And welcome to Nolan. They do you, John is a great brother, great leader. You guys are lucky to have him so thankful uh to know him. And so, hey, uh so I was a youth pastor before as a church planter up in the Portland area. And I remember getting a text one day from a student's dad. Ok. And the student wanted to come to our youth group, but the dad was not into it. All right. So you can imagine my like what is this text message moment? And he's going, hey, I wanna meet up, my son wants to go to your like youth thing, whatever that is like, but I have questions about Christianity and so I'm like perfect. Sounds like a fun time. And so uh we sit down at the coffee shop nearby and he starts giving me all the really easy questions, you know, just like, what do you believe about sin? You actually believe sin is a thing. What about hell? You're, you're into hell, right? And what about homosexuality, gender identity? Can you give me the low down from a Christian perspective? Just softballs, you know, so I'm just like ready. And so I'm trying to win this guy over and he looks at me, you know, I get down to the brass tacks. What is it that Christians really believe? What's the central kind of thing? What's the purpose of life according to the Christian message? And I'm like, well, it's the gospel. It's this idea that Jesus God in the flesh died for us, rose again, makes all things new and, and as we follow Him, we get to love God and love people. And I remember he looks at me and I'm just like, what is he gonna say? He's like, that's a pretty good answer. And I'm like, pretty, pretty good. What do you mean? Pretty good, Mr atheist? He's like, no, I'm a Christian and I'm like, you're a what? He's like, yeah, I'm a Christian actually, I'm a pastor. He's like, I just wanted to make sure that you had good theology. I was like, dude, you can't do that to people. You are the devil, bro. What would you say if someone said boil it all down? What's the point of life? We have to answer these most important questions, don't we all of us as human beings, whether you're in here, a Christian or new to Christianity, we all have to answer it. We're gonna look at these two questions today and see how Jesus answers them. Here are the two big questions. Number one, what is the central goal of life? Like, what's the purpose of life? What are we trying to get done here? Number two. Who has the authority to define that today? We're gonna jump into Mark chapter 12 and Jesus is gonna be posed with these questions and we're gonna look at how he answers you guys down for that. OK. Let's look at it. Mark chapter 12, we're gonna just start off, we're gonna kind of work through verse by verse here real quick. Mark chapter 12, verse 28. Look at the text starting off with justice work. It says, and one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another and seeing that he answered them, well, Jesus answered, well, asked him what commandment is the most important of all? OK. Pause right there just real quick. Here's the question right here is the big question. What commandment is the most important of all? In other words, when a Jew would ask another rabbi, this he's saying like, what's the big idea of the Bible? What is the one command? What is the purpose of our life? And by the way, this is the one time in the whole book of Mark that any scribe who is kind of an intellectual approached Jesus with any level of real honesty. Every other scribes trying to trap Jesus here, this scribe was sent to trap Jesus, but he's like, actually impressed with how Jesus has answered other questions and he's going like I'm genuinely curious. And what's cool about this is he comes to him with curiosity, just a side note on this. You can come to God with questions like that's a real thing. All of us have questions for God. But I would just say this, you can either come to God with one of two kind of spirits. One is this, you come with critical spirits. And number two, you can come with curiosity. What I love about this scribe in this moment is he comes genuinely interested and that's what we're gonna see here at the very end of the passage. But now I want us to kind of look at Jesus's answer. What would you say to the most important question of life here is what the God in the flesh, Jesus Christ, the Messiah himself says according to the Bible. Um and we're gonna see three things about jesus' answer. All right. If you're taking notes, co you write this down. Number one, jesus' answer is biblical. Number two, Jesus answer is radical. And number three, Jesus answer is paradoxical. Let's take these in turn. Number one, jesus' answer is biblical. It's biblical. Look at verse 29. If you can here 29 it says Jesus answer. 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, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this, you shall love the ne your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these jesus' answer is biblical. It's biblical. Uh uh what, what we noticed is that Jesus, uh this was a question that was asked of lots of rabbis. But Jesus, uniquely among all rabbis in history, like this is a thing. OK. People are asked this, they have to answer, they have to give a summary of it. Jesus is straight out of the Bible. Do you notice that this is powerful in Deuteronomy 64 is where we get his first answer when he says, love the Lord, your God hero, Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord, your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength that is actually coming straight out of the Bible. Did you know that? Then his second answer where he says that you shall love your neighbor as yourself that comes too straight out of the Bible. Now, would it be wrong for Jesus to say that um man, like let me just summarize it for you and give you my own language around this? No, because Jesus does that in other places. But whenever Jesus hits an instrumental moment, I need you to see this. His instinct is to quote the scriptures. You know that John calls Jesus, the word become flesh. Then as a little boy, Jesus is found in the temple when his parents lose him. What terrible parents they were evidently and he's found and what is he doing? He is like impressing the teachers of that day with his wisdom around the word, even as a young, probably 12 year old boy. And then as Jesus gets ready for mi ministry, he is in the wilderness and he is being tempted and he gets tempted by Satan himself three times. And do you know how he confronts every temp temptation in that moment? He confronts it each time by quoting what scripture and mostly Deuteronomy. And so Jesus begins his public ministry and he starts that ministry entering the synagogue and opening the scroll of Isaiah and, and reading it to them and saying this has been fulfilled. And you're hearing Jesus is the biblical savior, you move on to the end of the story in the gospels and what is Jesus doing there? He is dying on a cross and I need you to see this. What he is doing on the cross. And what he is talking about is he's quoting Psalm 22. You guys, he quotes Psalm 22. What's powerful that is, you can't even kill Jesus without him quoting scripture. Scripture is so central to who he is in his identity. And scripture is so central to what he immersed his mind in you guys, Jesus is a biblical savior and his instinct is to preach from the Bible. So why not us Christian? If I can just speak to the Christians of this room. We are living in one of the most biblically illiterate times in history. We, we talk to Christians and they say, man, I'm all about Jesus, but I don't know that much about the Bible. And while I understand we should be elevating and exalting Jesus and we have a personal relationship with Jesus. We have a relationship with Jesus that begins and ends and is carried through our Bibles. Listen. Um We cannot know anything about Jesus without the scriptures. When we study the scriptures, it's where God talks to us. When we dig into the Bible, it's where we see God more clearly. I love what Dietrich Bon Hofer himself. Uh go look him up. He's a tremendous guy. He talks about um what it means to be a disciple of Jesus and he calls it life under the word. It's beautiful. John Piper writes this to the question. Can't I just love Jesus and not be interested in the Bible? He says God is not honored by groundless love. In fact, there is no such thing. If we do not know anything about God, there is nothing in our mind to awaken love. If love does not come from knowing God, there is no point in calling it love for God. You rocking with this, that we need to be a biblical people. Christianity. If you're new to, it is a, is a religion is a, is a message of substance, there's stuff to dig into here. So jesus' response is what it's biblical. Secondly, I want you to notice that Jesus response is radical. It's radical. If you're taking notes, why do I say that? His response here is radical. Well, here's the big idea that when Jesus says this, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. It's very fascinating the language you use and it harkens back to the uh the same use in Hebrew in the Old Testament. It essentially says when he says love the Lord, your God with your heart, that's your emotional faculties. When he says soul, he's talking about our spirit, our nets in the Hebrew. It's this idea of our whole being our, our soul. When he says our mind, it's our intelligence, of course. And then strength is our will or volition. So why is this so radical? Because so many of us want to compartment, compartmentalize our love for God. Then we wanna say, man, I do Jesus on Sunday. But the rest of the week, that's still kind of mine that I that I'm kinda into the Christian thing, but it's not really who I am. I don't wanna come across as like overly religious. You ever heard anybody say that? That's like a big thing, man. Are you, are you kind of overly religious? Jesus says there is no category for a Christian who isn't totally sold out for Him. Because here's the reality as you dig into the commentaries here, the uh scholars will say that this isn't the idea of like you almost check four boxes. Like I loved the Lord my God with my mind today, but it didn't really love the Lord my God with like my soul. Like how do you even do that? Right. It's impossible. In fact, the Hebrew and the Greek here are trying to drive us into an understanding that this is loving the Lord our God from all of our being. And so hear me on this, Jesus actually rejects Jesus gonna say some some tough things even as he's talking about love here, right? Jesus rejects dead orthodoxy. Jesus rede rejects just like going to church and being into the religious thing, but having no affections for God himself. And so I would ask you today, like, are you religious but not genuinely love with Jesus? Do you love God with all of who you are? Pretense? And religion are not what God requires. Uh There's a story of a young missionary and he gets the uh he's hearing this call for giving to missions, right? He's this young boy at the time and he's interested in the mission field. And so he hears this call, but his heart is so moved as he's talking about uh those who did not know Jesus in China from the message as as the offering plate goes on, he takes his wallet and dumps every dollar in coin out back when we still had paper coins. Ok. Just, and then he takes out a note because he's not satisfied. And he writes on that note and he says OG my L because he spoke another language which translates to end my life and he puts it in the offering plate. He goes on to be a great missionary to China. And this is what I'm saying to you. Do you have you given all your life to Jesus? Does he have a access and authority in every sphere of your being? Because no less than that is Christianity that we would give all of ourselves to Him. Now, if you are like me and uh did not grow up in the church that you're not used to Christian categories. Maybe even today, you're like new to Christianity or maybe you did grow up in the church and you're going, I don't know if that's me. I don't know if that's me. We have to ask this question. What gives us a heart for God like that? How does someone become radical in love with God? Well, I think there's actually a key here in the text there, there's something I want to highlight here in the Greek where it says you shall love the Lord, your God, with your heart, with your mind, with your soul, with your strength. That word there with is actually kind of woodenly translated in our Bibles uh appropriately, but it's still kind of clunky. It's hard to translate one language to another. What it actually is is this word X in the Greek X heart, X soul, XMX strength. And what that word X is probably better understood is out of the source of that. We need to in essence, draw out from the source of our heart, out from the source of our mind, out from the source. And it's this picture of like a well, OK, you almost picture a well where it is filled to the brim with something and you draw that something out. You guys tracking with this and this is what we're to do. We're to have something in the well of our soul to draw from and then give up to God and what that thing we're, we're s we we should seek to draw is love itself. But here's what I would contend plenty of us today are those with an empty vessel. Many of us are trying to sort of muster up a love for God like I wanna be geeked out on God like that. I wanna be excited for God like that, but I don't have it within me. Well, here's what the scripture says that it's not going to be in you unless you have first experienced the love of God towards you. First. John 419 says this that you and I only love God. We love God because he first what of us. The story and the message of Christianity is not first that we drum up very religious affections for God. But first and foremost, we have experienced the undeserved grace and favor of the father poured out through the death of his son who wanted us and died for us. Despite our sin and our undeserved this, this is the good news of the gospel. And my question for you today is, have you tasted that? Because unless you have tasted that there is no, well, from which you can draw a love from God, it will only be religion, it will only be false pretense unless you've experienced it unless you know it for yourself. Um My son, he's now eight years old, so he's like a big cool dude and he's saying things like dude and what's up and skateboarding and all of that. But I remember when he was two and we were introducing to uh to him uh everything for the first time, right? Parents in the room, you know, this experience, it's such a joy and uh because we're foolish parents, we introduced him to ice cream. All right, there's like a hipster ice cream place up in Portland. We took him there because it was like our place and we're like, I better like it. And so we give him this ice cream and he looks at it and you have to like conceptually think about this if you're like a little kid this is the first time you've ever seen this slushy stuff. You know what I'm saying? Like, if you just think about what the way ice cream looks, it doesn't really have much of an odor and you're looking at it and he goes, no, no, I don't want that and everything on his face is like that is, oh, like horrifying. I don't want it. And, and, and he's looking at us like this is gonna taste like feet and mushrooms, bro, that slimy thing right there. Like I'm, I'm not like, I'm not down for that. And so, and so I, I, you know, my wife's like, well, we just need to be understanding and I'm like, no, because I'm the dad. And so I'm gonna force him now, like, because I'm a good parent, I'm like, come on, buddy, like I, and I'm like forcing until finally he goes and then he tasted it. He does that look, parents. You ever seen that on a kid's face? And his eyes light up and he has this wonder in this moment and everything reverses and all of a sudden where once he was like, I don't want to have anything to do with that mushroom sauce. Now he's like, give me the ice cream. Daddy Moore, Daddy Moore. And we made a mistake here because the next day I'm like giving him mac and cheese and broccoli. I'm like, here's your dinner, son and he's like, nope ice cream, right? Because what happened was he had tasted the goodness, didn't he? I mean, some of you guys haven't tasted the goodness of the gospel. You haven't tasted and seen that the Lord is good. So there's no way we can demand in some religious sense. You need to love God radically like this, but you need to experience Him yourself and then give all of yourself to the God who has given himself to you. This is radical. Amen. This is very radical. Number three, I want you to see finally now that it is not just radical but paradoxical, paradoxical, you know that word, remember it from like English class paradox. The idea is like bringing together two opposites in a beautiful way. What I want you to kind of identify here is not just the first commandment, but the tie together with the second commandment, right? The first commandment is love the Lord, your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And the second one which is related is what love your neighbor as yourself. And I need you to see kind of the contrast here. Uh This would have been uh radical for Jews in that day, but it's also paradoxical for us today because what we see is that uh these are kind of two different categories, loving God and then loving our neighbor. And um we see Jesus bringing together and not allowing us to divide them. He is bringing together two extremes of humanity. Uh Those of us who know God, those of us who walk we can on the one end, embrace what's called mysticism and on the other end embrace what's called humanism. Mysticism. On the one hand is where we, it's just like me and God. Right. I'm up in the monastery like I'm with my Bible. Like I'm good with God. I love Jesus. I get it. I'm stoked. I love that kind of stuff. But when it comes to other people though, I'm like, I don't know if I like really like them that much. You guys know what I'm saying? Am I the only one that like, that's how I feel a little bit. Like I love God. But like people like, I'm OK about them. But if we're honest, a lot of us are drawn one way or the other, the other side being what humanism and this is the person who says, man, I'm not into the whole God thing necessarily. I don't necessarily have a personal relationship with God. If I'm really honest, this is, this is really what pre progressive Christianity is, but I want to do altruistic good deeds. One of the youth rooms we actually rented back when I was a youth pastor was this uh formerly Methodist church. They had since liberalized. And uh it was, they were basically all about progressive ideology. They were all about doing good for the community. They were all about diversity they were all about helping people and I would read through their hymns as I would put our worship lyrics in because we were renting from their building. And as I would look through like the program there and kind of look at things they would like have hymns to God for the people who are still religious and like, you know, 100 and 15 years old in their congregation or whatever. So they're keeping the hymns around. But then after, after the hymn, it would point to some like, I don't know, like western liberal value like this is why we celebrate diversity. And you're like, this is how deep is the Father's love for us? Like, what are you talking about? Like these two things? Yes, they kind of relate. But like you, you're kind of hijacking religion for your altruism. And I would just ask you today, which one of these do you tend towards? Do you tend to just really like the people side of church religion? Christianity or do you tend towards just, it's just me, Jesus, my Bible and evangelicalism, right? And you're like geeked up on theology and Jesus ties both together and says, listen, if you, the test of whether you and I truly love God is what full of people for love people. Furthermore, the only fuel and motivation because people just make terrible Gods. They do the only motivation that will continue to draw us back to loving hard to love people is if we know the love of the Father, these two are inextricably linked and it is a beautiful, beautiful paradox by way of application on this, I just wanna um you to think about this. One of the best ways that we tie these two together. Hear me on this is when we live our lives on the mission of Jesus. When we daily love people enough and love God enough to say, man, I am going to love my neighbor as myself by introducing them to the Lord and my God. Yes, with this, when we tie these two things together in evangelism and caring for people enough to not uh to, to not refrain from talking about Jesus and to strategically move into their lives. Say you need to meet the Jesus who saves, you need to meet the Jesus who saved me. That is one of the pinnacle forms of this love. Who do you find it hard to love? And who do you need to introduce to Jesus? I, I would, I would even compel you that we're having Easter here on April 9th, right? You guys excited for Easter. Yeah, you're like mediocre. OK? With Easter. Good, good. I'm pumped, man. This is like the Christian Super Bowl. You guys, we're like proclaiming Jesus to a lost and dying world. We get to tell the dying world there is a resurrected savior. And so here would be what I would urge you to do, be thinking right now, who am I going to invite to Easter? Who am I going to introduce to the resurrected Jesus? Because in this, we find one of the heights of uniting this beautiful paradox of loving God with all of who we are and loving our neighbor as ourselves. So I conclude with this, how do we respond to this? If you look at the text, I'm just gonna read 32 to 34 real quick. It says in the scribe said to him, you are right teacher and you're like, obviously, he's Jesus, right? But he acknowledges it. You have truly said that he is one and there is no one. excuse me, there is no other besides him and to love him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the strength with a loved one's neighbor as oneself is much more than all Holbert offerings and sacrifices. Now notice verse 34 because this is where we conclude says, and when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, you are not far from the Kingdom of God. Fascinating story. It begins with the scribe evaluating Jesus. But how does it end? It ends with Jesus taking authority and evaluating the scribe. But mark intentionally leaves this cliff hanging and it's a cliffhanger that applies to this man and a cliffhanger that applies to you and me as well. When this says, what are you gonna do with Jesus. You're close to the kingdom of God, but have you and he dived all the way in? Is he your Lord? Mark intentionally never tells us what happens to that scribe because I think Mark is asking us today, what are you going to do with Jesus? What are you going to do with his authority? His call to experience his radical love and then return that love to him. Are you gonna step into it or not? Some, some of us do have the same kind of intellectual questions, don't we? I know that I have always struggled. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, I said, right? And because of that, I've always like, I, my foundation is very progressive, liberal, not Christian. And, and I've always been skeptical, but even as a Christian, it wasn't perfectly clean. I've wrestled with questions. I mean, if that's, you hear me out for a moment, sometimes our deepest questions are actually theological encasing intellectual barriers for something deep down them hurts, that hurts. And Jesus is inviting you to let him in. I uh I do this event called, ask anything at the garden as we're kind of gearing up to start. And I invite skeptics and saints to ask questions about Christianity. And um this last one, we had a woman and she raised her hand and she have a question. He asked me a question. She says, how can a good God? How can a good God allow bad things to happen to people. And honestly, in this moment, I wanted to start peeking out on some CS Lewis argumentation, right? Like I was like, hey, I got the answer. Like here's how, uh, you know, all of this works together and infra lapsarian is and all this crazy stuff. Like let me give you. But what happened in this moment is I felt like the holy Spirit of God was like, stop ask her a question in return. So I looked at her and I said, hey, do you mind if I know we're kind of in front of some people here? But is there a reason you asked that question? She stopped and she goes, man, I'm asking this question because I lost someone I dearly love years ago and my kids, I even struggled to disciple them because like this question still haunts me. You guys ever experienced something like that or a question of theology haunts you. And here's what I would say about Jesus. Jesus here approaches this intellectual scribe with a degree of gentleness and he is inviting him to step fully into the kingdom of God is saying, and I know it hurts. I know there are real questions, but I am inviting you to just trust me to experience my love from the cross and full and to approach all of these questions, not with criticism, but with curiosity and find that Jesus is the answer will you pray with me. Glory. Just thank you that Jesus is the answer, Scott. You that you are the answer to the deepest questions of life. For the intellectual here who has questions about all kinds of philosophical things and for the Christian and heroes wrestling over the difficulty of their life, God, I would pray right now that your spirit would just fall on us. Maybe these questions aren't satisfied in this moment, but God may your presence be with us that we would feel your love? But would you do work in us even today as we think and consider your gospel? And Lord that our hearts will be silent? But we would be changed so much so that we seek you God, that we would love you with all our heart, soul, mind and strength that it would overflow to our neighbor. Who would share the good news that there is a God who is the answer. We pray this all in Jesus name.