28 And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all?
29 And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:
30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
32 And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he:
33 And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.
34 And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. And no man after that durst ask him any question.
Introduction
Perhaps you have heard the story about the preacher who was delivering a deep theological sermon one day when his wife scribbled a note on a piece of paper, folded it up, and handed it to the usher who delivered it to the pastor while he was preaching. The pastor saw on the note the word “KISS.” He thought that was nice of his wife to send a love note while he was preaching and it distracted him momentarily, but he got back into that deep theological subject. It wasn’t long until she pulled out another piece of paper, scribbled on it, and handed it to the usher, and he delivered it again. Once more, it was the same word “KISS.” The pastor thought it was nice, but surely she could wait until after the service was over! He tried to get back into the subject, but before the sermon concluded, she wrote another such note and delivered it to him. Afterward he said to her, “Honey, I appreciate your feelings and thoughtfulness, but surely you could refrain from sending me kisses until I am through preaching.” She said, “Kisses? KISS doesn’t mean kisses. It means Keep It Simple, Stupid.”
There is a need for the preacher to keep it simple. But that same need for simplicity is in every area of life. One of our attorneys told me a story about when he was in law school years before and was given an assignment to write a paper. When he turned the paper in, he thought it was rather good. But he got a “B” on the paper when he expected an “A.” He went back to talk to the professor. The professor said, “Here is an ‘A’ paper. Take both papers, this one and yours, and read them side by side and make a comparison. Then you will understand why he received an ‘A’ and you received a lower grade.” The student went home and carefully read those two papers. He came back to the professor and said, “I still don’t understand. We covered exactly the same material. Point for point, we said the same thing.” The professor said, “Yes, but it took you twice as long to say it as it did this fellow.”
The attorney said he learned that day that the grade goes to the simpler. It is almost always that way in life. Life is enriched not by complicating it, not by cluttering it, but by simplifying it. Even in our faith and our relationship to the Lord, the more we can simplify, the better life becomes.
I think of that time when Dr. Carl Barth, the great Swiss theologian, came to the United States. He was talking one day with theological students. They asked him this question: “Dr. Barth, in your lifetime you have read and studied as deeply into theology as any man who has ever lived. Could you summarize for us in just a few sentences what you believe to be the essence of Christianity?” And those students waited anxiously for some profound theological truth to come from his lips. The old man said to them, “Yes, I think I can summarize the essence of Christianity in just a few words. It is this: Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
The wiser we become, the more we simplify life. Life so easily gets cluttered for every one of us. People who despair because their calendars are so crowded and their duties so demanding have to put a premium on simplicity. Otherwise our lives are at the disposal of others.
Jesus was the great simplifier. There is an example of that in the passage in Mark 12. Jesus had been questioned all day long by his opponents. First came the Pharisees and the Herodians wanting to know if they should pay taxes to Caesar. Then came the Sadducees asking Jesus about the resurrection. He answered each one of them profoundly, wisely, simply. A scribe saw that Jesus had answered these other men well, and so he had a question of his own: “Lord, out of all of the commandments of God, which one is the most important?”
Now you may wonder why a man would ask Jesus a question like that. Well, the reason is that the religious leaders of Jesus’ day had so multiplied the basic Ten Commandments of God until they had cluttered up religion almost to the point that no person could understand it or live it. They had over 613 different laws that they had taken out of the original Ten Commandments. Three hundred and sixty-five of those were negative. Two hundred and forty-eight of them were positive. Three hundred and sixty-five things “thou shalt not do.” Two hundred and forty-eight things “thou shalt do.” So many rules. So many regulations that religion had become a burden to people. It had become weights instead of wings. The people longed to be free from the legalism and restrictions of their day, while the rabbis often sat around and discussed which of the commandments is first.
Really, the question is, “Which kind of commandment is first?” You see, they divided up these commandments. They were trying to classify them so they could understand them better. So some commandments they considered weighty and important commandments; others were considered lighter and less important. Some of them were negative; some were positive. Some of them had to do with ethical behavior, and others had to do with ceremonial activities. Some were moral and some were ritualistic.
So their question was really this, “Which kind of commandment is first in the heart and mind of God?” Well, Jesus gave a remarkable answer. His answer was this: “Hear O, Israel, the Lord our God is one God. There is none other but he. And you are to love him with all of your heart and your mind and your soul and the second is like unto that; you are to love your neighbor as yourself.”
What Jesus did in that statement was to bring together two widely separated commandments from the word of God and to unite them together saying, “This is the most important.” No rabbi had ever done that before. He had never taken one from this part of scripture and one from that part of scripture and joined them together to make one great command.
The first that Jesus picked was found in Deuteronomy 6:4-5: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” That was the creed of Israel. That was their fundamental confession of faith. God is just one God. There are not many gods. There are not multiple gods. There is only one and man’s first duty is to love him. We are to have no other Gods before him.
Then Jesus reached over in the book of Leviticus 19:18 and found the command that said, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” And Jesus welded them together as though they were opposite sides of the same coin. On one side it read, “Love God with all your heart and mind and soul.” On the other side it read, “You are to love your neighbor as yourself.” And Jesus said, “That is it. That is the first and great command.”
When this man saw how wise Jesus was, he commended him saying, “Lord, you are exactly right.” There is only one God. And to love him with all of your heart, mind, and soul and to love your neighbor as yourself is the supreme duty of man. And then Jesus responded to him saying, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
With that, the people were through questioning Jesus, but Jesus was not through. He had a counter question. He wanted to impress upon those who had been questioning him that he was in fact the Messiah, the Son of God. So he asked, “Why do you scribes say that the Christ is David’s son?” You see, they believed that the Messiah was going to be a descendent of David and that he would establish a political kingdom in Israel and rule from there. They looked for a military Messiah with a political bent. Then Jesus quoted Psalm 110:1: “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.” He then asked the people, “Why do you say the Messiah is going to be the Son of David, when David himself by the Holy Ghost [meaning by inspiration the Spirit of God gave him this truth] said that the Messiah is going to be his Lord? How can you say he is going to be David’s son, when David said he is going to my Lord?”
Jesus was putting these men into a position of having to recognize that David himself had declared that the Messiah was not going to be a political ruler. He would not let the crowd go until he had declared plainly to them that he was the Messiah and he had inspired scripture to back it up.
Now you put all of that together and you have a great simplification of our faith by the Lord Jesus. And here is what Jesus says to you and to me in this confused and cluttered-up world in which we live. He gives us those things that will enable us to simplify our lives.
First, Jesus said there is only one God to worship. “Hear O, Israel, the Lord our God is one God and there is none other.” Second, there is only one law to live by. You are to love God with all of your heart, mind, and soul, and you are to love your neighbor as yourself. One God to worship, one law to live by. And then almost parenthetically—almost as if he put a postscript on all of this—Jesus said there is one book to believe. If you want to know the truth, read inspired scripture. See what David said by the Holy Ghost. David the writer; the Holy Spirit, the inspirer. Jesus is saying, “See what he says and then you will know I am the Savior. I am the Messiah. You ought to follow me and trust in me.”
Jesus said there is one God to worship. There is one law to live by. There is one book to believe, the Holy Scripture. With that you have the great simplification of life from our Lord Jesus. With all of the confusion and the complexities and the clutter of life today, surely every one of us can grasp those basic truths and can have enough material to live by and to guide us as long as we live. One God to worship. One law to live by. One book to believe. That’s what Jesus talked about here. How our lives would be blessed if we could reduce them down to those essentials, to those basics in life.
1. There is one God to worship.
That is not a statement against atheism because atheism was not even a consideration in the minds of people in that day and time. Nor is it a consideration in the Bible. The Bible makes only one statement concerning atheism and it is this: “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Psalm 14:1). The Bible begins with a great affirmation: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” and thereafter the nonexistence of God is never considered. The reason is that God is so self-evident that anybody who has eyes to see, ears to hear, and a mind with which to think must know that God is.
The command is not against atheism; the command is against idolatry. Martin Luther said, “Men will either have God or idols.” The world into which Jesus came was a world of idolatry. The choice in life is not between one God or no God. It is between one God and many gods. We are instinctively religious. If we do not worship the one true God, then we are bound to manufacture in our own minds, if not with our hands, other gods to worship. And there are gods according to our needs and according to our desires. We fashion gods like unto ourselves. And thus we miss the true God altogether.
That’s why Paul spoke of some in his day and said concerning them, “Their God is their belly.” That sounds rather crude to us, but it is going on all the time. They live for their appetites. They live to gratify the sensual pleasures of life. There are those who live for things, money, and material possessions. That is their god. A house, a car, clothes—whatever else. There are those who live for pleasure, and the soul objective of their life is to find something exciting and thrilling to occupy their time. They put anything and everything in front of the one true God. And thus their lives are cluttered, confused, and frustrated and are destined to remain so until they recognize that there is one God to worship. Find him in the Lord Jesus. Bow before him as king and Lord, serve him with all of your heart, and you will simplify your life.
2. There is one command to live by.
There is not only one God to worship, there is one command to live by. The command is the command to love. You are to love God with all of your heart, and your mind, and your soul. You are to love your neighbor as you love yourself. You see, Jesus was saying to us that the command that is most important is the moral and ethical command, as opposed to the commands that have to do with ceremony and ritual. The scribe in this passage recognized that. He said, “Lord, I see that loving God is more important than all of the burnt offerings and all of the sacrifices.” It is so easy for us to think of our relationship to God in terms of ritual and ceremony: going to church, dropping money in the plate, studying our Sunday school lesson, going through the motions and rituals of religion—when there is no heart in it at all.
What God is interested in is your heart. Remember what the Lord said to King Saul. He had commanded Saul to slaughter some animals that had been captured in battle. Saul instead decided to offer them as a sacrifice unto God. God came to him through the prophet Samuel and said, “Saul, don’t you know that it is better to obey than to sacrifice?” Obedience is always more important than sacrifice: Psalm 40:6-8, 51:16, 50:7-15; 1 Samuel 15:22; Isaiah 1:11-20; Jeremiah 7:22-23; Hosea 6:6; Micah 6:6-8. In these passages obedience is set forth as better than sacrifices, and sacrifices are worthless apart from obedience.
Don’t ever think that things are right just because you laid something in the plate or because you came and sat in the house of God. That outward expression of religion is not what is most important; what is most important is that from the depths of your heart, you love God and you serve God and you obey God. That’s what Jesus was saying.
David said something very similar to that in Psalm 51:16-17 as he was making his great confession and repenting of sin. He said, “For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” You bring a sacrifice without a heart repentant of sin, and God will turn his nose up at it. He would have done so to David and he would to you. The thing that matters most to God is that your heart be right, that you love him with all of your being—heart, mind, and soul. We must love him with the totality of our being—with all of our powers, all of our potential. Love for God is not mere sentiment. It is not emotion. It is action. It is the total self-giving to him.
In his interesting little book on Christian fundamentals, This I Believe, Louis L. Austin writes: “The Lord gave us two hands. One to hold to him, the other to our fellow man.” Two-handed religion. Loving God with heart and mind and soul—loving your neighbor as yourself. They go together and you cannot separate the two. Love is not mere sentiment and emotion. It is actively seeking the wellbeing of others. Jesus said, “That’s the one law to live by.” It is the royal command. It is the way to fulfill the law. It is the way to simplify life.
3. There is one book to believe.
One God to worship. One command to live by. Add to that, one book to believe. Jesus wanted to impress upon them that he was the Messiah, the Son of God—not just the Son of David. So he asked, “How do you say that I the Messiah am the Son of David when David said by the Holy Ghost [if your Bibles are open and you are marking them, then I want you to mark Verse 36] that the Messiah would be his Lord?” To substantiate in their minds that he was divine, Jesus quoted scripture: Psalm 110:1. And he said concerning that scripture, “It is inspired scripture, for David wrote it by the Holy Ghost.”
This book is the most unique book in the whole world because it is a combination of the work of men and the work of the Spirit of God. David wrote Psalm 110, but he wrote it by the Holy Ghost. Meaning that the Spirit of God moved upon his spirit, enlightened his mind, gave him truth that he couldn’t find any other way, and impressed him to write that down. That became inspired Holy Scripture, and Jesus built his life on that. And he said to those who listened that day, “If you are wise, then you will build your life upon that same inspired truth that I am the Son of God, as well as the Son of David.”
Knowing the Bible can clear up a lot of the confusion and the clutter of life. I read the comic strip Peanuts sometimes. Lucy was frightened one day. It had rained and rained and rained and she was afraid that there was going to be another flood like in Noah’s day. Charlie Brown calmed her fears by telling her that God had promised in the Book that there would never be a flood. And she responded to him by saying, “You have taken a load off my mind.” And he said to her, “Good theology has a way of taking our mind off the pressures of our time.” Good theology has a way of doing that.
You see, if you can worship one God, and live by one law, and believe one book, you can get your life together. I don’t understand all of this, but I stand on it. It doesn’t need me to vindicate it. It is the truth whether you believe it or not. And you say, “Preacher, that is old fashioned.” Well, so is the sun; without it, men grope in darkness. So is the air, but without it, men gasp for breath. So is water, but without it, people go mad for a drink. And we learn in this complex age, with all of our technology, that we still live by the simple things like the sun, and the air, and the water—and by the word of God.
One God to worship. One command to live by. One book to believe. That’s paring life down to the bone. That’s cutting it as close as you can get it. That’s simplifying life. That’s what Jesus did.
Jesus said to that scribe, “You are not far from the kingdom.” Do you know why he said that? Because the man was open. But just because he was near the kingdom didn’t mean that he was in it. He had to act on what he had just understood about the Messiah. He had to receive Jesus as Savior. He was near, but he was not in. He needed to take one more step, and Jesus understood that the last step was the biggest one. He had to open his heart and say, “Jesus, I accept you as my Lord and as my God. Not just as the son of David, but as the Son of God himself—divine, redeemer, Lord.” I don’t know what the man did; we are not told. I know this—if he walked away from Jesus, then he walked away sorrowfully because he walked away from the truth. And so will you. Do you know that impression without confession leads to depression? To be impressed by God and to not receive that and confess to it always causes us to go away sorrowfully.
Some of you are missing the best in life, the joy of life, the simple good life. And your life is cluttered with junk because you don’t have one God to worship, one command to live by, and one book to believe. Come to Christ. Let him be Lord and Master of your life and you will know life at its best.