This transcript was generated by whisper.ai. Welcome back to Day 3 of our look through Mark chapter 12 in Daily Tribetime Devotions, verses 28 to 34 today. And in this chapter about what's most important, this day focuses on what is most important. Imagine what happened in these verses 28 to 34. One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating, noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer. He asked him of all the commandments, which is the most important? The most important one, Jesus answered, is this, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. " The second is this, "Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these. " "Well said, teacher," the man replied, "you are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. " When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God. And from then on, no one dared ask him any more questions. " Here's the question, what is the greatest commandment? In this week of talking about what is most important, the question is asked of Jesus, what is most important? And his simple, clear answer to this question has the power to take your breath away. By choosing these two commands as the most important of all the Old Testament commands, Jesus tells us how deeply he values relationships. He values our relationship with God and he values our relationship with each other. Lesson one in Jesus' teaching about relationships is simply this, nothing is more important than relationships with God and then with others. Now, Jesus talks in these verses about what to do, how to do it, but he also talks about how to get there. He talks about what to do. He says you love God and you love your neighbor. That is the priority. How many first priorities can you have in your life? Only one. And Jesus says the first priority has to be love. That is the one. So you might think about, we all have to think about every day, what are some of the lesser priorities that invade our time and energy so that we don't love like we want to love? And when you begin to think through that question about lesser priorities, things that invade your time so you don't love like you want to love, there are hundreds of things that come into our minds. This takes my time. That takes my time. This takes away my time. And we immediately begin to wonder how could I have time to love in a world where I have to work to earn a living, where I have to drive carpool for my kids, where I have to make sure that the house is clean because some people are coming over, where I have to make sure that the lawn is mowed today because it's been like five weeks, where I have to make sure, make sure, how do I do this? Here's how you do it. Here's the key. You don't stop what you're doing so that you can make love your first priority. You make love your first priority in whatever you're doing. That's how you change. That's how you love God and love your neighbor. So even while you're mowing the lawn, you're thinking about God, maybe praying to God. Or you're thinking about your neighbor and thinking this is one way I can love my neighbor because they got to look at my lawn. You make love the first priority in whatever you're doing. What do you do? You make loving God and loving your neighbor first. Somebody on our research team asked about these verses. How is the best way to monitor how I'm doing with these two greatest commandments? How do I know if I'm loving God? How do I know if I'm loving my neighbors? I believe that Jesus gave us the answer in these verses. How do I do this? Jesus said here's how you love God. You love him with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, all your strength. Here's how you love your neighbor. You love your neighbor as yourself. How do I do this? You love God with heart, mind, soul, and strength. Your heart. That's how you feel. Now, the Bible means more than just feeling when it talks about the word heart. But I want to focus on the idea of feeling here. Your heart is how you feel. Your mind is how you think. Your soul is how you decide. The soul is really the place where you make your decisions in life. Your mind informs your soul. Your heart informs your soul. Your soul is how you decide. And your strength is what you do. And Jesus says you want to love God? It's going to involve what you feel, what you think, what you decide, what you do. You bring loving God into all those areas of life. So when you have a feeling of anger or a feeling of joy, you bring God into both of those feelings. The feelings that you have throughout the day. You don't insulate God from those like God wouldn't be interested in this. He doesn't want to know how I feel. All God wants to hear is feelings of praise from me. So I'm going to insulate him from all my other feelings. Absolutely not. Read the book of Psalms. Read how David expressed all of his feelings to God. Look at Jesus Christ. Look at how Jesus expressed all of his feelings. What God was doing. Your heart. Then your mind. How you think. What you think is going to eventually become what you believe. And what you believe is going to determine your life and the direction of your life. What are you thinking about during the day? What's in your mind? What am I allowing into my mind? What am I inviting into my mind? One of the problems I think all of us have is we allow too many things into our minds. We don't invite enough things into our minds. It's an easy thing to do, at least for me. We're just inundated by thoughts and ideas and advertisements and all the things of this world all day long. So we have to allow a lot of things into our minds if we're not careful. One of the ways to fight against that. One of the ways to fight against a worldly way of thinking that says I've got to be selfish is to invite God's thoughts into my mind. To invite his word into my mind. You love him with your heart. You love him with your mind. You love him with your soul. You make decisions that you think this would make God smile. And you love him with your strength. You love him with the things that you do today. Don't just do things today. As you do those things, do them thinking I'm loving God by doing this. Whether it's some small task you're doing around the house or at work or some great opportunity that God's put into your life today. You do it thinking I'm doing this as an expression of my love to God. That's how you love God. Heart mind soul and strength. And how do you love your neighbor? Jesus said here's how. As yourself. You can't love your neighbor focused on yourself. You got to love your neighbor recognizing that we're all on the same plane. We all have the same needs. And just like I need people to love me, the people in my life need others to love them. So I recognize that. Many times it's a habit of our human nature to focus on ourselves to the extent that we think only of ourselves. And then we wonder why other people don't love us because they're doing the same thing we are. They're focused on themselves to the extent they're not loving anybody else either. So you love your neighbor as yourself. You recognize that the same needs that are at the core of your heart, they're at the core of everybody's heart around you, the same feelings of reticence that you have to reach out and love other people, the people in your life have those same feelings, the same feelings of inadequacy that you might face in your life. The people that you're surrounded by have those same feelings, the same feelings of pride that rise up in your life and anger when things don't go like you would want them to go. Other people around you are struggling with those same feelings, the same need to be loved, to be encouraged, to have someone in your life that cares not just for themselves but also truly loves you, the same need that you have, the people around you have that need. Here's the incredible thing in life, you've discovered this, the incredible thing is I don't get my needs met by waiting for other people to meet my needs. The amazing thing is I get my seemingly selfish needs met by reaching out to others selflessly and all of a sudden I realize that some of those selfish needs are nothing but pride and others of them are met because I've made a connection with somebody else. You love your neighbor as yourself. Now the famous story that Jesus told to illustrate who our neighbor is is the story of the good Samaritan and in that story he was showing that somebody who everybody thought was a foreigner who they thought was from another town, nobody needed to stop and love the Samaritan, that he was a neighbor. So the people that God puts in my path today, they are my neighbor. Love my neighbor as myself, love God with my heart, mind, soul and strength. That's what you do, that's how you do it. But then how do I get there? How do I get there today? I want you to notice what Jesus said was wise in this man's response because if you're like me, these are great thoughts, I want to love God this way, I want to love people this way but then at the end of every day I find myself, oh I've been selfish once again today, I've done it my way once again today. How do I get to this place of love on a daily basis? Jesus affirmed in this man, this teacher, the fact that he'd said that these commands were the most important of all and that they were more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices, nothing was more important and then he gave him this challenge. He looked at this man and he said, "You are not far from the kingdom. " The challenge I see in my life in these verses is that's one of the easiest places to be in life, not far, not far from the kingdom. It's one of the most dangerous places to be in life. I can understand these commandments, I can know what it means to love God and to love my neighbor and I can live my life not far from these commandments, not far from this kind of life. It's only when I understand with childlike faith that I need God's power to live God's commands, that I'm ready to enter the kingdom and then live this kingdom life. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be satisfied with living a not far from the center of God's will life. I want to get there. How do I get there? I get there by recognizing that I don't get there on my own power, my own strength, my own energy. I get there by his power, his strength, his energy and then he gets the glory because he's the one who's doing it. As you and I end this time of looking at this greatest commandment today, love God, love others. Let's pray in practical ways that God would give us opportunities. Our Father, we pray together that you'd help us to see how we can love you today with our heart, with our mind, with our soul, with our strength and God we pray that you'd help us to see how we can love others today as our neighbor and as ourselves. Lord, you know how easy it is for us to see just ourselves, the selfish things that we need, the disappointments that we have, agenda that's in our lives. God help us to see with different eyes today, with Jesus' eyes and we know that if we're going to do that, we need your strength, we need your power. So deliver us from a life of trying to live out these commandments and deliver us into the joyous life of trusting you, trusting you to live out this life of love through us Jesus Christ. We ask you to do something in our lives today that we could not do on our own strength, our own power. Help us to love. We ask this Jesus in your name, amen. Well join us tomorrow, we're going to be talking about, Jesus talked today about what is most important, we're going to be talking about what he said is least important.