Alex Huggett: Mark, chapter 12, verse 28,.
Alex Huggett: One of the scribes approached and when he heard them debating so Jesus has been talking to various people, pharisees and Sadducees and political people.
Alex Huggett: So when he heard them debating and saw that Jesus answered them, well, he asked him which command is the most important of all?
Alex Huggett: And Jesus answered the most important is listen, o Israel, the Lord, our God.
Alex Huggett: The Lord is one.
Alex Huggett: Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.
Alex Huggett: And the second is love your neighbor as yourself.
Alex Huggett: There is no command greater than these.
Alex Huggett: Then the scribe said to him you are right, teacher.
Alex Huggett: You have correctly said that he is one and that there is no one else except him.
Alex Huggett: And to love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is far more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices.
Alex Huggett: And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him you're not far from the kingdom of God.
Alex Huggett: And no one dared to question him any longer.
Alex Huggett: While Jesus was teaching them in the temple, he asked how can the scribe say that the Messiah is the son of David?
Alex Huggett: David himself says by the Holy Spirit.
Alex Huggett: The Lord declared to my Lord sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.
Alex Huggett: David himself calls him Lord.
Alex Huggett: How can he be his son?
Alex Huggett: And the large crowd was listening to him with delight.
Alex Huggett: He also said in his teaching beware of the scribes who want to go around in long robes and who want greetings in the marketplaces, the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets.
Alex Huggett: They devour widow's houses and say long prayers just for show.
Alex Huggett: These will receive harsher judgment.
Alex Huggett: Sitting across the temple treasury, he watched how the crowd dropped money into the treasury.
Alex Huggett: Many rich people were putting in large sums.
Alex Huggett: Then a poor widow came and dropped in two tiny coins worth very little.
Alex Huggett: Summoning his disciples, he said to them truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others, for they all gave out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.
Alex Huggett: Well, when a young couple gets married or an older couple for that matter it often involves some kind of vow of undying love, a vow at least until death do us part.
Alex Huggett: But with 30% of marriages ending in divorce.
Alex Huggett: Sadly, it doesn't always quite work out like they hoped.
Alex Huggett: Then there are the marriages that don't end in divorce.
Alex Huggett: That's 30% of first time marriages.
Alex Huggett: There are the marriages that don't end of divorce, but you couldn't exactly call a happy marriage.
Alex Huggett: So what is it that makes a successful, long-lasting, committed marriage, if it's not just promises of undying love?
Alex Huggett: Well, of course, it's all about the execution of the marriage, and I don't mean one partner executing the other don't get to make shortcuts I mean the execution of a plan to carry out the practices of love.
Alex Huggett: So, as we approach the end of our journey in this Gospel of Mark, jesus' last public interaction is with one of the groups that he'd often crossed verbal swords with the scribes.
Alex Huggett: Now, the scribes were the Bible scholars of their day.
Alex Huggett: You might think of them as sort of, I guess maybe the equivalent of Bible college professors, although they didn't have the same sort of institutional structure.
Alex Huggett: But in Jerusalem they were probably connected with the Sanhedrin and scribes had an important place in Israelite societies.
Alex Huggett: Jews were expected to rise when a scribe went past and greet them respectfully.
Alex Huggett: And having a scribe at your special banquet if you had a I don't know a bar mitzvah or a big celebration or something.
Alex Huggett: Having a scribe there was a bit of a status symbol for you, and so the scribes were really treated with a lot of respect.
Alex Huggett: Now, while Jesus was usually running up against the scribes in his interactions, we see here a rare occasion where he has a genuine dialogue and agreement with a scribe.
Alex Huggett: This scribe was really impressed with Jesus' previous interactions, and so he asks us what is the greatest commandment?
Alex Huggett: Well, evidently this must have been some topic of discussion among religious leaders, or else we can hardly expect him to have asked Jesus about it.
Alex Huggett: But regardless of where anyone stood on the topic, you could hardly argue with Jesus' answer, because the reply he gives is with what's called the Shemaar, which means.
Alex Huggett: Shemaar is a Hebrew word for listen or obey, and it's so important that it has become a daily prayer.
Alex Huggett: In fact, devout Jews will pray this twice a day.
Alex Huggett: It's taken from Deuteronomy 6, verses four to five, which says listen, israel, the Lord, our God.
Alex Huggett: The Lord is one.
Alex Huggett: Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength.
Alex Huggett: And Jesus adds mind as well.
Alex Huggett: So the Shemaar teaches us about love for God, but then isn't it interesting that Jesus connects it with another command, love your neighbor as yourself, which is taken from Leviticus, as if he's saying you can't love God unless you also love your neighbor, which will surprise exactly no one who's familiar with Jesus' teaching.
Alex Huggett: And so the scribe enthusiastically endorses Jesus' answer in a way that indicated that he actually got it.
Alex Huggett: He knew where Jesus was coming from.
Alex Huggett: He understood the heart of it.
Alex Huggett: This scribe's heart seems to have been in the right place and he seems to have had godly wisdom.
Alex Huggett: And so Jesus says to him you're not far from the kingdom of God.
Alex Huggett: Now it seems like there's a little bit of a verbal interplay going here.
Alex Huggett: The scribe thinks he's questioning Jesus, and then Jesus becomes sort of the one in authority here, judging the other one's heart.
Alex Huggett: I wonder, do you think the scribe actually made it into the kingdom of God?
Alex Huggett: Wonderful, see him.
Alex Huggett: Thing is, it's one thing to say that we love God, but, like in a marriage, every Christian knows that it's another thing to actually live it out.
Alex Huggett: So what does it take to cultivate a life that loves God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind and with all our strength, and that loves others as ourselves?
Alex Huggett: Well, it's interesting that, even though he's just had a pretty positive interaction with the scribe, jesus then sort of turns on them and warns the crowd about them, and perhaps Mark is recording this just as an indication of how not to love God and neighbour.
Alex Huggett: Jesus accuses the scribes, or at least some of the scribes, of abusing their privilege.
Alex Huggett: They love the honour that comes with their position, and one of the things that may seem strange to us is that, despite all the honour that they had in society, scribes are often actually quite poor not all of them, but they could be.
Alex Huggett: See, they weren't allowed to sort of charge for doing their jobs, and so what some of them would have then is a patron who would look after them, essentially help support them so that they could devote themselves to the study and teaching of Torah, and some of these Jesus is talking about when he accuses them essentially of sponging off even poor widows.
Alex Huggett: The thing is, in that society there was no welfare system.
Alex Huggett: If you were a widow, you hadn't been able to remarry, perhaps not having children, you could be quite poor, you were certainly vulnerable, and perhaps some of them, for the sake of piety, might try to support a scribe beyond their means.
Alex Huggett: I have to tell you, as a pastor, this makes me really nervous.
Alex Huggett: Nowadays, pastors in Australia don't have the same sort of status in our society that the scribes had in theirs.
Alex Huggett: Maybe that's a good thing, but we still have a lot of influence in our position and in our words, and in recent years, of course, we've seen a slew of high profile pastors who have fallen into scandal, and there are many others that you and I will never hear about.
Alex Huggett: So there's a warning here for me as a pastor.
Alex Huggett: But I think there's also a warning here for you and for me as well, as believers, because I sometimes hear people talk about their favorite might be television preacher or an internet preacher.
Alex Huggett: I've got to admit I get a little bit nervous.
Alex Huggett: Maybe it's because I've had my favorites as well and it hasn't always ended well for them.
Alex Huggett: It's very easy for us to idolize people, but just because someone is a dynamic speaker with a lot of influence and a big audience, and maybe a mega church or a mega YouTube channel, doesn't make them a good pastor.
Alex Huggett: And do you know what?
Alex Huggett: Sadly, it doesn't even make them very good at theology all the time.
Alex Huggett: And this is what Jesus was saying of the scribes they weren't necessarily great at their theology.
Alex Huggett: You see, like all of Israel, the scribes eagerly awaited the coming of Messiah, but Jesus said they had no idea what they were actually talking about.
Alex Huggett: How can the scribes say that Messiah is the son of David when David calls him Lord?
Alex Huggett: They were looking to a human redeemer.
Alex Huggett: And Jesus says actually, this idea of Messiah is so much bigger than what you can imagine.
Alex Huggett: They seem to be impressive teachers, but they were missing the mark.
Alex Huggett: And so just because someone has deep sounding theology doesn't actually mean they're speaking the truth.
Alex Huggett: One of the things Jesus tells us each elsewhere is that you will know a prophet, a true prophet, by their fruit.
Alex Huggett: How are they living their lives?
Alex Huggett: We've seen this fruit of the scribes didn't always add up, and so, before Making heroes of our favorite preachers, we need to ask questions like well, what's their lifestyle actually like?
Alex Huggett: What's their character actually like?
Alex Huggett: What about their theology?
Alex Huggett: It's just so easy for us to give our favorite preachers a free pass.
Alex Huggett: I'm going to pick on someone because there was a whole podcast made on him and it's no status Anyone here of Mark Driscoll.
Alex Huggett: Back in the 2000s, mark Driscoll had, yeah, a few hands going up.
Alex Huggett: He was immensely popular, still is.
Alex Huggett: He's still a pastor, but he was pastoring a mega church in I think it was in Seattle, called Mars Hill.
Alex Huggett: He was writing books.
Alex Huggett: They were good books and a lot of people left up his ministry because they were already cracks starting to show in his ministry and because he was so successful and so popular, people sort of gave him a pass and gave him another pass until it all just came crashing down.
Alex Huggett: And it didn't actually come down crashing down because of a sexual scandal or anything like that.
Alex Huggett: It was matters of integrity.
Alex Huggett: Sometimes pastors get picked up because of really bad theology that ends up coming out.
Alex Huggett: So we need to be asking, most importantly, do these people they need to have?
Alex Huggett: If you're a teacher, you have to have good theology, you have to have a good knowledge of the Bible.
Alex Huggett: But what about their character?
Alex Huggett: What about their love for God in neighbor is lived out, and here's the thing you're probably not going to see that on TV or on YouTube or on a podcast.
Alex Huggett: It comes from relationship.
Alex Huggett: So if scribes and pastors, sadly, aren't necessarily the best examples of love for God, then what is?
Alex Huggett: How do we cultivate love for God?
Alex Huggett: Well, in an ironic twist, we discover that well, the seemingly pious scribes aren't the model of devotion.
Alex Huggett: A widow is sort of people that they're sponging off vulnerable, poor, actually often despised in that society.
Alex Huggett: Can you believe it?
Alex Huggett: As Jesus is watching people come past the temple, he sees people bringing their offerings to the temple.
Alex Huggett: Now, there were taxes, people had to pay.
Alex Huggett: But people would also bring big offerings to church to pay for the upkeep of the temple and the priesthood and everything.
Alex Huggett: And apparently what they tell us from the day is that there were these big sort of receptacles people would pour their money into big trumpets shaped things made of metal.
Alex Huggett: So you can imagine it must have been very satisfying for Mr Moneybags to come along and tip all his metal coins into the metal receptacle and hear that.
Alex Huggett: You've heard the sound of coins pouring out, maybe at a bank or what's a bank anyway now, but you know that sound and sort of almost showing off their generosity.
Alex Huggett: Then comes along this widow tosses in two pennies.
Alex Huggett: In that context, what are two cents going to achieve?
Alex Huggett: The barely by a loaf of bread.
Alex Huggett: And yet Jesus says this woman has given more than everyone else combined.
Alex Huggett: Why?
Alex Huggett: Because she gave all she had.
Alex Huggett: She actually could have got away with just giving one coin.
Alex Huggett: No one would have known, no one would have cared, frankly.
Alex Huggett: But she gave it all.
Alex Huggett: Maybe all those pennies could buy was a loaf of bread.
Alex Huggett: Now she's going to go hungry.
Alex Huggett: Her gift was an act of complete devotion to God.
Alex Huggett: Now, you know, this isn't about money, right?
Alex Huggett: Well, it kind of is, but it's not.
Alex Huggett: Money was an expression of devotion, but it was a state of her heart that prompted the sacrifice.
Alex Huggett: And for this woman, this wasn't just an inconvenience, this was a real cost.
Alex Huggett: She didn't have much to give, but she gave what she had.
Alex Huggett: So what does love for God look like?
Alex Huggett: No, it's not just giving out of our abundance, but sometimes, often, maybe all the time, it's giving out of our poverty.
Alex Huggett: And poverty isn't just about money.
Alex Huggett: I know some of you are time poor.
Alex Huggett: You have busy jobs, you have a young family.
Alex Huggett: You might say I don't have much time to give to God.
Alex Huggett: What are my few minutes that I can snatch to read the Bible or give someone a phone call?
Alex Huggett: What is that?
Alex Huggett: What does it even matter?
Alex Huggett: Well, the little time you do give becomes a great expression of love to God, a giving of your whole life.
Alex Huggett: Some of you perhaps feel you don't have much in the way of talents or gifts or anything to offer.
Alex Huggett: Maybe you lack confidence and stepping out and serving God, serving His church, in some small way, becomes an act of great faith.
Alex Huggett: Some of you don't have much money.
Alex Huggett: What difference is it going to make if I put a few dollars in the offering?
Alex Huggett: Sometimes we see in the box up the back just a couple of dollars, but given with a heart of love for God, that makes a big difference to God's heart.
Alex Huggett: So Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.
Alex Huggett: These represent the totality of our lives, our affections, our will, our assets and abilities, our very selves.
Alex Huggett: And so it's in giving ourselves that a gift becomes an act of love, and in particular, time and money or proxies for our lives.
Alex Huggett: Don't we spend a lot of time earning money?
Alex Huggett: Some people will give their lives away so they can have the six or seven figure income.
Alex Huggett: And some of the things we spend that money on actually is essential, isn't it?
Alex Huggett: Food, clothing, housing, health, education, summer, discretionary hobbies, entertainment, more food, bigger house, fancier clothes?
Alex Huggett: A poor widow might have become bitter to God for the lot He'd given her, but she's prompted not only to give her discretionary spending.
Alex Huggett: If I've got to give something to God here, well, was it 10%?
Alex Huggett: Let me, can I cut this coin in half?
Alex Huggett: But no, she doesn't give her discretionary, she gives her essential.
Alex Huggett: So how do we cultivate that sort of love, a love that not only gives my spare time but my me time, a love that not only gives up a night at the movies so I can give it to compassion or something, but maybe gives up a meal so that I can give more, and gives it up joyfully, not just dutifully, because if it's not joyful it's not going to be sustainable.
Alex Huggett: If it's only out of duty and not from the heart, it's not really an expression of love.
Alex Huggett: So here's the thing.
Alex Huggett: It's a bit of a paradox, but our affections are often formed out of our daily habits where we focus our attention, and this has certainly been my experience.
Alex Huggett: Just a little story story.
Alex Huggett: So anyone reading listening to the Bible project I keep coming up with the Bible project.
Alex Huggett: I want to see if more hands go up, a few more.
Alex Huggett: The Bible project it's fantastic, I love it.
Alex Huggett: So here I'm giving it away so you can listen to the Bible project for free.
Alex Huggett: I've got a lot of resources.
Alex Huggett: Now.
Alex Huggett: They have seminary level or Bible college level teaching that you can access for free and everything.
Alex Huggett: So you do not have to pay a cent and you will get everything that's on offer.
Alex Huggett: But you listen to the end of a podcast or something that says they're supported by people like you.
Alex Huggett: So why would people support the Bible project?
Alex Huggett: Because I started becoming a supporter of the Bible project even though I can get it all for free.
Alex Huggett: I don't get anything extra for that, I don't even get my name at the end of the credits or anything.
Alex Huggett: But why?
Alex Huggett: Because I have been investing myself, I guess you could say, into the Bible project.
Alex Huggett: I listened to it, I really enjoy it, I've come to love it and I want to do this Now.
Alex Huggett: I'm not giving my essentials to support it, but that act of supporting the Bible project has come out of my engagement with the Bible project.
Alex Huggett: Going back to the example of marriage what makes a successful marriage?
Alex Huggett: Well, it's often the small things, isn't it Giving flowers or buying your spouse their favorite chocolate, and he's like why don't you do that more often?
Alex Huggett: Affirming and encouraging them, going on date nights together, doing the dishes or making the bed for them?
Alex Huggett: Here's the thing If you think these things only flow out of love, you only do it if you feel it.
Alex Huggett: Let me challenge you to flip that around.
Alex Huggett: What if the love flows out of doing these things?
Alex Huggett: As you invest in it, as you do acts of love, you start to grow love, and I think it's the same often with God.
Alex Huggett: Now, when we come to God, we do need a supernatural work of God in our hearts.
Alex Huggett: It's the work of the Holy Spirit.
Alex Huggett: The paradox is that performance religion doesn't impress God, but the daily habits that sometimes can look like a performance, but that are designed to cultivate a heart of love for God.
Alex Huggett: Doing those things does please God.
Alex Huggett: So we talk about engaging with spiritual practices, or what we sometimes call spiritual disciplines.
Alex Huggett: When we use that word discipline, it can sound like drudgery, can't it?
Alex Huggett: But it's not.
Alex Huggett: If it's done with the right motive, then it can start to form our affections for God.
Alex Huggett: You know, I think you're never going to learn to love the Word of God If you never engage with the Word of God.
Alex Huggett: You will never learn to hear God's voice If you never stop to listen to God in prayer.
Alex Huggett: We learn to love, we learn to hear, we learn to grow in Him by doing.
Alex Huggett: The light comes from engagement.
Alex Huggett: So many of the scribes and those people who were putting their money bags into the temple offering boxes had a performative love, if you like, for God.
Alex Huggett: It looked good.
Alex Huggett: A lot of it was really about them, but the widow displayed a real devotion to God by giving all she had, and that kind of devotion can only come from a heart that is set on God, the kind of heart that's not formed by public performance but by personal practices.
Alex Huggett: This kind of practices that cultivate love.
Alex Huggett: As we head into Easter, we have the opportunity to reflect on the love of God in Jesus Christ that he poured out for us.
Alex Huggett: What kind of love would drive Jesus to the cross to die for us?
Alex Huggett: What kind of practices sustained Him through His earthly ministry, knowing what was ahead of Him and we see some of them in the Bible what kind of practices can we develop to cultivate a life that loves God with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our soul, with all our strength, and that loves our neighbour as ourself?
Alex Huggett: We haven't really gone there much this morning.
Alex Huggett: How can we cultivate a devotion that, like the widow, gives all we have, not reluctantly, and I don't want you to go away and hear me saying I have to go and do this or else I don't love God.
Alex Huggett: No, what I want you to do is to cultivate a heart where that becomes natural.
Alex Huggett: That involves a supernatural work of God as well.
Alex Huggett: God ultimately comes to a joyful giving of ourselves out of love for God.
Alex Huggett: Let's pray, father.
Alex Huggett: We thank you for the love that you have for us.
Alex Huggett: Your love is the inspiration and the model for us as we come into this Easter season.
Alex Huggett: Over the next week, Lord, we just pray that we will be more inspired by you and more challenged in our love.
Alex Huggett: Help us to grow in the disciplines of love that that can turn into affection for you, and that these sacrifices that we read about and feel challenged by, that seem so impossible and overwhelming, now become things that are just natural and flow out of lives that are devoted to you.
Alex Huggett: Fill us with your Spirit, fill us with the knowledge of Christ, fill us with love for you.
Alex Huggett: We pray in Jesus' name, amen.