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Jesus - Putting His Final Touches on His Painting of Discipleship - Mark 12:28-44

Sermon Series: Spare Me the Details - Just Give Me Jesus

When I was little I used to watch a guy named Bob Ross on PBS.  He was an older guy with a great big afro who would paint a picture in the 30 minutes that his television show lasted.  I used to sit there amazed at how he could make a picture come to life on a blank canvas.  He would always start with a blank page and he would begin to add objects to his painting, usually working from the background and finishing off with the objects that appeared to be the closest.  I can always remember thinking to myself as he put those first few strokes on, “I wonder what the finished picture is going to look like?”  I couldn’t picture in my mind what He had in mind.  But by the last few minutes of the show, as he was putting the final touches of his painting on the canvas I was able to see and appreciate the incredible work of art that he had just made.  Even in the middle of the show, when certain objects in the painting were really clear, there was still a lot left to be added to the picture.  But in those last few minutes as the final touches were being applied, the viewer got to see the beautiful picture that was in Bob’s mind expressed on the canvas in its entirety.

Studying Jesus' life and ministry can be similar to watching Bob Ross paint.  Rarely if ever do we consider the whole of Jesus’ teachings or the example of His life and ministry as a whole.  Most of the time we consider isolated passages where we only see isolated experiences or hear isolated teachings of Jesus.  In those moments we don’t have a complete picture of what our discipleship should look like - we only see bits and pieces.  But there are occasions where the picture of discipleship is much clearer as the final touches are being applied.  We need to know where those passages are so that we can see the nearly completed picture of discipleship and have a better understanding of what God desires to see in our lives.  Today’s passage is one of these passages.  So the question we ought to consider going into the passage is, "What are the final touches Jesus places on His painting of discipleship?"  

We find ourselves at an interesting place in Mark’s gospel this week.  We are getting ready to leave the portion of Mark’s gospel in which he has described the life, ministry, and model of Jesus, to enter into the portion of his gospel that describes Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection.  In the next few weeks we are going to be dealing with some of the most significant, provocative, controversial, and debated moments in Jesus’ ministry.  For those of us who are believers in Jesus, so much of our faith is wrapped up into His death, burial, and resurrection.  Our hope for salvation and forgiveness of sins begins with the fact that we believe that Jesus is God’s perfect Son.  We needed a perfect and powerful sacrifice for our sin and believe that we find that in Jesus, God, Himself, who took on flesh and came to earth to rescue us from our sin.  We believe that in His death He became our substitute for sin taking upon Himself the wrath of God that was to be poured out on men for the sin which they had committed.  We believe that Jesus’ death and the shedding of His blood was the only sufficient payment that would have atoned for our sin.  But Jesus’ death alone isn’t enough for us to hope in.  We also believe and have great hope because the tomb His body was placed in is empty.  Had Jesus died on the cross and remained in the tomb there would be no hope to believe He was anything other than just a man.  And if He was only a man there would be no hope that His death was sufficient for ours.  But because the tomb is empty, and because He rose again, we can have great confidence that He is God, that His death for us was sufficient, and that we can have the salvation and forgiveness that He promised.  It is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus that provide the undeniable evidence that Jesus was in fact God’s Son and that God had in fact provided a way of salvation which He had promised long ago.  Because the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus become the cornerstone to our faith in Jesus, we spend a lot of time talking about and emphasizing them – and rightly so.  But if we do this exclusively we don’t get all of the good news and miss out on both Jesus’ teaching and model for discipleship. 

There is so much that we can learn about God and His plan for us in Jesus’ birth.  In Jesus’ birth we discover that God is a sending God.  He sent His Son to us.  And at the end of Mark’s gospel we are going to see that that is God’s plan for us as well.  God is still a sending God and now He is sending us.  But in Jesus’ life we are taught by Christ and given a model for discipleship.  We have a fancy word in Christianity called ‘sanctification’ – it means becoming like Jesus.  We believe that’s what God is working to do in our lives after we come to faith in Jesus – to make us like Him.  In Mark’s gospel he spends 13 chapters teaching his readers about Jesus’ life and ministry and only 3 on His death, burial, and resurrection.  While those last 3 chapters have the greatest news we could ever hope to hear, those first 13 are essential for us to know and understand if we are going to be like Christ.  Let me ask you this, “What happens if we focus our attention exclusively on studying the death, burial, and resurrection?”  It may lead us to saving faith, but we will never be equipped to be like Jesus, because we will never have spent any time learning what He taught and seeing how He lived.  I say all of this this morning because as we are in the final portions of Mark’s gospel teaching on the life and teachings of Jesus, Mark provides what I believe is an extraordinary summary of what He has been trying to convey in the first 12 chapters of his gospel and instructions that we absolutely have to grasp if we are going to be genuine disciples of Jesus.

In verse 28 we see a lone scribe who has come onto the scene while Jesus is rightly teaching the Sadducees from the OT scriptures in regards to the future resurrection of those who have trusted in Him as Savior and Lord (see verses 18-27).  This particular scribe, who we will find has an incredible understanding of the OT and it’s right application (see verses 32-34), understands that Jesus has answered the challenge of the Sadducees well.  He then takes the opportunity to ask Jesus a question of his own.  It was not uncommon for the scribes and other Jews to ask the leading rabbis of the time to give a concise summary of the OT.  What is it that the scriptures of the OT really boil down to?  And that’s what this scribe asks Jesus here when he asks Him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?”  The scribe isn’t asking which of the commandments is the most important – he doesn’t use the word ‘all’ to modify the word ‘commandments.’  The best way to understand the question that the scribe asks Jesus is to render the question like this, “Which commandment supersedes all (everything) and is incumbent on all humanity?”  Jesus answers him with not one commandment, but two.  And Jesus answers the question not by summarizing, paraphrasing, or mixing the two together, but rather quotes the OT text one after the other.  Jesus first quotes the text of Deuteronomy 6:4-5, which the Jews referred to as the Shema.  The Shema was a form of creedal summary that was hugely important to the Jews and which was recited by the pious Jews every morning and every evening.  Jesus said, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’”  Jesus provides a very interesting answer to this scribe’s question, especially considering the context.  Jesus, standing in the most important place for the worship of God, the temple, where worship was centered around the sacrifice of animals and the giving of offerings, doesn’t mention anything about the temple or its forms of worship.  Jesus talks about a different kind of sacrifice and a different kind of offering.  Jesus says the commandment which supersedes everything and which is incumbent on all humanity isn’t to sacrifice some animal or to make some monetary offering – it’s to sacrifice oneself by offering all of one’s self to God.  I would argue that here is where we find one of the final touches to Jesus’ painting of discipleship.  As He begins to boil all of chapters 1-12 down to a nutshell and all of the OT scriptures in a nutshell, Jesus gives a final exhortation for discipleship.  Listen to Jesus’ answer.  Genuine discipleship according to Jesus is about relating rightly to God and rightly to one another!  And as Jesus describes what that looks like He begins by demonstrating our need to have a total response of love to the lordship of God.  Four times He uses the word “all.”  We are to love God from all of our heart, from all of our soul, from all of our mind, and from all of our strength.  Genuine discipleship isn’t a partial response to God.  It’s not offering part of ourselves to Him or loving Him some.  Genuine discipleship isn’t even offering most of ourselves to Him or loving Him with most of our lives.  Genuine discipleship is loving God with all of ourselves and offering all of ourselves to Him.  But there’s also more.

After Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:4-5 He quotes Leviticus 19:18 which says, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  This is the second part of Jesus’ final exhortation for discipleship.  Not only must genuine disciples of Jesus relate rightly to God, they must also relate rightly to others.  Jesus says the OT scriptures teach this by commanding us to love others in extraordinary measures.  Now you might object and say “That’s not what Jesus said!  He said that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves.  That’s not nearly as demanding as you make it out to be because I’m not a great lover of myself.”  If that’s how you respond then I would agree with you – you’re not a great lover of yourself, you’re an extraordinary lover of yourself.  By nature we are men and women who deeply and passionately love ourselves.  Almost every decision we make is to benefit ourselves, to make much of ourselves, or to gratify some desire that we have.  We love to sit on the throne of our lives and to seek out that which will make us feel good, add to our kingdom, and make much of us.  And Jesus says that we are to love others in the exact same extraordinary measure that we love ourselves.  According to Jesus, “There is no other commandment greater than these.”  John provides added emphasis in his first letter when he wrote, “We love because He first loved us.  If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.  And this commandment we have from Him: whoever loves God must also love his brother” (1 John 4:19-21).

As Mark proceeds with the account we find that the scribe is again impressed with Jesus’ answer.  Not only had Jesus answered the Sadducees challenge well, but He had also answered his own question well.  This scribe's wisdom and understanding of the OT impressed Jesus and Jesus said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”  The scribe hadn’t acquired it yet.  He understood that a genuine disciple of God must relate rightly to God and to others and there isn't anything to suggest that He wasn’t doing those things.  But something was still missing.  We find out what that might be in the next few verses.

In verses 35 through 37 we see the second of Jesus’ final touches on His painting of discipleship.  In these verses Jesus gives a final question for discipleship.  He begins in verse 35 by addressing the challenge to the scribes (the particular group of the Sanhedrin represented by the individual who had just questioned Jesus).  The question Jesus asks is how the scribes can misunderstand who the Christ (the Messiah) will be.  While this previous scribe (and perhaps others) had a good understanding of the OT scriptures and knew how they were to rightly relate to God and others, they did not understand who the Christ was.  In their minds He would simply be a descendant of David who would restore the prominence of Israel and free them from the control of their oppressors.  He was simply ‘the son of David.’  But Jesus argues that David himself, inspired by the understanding of the Holy Spirit, had a different and better understanding of who the Christ would be.  Then Jesus quotes Psalm 110:1 which says, “The LORD (i.e. Yahweh) said to my Lord (i.e. adonai), sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.”  The particular psalm was used at the inaugurations of new kings in both Israel and Judah.  When the psalm was sung or recited they were proclaiming that God the Father was the one who had appointed and positioned the earthly king, as His representative, at His right hand, a place of power and authority, to rule until God put his enemies under his feet.  But the psalm has Messianic tones as well.  And this is where some of the misunderstanding arose.  If David said that God the Father said “to my (David’s) Lord” then we have an incredibly difficult passage to understand, especially if the Messiah is just a descendant of David.  David would be giving to his descendant a greater significance than he gave to himself.  The religious elite among the Jews could not comprehend that.  David was the greatest king of the Jews and for him to call one of his descendants his Lord made no sense.  The only way to make sense of what David said was if in fact his descendant was greater than him.  And that’s the reality that we have to understand.  The Christ, the Messiah, was in fact greater than David, for while He was a son of David, He was also the Son of God.  So Jesus asks the question of the scribes (and Mark to his readers), “If David calls the Christ ‘Lord,’ how can He simply be his son?”  As Jesus is addressing the final touches of His painting of discipleship the final question that has to be rightly answered is, “Who do we say that Jesus is?”  The particular scribe who approached Jesus knew the OT scriptures and knew how to rightly relate to God and to others, but perhaps the thing that kept Him from being a genuine disciple of God was how he answered the question, “Who is Jesus?”  If this scribe, like the other scribes, believed that Jesus was just the son of David, then he could not have been a genuine disciple of God.  You’ll recall that in the center of Mark’s gospel, we saw the question that was central to the gospel.  In Mark 8:29 Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”  And we saw in the following verses that the answer is “the Christ” – the One who came to “suffer many things . . . and be killed, and after three days rise again” (vs. 31).  That is the central question of the gospel and the question that must be answered by those who are genuine disciples of God.  We have to rightly relate to God and others by rightly loving them (loving God with all we are and loving others as ourselves), but we also have to rightly answer the question, “Who is Jesus.”  The only answer that will suffice is that “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, who came to suffer and die for sin, who was buried, and who rose again on the third day.”  Is that how you have answered that question?  Have you even considered the question before?  It’s not a question that we can take lightly, ignore, or assume doesn’t require a response.  It is the central and most important question in life.  How have you answered it?  Who do you say that Jesus is?

Having given a final exhortation in regards to discipleship and offering a final question for discipleship, in verses 38 through 44 Jesus provides final pictures of discipleship.  Jesus first shows a picture of insincere discipleship by identifying a lifestyle that may look impressive to others, but which has little concern at all for God and His glory.  Jesus did this by directing the attention of His listeners to the lives of the scribes.  Jesus said to those listening that the scribes loved attention and honor.  They would dress differently than the common Jews to draw attention to their perceived ‘holiness.’  They craved honor and looked for it from the common people in the form of greetings in the marketplace and special seating in the synagogues and at feasts.  Even in their prayers, they would pray for long amounts of time so that those listening would be impressed.  Jesus says that while these things may give the appearance of holiness, these kind of men would actually receive a greater condemnation.  They were living solely for their own glory and fame – not God's.  Then Jesus took a seat opposite the treasury and began to watch people put money into the offering box.  While they were sitting there Jesus saw many rich people put in large sums.  Once again we have what appears to be an impressive act of holiness.  Men and women who had massive amounts of wealth were giving very large sums of money, presumably because they were good disciples and doing what the law required.  But we find later, in verse 44, that these men and women were giving out of their abundance.  Their giving wasn’t costly to them – they had a great deal of excess and they were giving out of that excess.  It was a large amount, but it was only a small portion of what they possessed.  Then finally in verse 42 Jesus and His disciples see a poor widow approach the offering box.  All this poor widow had left to her name were two small copper coins and as Jesus and His disciples watched, the poor widow put both of them into the offering box.  Jesus then tells His disciples, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box.  For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”  Jesus saw in this poor widow woman a genuine and sincere disciple of God.  This is what it looks like when one truly loves God with all one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength.  It may not look like holiness to most people.  It certainly didn’t look as impressive as the scribes, or as impressive as those who gave large amounts of money.  But Jesus suggests that this woman, more so than any of the others they have considered, is what a genuine follower of God looks like.  James Edwards noted, “For Jesus the value of the gift is not the amount given, but the cost to the giver.”

The question for us is which of these three groups do we most look like?  Does our life look more like the lives of the scribes?  Are we practicing religion for the purpose of our own self-advancement?  Or does our life look more like the lives of the rich who were giving great gifts, but whose discipleship really didn’t cost them anything, since they were giving out of their abundance?  Are we content to simply give God an hour and 15 minutes of our weekend and another hour and 15 minutes during the week?  Many in our culture today would consider that impressive – church attendance and small group attendance.  But is church attendance twice a week really all it takes to be a genuine disciple of God?  Or does our life look more like the life of the poor widow?  Are we willing to give all that we have for God and His glory?  Are we willing to do so even when we won’t receive any recognition?  When you offer your gift and your discipleship to Jesus does He see any sacrifice at all involved?

Mark concludes the first 12 chapters of his gospel by helping us apply all that we have seen in Jesus’ life and ministry so far.  Jesus’ life and ministry have clearly shown us that He is God’s Son and in His teachings He has proclaimed that He has come to suffer and die for sin, be buried, and will rise again on the third day.  He has provided plenty of evidence for us to answer the question, “Who do you say that I am?”  We have also seen in His life and ministry a life that loves God with all of His heart, soul, mind, and strength.  Now as we head into chapters 14, 15, and 16 we will see again, another clear picture of discipleship as we watch Jesus, who genuinely loves the Father with all of His heart, soul, mind, and strength, and who genuinely loves His neighbor as Himself, give all that He has by offering very sacrificially His own life as a substitute for sin.  This is the life and ministry of Jesus and the life and ministry that Jesus is calling each of us to as well.

Small Group Questions for Discussion

1. Read Mark 12:28-34.  As we examined these verses we emphasized what we said was Jesus' final exhortation for discipleship.  As His life and ministry was coming to an end, Jesus summarized both what the OT taught was the most important thing and what His life had modeled - to love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.  This is certainly a hard calling to carry out.  What is the key to being able to do this?  What are some of the things that keep us from loving God in this way and from loving others this way?  Which of our neighbors are we failing to love this way?  Why is genuine discipleship characterized this way?  Can't we be genuine in our discipleship just loving God some and loving others some?  

2. Read Mark 12:35-37.  As we examined these verses we emphasized what we said was Jesus' final question for discipleship, "Who do you say that I am?"  Is it possible for someone to strive to rightly love God and rightly love others who has not answered this question?  Why is answering this question rightly such a big deal - why does it play such an important role in genuine discipleship?

3. Read Mark 12:38-44.  As we examined these verses we emphaszied what we said were Jesus' final pictures of discipleship.  Consider the examples that Jesus drew the people's attention to: the scribes, the wealthy, and the poor widow.  Which of these three examples do we most resemble and why?  Which of these three examples do we most want to resemble and why?  If the group we most resemble is not the same as the group we most want to resemble, what are our next steps?  What part of your discipleship right now is costly to you?

4. What step of faith does this passage of Scripture require us to take as individuals and as a small group?  How do we work this out on mission?

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