, in spite of all Jesus taught about love - Today s passage pretty much sums up what we are supposed to do with it - And who we are supposed to be - If we love God first, and secondly, we love our neighbors; we cover most of the bases Loving God means that we are totally devoted to the Lord - Notice that Jesus said, 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. We are to love God with our entire being - With our heart, the seat of our emotions - With our soul, the only thing we will take with us into eternity - With our mind, our entire intellect - And with all our strength, every last bit of us Our emotional response should be tempered by loving God - Our reasoning, everything we think, should be guided by our love of God 3 Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, 2003, (David C. Cook, Colorado Springs, CO) Page 2

3 Our love of God should be what we nurture our souls with - It should be everything about us, down to our very last ounce of strength And secondly, Jesus said, You shall love your neighbor as yourself - Even if it is inconvenient - Even if you don t even like that neighbor - Even if loving that neighbor will cost you something - Even if it pushes you out of your comfort zone - In all those places, Jesus says love your neighbor as yourself - That is pretty radical discipleship The world buys into the world s type of love - If you re worldly, loving someone super attractive, someone totally popular, or someone you might profit from is fine - But notice that in every case the worldly person hopes to gain something The Believer who is loving the way Jesus commands is loving others because they need the love of God in their life - It is the exact opposite - The Believer loves with hopes of giving something Dr. Barbara Lundblad tells about a friend of hers who s a pastor in New England - How s your building program going? Dr. Lundblad asked her friend one day Oh, we ran out of money before we got to the worship space, the pastor said - Dr. Lundblad thought to herself, What could be more important than the worship space? - Fortunately, she kept that thought to herself We renovated the basement, the pastor went on to explain - We created a shelter there for homeless men - We put in new showers and renovated the old kitchen - The basement had been just storage, and although there was a bathroom there, it was small and ancient Then the pastor added these very moving words, On the Sunday before the shelter opened, the worship service began as usual in the sanctuary - When it came time for communion, the people carried the bread and the cup downstairs to the basement Page 3

4 The whole congregation gathered around the empty beds - They passed the bread and the cup around the circle - Then this pastor concluded: That night the shelter beds were full, but I guess the worship space still needs a lot of work. 4 That sounds like a Church that is living out the command to love - As every Church should be - I am not advocating that we convert some of our space into a homeless shelter But there certainly are hurting people in our community - Some of them are lonely. - Some of them have emotional problems - Some of them are single moms or dads who are overwhelmed by the needs of their family - Some are struggling with some form of addiction They are all our neighbors - And they all need to feel the love of Christ extended to them - We are to love God, and love our neighbors - And when we do that it is not the type of love we keep to ourselves Did you know that as United Methodists we have a mission statement that has been set for us - General Conference is a meeting that brings together all the United Methodist Churches in the world every 4 years It is made up of 1,000 delegates, of whom half are clergy and half are lay persons - They have the authority to change our denomination s laws, which we call The Book of Discipline In 2000, they decided we all should have the same mission statement - It was The mission of the church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ - In 2008 they expanded it to read, The mission of the church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world Personally, I prefer the words of Jesus, to the words of the Methodist rulebook - But He said basically the same thing in the passage we call The Great Commission 4 The Rev. Dr. Barbara K. Lundblad, When Pentecost Ends Too Soon, Sermons.com Page 4

5 Matthew 28:19-20 record His words, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. If we are serious about doing what Jesus has called us to do, we will be serious about making disciples of all nations and teaching what Jesus has commanded When we love God first, love our neighbors, and love each other the way Jesus loves us; we are doing just that - Making disciples is about demonstrating that we are a disciple - And teaching what Jesus has commanded is all about letting others see Jesus teachings as work in our lives Actions speak louder than words - You can tell someone you love him or her as many times as you want, but until your behavior coincides with that, the other person will probably not believe you 5 Joanne and I heard Tony Campolo speak during a vacation week we took so we could attend the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting, years ago - I may not agree him theologically all the time, but he is a gifted speaker and story teller He told of a deacon who wanted some place he could share the love of Christ - The youth in his church led a worship service once a month in a nursing home - So one month the deacon went with them He stood in the back of the room - The young people were performing and this old man in a wheel chair rolled his chair over to where this deacon was standing, took hold of the deacon s hand and held it all during the service - That was repeated the next month and the next and the next Then they went one Sunday afternoon and the man wasn t there - The deacon asked the nurse in charge, What happened to that man? 5 Google result, source unknown Page 5

6 Oh, she said, He s near death. He s just down the hall, the third room. Maybe you should go in and visit him. He s unconscious, though. The deacon walked down and went into the room - It was a typical nursing home setting - There was a chair, a bed, and a man with life support attached to him, near death The deacon went over and took hold of one of the old gentleman s hands - He felt moved to say a prayer - When he said Amen, the old gentleman in the bed unexpectedly squeezed his hand in recognition - The deacon was so moved by that squeeze of the hand that he began to tear up As he was leaving the room, he bumped into a woman who said, He s been waiting for you - He said he did not want to die until Jesus came and held his hand - I tried to tell him that he would get to see Jesus when he got to heaven But he said, No. Once a month Jesus comes and holds my hand and I don t want to leave until I have a chance to hold the hand of Jesus once more. 6 - When we show the love of God in this world, we very often are being Jesus for them Today is All Saints Sunday - Here in the Protestant Church a Saint is any believer - It is also what it means if you find the word Saint in the Bible - All Saints Day is November 1st, and the Sunday is the first Sunday after the 1st It is a time when we remember Saints who have touched our lives - Other Christians who have influenced us - They are people who have demonstrated the love of God in a very real way in our lives We too are on our way to Sainthood when we love God first, love our neighbors, and love each other the way Jesus loves us - And my vision for our Church is for us to be so totally in love with God and our neighbors that others want that same relationship that we have with the Lord 6 Tony Campolo as quoted in A Rock Thrown by King Duncan, Sermons.com Page 6