Well, we took that one week break last week from our journey through the gospel of Mark, and we're going back to Mark this morning in chapter 12, and we'll pick it up in verse 28. And I'm planning on reading down to verse 34, and that's the text we'll work with for today. But let me pray. Our Father and our God, we pause before we read your word to just confess before you, Lord, that we are a weak people. Lord, we need your help. Lord, that you'd open our minds, that we can understand your word, our ears to even hear it. Lord, we pray that you'd give us hearts that this word could be implanted into. Father, we know your word's powerful. So Lord, we pray you do a powerful work in us today. In Jesus' name, amen. So this is Mark 12, beginning in verse 28. 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? Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, here, 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, with all your strength. This is the first commandment. And the second, 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 the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. Now when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, You were not far from the kingdom of God. But after that, no one dared question him." So we are picking back up in what I think I said a couple weeks ago, sort of a triad of these questions that are being hurled at Jesus here. And it says in Mark's text here that, it says, they reasoned together, perceiving that he had answered them well. Well, the first group that he had answered well to, if you remember, was the Pharisees and Herodians who came and asked Jesus about taxes. Should we pay tax to Rome? And you remember Jesus' answer was basically, yes, you should pay tax to Rome. But he did it through an illustration. He got the coin, said whose picture is this on the coin? They said Caesar's. And that famous scripture verse saying, he said, then render to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's. And in that brilliant response, Jesus was basically saying, pay your taxes to Rome, but only give honor and glory and worship to God Almighty. There's a difference there. So Jesus masterfully takes care of that question. And then he's approached by the Sadducees. And you've got to remember, the Pharisees and the Sadducees don't get along. The Apostle Paul got them in a pretty good argument in the book of Acts over the subject of the resurrection. Well, the Sadducees do not believe there is a resurrection, so of course they come up with their ridiculous question about a woman who has married, and then her husband dies, and then she ends up marrying the brother of that husband, and the next brother, and the next brother, as they all keep dying on her. And the question that they didn't, they just didn't even believe in the resurrection. And they said, so whose wife is she? in the resurrection. And they thought they had Jesus on that one. And Jesus says, you don't understand. It's not like you think it is in the next life. The resurrected body, the resurrected life is different than the way you're perceiving it to be. And Jesus confirmed in that response that, yes, indeed, there is the resurrection of the dead. And he confirmed that with scripture. And he said that God said he's the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He said he's not the God of the dead, he's the God of the living. These men that he is the God of are still alive. They're just in paradise. So that's basically Jesus' response there. So here we see that one of the scribes comes, according to Mark, having heard the reasoning, perceiving he had answered them well. And so now he comes with his question. I want to take a moment to refresh ourselves on who is a scribe? What is this office of scribe? The Bible elsewhere for the very same office will use the language of lawyer or expert in the law. So this is an office that's held. When I was reading my Zondervan Pictorial Bible Dictionary, it says, a term used to describe a class of men well-versed in the oral and written law whose duty consisted in teaching young men and in deciding questions concerning the law. If we go back, I've been doing a lot of study on my own. It's always good to be studying something you're not preaching just to edify me, you know, for my study. And I've been studying the Old Testament quite a bit and going through the law and Leviticus. And when you go through the Old Testament, you'll find the office of scribe there in the Old Testament, but it's a little bit different. In the Old Testament, the scribe was basically somebody that would take down dictation, somebody maybe, if there was a court proceeding, that would be taking the notes. They were also copyists. So if you needed a new copy of the Torah or the law of God, you could have a scribe, and their job would be to make sure they did an expert job of copying the law to a new scroll for a new synagogue or whatever you might have. That role seems to have morphed and changed and expanded, especially in the years of Ezra. Ezra was a scribe during the time of the exile. And the first couple chapters of Ezra is dealing with the restoration of the temple as they're coming back. They're coming back from exile. So chapter 1 through 6 of Ezra is dealing with the restoration of the temple. But then when you get to chapter 7 and forward, it begins to deal with the restoration of the people spiritually. the people spiritually. So just to give you a little taste of Ezra, the book of Ezra chapter 7 verse 6, it says, This Ezra came up from Babylon, and he was a skilled scribe in the law of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given. And the king granted him all his requests according to the hand of the Lord, his God that was upon him." So God's at work even through this pagan foreign king. And Ezra says in chapter 7 verse 10 says, "...for Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it." and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel. So God raised up Ezra, gave him a heart for the law of God, to really not only just know it, but to walk in what God had commanded, and to teach it to other young men, and to bring a sort of a spiritual restoration, if you will, to the people of Israel as they were coming back out of captivity. D. Edmund Hebert, and this is one of the contributors to the Zonervan Picture Dictionary. He writes this, he says, when during the Hellenistic period the upper priests became largely tainted with paganism, The scribes became the zealous defenders of the law and the true teachers of the common people. By New Testament times, they held undisputed sway as the recognized exponents of the law and the revered representatives of Judaism. Accepting the law as the basis for the regulation of all of life, they made it their primary task to study, interpret, and expound the law as the rule for daily life. The lack of details in the law they filled up. Through the gradual development of an extensive and complicated system of teaching intended to safeguard the sanctity of the law, by their practice of making, quote, a fence about the law, unquote, they added to its actual requirements, thus loading the people with, quote, burdens grievous to be born. So as far as the office of scribe, there's a lot of Jesus denouncing what the scribes were doing and how they were teaching. It says in Luke 7.30, speaking of the scribes and the Pharisees, it says, but the Pharisees and the lawyers, that's the scribes, the lawyers, rejected the will of God for themselves. And you say, well, how so? says, by not having been baptized by him, and they mean John the Baptist. John the Baptist was God's prophet. They rejected his prophecy and they rejected his baptism. They were also denounced by our Lord in Matthew 23, and almost that whole chapter, And I'll just read you one little part of that, verse 4 to 5. It says, For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear. They lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. But all their works they do to be seen by men. And in that chapter, if you just go through it quickly like I did, you'll see that Jesus denounces greed and pride, adding to the law, outwardly religious but inwardly dead to God, dead spiritually, that they were murderous. Jesus went as far as to say they were under the wrath of God and their destination was hell if they didn't turn and repent. So Jesus denounces them very strongly. Jesus also denounces them in Luke chapter 11, And I'm going to read you verse 52 where it says, And he's talking about the kingdom of God. Jesus himself being the key. that unlocks and interprets the Law and the Prophets. Jesus taught that in Luke 24. Jesus says, These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms, Jesus says, concerning me. He is the key, he is the filter, the lens by which we understand the law, the Old Testament law, whether it's moral law, ceremonial law. It's found and discovered and understood correctly in light of who Christ is. But here's Jesus walking the sod in his earthly ministry and they reject him outright. So he has a lot to say against the scribes, also known as lawyers or the experts of the law. They're going to play an integral role in the death of Jesus. And if we flash forward a little bit in our study of Mark, you'll see in Mark 15.1, it says, immediately in the morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes. and the whole council, and they bound Jesus, led him away, and delivered him to Pilate. And you can imagine in that context with that gathering, why were the scribes there? They were the experts in the law. So if there was an accusation made about Jesus having somehow broken the law, the scribes would have been consulted with, and they would have gave their interpretation of the law. And in this case, they saw Jesus worthy of going and being led to Pilate and eventually to the cross. So that's who these scribes were. So as far as them being a scribe or a lawyer, that was their office. You could say that was their vocation. They were also found here amongst the Pharisees. You could be a Pharisee, which is a religious sect, And also maybe out of a group of Pharisees, one of them happens to hold the office as a scribe, an expert in the law. And you'll see that the same story that we're looking at in Matthew 22, it says in verse 34, But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, Now, I think there was a little gloating going on there, because they like the fact that Jesus denounced the Sadducees, their erroneous view about there is no resurrection. And so they get together, and they're talking about how he had silenced the Sadducees. It says, they gathered together. Then one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him and saying. So one of these Pharisees that had gathered together. And it seems to me, from reading the text, that the Pharisees put this one forth. basically said, you know, hey, hey, Bob, you got to go forward or Tony or whatever the guy's name is, probably some more like Saul or something like that, and put him forward to go to Jesus to ask him this question, because they had gathered, they had a meeting, and they put forth the lawyer to go and to question Jesus. Now, as much as Jesus denounces the current office of both the Pharisee, which is a religious sect, and the office of scribe, it doesn't mean that every single person within those groups was wickedly opposed to Jesus. You think of like Gamaliel. who was a scribe, Nicodemus, who was a scribe. They were experts in the law. And yet you see faith birthing, and Nicodemus, look what he did. So it's not that every single one of them was so opposed to Jesus, but he would denounce the basic direction that office was going in, the teachings that they were expounding, he would denounce. And I don't know, and this is just me studying the scriptures for all these years, I don't know that this man that was sent forth from the Pharisees was opposed to Jesus. I do think the Pharisees, because they had just tried to trip him up, I think they wanted to send him forth to trip up Jesus. That's why it says in the text that he went to go ask his question, testing him. But I'm not so sure that this guy wasn't open to being taught by Jesus, because that's the way the conversation kind of goes. And at the end, Jesus says, well, he really answered pretty well. He's starting to get this. He's not all the way in the kingdom yet, but he's not far out. So it could be that this individual was open to that. But Holman's commentary says the Pharisees had regrouped after Jesus turned their first trap against them. In seeing the same thing happen to the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together, seeking power and courage in numbers. The one expert in the law whom they chose to ask the testing question must have approached Jesus with some trepidation. Having seen him just win the argument with two other questioners, here he goes forward. Now Warren Wearsby in his commentary says, we have every reason to believe that he, meaning the scribe, asked the question in sincerity with a humble attitude. And it kind of comes across that way when you read the text. Hard to tell for sure. But regardless, the scripture does tell us that Jesus is being put to the test here. One last commentary thought here, the new American commentary says, the Pharisees regroup after their defeat in verses 15 to 22 to initiate the next round of questioning. Before, they simply sent their disciples. Now, they came themselves, won a lawyer, who's an expert on the law, again tries to trap Jesus. His question seems innocent enough, but reflects an intra-Jewish debate on how to rank or summarize all of the scriptural commandments, and on whether such ranking is in fact possible at all. Moreover, given Jesus' radical views on the law, an open-ended question such as this would surely elicit some remark by which Jesus would indict himself." So it could be that that's what's going on as he's approached and he's asked this question. And what's the question? The question is, which is the first commandment of all? He's not asking, chronologically, what was the first commandment that God ever issued forth from his divine voice. It's first an order of priority or importance. And really, you can't see that the question has to do with Is there something, some command that sort of summarizes the totality of the commands that God has given forth to us? Matthew, in the same story, gives us this as the scribe says, Which is the great commandment in the law? And that might give us a little bit more indication. They're looking for the grandiose commandment that sort of hovers above all of the totality of the commandments. The New American Commentary picks up on something that I went down a rabbit trail and studied myself a little bit. But in Jesus's day, and even before Jesus's day, this was a common question that the Pharisees and the other religious groups would get together and talk about. Is there a way to summarize the commandments of God? Sort of shorthand, is there one commandment that stands above and through and over all of them? And that was something that they actually discussed quite a bit. I was thinking in my own mind, if they had Starbucks back in their day, you probably would have seen a group of these guys at a table at Starbucks, sharing coffee together, and that would be the question on the floor. What do you guys think? I'm kind of thinking maybe this commandment sort of is the commandment above and through over all of these commandments. He almost could summarize the law of God like this. And somebody else goes, no, no, no, no. It would be more like this. So these were debates that went on. One of the rabbinical schools and teachers, Halil, probably before Jesus's ministry, because Halil lived from 40 BC to 10 AD. So he died when Jesus would have been very young. But in the Babylonian Talmud, which you can pull up. I pulled it up yesterday to read it. In the Babylonian Talmud, there's a section where people come to Hillel to ask him a question. And then he gives his wise answer. And that's how the rabbis would teach. And so there's a whole section of all, you know, then so-and-so approached Hillel and asked this. And in that teaching, one individual comes to Hillel, a Gentile, and says, Can you summarize, and I'm paraphrasing here, but can you summarize the Torah or the law of God while I stand on one foot? In other words, you know, you have to pop this out quick. And it goes on one foot. And it's said that in his summary, he said, what is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah. And then he said, while the rest is the commentary thereof. He basically gave the answer of the golden rule, but he gave it in the negative. What you don't want somebody to do to you, don't do to them. It's the golden rule in reverse almost. And that was his answer. So this is something that had been talked about, and so it wasn't unusual probably here that the scribe would ask that question. What's the first commandment? What's the greatest commandment? What would cut through all the minutia and get to the heart of the law of God? That we might have it sort of summarized. I was thinking we kind of do that a little bit with the gospel. You know, we only got so much time to share with somebody. We want to share the gospel with somebody. Or you're at a football game, you know, you're on live TV and all you got is one sheet to put something on to hopefully get the gospel across to people. What do you use to see? There was always a big sheet up there hanging with John 3.16. I don't even know if they're allowed to do that anymore. But when I was a kid, you'd see it all the time. John 3.16 would be hanging on a sheet. Somebody's trying to get the gospel out. And we'd try to get a summary statement that kind of encapsulates the gospel. But the gospel is much, much more than these individual verses, as we all know. But you have to start somewhere with somebody and sort of summarize it and convey it. And then hopefully, they'll enter into a time of teaching where they can have that broadened and their understanding can grow. with these things. So Jesus's answer in verse 29 and following. 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, with all your strength. This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this. You shall love your neighbor as yourself, There is no other commandment greater than these two. Now Jesus, in this brilliant answer, obviously is God in flesh talking here, so we know this is absolutely accurate. He summarizes the full two tables of the Ten Commandments. The first four of the Ten Commandments are between our responsibilities before us and God, and the last six are our responsibilities between us and our fellow man. And he summarizes them in the context of love, that we would love God, that we would love our neighbor. This first that he gives here, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, is the Shema. The Hebrews, a devout Hebrew, would recite that twice a day. They knew that text inside out. They understood it. Shema means hear, and it's just the beginning of the text. Hear, O Israel, our God, the Lord, he is one. That comes right out of Deuteronomy 6, verses 4 and 5. R.C. Sproul, I thought, did a good job with this, where he says, Of course the Israelites were not commanded to love Him simply because of what He had done for them, just as we ought not to love God simply for the gifts and the benefits that we've received from His hand. Neither are we to love him simply for his attributes, his infinite wisdom, his limitless power, his peerless justice, and so on. Rather, we are to love him for who he is in himself. We do not really progress in the Christian life until we understand that we are to love God simply because He is so lovely and wonderful, worthy of every creature's unqualified affection. And that's what the text means when it says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. That would fly in the face of the pagan nations around Israel who had a whole pantheon of gods that were false deities. But what they were saying was, you know, the God of Israel, Yahweh, He is the one God. He's holistic in who He is. He's holistic and he's the one and only creator of heavens and earth. He's the one and only sustainer of all that is. And because of who he is, we owe all of our love and affection to him. That's what the Shema was conveying that the devout Jews would recite, you know, twice a day at least. The New Testament picks up on this same theme, and there's a lot of New Testament writings that we could read, but it seems like John and 1 John touches on this a lot. And I want to read a little bit out of 1 John. This is chapter 4, beginning in verse 12, where it says, No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love has been perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him, and he in us, because he has given us his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love. And he who abides in love abides in God and God in him. Love has been perfected among us in this, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love him because he first loved us, the writer says, John. I found a poem by Francis Xavier. He wrote this in the 1500s and was translated into the English in the 1800s by Edward Caswell. And he picks up on this theme. He says, my God, I love thee, not because I hope for heaven thereby. nor yet because who love thee not are lost eternally. Thou, O my Jesus, thou didst me upon the cross embrace, for me didst bear the nails and spear and the manifold disgrace, and griefs and torments numberless, and sweat of agony, yea, death itself, and all for me, who was thine enemy. Then why, O blessed Jesus Christ, should I not love Thee well? Not for the sake of winning heaven, nor of escaping hell. Not from the hope of gaining aught, not seeking a reward. But as Thyself hast loved me, O ever-loving Lord, so would I love Thee, dearest Lord. And in Thy praise will sing solely because Thou art my God and my most loving King. And that's what it boils down to. We love Him because He first loved us. We love Him because He's our Lord and He's our King. He's our God. So Jesus breaks this down to loving God with your whole being and loving neighbor. And there's a couple of places that Jesus might've been thinking of in the Old Testament, but I'll read you Leviticus 19, 18, which says, you shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. And John picks up on that theme a lot. That's a common motif in 1 John. 1 John is secular. It keeps circling through the same themes over and over again with the understanding that it's a test, if you will, to see, am I truly in the faith? Do I have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ? And one of the themes that keeps circling through in 1 John is the theme of us loving one another. Loving the brethren, right? That would be one of the signs of legitimate faith in Jesus Christ, is that we love each other. And in 1 John 3.17 it says, But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and then shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? And then he says in 1 John 4, 7, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God. And everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested towards us, that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. Right? It's who we are as Christians. That fancy word, propitiation, basically means to remove the wrath of God. Always like Jerry Bridges said, Jesus exhausted the wrath of God in his own body on that cross. But he propitiated the wrath that was against us when he went to that cross and died for us. So he says, you want me to surmise the law? He says, basically, love God with all you've got, everything you are, and love your neighbor as yourself. And Matthew, he likens this, and I always picture this as when I was a kid in high school, we used to have to do these, once a year, I think we had to go through this crazy thing where we were timed with all the other boys my age of how fast we could run and how far we could throw a shot put. And then one of the things we had to do, and it was really hard to do, was they had this pegboard on the wall. And we had these two pegs, and they had holes all the way up. And you had to jam it in there, and then you had to, like, Hold on to this one and lift it up and go to the next one and you're pulling yourself up a wall with these two pegs. Jesus talks about these two pegs that are hanging on a wall, if you will. And he says, all of the law, all of the prophets are going to hang on these two pegs, if that's the picture. And in Matthew's telling of the story, he says, on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. It all hangs from those two truths that God requires of his people, that we love God, that we love our neighbor. So the question is, what hinders us from doing this? There's a lot of places we could look at, but I think that the scripture comes back to us kind of blatantly, and obviously with two in particular. What hinders us from loving God is that we love this world too much. And one of the things that happens in our conversion is there's a definitive break with sin. Romans chapter 6 and 7 get into that subject, that there's been a definitive break. You're not who you were. The power of sin's been broken. But we're not yet perfected. We're not who we're going to be. And even as converted Christians, we struggle To really love God with everything we are, everything we have, we really do. And I believe it's because we love the world too much. And that's just for you to do your own self-evaluation. I'll do my own, for me. But 1 John 2 says this in verse 15, it says, do not love the world or the things in the world. Now, when the Bible talks about us not loving the world, it's talking about this fallen world and the world system. as opposed, and the world system which is opposed to and against the teachings of God Almighty and God himself. So he says, Do not love the world, or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world, and the world's passing away, and the lust of it. But he who does the will of God abides forever." Or Paul writes to the Galatians and says, But God forbid that I should boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. And there is that definitive cut. I came to the Lord late, so I knew what it was like to really love the world and the things of the world. I really did. And the world loved me. And something changed when I came to the Lord. And the things that once sparkled and shined for me of the world no longer did. But I'm still on the path to glory. I'm not there yet. And there's still things that God deals with me on, where I find I've got my hands wrapped around something that's of the world. And the Lord has to deal with me, just like He deals with you. We don't always share all that stuff with each other. But God, in His sanctifying work in us, is weaning us off love for the things of the world. That's part of the work that God does. And we can be co-laborers in that, and at times we can resist the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, as God wants us to love the things of the world less and less, and to love Him more and more and more. And that's the work that the Spirit does in us. I was reading a sermon yesterday by John Piper, who I like. And Piper was preaching to a group of business people. It wasn't his church. He was asked to come to a bunch of businessmen. And he taught them out of Philippians. I won't read the passages. But in that sermon, he said to these businessmen, he says, imagine you're on your deathbed. You're leaving everything. You're leaving your family. You'll never see your grandkids maybe. You'll never get that retirement that you wanted. Your wife goes, your family goes, successful business goes, dreams go. All you get is Jesus. What are you going to say? He says, well, the Apostle Paul said, gain. Everything else is rubbish compared to Jesus. He says, the Apostle Paul would say, gain. If you were watching him at that moment, meaning the Apostle Paul, who was in jail when he said that, and we do get to watch him, you would say, at least in this life, Christ is being made much of. So that's how you do it. He says, you treasure Christ. You treasure Him above business. You treasure Him above your wife. You treasure Him above your money. You treasure Him above the dreams of attention from the world and from the guild. He goes, that's how you live the not wasted life. And that's what God's working in his people, the Christians, is that we would love the world less and less and that we would have Jesus as our treasure. That when we do close our eyes on our deathbed, we know that we've made the right decision and they can't take Jesus from us. We'll be ushered into his presence where our true treasure lies. So I think we love the world too much. And sometimes that hinders our love for God, the Bible says. And then we love ourselves too much to be bothered with our neighbors. We want to reach out and love to neighbors. And there's times where a neighbor might just seem like an irritation to you because we're not perfected in love yet. We're not all the way there. And sometimes we love our own conveniences. I love my quiet up there in the hills and my neighbors out there with his leaf blower. And I'm thinking, why today, Lord? Why do I got to hear this leaf blower? But, you know, it's just because I love myself. I want my own silence and my own contemplative time or whatever it might be. And I'm not thinking, well, you know, that man's doing what he needs to do to keep his place looking good and all that. So we were tainted by sin in both of these directions. John Owens, and I'll just paraphrase him, the Puritan, likened the love of God to the sun and its glory as it comes across the sky. And it's always perfectly round and brilliant and bright, even though a cloud might obscure it. But above all that, the sun is always beautiful. He says, our love is more like, we're more like the moon. Sometimes it comes up and it's a nice full moon, and other times it's a crescent, and sometimes it's the new moon. It's like, well, where's the love, Pastor Larry? Where's that love you keep talking about? And we do. We ebb and flow. God's love is a constant. And it's hard for us to understand that as creatures, but that's the love that God demands of us. is a fervent, altogether holistic, with every fiber of who we are, love to God and a love to our fellow man. So the scribe responds to Jesus and says, Well said, teacher, you've spoken the truth, for there is one God, there's no other but He. And to love Him with all of our heart and our understanding, with all of our soul, all of our strength, to love one's neighbor as oneself, is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. He takes it a notch farther, doesn't he? He understands what Jesus is saying. He agrees with it. And now he even adds to it, you know what, that love that you speak of, that's more important than even sacrifices. And that's consistent with Saul and the Old Testament stories. We've seen that language before. New American Commentary says, the word translated burnt offerings refers to those offerings totally consumed on the altar. The word translated sacrifices refers to offerings in general, only a small portion of which was burned. The remainder was given to the priest or was returned to the worshiper to eat as a sacred meal. The two terms summarized and represent the entire sacrificial system. So he knew the law. He was a well-educated expert of the law. And he answered really well. Jesus is going to say that. Like, hey, you're starting to get this. That's my interpretation of what Jesus said to him. And that's what Jesus says. It says, now when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, you are not far. from the kingdom of God. And after that, nobody dared ask many more questions. You're not far. That's both shocking and hopeful. It's shocking because of all people, and even the populace, would have thought, did Jesus just say the scribes are outside of the kingdom of God? And that's exactly what Jesus said. You see, the scribe needed to go next in his thinking. He's got a right understanding. God demands absolute love to God and fellow man. The next thing he should have thought, and that's greater than even the sacrifices, but he should have realized, and those sacrifices are necessitated because we don't love God as we should. and we don't love our neighbor as we should. And if that is all the commandments summed up, then we're in deep trouble. I need a Savior. I need an ultimate sacrifice to sponge me of my sin because I don't love God as I should, and I don't love my neighbor. Actually, there's times where I'm irritated with what God does in my life, and there's times where I see my neighbor as a nuisance. I'm never really being honest. And he should have seen that, and it would have driven him to fall to the feet of Jesus and give his life to the Lord. And I'll end with this quote by J.D. Jones, because I'm right there with J.D. Jones. He says, he wanted the real thing, and the Lord, when he noted his candor, his earnestness, and his spiritual sympathy, said to him, thou art not far from the kingdom of God. not far from the kingdom. There is scarcely a phrase in the gospel so pregnant with hope and fear as this little phrase, not far. Did he actually enter in? Not far. Or was he, after all, shut out? Both possibilities seem wrapped up in the phrase. And then JD Jones says, I would give a great deal to know the after history of this scribe, but scripture leaves him here not far from the kingdom. And I thought, I want to know what happened to him, too. Wouldn't it be glorious if we get to glory and we find out he did fall on his knees before the Lord. He was a part of that new church, maybe on the day of Pentecost. It all came together for him and he heard the preaching of Peter and he gave his life to the Lord Jesus Christ. I pray that that was what happened with this man. But I pray that anybody who's listening here in this audience or maybe would listen to the recorded service would not be one who's close, but will be in the kingdom. Let me pray. Our Father and our God, we thank you for your word. Lord, we thank you for the study that we've been on, as you skillfully answered the questions of those who would come to test you. And Father, we don't want to ask you questions to test you. We fall on our knees before you, praising you. Lord, I confess we don't love you as we should. We don't love our neighbor as we ought. But Father, we pray that more and more, through a work of your Holy Spirit in our lives, that we would yield ourselves to you and to our neighbors in a greater and greater way. And Lord, we thank you for that. In Jesus' name, amen. The blessing of the Lord. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Go in peace.