That First Commandment (Part A)

Things in Christ are supposed to be better and stronger, which is one of the reasons why, when another Christian disappoints us, it seems to be doubly painful, because we expected so much more from them, being sons of light, children of righteousness, yet we're still saddled with this flesh. And in those instances is when we must love nonetheless, and that's one of the reasons why I didn't want to do that.

I want to deal with love, because it is painful to my flesh, not to my spirit. A spiritual man loves everything God has to say, loves everything that God reveals. We are in the Gospel according to Mark chapter 12, and if you have your Bibles, please open to the 12th chapter. We will take verses 28 to 34. Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment, and the second is like it, is this, You shall love your neighbor as yourself, there is no other commandment greater than these. So the scribe said to him, Well said, teacher, you have spoken the truth, for there is one God, and there is no other but he, and to love him with all your heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself is more than all the 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, but after that no one dared question him. The first commandment, that first commandment. In preparation I found myself wanting to talk about the devotional element of this section without really getting into the love part of the neighbor.

My flesh wanted to skip that. It's easier to love God than some people. And you can give bad reasons to God why you think you should be excused and that won't work well. I guess another question you can ask yourself is, Can you give a reason why you should be loved by God? Why should God love you? What's about you to love from a mighty God? And then ask the question, Can you give a reason why you think you should be excused knowing that God loves you? Why should you be excused from loving those whom you don't like, who may even be wicked?

What does that mean? How does that all work out? How do I love people who are wicked without justifying their wickedness? Of course the Holy Spirit will lead us through those things.

He will balance it for us. Bottom line, I think it's very simple. In loving the wicked, you look for an opportunity to be useful to save them. Otherwise you have to deal with them as they are in their wickedness.

Otherwise no justice could be carried out. There is no reason that God should love us except God is love himself and takes an entire Christian life to approach that, to develop it. We obey God not to be loved, but because we are loved. That's why we obey God. We know we're loved. It's a spiritual response to a spiritual thing.

All of these things are superlative when you put them next to regular things. The things in Christ are supposed to be better and stronger, which is one of the reasons why when another Christian disappoints us, it seems to be doubly painful because we expected so much more from them being sons of light, children of righteousness, yet we're still saddled with this flesh. And in those instances is when we must love nonetheless. And that's one of the reasons why I didn't want to deal with love. Because it is painful to my flesh, not to my spirit.

A spiritual man loves everything God has to say, loves everything that God reveals. It is that old nature that rears its ugly head and defies everything that is righteous, any chance that it gets. And I spend my life, as every Christian does, fighting back. Paul told the Galatians, you know, the flesh and the spirit, they're irreconcilable. These two are contrary to one another. They war without end. And you have no right to get tired of fighting the flesh. It's not to your benefit, that's why. The most important command, not first in listing, there are others listed, the Ten Commandments, you shall have no other God before you.

It's not talking about as being listed, it's talking about its value. Of course, within that first commandment is this commandment. So we have a lot to talk about this section, from this section, verse 28, Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that he answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? Well, the first part of verse 28, Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together. Of course, Christ had faced this coalition of attacks with questions and challenges, and he beat them all back using scripture. The scriptures that they were expected to know and honor and carry out, they did not. Well, this particular scribe, who belonged to that scholastic group of Jews concerning the word of God, he had witnessed this and he was impressed.

He was impressed by what he heard. Of all those that challenged the Lord, this one, this scribe, seems sincere with his question. The others were loaded questions. They were questions designed to discredit the Lord, if not get him arrested, as they eventually will. These scribes and these Pharisees and Sadducees and the Herodians, these lawyers of the law, these scholars had endless debates about all sorts of things from the Bible, the Old Testament, when the New Testament did not yet exist, and they questioned themselves, Which is the first commandment?

Which one has the most weight? They counted 613 commandments of Moses, just Moses, and they would debate them. In the early days of the Jews, the ceremonial laws were deemed most important, but then as the people began to drift from serving the Lord and into idolatry and with that their morals would follow, the prophets, the writing prophets, then penned their revelations for others to read, and then it shifted the weight from the ceremonial laws to the moral laws, to behavior. What is in our scripture that is important right now? Well, if you lived in the days of Jezebel, it was dealing with the idolatry.

All of a sudden you weren't arguing about, you know, which holiday is deeper than the other. Now you were discussing, we are supposed to obey the Ten Commandments, and the prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah and all the rest, they dealt with these things. In the day of Christ, though, now what was happening? They were debating the Sabbath, they were debating tithing and dietary laws and purification rights, while neglecting the more vital aspect of faith, of beliefs, justice, morality, mercy, truth, and faith.

These things we're susceptible to also. We can begin to argue the silliest things as Christians and pass right by the essential things, that first commandment. Jesus, in speaking about this kind of thing concerning these scholars in Matthew 23, said, woe to you.

You can't overemphasize that woe coming from this one, this Jesus Christ. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, you're actors. You act like you're holy, you act like you're interested in God, you act this way, but you're not. That's what he means by hypocrites. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you pay tithe and mint and niece and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith, these you ought to have done without leaving the others undone.

Yeah, you're supposed to follow all of the law, the ceremonies, the Jews were to follow those ceremonies, but they were not supposed to leave the weightier matters of the law undone, which is what they were doing and is why they were such a problem and could not receive their Messiah, because they were faking it. To this day, some do suppose that tithing or good deeds satisfies their obligations. There, I gave a lot of money to that church, I don't have to do anything else. Or there, I do this to the poor and I do this at the food pantries or whatever it is it may be, and they think that they are excused now from the weightier matters of the faith, that first commandment. It is not by accident in the title I have that first commandment. Put a little emphasis, a little oomph into it for us so we don't lose it because we're too familiar with these things.

Jesus spoke to the church at Ephesus through John in the Revelation, he said to the church at Ephesus, you're doing a lot of stuff down there at that church, you can't even stand the liars that come down and say, oh I'm an apostle, but they're not. You deal with those guys right on, but I got something against you and it's big. In fact, it's a deal breaker, because if you don't fix this one, all the others are going to go away. In fact, if you don't fix this one, I'm going to leave you in darkness.

I'm going to take your lampstand from you. And what was it? It was love. You left your first love. That commandment, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. You're supposed to throw everything you have into this and you have not been doing it. You've been doing these other things in my name without loving me.

So what good are they then? Because if you don't have love, what do we have? What are we left with? So this scribe was sincere, or sinister in his question, and I think the story makes it clear, he was sincere. He's not looking to trip up the Lord, not trying to discredit him, but actually interested, having observed how he handled scripture, this man was attracted to that, because he understood. You can have all the church you want, with all the music you want, if you take away the word of God, you don't have church anymore. You have to have God, what God says. That's what the Bible is. It's what God says. And it is forceful and it is effective. And one of the most discouraging things about pastoral ministry is that in the early years, you think you're going to bring the word and it's going to change things on such a level, and people are just going to line up and do what they're supposed to do, and then you find out. It is a knock-down, drag-out fight, but as painful as that is, and it is very painful, it's worth it.

It is worth it. The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of God stands forever. The Christians come, the Christians go, but the word of God stands forever.

Pastors, they come, they go, but the work continues on, because it is the power of God, it is the Holy Spirit. And these works are not in vain if there be love. Love hurts. Love is painful. And don't for one minute think that it is not. Love puts skin in the game. I love that I don't have pain, and I hate when I do have pain. You know, Satan said to God about Job, you won't let me hurt him, skin for skin.

Put some skin in the game, let's see if he still loves you. And Job did, which makes him outstanding to us. It is impressive that this man, this scribe, that he got it, and what that did is it took away the excuses of all the others who did not. If he could appreciate, if he could value the answers of Christ from Scripture, what was the problem with everybody else? It's a question, and it's a matter that we should be mindful when we find ourselves critics, when we find ourselves troublemakers, or unhappy. We should ask ourselves, what about others? You know, how come they're handling this well?

Why can't I handle it well? So again, his reaction demonstrated not only his sincerity, but his integrity. And the Holy Spirit captures what he has to say. Instead of just ignoring his response when he says to the Lord, well done, well said, instead of God saying, who cares what you think, it's what Christ said. No, God says, I want you to see what this man's reaction was.

I've showed you the negative ones, here's a positive one. And he only needs to give us one. He says here in verse 28, perceiving that he had answered them well. And of course, that is him respecting the Lord's handling of attackers. What's the issue with unbelievers today when they come across the words of Christ? How can you refute them? To me, they're irrefutable.

You can't beat them. The wisdom, the logic, the truth, the conviction behind them. That's one thing that God's word brings that I don't think any other religious writing brings at all, is a conviction. And that conviction is, you are guilty. You have been tried.

You have been weighed and found wanting. When the handwriting appeared in Daniel's day, many, many, tackle you for our sin. It was, you are busted and you know it. That's what it was all about. That's why the king's knees knocked against one against the other. He was terrified. And they sent for Daniel.

If there was no conviction, who cares? That's impressive. Okay, let's go on with the party. And it says here that he asked him, which is the first commandment of all? First in value. Again, where is the one with the weight?

Where is the one that you cannot do without? To better understand God, you have to understand scripture. That's the point. That's the way, you know, we want to understand. I want this question asked, Rabbi, because I want to understand God better. And if there's any way I'm going to understand him, if I have any chance at that, it's going to come through his word. Oh, I can get the beginnings of it. There are other ways to begin to see God, to begin to see God.

But if I'm going to develop that and enter into this relationship, I've got to hear what he says, and I've got to understand enough of it. Decades later, Luke will write about scholastic Gentiles, who all they did was spend their time arguing points. They loved to hear themselves talk, and they would judge others and posture themselves. Some, just like these Jewish scholars did. The point is, not only did the Jews do these kind of things, but pretend to be religious and pretend to be intelligent before God without the vital ingredients of love and submission and sincerity and integrity. Acts chapter 17, Luke just makes this, he throws this comment in when Paul had to deal with these guys. He says, For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing. So they could never really enter into the depths of what God had for man, the knowledge, the relationship.

They stayed on the surface, but they thought they were deep. Verse 29, Jesus answered. The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel, Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one. Just incidentally, he's quoting Deuteronomy 6. And there the word in Deuteronomy 6 in the Hebrew for one is a compound one, not an absolute one, which lends to the Trinity. And it's Elohim, plural, for God. And so even in Deuteronomy 6, you have this coming attraction, we could say, of the Trinity in the Old Testament.

There are other places, but that's one. But this is known as the Jewish Shema, the Jewish, Listen up, Israel, listen up, hear, O Israel. They called it the Shema. The devout Jew would recite it three times a day, twice a day, pardon me, three sections of Scripture twice a day. Here, Deuteronomy 6, 4, Numbers 15, 13 through 41, and again Deuteronomy 11, 13 through 21. And they would take these verses and they would write portions of them and put them in little boxes and wrap them around their arm or tie them around up on their forehead called phylacteries. Because they believed this was the weight of their Scripture and they were not entirely wrong. But what did they do with it?

After a while it just became a showpiece. True faith in God, the God of the Bible, is centered in man's resolve, not man's feelings. Your faith is not about your feelings. Oh, it can have feelings? I'm a little nervous when I get around people who are emotionally driven because they just don't think. They stop thinking and they just feel. And that means they block out others. Others may not feel what they feel, but yet they demand they be put under the same guidelines or whatever is going on.

And I don't want to be that guy, but at the same time I'm not a stick. I want to be able to feel things too, but I want them to be right. And when I've got, you know, the lights are all where they need to be and all the dials and knobs are on the settings they need to be, then I can have my brains and my feelings. I can have all of me begin to work in unison. I've got that rhythm now with truth and with who I am in Christ. So the Old Testament as well as the New Testament centers on man's will, not his desire to, you know, not what man wants, but the resolve of man when faced with the will of God. Is that individual going to submit Christian love, Christian devotion? It is the pursuit of obedience, whether it gets there or not. It pursues nonetheless regardless of how I feel.

I know what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to pursue obedience. This word means a lot to me, what Christ is saying.

This is the first word. If the feelings were central to my walk with Christ, then Christ could never command me to love. Love, agape love, Christian love, divine love, it's not an act of the emotions. It is an act of the will, my soul, who I am, me, my decision to follow. And love, this type of love, it's not only emotional.

In fact, it doesn't have to be emotional at all. I know what I'm supposed to do, whether I like it or not. I love a person and am ready to preach the gospel to that person. Whether I like them or not, whether they have hurt me or not, if I have an opportunity to share the truth of God, hatred would withhold it. Love would disperse it, as painful as it might be.

And others have gone down this road and they have pulled it off, they have done it. So, God's word is centered in the will to comply, to surrender. God has no plan of salvation for the unsurrendered life. It belongs to those who say, he must increase, I must decrease. God must get larger in me and I must get smaller.

And that is a good plan, because the result is nothing like it. When you look at a man like Daniel and you say, how do you get to be like Daniel? Well then you have to decrease, Yahweh has to increase. This is the story, Yahweh of the Old Testament, Jesus Christ in the New Testament, same person. Verse 30 of Mark 12, and you shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength, this is the first commandment. Within this great exhortation and commandment, within this profound answer that is just easy enough for all of us to repeat and to understand, there's the great invitation of God to love us and for us to love him back. God can be loved by sinners because God is love. And so again he says, you shall love Yahweh. What's the most important, Jesus? That you should love Yahweh. Who is Yahweh? Jesus Christ, we know that because the New Testament develops it.

They had not yet gotten there. In fact today, two of the reasons that Jews will say Jesus could not be the Messiah, one is that he made himself equal with God. Well, he's following the Old Testament.

He should be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father. I mean, it's just your own scripture. Your Old Testament has it. Then the other one they say is he did not destroy the Romans. Well, we covered that so much already going through Mark, how they refused this man's authority because they wanted to dictate terms. He cannot be Messiah if he doesn't do what we say.

And they lost as a result, but they hold this to this day, to this day. Judaism stands by these two points in rejecting Jesus as Messiah. Thanks for tuning in to Cross-Reference Radio for this study in the book of Mark. Cross-Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more information about this ministry, visit our website crossreferenceradio.com. Once you're there, you'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross-Reference Radio. You can search for Cross-Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. That's all we have time for today, but we hope you'll join us next time as Pastor Rick continues to teach through the book of Mark like here on Cross-Reference Radio.