SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/7/2012
10:29:00 AM
My Worship Time Focus: A Question
of Priority
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Mark
12:28-34
Message of
the verses: “28 ¶
One of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He
had answered them well, asked Him, "What commandment is the foremost of
all?" 29 Jesus answered, "The
foremost is, ’HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD; 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 The scribe said to Him, "Right, Teacher;
You have truly stated that HE IS ONE, AND THERE IS NO ONE ELSE 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 HIMSELF, is much more than all burnt offerings and
sacrifices." 34 When Jesus saw that
he had answered intelligently, He said to him, "You are not far from the
kingdom of God." After that, no one would venture to ask Him any more
questions.”
We will begin this SD with a little bit of review
from what we have learned from the 12th chapter of Mark. We began this chapter by looking at a parable
that Jesus spoke against the religious leaders of Israel which made them want
to kill Him all the more. This would
have been on Wednesday of what we call “Passion Week.”
The Sanhedrin then began to send the Pharisees, Sadducees,
and the Scribes to test Jesus, in what was actually a fulfillment of Psalm 2:2 “The
kings of the earth take their stand And the rulers take counsel together
Against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying;” We will see that the disciples of Jesus spoke
of this fulfillment in Acts chapter four, “23 ¶
When they had been released, they went to their own companions and
reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them. 24 And when they heard this, they lifted their
voices to God with one accord and said, "O Lord, it is You who MADE THE
HEAVEN AND THE EARTH AND THE SEA, AND ALL THAT IS IN THEM, 25 who by the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of
our father David Your servant, said, ’WHY DID THE GENTILES RAGE, AND THE
PEOPLES DEVISE FUTILE THINGS? 26 ’THE KINGS OF THE EARTH TOOK
THEIR STAND, AND THE RULERS WERE GATHERED TOGETHER AGAINST THE LORD AND AGAINST
HIS CHRIST.’ 27 "For truly
in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom
You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel,
28 to do whatever Your hand and Your
purpose predestined to occur.”
In the section of Mark that we will look at today we will
see a Scribe who will be the next one to test our Lord, and as we read this
account we can see that there seems to be a difference in the way that he talks
to Jesus than in the way the Pharisees and the Sadducees spoke to Him for Jesus
tell him that he was not far from the kingdom of God at the end of His
conversation with the Scribe.
Not far from the kingdom is not in the kingdom, and we
can see from the first commandments of the Ten Commandments that there are two
types of people in this world: “2 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you
out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3 "You shall have no other gods before Me.
4 "You shall not make for yourself
an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or
in the water under the earth. 5 "You
shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous
God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the
fourth generations of those
who hate Me, 6 but showing
lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” What is a Christian? One who loves the Lord! Who makes up those who are not
believers? Those who hate the Lord! Since we are going to be talking about loving
the Lord in this section of Mark it is good to know the two classes of people
that are here on the earth.
This Scribe who
comes to Jesus is also a Pharisee and the probable reason of the question that
he has for Jesus is to trick Him, but the question that he asks has been asked
by the Pharisees to each other. Dr.
Wiersbe points out that “The scribes had determined that the Jews were
obligated to obey 613 precepts in the Law, 365 negative precepts and 248
positive. One of their favorite
exercises was discussing which of these divine commandments was the greatest.” In the answer that Jesus gave to the Scribe
we see that there are, according to Jesus, more important commandments. Love is the greatest of these as we can see
from different places in the Scriptures beginning with the quotation that Jesus
gives from Deuteronomy 6:4-5, “4 ¶
"Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! 5 "You shall love the LORD your God with
all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” Verse six goes on to say, “6 "These words, which I am commanding you
today, shall be on your heart.” The word
that is translated “Hear” is the Hebrew word “Shema” and the Shema is still
recited by devoted Jews today in the morning and the evening. As we look at verse six we see that this is
an issue of the heart, but the Jews were making it an outside issue, something
they did in order to make their way to heaven by this work of reciting it.
The entire 13th chapter of 1 Cor. is about
love, what it is and what it is not, and it ends with these words, “But now
faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.” Jesus stated this to His disciples on the
night when He would be betrayed and then crucified: “John 13:34
"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even
as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” John tells us how we as believers are able to
love: “1Jo 4:19 We love, because He first loved us.” We are not able to love in a biblical way if
we were not loved by God first. Paul
states, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us.”
What we can determine about love is that God is love, God
loves us and the only way we will be able to love God and others is because He
first loved us. He demonstrated this
love to us in the person of Jesus Christ who loved us so much that He took our
place on the cross. Because of His great
love for us we are able to love Him and also love others which is the next
commandment that Jesus gives to the Scribe, and it comes from Leviticus 19:18, “’You
shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor
as yourself; I am the LORD.”
There are some who don’t think that they love themselves enough, but I
don’t believe that this is the case at all.
When you get up in the morning take note of all the things that you do
for yourself, things like washing your face, brushing your teeth, combing you
hair, feeding yourself, exercising, making sure you have the proper clothes
on. These are all things we do, and
countless others, because we desire to take care of ourselves. The question is do we show this kind of
devotion and love to others? This is
what Jesus is speaking of.
Jesus speaks of the two greatest commandments in all the
Scripture, loving God and our neighbors.
Remember that Jesus gave a parable in Luke about who our neighbor’s are
so we know who they are. I believe that the
Ten Commandments flow out of these two greatest commandments, and out of the
Ten Commandments flows the many other commandments that are seen in Exodus
through Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy means the renewing of the Law so many of the
laws seen there are repeated from the earlier chapters. I have also looked at this from the
perspective of the cross, that is these two commandments. The vertical portion of the cross shows love
flowing down from God and our love flowing up to Him, while the horizontal part
of the cross shows our love for others, our neighbors.
As far as the portion of our text that talks about how
this scribe was “not far from the kingdom of God,” Dr. Wiersbe states, “It
means he or she is facing truth honestly and is not interested in defending a ‘party
line’ or even personal prejudices. It
means the person is testing his or her faith by what the Word of God says and
not by what some religious group demands.
People close to the kingdom have the courage to stand up for what is
true even if they lose some friends and make some new enemies.” This scribe knew that the kingdom of God was
an issue of the heart, which was more important to him than the burnt offerings
and sacrifice that were being offered in great numbers during this Passover
week.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: Perhaps one of
the things that the real church in the United States is lacking is our genuine
love for the Lord and also loving ourselves more than we should, and our
neighbors less than we are doing. God
has surely gotten my attention about these things and it was reinforced by this
section of Scripture and the message that I listened from John MacArthur this
morning.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Loving the Lord with all of my being and
loving my neighbor as myself.
Memory verses for the
week: Psalm 130:1-3
1 Out of the debts I cried to You, O LORD. 2 Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive to the voice of my
supplications. 3 If You, Lord, shall
mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?
11/7/2012 12:00:49 PM
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