What Matters Most?

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Transcript:

Several years ago, a close friend of mine ran for public office, and when he did, he and his opponent were sent one of these candidate questionnaires that different groups send out, and they asked him all the regular background information, who your family is, where you went to school, that kind of stuff. They asked about their positions on various issues. And something they asked that was unusual that I had not seen before was they gave a list of, I don’t know, there were seven or eight issues.

And they wanted to know what your priorities were. That wasn’t something I’d seen before. But they gave you a list of about seven or eight issues, and you were asked to put them in order of importance.

So my friend went through, and really I thought it through. And these would be my top priorities. These are a little further down the list. And, you know, something’s got to be last, and it doesn’t mean you don’t care about it at all.

But if you’re ranking them in order of importance, something’s got to be last. Something had to come in seventh or eighth. Well, his opponent, and I think for him, I think the issue was health care. I can’t remember.

It’s been so many years ago, but I think it was health care. His opponent kind of went another direction and listed everything top priority. Everything’s number one.

I thought, well, that’s cute. That’s a cute way to not take a position and sound like you’re taking a position. I’m the big man because everything’s important to me.

I care about everything. Well, probably so did my friend. It’s just you were asked to rank them in order of importance, and you can’t care about everything as though everything is the top priority.

Everything’s the end of the world. And so I saw that, and it was published, and I thought, well, that’s cute. And a couple weeks later, just right on schedule, got a mailer in the mail where this opponent was attacking my friend because he doesn’t care about health care.

He said it was the last priority. Well, something’s got to be last unless we just take the noncommittal approach that you have that everything is the end of the world. Okay, we can’t function that way, can we?

I’m not just talking about politics. In life, we can’t function that way. Every decision you make, can it be the end of the world of supreme importance?

You would never get anything done. you would spend your whole life focusing on the tiny details and not getting to the big things, because if everything’s equally important, nothing is really important, right? If I spend my whole day trying to figure out what am I going to wear, which I don’t spend my whole day on what I’m going to wear, I would never get around to what am I going to preach on this week.

I would never get around to what are we going to teach Benjamin in school. Am I going to go pick Madeline up from school? I would give the decision, am I going to go pick her up from school now, equal importance to what am I going to wear today.

Everything can’t be equally as important. And then there are things that are even more important than those. There are decisions that shape our lives.

And that man, that candidate, had not learned what I learned in high school. You know, you’d try to study, and you’d study for a test, and you try to highlight the things that you thought were really important for the test. I don’t know if anybody else ever did that. But I thought, surely, all of the.

. . Okay, this is going to be on the test, and this is probably on the test. This is probably going to be important.

And what I’d end up with was a page of notes where more stuff was highlighted than wasn’t highlighted. And my dad told me at one point, if you highlight everything, you’ve highlighted nothing. Think about it.

Because highlighting is supposed to make it stand out. If you highlight everything, you’ve highlighted nothing. And so there’s a lesson in there that this candidate hadn’t learned and that I had to learn that if you treat everything like it’s the top priority, if you treat everything like it matters most, and I’m not saying you treat anything like it’s not important at all, but there’s a prioritization.

And if we treat everything like it’s equally important, then nothing really is important. If we treat everything like it matters most, then nothing really matters most. But I think we realize that’s not a good way to live our lives. That’s not a workable way to live our lives.

We have to treat some priorities and some decisions as though they’re more important than others, right? There are some decisions that are more important than others. And I’d say, what am I going to preach on is a more important decision than what am I going to wear when I get up on Monday.

Just grab something out of the closet, throw it on, and go get into the Word and figure out what God wants you to tell the people. Obviously, who am I going to marry? More important decision than picking a brand of toothpaste, right?

People don’t always act like those are different in importance. But we all know, just from living our lives, it’s self-evident that some things matter more than others. And so what that leads us to is that you and I then have to figure out what is the most important thing.

Because we could easily spend our lives, we could easily fritter our lives away, just putting undue emphasis on things that really don’t matter that much, and totally neglecting what matters most. And so I think we’ve got to ask ourselves, what is the most important thing? What is the most important thing I can do? What’s the most important thing I can spend my time on?

From a spiritual standpoint, what is the thing that is most important that God wants from me? What does God want from me most? And maybe you’ve never asked yourself that question.

I’d invite you to ask yourself that question today what is it that God most wants from you maybe you have struggled with that question and haven’t come to an answer yet you’re still trying to figure out what does God actually want from me because there’s a ton of commands in the Bible there’s a ton of principles taught in the Bible what is it that God if we can just distill this down to what is the most important and just nail that down first and then get to the stuff of lesser importance lower priority what is it that God says this is number one this is what I want from you. If you’re looking for it, what is the most important thing? If you’re trying to figure that out, you’re not alone.

Because somebody came to Jesus and asked him the same question. What is it that God considers most important? As I’m somebody who’s trying to serve God and trying to glorify him and trying to honor him, what is the most important thing for me to do?

Somebody came and asked Jesus that same question. So as we go through this series on some of the most important questions, and even in the series I had to prioritize because I came up with a list of dozens of questions or questioning statements that people came to Jesus with. And I realized I’ve got a few weeks to do this.

I can’t get to them all, so what do I think are the most important? I had to do that even in coming up with this list. As we go through what some of these most important questions are that people asked Jesus, that people are still dealing with today, one of them that we’re going to look at is when a man came and asked Jesus, what is the most important thing? What matters most?

And if you haven’t already, turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Mark, chapter 12, the book of Mark. It’s about two-thirds of the way through your Bible. Second book of the New Testament between Matthew and Luke.

If that helps you find it, if you’re not familiar with the order of the books, the book of Mark, chapter 12. And we’re going to look at a few verses between verse 28 and verse 34 this morning. But starting in verse 28, it says, And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, which is the first commandment of all?

Now, to give you a little background on this, because you may be thinking, wait, who was reasoning together, and who had answered well? All right, to give you a little background information on this earlier in the chapter, and again, just like most weeks, we don’t have time to pull in everything from the chapter, as helpful as it would be. So I can give you a quick synopsis, and I’d encourage you to go back and read it for yourself.

There’s a lot of good information in there. But at this point, there had just been a discussion. Now the King James here says a reasoning together.

The word in Greek is more like a dispute. So they were reasoning together, but it wasn’t always reasonable on everybody’s part. So there’s been this discussion where the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes all came to Jesus, and they were trying to, as they were often doing, they were trying to start arguments with Jesus so that they could trip him up and find some kind.

. . They were looking for ammo.

They were looking for ammo that they could use against Jesus. Looking for something that they could accuse him about. You know, the media follow our politicians around all the time and our celebrities.

And when you’re followed around with a tape recorder all the time, eventually you’re going to say something dumb on tape, right? Because I know I say dumb stuff every day. I’m just not being taped all day long.

but they’re looking for something that they can make fun of them about or that they can pounce on them about because they want their headline. That’s what the Pharisees and Sadducees and scribes were doing to Jesus. They were asking him these questions, trying to trip him up, trying to catch him misspeaking or speaking hastily so that they would have something to use against Jesus.

And some of the groups you had here, you had disputes between the Herodians, who were Jews who were in favor of the Roman government, And you had the Pharisees who were against the Roman government, and they came to him together, they came to Jesus together, and they asked him about paying taxes to Caesar, thinking that they were going to trip him. And either one of those groups was going to leave angry because he was going to side with one of them. And Jesus said, render unto Caesar what is Caesar, and unto God what is God’s.

And very skillfully navigated that trap that they had set for him. At the same time, you had the Pharisees and the Sadducees. You had the conservative Pharisees on one side, and you had the liberal Sadducees on the other side.

And they came to Jesus, and they started asking him about the resurrection. And none of these people are coming to Jesus because they wanted to learn. Again, they’re coming to Jesus because they want to trip him up.

And they asked him about the resurrection. Because the Pharisees said, you know, there is a resurrection, and they brought this hypothetical story about a woman who married several brothers in a family, not at the same time, but as one died, she’d marry the next brother. As he died, she’d marry the next brother, and so on, according to the Old Testament law.

And they asked, whose wife is she in the resurrection? Now, they weren’t really wanting to know anything about the resurrection. They were trying to trip Jesus up.

And it’s compounded by the fact that the Sadducees are over here, the religious liberals, who say, oh, we’re too enlightened and too intelligent to believe in all this supernatural aspect of the religion. We don’t even believe in a resurrection. And so they came to Jesus and they asked this question about the resurrection.

Now Jesus does a little bit side with the Pharisees and say there is a resurrection because there is. But he said in the resurrection we’re neither married nor given in marriage. And so he just shut down the Pharisees’ question even though he admitted there’s a resurrection.

So he navigated the waters in between these. Nobody’s particularly happy but they didn’t come up with anything to accuse him about. So there was a scribe who heard all of this going on, who heard the way Jesus navigated these disputes.

The way Jesus, these really learned people in the law, came to Jesus and thought with all their knowledge they could trip him up. And yet this less educated, apparently from human standards, this less educated carpenter just pole vaulted over every obstacle they threw in his path. And so he realized that Jesus understood the truth.

He admitted that Jesus did this well, because it even says in verse 28, perceiving that he had answered them well. He realized that Jesus was somebody who knew and understood the truth and could communicate the truth and wasn’t going to be tied up in what the Pharisees believed or the Sadducees or the Herodians or anybody else. The others were trying to trip him up with these relatively trivial matters, but this scribe realized that this was somebody with a wisdom beyond their trivial concerns.

and he realized he could go and ask Jesus a bigger question. Because see, they were concerned with trivial matters. They were concerned with who’s married to who in the resurrection.

I would think the bigger matter is how do I get resurrected? They were concerned with who they ought to give their money to. Jesus was concerned with who they gave their hearts to.

See, there were bigger matters that Jesus was concerned with. And so the scribe realized that Jesus was somebody he could go to about the questions that he was wrestling with, the questions of what really matters. The question we talked about that I shared with you at the beginning of this message.

Because all of these things may be important in their place, but what really matters most? He’s wrestling with what does God really want from me? What is most important as I try to serve God?

It’s another way of asking what matters most. What matters most for us? What matters most to God? And he knew that Jesus, unlike these petty Pharisees and Sadducees and Herodians, that Jesus could answer these important questions.

And so we go to verse 29. Look at verses 29 through 31, and we’ll see his answer there. It says, And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.

And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first commandment. And Jesus goes a step further and says, That’s the most important thing, but here I’ll give you a runner-up.

In verse 31, it says, And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these, he says. Of all the things that God has told you, of all the things God wants from you, he says, these two are the most important.

So he drew the scribe’s attention. When he answered, he drew the scribe’s attention back to Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 4 through 5. where he paraphrased what that command said.

And what it’s teaching is that on the basis of our belief in the one true God, because this was something that all the Jews believed, this was the beginning of a prayer called the Shema that they recite daily. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. They worship one God.

That was sort of the bedrock of Judaism, that they worship one God, which incidentally so do we. But they were to worship one God. not all these pagan gods of the countries around them.

They had one God to worship. And so it was drilled into them, Here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. And the verse after that in Deuteronomy says that we’re to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, our soul, and our strength.

Jesus adds the word mind in there also. But what this is teaching, because we believe there is one God, because we believe there’s one true God, there’s only one God to be devoted to, only one God to worship, He says that we are to love that one God with everything we have. What is the thing that matters most if you’re trying to serve God, if you want to be a godly person, and I’m speaking specifically to people who’ve trusted in Christ as their Savior.

What matters for you most in your spiritual development from this time forward? What is the thing that God says is most important for you? Love God with everything you have.

Because if we look at the four things that Jesus lists here, It’s pretty much everything we have. He says we’re supposed to love God with our heart, our soul, our mind, and our strength. Our heart is not necessarily the cardiac muscle that pumps blood.

It’s talking about the metaphorical heart. It’s talking about our emotions and our allegiance. We are supposed to feel a love for God and a loyalty to God.

I love my wife with all my heart, not the blood pumping muscle. but emotionally I feel love for her. But there’s also something deeper there.

There’s a commitment. There’s a sense of loyalty. There’s an allegiance to my wife.

That she and I have a relationship that I don’t have with anybody else. It really upset Benjamin when she pointed out that a husband and wife are supposed to love each other first and then the kids. Because our society makes you think it’s all about the kids.

No, no, I made vows to her and she to me. Not to you people. And one day you’re going to grow up and have lives of your own, and you’re going to leave us if we do our jobs right.

And we hope you still love us, and we will still love you. But at some point after 2030, I don’t know. I haven’t revised it now that Charlie’s here.

I don’t know what 30. I haven’t done the math. I know Madeline will be 18 in 2030.

That makes it sound like I’ve got a countdown until she leaves. There’s a reason for that I won’t go into. But sometime after 2030, it’s just going to be us.

And it matters that I love her, and it matters that I like her. And it matters that there’s a relationship there and a loyalty. That’s what I’m talking about.

So there’s not only the emotional aspect, but there’s also the loyalty. There’s the allegiance. And we’re supposed to have the same thing to God, only greater.

We’re supposed to love Him with our whole heart. My love for her has to come even second to my love for God. And I know that sounds crazy to the world too, but if I don’t love God first, I can’t love her the way I’m supposed to.

So I have to love God. I should feel love for God, but there should also be a commitment, an allegiance, a loyalty there that says even if I wake up in the morning and I’m not feeling especially spiritual that day, I’m still going to choose to love God. I’m still going to choose to be loyal to God.

And again, like a marriage. Do you like me every day, Charla? You can answer honestly.

Do you like me every moment of every day? no I’ll let you in on a little secret to our marriage I have trouble going to sleep but once I’m asleep I have trouble getting awake you could once I’m asleep you could send a mariachi band through our room I’m not going to wake up which is real helpful when we have small children because Charlie likes to wake up around 4 a. m.

I’m willing to help but it’s more work for her to get me awake and get me to go get him than for her to just go get him. So I know that there are days that when I wake up a couple hours later to get myself ready and get Madeline to school, and she’s just kind of sitting there. I know she’s probably not feeling a whole lot of like for me at that moment because she’s tired, and I didn’t wake up at 4 a.

m. with Charlie, but I know she loves me. There’s a commitment there, even when she’s like, you’re not necessarily my favorite person right now.

And there are things that I can’t even think of something that irritates me right now, honestly. I’m not just trying to stay out of the doghouse, I would tell you. But we know there are things that the other one does that, you are not necessarily my favorite person at this moment, but I still choose to love you.

And so when there are those days that we wake up and we’re not feeling especially spiritual, we’re not feeling especially on fire for God, the heart is not just the emotions, it’s also the allegiance, that we have a commitment and a loyalty to God that we’re not going anywhere. That he’s going to come first whether I feel like it or not. Whether I feel like I should follow him first or whether I feel like I’d rather go over here and do other things today, still I am going to follow him and I’m going to stick with him.

So we’re called to love him with our whole heart. We’re called to love him with our soul. That’s our spiritual self.

Now the line between soul and spirit is still a little fuzzy for me. And the more I hear people try to explain it, the more confused I get. Some people say they’re the same.

Some people say they’re different. I really couldn’t tell you. But I know they’re related.

And the soul or the spirit, whichever you want to talk about, is part of us that lives on forever. I like the way Brother Tim Green says it. The part of me that lives forever.

That part of us should be totally committed to God. We should love him down in the depths of our soul. Our love for him should be part of who we are.

Should be part of who we are. When you get down to think about who you really are, it’s not necessarily your job that makes you who you are. Although I know a lot of times we as men tend to wrap ourselves up, our identity up in what we do.

But it’s not really your job that makes you who you are. Ladies, sometimes for you it’s your family. It’s your children.

Well, I’m so-and-so’s mom. That doesn’t really make you who you are. It’s not even really hobbies or anything else.

When you get down to who you really are, there’s a way that we’re wired. There’s a personality. There’s an essence there.

And woven into that fabric, the part of us that is who we are, the part of us that lives forever, the part of us that does not change, woven into that fabric should be a love for God. It should be part of our spiritual DNA, if you want to put it that way. And Jesus talks about the mind.

Folks, in addition to our spirit, we have thoughts and we have a will. Some of us have a strong will. Some of us have a stubborn will that doesn’t always want to do what God tells us.

We were at breakfast at my grandmother’s house yesterday. And I, well, from, let’s say from 1971 to 2011, I was the only male born into that side of the family. There are men that have married in, But when everybody’s sitting around and making decisions for the extended family, it’s a bunch of women and me.

So it’s a family that’s very much women-oriented. And they, well, Charla and I kind of stand out a little bit in that. Because they were talking about, I told my husband this, I told my husband that, and I told him yesterday at breakfast that I’ve warned Charla before we got married, I’ll do anything, you know, within the bounds of what’s legal and what’s moral, I’ll do anything you ask me.

but I’m not doing anything you tell me. I’m stubborn. I don’t like being told what to do.

My mother-in-law tried that, and I’d say this even if she was here. My mother-in-law tried that before we got married, and I told her, Janice, I love you, but I already have a mother I don’t listen to. Okay?

I don’t. We get along great, okay? We get along great.

But I just had to let her know that. What I’m telling you is I don’t like being told what to do. And before you think I’m a terrible person, I’m sure some of you sitting out in the pews are the same way.

anybody want to fess up to it or is it just me okay Jolynn thank you you and I can have a stubborn person club we’ll let you all in too all your decisions are correct great me too me too what I’m telling you is I don’t like being told what to do we all have a will whether we want to admit it or not but loving God with our will means being willing to step in line when God says you do this I have to go okay God you call the shots that is not always easy for me but it’s something we’re called to do and it’s something I struggle with but it’s something I try to do but with our thoughts and our will we should demonstrate our love for God and then there’s our strength and that just simply means all of our ability to the best of our ability well guess what you and I don’t have a whole lot of strength in that regard human beings are not known for our spiritual strength we are a fallen creature we are a fallen species we don’t have a whole lot of spiritual strength because God started out with one rule about not eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and we couldn’t even follow that guys it was fruit it’s not like Adam and Eve doomed all of mankind over bacon cheeseburgers it was fruit well I love fruit too but it’s when I really want something it’s usually got meat in it what I’m saying is spiritually we don’t have a lot of strength and willpower But what we do have, as much as we can, we’re supposed to love God with all of our strength.

Whether it’s a lot or whether it’s a little, all of it, we’re supposed to love God with. So in Matthew’s account, well, first of all, this is the single most important commandment. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength.

Then there’s the second commandment. There’s only one commandment that could be considered for even a close second in this, Jesus says. The second place commandment is to love others like we love ourselves.

Love others like we love ourselves. Hey, it’s easy to love ourselves most of the time. I don’t know, sometimes I kick myself over the things I say or do.

But most of the time, we tend to love ourselves. We tend to take good care of ourselves. And we’re supposed to love others with that same kind of love.

We’re supposed to take care of others like we would take care of ourselves. We’re supposed to serve others the way we would want to be served. Put others’ needs up where we put our own.

Jesus says that’s the second most important commandment. Love others the way you would love yourself. And in Matthew’s account, I know this says in verse 31, there is none other commandment greater than these.

There’s nothing greater than these two. Nothing matters more than these two. Now Jesus says when Matthew records this in Matthew 22, 40, on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

I believe he said both things. Matthew recorded part, Mark recorded part. I think what Matthew said, what Matthew recorded was pretty important.

On these two commandments hang all the law and all the prophets. What that means, what that means is if we could do these two things perfectly, if you could today love God perfectly with everything you have and love others perfectly the way you love yourself, every other commandment would fall into place. every other commandment, every other thing that is written in God’s word that we fall so far short of, that we find so difficult to do perfectly, if we could do those two things perfectly, every other commandment would be covered.

Every other commandment would just happen as a natural function of us doing those two things perfectly. So if we could just do those two, we wouldn’t have to worry about all the others, because we’d already be doing them. But there’s a problem.

There’s a problem. The scribe responds to Jesus, and we’ll see this in verses 32 through 34. The scribe responds, and Jesus responds again.

It says, And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master. Not as in, well, Master, but meaning good. You said that well, well said.

Well, Master, thou hast said the truth. For there is one God, and there is none other but he. I’m intrigued by the idea of somebody looking at Jesus and going, yes, good, that’s right, good job.

He knows more than you. He wrote the law. He’s God, so how presumptuous do you have to be to look at God and say, oh, good, you got that right.

And I don’t think he was being sarcastic, but I also don’t think he understood who Jesus was. Well, Master, thou hast said the truth, for there is one God, and there is none other but He. And to love Him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the soul and with all the strength, and to love his neighbor as himself is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.

And he’s right in that. The scribe tells Jesus, you know, you got that right. He’s looking at Jesus saying, I think you’re right.

Because loving God with everything you have and loving your neighbor as yourself, that’s way more important than if we get all the sacrifices and offerings right. God would rather us do those two things than for us to, you know, all these blood sacrifices, all these offerings, all these tithes, all these things that we have to do to get in good standing with God, he’d much rather just have those two things. And when Jesus, verse 34, when Jesus saw that he had answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.

And no man after that durst to ask him any question. Okay, so Jesus looked at the man and said, you know, you’re pretty close to the kingdom of God. And after that, everybody, Durst is, I believe, a past tense way of saying dared.

No one dared to ask him a question after that. So the scribe agreed with Jesus. These two things were the things that mattered most. He came to Jesus.

He said, what is the most important thing for me to do and to know? And Jesus said, love God with everything you have. Love others as you love yourself.

And the scribe realized that those two things were the things that mattered most. So the scribe, again, said these things mattered more than all the rituals they could ever perform. And Jesus said, here’s where we see the problem. Jesus said that because he understood that God is more concerned with the heart, God is more concerned with the things that come out of the heart than he is with these outward characteristics, all these rituals, all these rules, all these laws, God was more concerned with these two matters of the heart that he says he was close to the kingdom of God.

He was close to the kingdom of God. Now, for us today, that doesn’t mean that we can get to the kingdom of God by being good. That’s not what that means.

We get to the kingdom of God through the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you’re looking to get to heaven, if you’re looking to be reconciled to God here on earth, if you’re looking for eternal life, we receive those things as the gift of God through Jesus Christ. The gospel is what gets