SERIES: FAITH, HOPE, & LOVE #3/3

#1 · March 8, 2010, 2:38 pm

Quote from Forum Archives on March 8, 2010, 2:38 pm
Posted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>

SERIES: FAITH, HOPE, & LOVE #3/3

RIGHT ANSWERS

February 14, 2010

Text: Mark 12:28-34

Have you ever noticed how blunt Jesus could be? How he always had just the right answer for every situation? I think anyone who is involved in ministry has wished at some time that he or she had this same ability to give the right answer at just the right time.

This account from Marks Gospel is one of those situations. Jesus is spending time with some Jewish scholars. We know from the prior verses that the goal of some of these fellows was to trick Jesus into saying something wrong; to try to get Jesus to damage his credibility.

With amazing insight, Jesus knew what they were trying to do. In response to the question concerning the payment of taxes, Jesus replied, Why are you trying to trap me? Then he answered them, and we are told that they were amazed at him.

In verse 28 we are introduced to another teacher of the law who has come to observe and to ask questions. Having just heard some of Jesus wise replies to those who were trying to trap him, this teacher decides to seek some honest knowledge. Of all the commandments, which is the most important?

It was considered a mark of great wisdom and learning to be able to make a summation of the Law. How wise Jesus must have appeared to this teacher, then, with his reply! The Interpreters Bible tells us that the Rabbis calculated that the Law contained 365 prohibitions and 248 positive commands. Quite a reduction, 613 compressed into two! (The Interpreter's Bible, vol. 7, p. 846) What is it about Jesus reply - and the teachers parallel responses in verses 32 and 33 - that make them right answers even for us?

Jesus begins with a statement of revelation about who God is: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.   This is significant for two reasons. One, Jesus knew and applied Scripture. His Scripture, of course, is our Old Testament. The first part of his response quotes Deuteronomy 6:4. This sentence is a foundational real creed of Judaism. It is called the Shema, from the Hebrew verb to hear. This is the sentence with which the service of the synagogue always began and still begins. Jesus confirmed for the teacher and for us the truth and importance of this statement.

Second, Jesus made it clear that the God to whom he referred was the self-revealed God of Israel, and that there was no other. His following consolidation of the Law is based upon God who revealed Himself, not upon a god revealed by others through human knowledge or tradition. This is vital because Jesus referred to a real person who makes Himself known to His people. The only way to know the Lord and respond to Him is to know who He says He is, not what others wish He were. A real danger to us today, as it was to those to whom Jesus spoke, is to ignore Gods self-revelation and to replace it with unreal images of who He is.

Philip Yancey, in Christianity Today, wrote an intriguing editorial a few years ago in which he reflected on some Bible reading. Holed up in a mountain cabin in Colorado for two weeks during a blizzard, he began reading the Bible straight through from Genesis to Revelation. Above all else, this is what struck me in my daily reading: Our common impressions of God may be very   different from what the Bible actually portrays... Simply read the Bible and you will encounter not a misty vapor but an actual Person. God feels delight, and anger, and frustration. Again and again he is shocked by human behavior. Sometimes, after deciding on a response, he changes his mind. ...if you read the Bible straight through ... you cannot help being overwhelmed by the joy and the anguish - in short, the passion - of the Lord of the universe. With his answer, Jesus directs us to pay attention to who God is. He confirmed for the teacher and for us that the God of the Universe is the same God who revealed Himself to Israel through the testimonies in Genesis through Malachi. This is the starting point. The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

It is then not surprising for Jesus to say that the most important commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. In so doing, Jesus once again referred to the testimony of Scripture. Deuteronomy 6:5 reads Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Joshua 22:5 instructs the people to ... be very careful to keep the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the Lord gave you: to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to obey his commands, to hold fast to him and to serve him with all your heart and all your soul.

The teacher of the law also referred to Scripture when he replied and commented on the wisdom of Jesus answer, for as the prophet Samuel rebuked King Saul, he asked, Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. (1 Samuel 15:22)

What both Jesus and this teacher of the law knew and experienced were the distortions of God's commandments. The religious leaders had built up so many interpretations of and traditions around the laws that they obscured the revelation of God. This is why Jesus warned in Matthew 6 against those who passed out money with a band following them and prayed aloud on the street corners: So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men... And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. This is why he and his disciples violated the laws of the Sabbath by taking care of others and themselves. The laws manufactured by men were not and are not God; they were not to be the object of worship and adoration.

Love the Lord, your God, Jesus said. Don't be burdened with the rest; that will come. The early Church leader Augustine once said, Love God - and do what you like. A dangerous statement? Not too much when we think about it. Because what all English teachers and good students recognize in all of these statements is that the subject is the implied you you love - and the verb - the word of action - is love. The object of this action word is God.

Jesus has told all of us: You love the Lord your God... Love is an active verb, not a passive verb. It requires action on the subject's part. What does the coach mean when he says to the football players, Run around the field? He doesn't mean for them to sit around and think about running; he doesn't mean for them to stand there and talk about running; he doesn't mean form a committee and develop a set of rules and regulations for how to run or what is really meant by running. He means, quite clearly, for his players to alternate placing one foot in front of the other at a faster than normal rate - and do it now!

We are to actively love God with everything we have. To love God is to exist for Him as a dedicated servant exists for his master. To love God is to listen faithfully and obediently to His instructions, to place oneself under His lordship, to value above all else the realization of this lordship, as in Matthew 6:33: But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.

It means that we base our whole being on God, cling to Him with unreserved confidence, leave with Him all care, and be led by His hand. It means that we despise all that does not serve God or come from Him, break with all other ties, cut away all that hinders, and snap all bonds except that which binds to God alone. To actively love God is to fulfill the commandments. Love God - and do what you like. What we will like is to please God before all others and before all else. This is what God wants.

In the final paragraphs of his editorial, Yancey wrote: The image of a wounded lover in Jeremiah (or in Hosea, where it is acted out in the flesh) is an awesome one that I cannot comprehend. Why would the God who created all that exists subject himself to such humiliation from his creation? In Colorado, as I read through the pages of the Bible, I was haunted by the reality of a God who lets our response to him matter that much... When we tame him, in words and concepts, and file him away under alphabetized characteristics, we can easily lose the force of the passionate relationship God seeks above all else. After two weeks of reading the entire Bible, I came away that God does not care so much about being analyzed. Mainly, he wants to be loved. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

Jesus then continued his summation by saying, The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. No one before him had put these two commandments together and made them one. Religion, to Jesus, is loving God and loving humanity. As we love God, we will be compelled to respond to our neighbors as He does.

This is the other great commandment which was pushed aside in the development of religious tradition - lost in the translation, so to speak. It is written in Leviticus 19:18, Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. In Hosea 6:6, God reveals that He desires mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings. And the prophet Micah wrote in 6:6-8: With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Once again, the verb is active. It does not mean here a personal liking or sentimental affection. It means active good will, boundless and aggressive, extended to those who may have no personal charm for us. It often extends beyond the boundaries of family or nation. It is in the parable of the Good Samaritan that Jesus makes clear   that love of neighbor has no barriers.

Many times, we come away from newspapers and newscasts feeling distressed and hopeless and helpless. It seems as if evil is always going on uninterrupted and triumphant. Always something bad going on. But we need to remember there is always something else going on that is much greater than evil. All over the world, men and women of faith are responding to these greatest commandments in such a way that lives are being reshaped with this amazing love.

A few years ago, there was an article in Habitat World, a publication of a Christian organization which builds houses for the poor all over the world, which describes the pitiful death of a twelve year old Haitian girl. She suffered from a debilitating disease; she died from a combination of disease and an overdose of unknown medications and home remedies. The whole sad story tugged at the readers heart.

Stephanie Frykholm ended the article: Little girl, I remember your eyes. It's not your dying that hurts. It's the futility of your death. You died because of ignorance, an ignorance born of poverty, a poverty caused by oppression. This oppression means suffering for you and your people. We who are shielded from the daily sufferings of the poor, how can we understand what your death means? What is life to your family? Hunger, malnutrition, illness, homelessness, illiteracy, violence, fear - your songs of suffering! They are too painful for me to hear! And yet, I look into your eyes, you Haitian people, and I cannot turn away.

The editor of the paper concluded by writing: We continue to build houses, but that is not the only part of our lives. The desperation of these people sometimes barges its way right to our doorstep. We, too, stand beneath the clouds of suffering and oppression which cover this land. Where, amidst this darkness, is the hope? God's light flickers over the land.

This article illustrates that God's work is alive and active. This world is not covered in darkness because God's servants love God and neighbor. Our missionaries and others continue to proclaim the Word of God in the troubled regions of Africa, such as Kenya and Congo. They are trying to bring the word of healing and light to that darkened, blighted land. Gods people are always at work, in spite of apparently overwhelming odds. I compare it to the wheat field which ripples back and forth in an evening breeze. There is always activity; movement; something going on.

We are the servants that help keep God's light flickering over the land. We have a part in this call to love the neighbor. Christian churches and organizations all over the world try to make a difference by loving their neighbors. The response to the earthquake victims in Haiti attest to that. Even when we cannot be there ourselves, we can support those who can be there. We are playing the part of a Good Samaritan in fulfillment of Jesus command to love God and our neighbor.

We could choose to become calloused; to close our hearts to those who are suffering in our communities or around the world. We could shut our eyes; close our ears; try to pretend that we are not affected. But to do so is not Christian; it is not love. It is certainly not acting out love.

Every book of the Bible speaks either directly about love or illustrates love in some manner: God's love for us, our love for God, or our love for neighbor. Jesus has told us that there are no greater commandments than these. I am compelled to believe that we are being told something here. Are we getting the message? I hope so. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:8 that love never fails. Then he wrote in verse 13 that these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. Paul was commenting about greatest commandments. We begin with faith, for faith is our response to Gods revelation. We persevere with hope, for hope is our proper response to faith. We live in love, for love will be eternal.

When we love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind and with all our strength, and when we love our neighbor as ourselves, then we are living a life which fulfills the commandments. We stumble, we fall, but we have a God who picks us up; who sustains us. Our response to Gods love is found in these verses containing Jesus right answer: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength... Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.

Rev. Charles A. Layne

First Baptist Church

179 W. Broadway

PO Box 515

Bunker Hill, IN 46914

765-689-7987

bhfbc@bhfirstbaptist.com

www.bhfirstbaptist.com

--
To unsubscribe, send ANY message to: abesermons-unsubscribe@welovegod.org

Posted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>

RIGHT ANSWERS

February 14, 2010

Text: Mark 12:28-34

Have you ever noticed how blunt Jesus could be? How he always had just the right answer for every situation? I think anyone who is involved in ministry has wished at some time that he or she had this same ability to give the right answer at just the right time.

This account from Marks Gospel is one of those situations. Jesus is spending time with some Jewish scholars. We know from the prior verses that the goal of some of these fellows was to trick Jesus into saying something wrong; to try to get Jesus to damage his credibility.

With amazing insight, Jesus knew what they were trying to do. In response to the question concerning the payment of taxes, Jesus replied, Why are you trying to trap me? Then he answered them, and we are told that they were amazed at him.

In verse 28 we are introduced to another teacher of the law who has come to observe and to ask questions. Having just heard some of Jesus wise replies to those who were trying to trap him, this teacher decides to seek some honest knowledge. Of all the commandments, which is the most important?

It was considered a mark of great wisdom and learning to be able to make a summation of the Law. How wise Jesus must have appeared to this teacher, then, with his reply! The Interpreters Bible tells us that the Rabbis calculated that the Law contained 365 prohibitions and 248 positive commands. Quite a reduction, 613 compressed into two! (The Interpreter's Bible, vol. 7, p. 846) What is it about Jesus reply - and the teachers parallel responses in verses 32 and 33 - that make them right answers even for us?

Jesus begins with a statement of revelation about who God is: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. This is significant for two reasons. One, Jesus knew and applied Scripture. His Scripture, of course, is our Old Testament. The first part of his response quotes Deuteronomy 6:4. This sentence is a foundational real creed of Judaism. It is called the Shema, from the Hebrew verb to hear. This is the sentence with which the service of the synagogue always began and still begins. Jesus confirmed for the teacher and for us the truth and importance of this statement.

Second, Jesus made it clear that the God to whom he referred was the self-revealed God of Israel, and that there was no other. His following consolidation of the Law is based upon God who revealed Himself, not upon a god revealed by others through human knowledge or tradition. This is vital because Jesus referred to a real person who makes Himself known to His people. The only way to know the Lord and respond to Him is to know who He says He is, not what others wish He were. A real danger to us today, as it was to those to whom Jesus spoke, is to ignore Gods self-revelation and to replace it with unreal images of who He is.

Philip Yancey, in Christianity Today, wrote an intriguing editorial a few years ago in which he reflected on some Bible reading. Holed up in a mountain cabin in Colorado for two weeks during a blizzard, he began reading the Bible straight through from Genesis to Revelation. Above all else, this is what struck me in my daily reading: Our common impressions of God may be very different from what the Bible actually portrays... Simply read the Bible and you will encounter not a misty vapor but an actual Person. God feels delight, and anger, and frustration. Again and again he is shocked by human behavior. Sometimes, after deciding on a response, he changes his mind. ...if you read the Bible straight through ... you cannot help being overwhelmed by the joy and the anguish - in short, the passion - of the Lord of the universe. With his answer, Jesus directs us to pay attention to who God is. He confirmed for the teacher and for us that the God of the Universe is the same God who revealed Himself to Israel through the testimonies in Genesis through Malachi. This is the starting point. The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

It is then not surprising for Jesus to say that the most important commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. In so doing, Jesus once again referred to the testimony of Scripture. Deuteronomy 6:5 reads Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Joshua 22:5 instructs the people to ... be very careful to keep the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the Lord gave you: to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to obey his commands, to hold fast to him and to serve him with all your heart and all your soul.

The teacher of the law also referred to Scripture when he replied and commented on the wisdom of Jesus answer, for as the prophet Samuel rebuked King Saul, he asked, Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. (1 Samuel 15:22)

What both Jesus and this teacher of the law knew and experienced were the distortions of God's commandments. The religious leaders had built up so many interpretations of and traditions around the laws that they obscured the revelation of God. This is why Jesus warned in Matthew 6 against those who passed out money with a band following them and prayed aloud on the street corners: So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men... And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. This is why he and his disciples violated the laws of the Sabbath by taking care of others and themselves. The laws manufactured by men were not and are not God; they were not to be the object of worship and adoration.

Love the Lord, your God, Jesus said. Don't be burdened with the rest; that will come. The early Church leader Augustine once said, Love God - and do what you like. A dangerous statement? Not too much when we think about it. Because what all English teachers and good students recognize in all of these statements is that the subject is the implied you you love - and the verb - the word of action - is love. The object of this action word is God.

Jesus has told all of us: You love the Lord your God... Love is an active verb, not a passive verb. It requires action on the subject's part. What does the coach mean when he says to the football players, Run around the field? He doesn't mean for them to sit around and think about running; he doesn't mean for them to stand there and talk about running; he doesn't mean form a committee and develop a set of rules and regulations for how to run or what is really meant by running. He means, quite clearly, for his players to alternate placing one foot in front of the other at a faster than normal rate - and do it now!

We are to actively love God with everything we have. To love God is to exist for Him as a dedicated servant exists for his master. To love God is to listen faithfully and obediently to His instructions, to place oneself under His lordship, to value above all else the realization of this lordship, as in Matthew 6:33: But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.

It means that we base our whole being on God, cling to Him with unreserved confidence, leave with Him all care, and be led by His hand. It means that we despise all that does not serve God or come from Him, break with all other ties, cut away all that hinders, and snap all bonds except that which binds to God alone. To actively love God is to fulfill the commandments. Love God - and do what you like. What we will like is to please God before all others and before all else. This is what God wants.

In the final paragraphs of his editorial, Yancey wrote: The image of a wounded lover in Jeremiah (or in Hosea, where it is acted out in the flesh) is an awesome one that I cannot comprehend. Why would the God who created all that exists subject himself to such humiliation from his creation? In Colorado, as I read through the pages of the Bible, I was haunted by the reality of a God who lets our response to him matter that much... When we tame him, in words and concepts, and file him away under alphabetized characteristics, we can easily lose the force of the passionate relationship God seeks above all else. After two weeks of reading the entire Bible, I came away that God does not care so much about being analyzed. Mainly, he wants to be loved. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

Jesus then continued his summation by saying, The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. No one before him had put these two commandments together and made them one. Religion, to Jesus, is loving God and loving humanity. As we love God, we will be compelled to respond to our neighbors as He does.

This is the other great commandment which was pushed aside in the development of religious tradition - lost in the translation, so to speak. It is written in Leviticus 19:18, Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. In Hosea 6:6, God reveals that He desires mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings. And the prophet Micah wrote in 6:6-8: With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Once again, the verb is active. It does not mean here a personal liking or sentimental affection. It means active good will, boundless and aggressive, extended to those who may have no personal charm for us. It often extends beyond the boundaries of family or nation. It is in the parable of the Good Samaritan that Jesus makes clear that love of neighbor has no barriers.

Many times, we come away from newspapers and newscasts feeling distressed and hopeless and helpless. It seems as if evil is always going on uninterrupted and triumphant. Always something bad going on. But we need to remember there is always something else going on that is much greater than evil. All over the world, men and women of faith are responding to these greatest commandments in such a way that lives are being reshaped with this amazing love.

A few years ago, there was an article in Habitat World, a publication of a Christian organization which builds houses for the poor all over the world, which describes the pitiful death of a twelve year old Haitian girl. She suffered from a debilitating disease; she died from a combination of disease and an overdose of unknown medications and home remedies. The whole sad story tugged at the readers heart.

Stephanie Frykholm ended the article: Little girl, I remember your eyes. It's not your dying that hurts. It's the futility of your death. You died because of ignorance, an ignorance born of poverty, a poverty caused by oppression. This oppression means suffering for you and your people. We who are shielded from the daily sufferings of the poor, how can we understand what your death means? What is life to your family? Hunger, malnutrition, illness, homelessness, illiteracy, violence, fear - your songs of suffering! They are too painful for me to hear! And yet, I look into your eyes, you Haitian people, and I cannot turn away.

The editor of the paper concluded by writing: We continue to build houses, but that is not the only part of our lives. The desperation of these people sometimes barges its way right to our doorstep. We, too, stand beneath the clouds of suffering and oppression which cover this land. Where, amidst this darkness, is the hope? God's light flickers over the land.

This article illustrates that God's work is alive and active. This world is not covered in darkness because God's servants love God and neighbor. Our missionaries and others continue to proclaim the Word of God in the troubled regions of Africa, such as Kenya and Congo. They are trying to bring the word of healing and light to that darkened, blighted land. Gods people are always at work, in spite of apparently overwhelming odds. I compare it to the wheat field which ripples back and forth in an evening breeze. There is always activity; movement; something going on.

We are the servants that help keep God's light flickering over the land. We have a part in this call to love the neighbor. Christian churches and organizations all over the world try to make a difference by loving their neighbors. The response to the earthquake victims in Haiti attest to that. Even when we cannot be there ourselves, we can support those who can be there. We are playing the part of a Good Samaritan in fulfillment of Jesus command to love God and our neighbor.

We could choose to become calloused; to close our hearts to those who are suffering in our communities or around the world. We could shut our eyes; close our ears; try to pretend that we are not affected. But to do so is not Christian; it is not love. It is certainly not acting out love.

Every book of the Bible speaks either directly about love or illustrates love in some manner: God's love for us, our love for God, or our love for neighbor. Jesus has told us that there are no greater commandments than these. I am compelled to believe that we are being told something here. Are we getting the message? I hope so. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:8 that love never fails. Then he wrote in verse 13 that these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. Paul was commenting about greatest commandments. We begin with faith, for faith is our response to Gods revelation. We persevere with hope, for hope is our proper response to faith. We live in love, for love will be eternal.

When we love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind and with all our strength, and when we love our neighbor as ourselves, then we are living a life which fulfills the commandments. We stumble, we fall, but we have a God who picks us up; who sustains us. Our response to Gods love is found in these verses containing Jesus right answer: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength... Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.

Rev. Charles A. Layne

First Baptist Church

179 W. Broadway

PO Box 515

Bunker Hill, IN 46914

765-689-7987

bhfbc@bhfirstbaptist.com

http://www.bhfirstbaptist.com

--
To unsubscribe, send ANY message to: abesermons-unsubscribe@welovegod.org