Mark 12

Mark 12:38-44

XVIII ANOTHER AND ITS ANSWER; HIS LAST PUBLIC ; OVER AGAINST THE Harmony, pages 155-159 and Matthew 22:34-23:39; Mark 12:38-44; Luke 20:41-21:4.This section commences on page 155 of the Harmony and consists of the last question of Christ’s enemies, differing bitterly among themselves, yet led by a common interest, conspired to test, tempt, and ensnare him by hard questions. He had answered the question concerning his authority, the question concerning paying tribute to Caesar, and the resurrection question. The Pharisees, seeing that he had muzzled the Sadducees, rapidly held a council, selected with great care the form of a final question and a representative to propound it. It will be understood that this representative is a better man than those he represents, but he speaks representatively. And the word “tempt” is used in its usual bad sense. They consulted first as to what question should be propounded.

Second, who should propound it. The querist was a lawyer. The word “lawyer” in the Bible does not mean altogether what our word “lawyer” means. A lawyer in the time of Moses and after, and especially in mediaeval ages, was one who was an expert in both civil and canon law, or ecclesiastical law. The first business of a scribe was to copy the text, then expound it. And after a while they became authorities both on text and exposition, and from them originated the meaning of the degree LL.

D., the word “laws” being plural, that is, one being skilled in both civil and canon law. In all countries where there is a union of church and state there are two forms of law, one applying to ecclesiastical matters and the other to civil matters. Oftentimes the two blend. A matter can be both civil and ecclesiastical.

It is quite important here to note the precise form of the question they propound. Following the Greek literally this is the question: “What sort of commandment is great?” We usually understand that the question seeks to find a distinction between the various commandments of the moral law, as to relative importance. This seems not to have been their idea. There would not have been a snare in such a question. Let us see if we can find just what was the snare. They themselves continually distinguished between a commandment that was written and a commandment that was oral or traditional.

And they were accustomed to put the traditional law above the written law. One of themselves had said, “The commandments of the written law are sometimes weighty, and sometimes little, but the commandments of the scribes are always weighty.” So when they put the question in this form, “What sort of commandment is great?” they want to commit him either for or against the oral law.

If he decides against the oral or traditional law they hope to make capital out of it before the people, who were very much devoted to the traditional law. Now, from the very beginning there had been a marked difference between them and him on the meaning of law. When he says law he means only the written law. When they say law they mean both the written and the oral law. All through the Sermon on the Mount we see how he magnifies the written law, and throws contempt upon their traditional law. He shows that in their construction of traditional law they oftentimes set aside the written law entirely.

We have considered a case already where they set aside the commandment, “Honor thy father and thy mother,” by following the traditional law, to the effect that if a man said to himself that the money with which he ought to help the aged, feeble parents was in his mind consecrated to something else, that would exclude him from piety toward his father and mother, that is, relieve him from the burden of taking care of them. All along he has been setting aside their conception of law.

Now their hope is that if he takes his old ground, that only written law is great, it would turn away from him the people who believed in the oral law. We have a passage in Mark often quoted in baptismal controversies showing how punctilious they were in their observance of their traditional law, the diligent washing of their hands and, when they returned from the market, the dipping of themselves lest they had contracted ceremonial defilement by touch with unclean people. And even the dipping of their tables and beds, and anything that might by a possibility have become ceremonially defiled. Hence the form of this question: “What sort of commandment is great?” In other words, “Do you say that only the written law is great, or do you agree with us that the traditional law is even greater?” He replies by a quotation from the Pentateuch. The first part of his answer is from Deuteronomy 6:4, the second part from Leviticus 19:18. He says, “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 great and first commandment. The second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Here he accepts the condensation of all the first table of the law by Moses into one commandment and his condemnation of the second table of the law into another commandment.

Spurgeon, while seeming to misapprehend the precise point of this question propounded to Christ, has a great sermon on the text, “The first and the great commandment.” To love God supremely is first in order of position in the Ten Commandments. It is first in order of importance. It is first and greatest because it includes the second. That is to say, unless we love God supremely we can never obey the second commandment to love our neighbor as ourself. Some magnify the first table of the law and disregard the second. They think that if they pray and pay tithes to God, and do not worship images) and keep the sabbath day, it makes little difference how they do toward their neighbors.

They may refuse to honor their parents, steal, lie, commit adultery, if only they comply with what they think is the .First Commandment. On the other hand it is the custom of the world to utterly disregard the First Commandment and magnify the Second. Businessmen on the streets conceive of law simply as it relates to our fellow man. They think if we kill nobody, do not wrong our neighbor in any respect, we are all right. Their stress is on morality, but our Lord shows an indissoluble connection between the two commandments: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself. He conceives of no sound morality apart from supreme love of God.

This representative LLD who propounded this question was much interested in our Lord’s answer. It becomes evident that he is a better man than those who loaded him with the question. He expresses hearty approval of Christ’s answer, and our Lord said that he was not far from the kingdom.

As usual, our Lord follows up his victory. He puts a question before the Pharisees are scattered. They still stand grouped where they had consulted to determine what question should be propounded to him. So he propounds a counter question. “What think ye of Christ? Whose son is he?” They readily answered as any Jew would have answered, “The Son of David.” Then he puts a question with a barb on it: “If he is only the Son of David, how is it that David, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, calls him Lord, in Psalms 110, to wit: The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand?” The object of his question is to correct their limited conception of the Messiah. They were disposed to look at him as a mere human Jewish king establishing an earthly government and raising the throne of David so as to bear reign over the whole Gentile world.

His object is to convince them that the Messiah foretold in their Old Testament was not merely a man, and to prove it by David: “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand.” He wants to bring out the thought which he himself later expressed to John in Revelation: “I am the root as well as the offspring of David.” In the divine sense he is the source of David; in the flesh he is the offspring of David. This statement of our Lord is of incalculable value in its bearing on the radical criticism.

They do not hesitate to say that David never wrote Psalms 110. Jesus says that he did. He explicitly ascribed that psalm to David. They say the psalms are not inspired. Jesus says that David wrote that psalm in the Spirit. They deny any reference to a coming One in that psalm. Jesus shows that there is a reference to himself, the coming Messiah. It is a little remarkable that this particular psalm is quoted oftener in the New Testament as messianic than any other passage in the Old Testament.

Our Lord himself quotes it more than once. Peter quotes it in his great address recorded in Acts 2, and yet again in his first letter. Paul quotes it expressly in his first letter to the Corinthians, and again in the letter to the Ephesians and four times in the letter to the Hebrews, and all of them say that David wrote it; that David wrote it by inspiration; and that David wrote it with reference to the coming Messiah. And so we come to the end of the great catechism. It has been a duel to the death.

THE LAST PUBLIC OF OUR LORDWe do not mean to intimate that Christ will not hereafter speak to his disciples. We mean that this discourse that we are now to consider ends his public ministry to the Jews. He considers the battle ended. They have rejected him, and now he makes the most serious indictment against the nation and its rulers known in the annals of time. It is the sharpest arraignment and the deepest denunciation to be found in the whole Bible.

This discourse consists, first, of a great indictment; second, the denunciation of a great penalty; third, the suggestion of a great hope. Let us see then what is the indictment.

We have already learned from the preceding discussion that the chief item of the indictment is their rejection of the Messiah and their purpose to murder him. Then follows the other items of the indictment relating particularly to the leaders: First, sitting in the seat of authority, they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne upon the people, which they themselves will not move with their finger. Second, all their works are done to be seen of men, hence they make broad their phylacteries, enlarge the borders of their garments, love the chief places at feasts and the chief seats in the synagogues, and salutations in the marketplaces – to be called rabbi. Third, they shut up the kingdom of heaven against men, themselves not entering nor suffering those to enter who would enter. Fourth, they compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is become so, he is made twofold more a son of hell than themselves. Fifth, they swear by the lesser things, disregarding the greater, swearing by the gift on the altar as more than the altar which sanctifies the gift, swearing by the gold of the Temple as more than the Temple itself.

Sixth, they tithe mint and anise and cummin and ignore the weightier matters of the law – judgment, mercy, and faith – strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. Seventh, they cleanse the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within are full of extortion and excess, as whited sepulchres, outwardly appearing beautiful, while inwardly they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness, so they outwardly appear righteous unto men, but inwardly are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Eighth, they are as monument-builders garnishing the tombs of the righteous, as if they thus said, “We would never have been partakers in the blood of the prophets.” All the time they are sons in spirit, as well as in flesh, of them that slew the prophets. In this way they fill up the measure of their fathers. And now comes…

THE PENALTY"Upon you shall come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of Abel, the righteous, unto the blood of Zachariah, son of Barachiah. . . . Your house is left unto you desolate." It has long been a puzzle to the thinker how the blood of Abel should came on the Jewish people, who, in their father Abraham, originated so many years subsequent to Abel. The answer to the puzzle is this: Abel and all subsequent martyrs believed in salvation by a coming Messiah. This doctrine was the hope of the whole world. And when the Jewish nation was established they were made the custodians of this doctrine. To them were committed the oracles of God.

If, therefore, when the Messiah comes, to whom Abel and every martyr had looked forward, and the Jews rejected and killed that Messiah, they sin, not only against the Messiah, and not only against themselves, but they sin against the whole world. They sin against the hope of the world. If their attitude toward the Messiah is true, then Abel died in vain. If they alone of all the nations were entrusted with the doctrine of Abel’s saving faith, and they repudiate that doctrine, on them comes the blood of Abel. The penalty denounced is not merely the destruction of the Holy City and the sacred Temple, and the dispersion of the Jewish nation, but it is a desolation – a tribulation that shall last through all the ages until the coming of the Gentiles be fulfilled. Therefore, as we learn later, it is called a trouble such as the world had never known before and would never know again.

It is surprising that commentators, in discussing “the great tribulation” set forth in our Lord’s great prophecy, make it a general tribulation bearing upon Gentile nations. It is exclusively a Jewish tribulation, which has already lasted about 1900 years. Nor is the end yet in sight. They were on probation twenty centuries as the bearers of the oracles of God. Their tribulation has already lasted nearly twenty centuries.

THE GREAT HOPEThe great hope is suggested in this final word of his discourse, “Ye shall not see me henceforth till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” (Matthew 23:39). So, that the last word to the Jews, the last public message, touches the second advent of our Lord.

Following this discourse we have an account of Jesus seated over against the treasury and beholding how men put money into the treasury. What a lesson is here! Christ watching the contributions, noting the amount, noting the motive, measuring the relative importance of the contributions, not by the amount, but by the unselfish sacrifice in the donation.

In my young days I preached a sermon to the Waco Association on this text, on the theme, “The Treasury of God’s People, and Christ’s Observation of the Contributions to This Fund.” The association called for its publication. The discussion was an epoch in the history of the association. From that time on enlargements in both spirituality and gifts, and broader fields came to Waco Association. Always before God’s people should be this picture of Christ sitting over against the treasury watching how men put money into the treasury. (The author’s sermon to which references are here made will be found in his first book of sermons.)

1. What was the Pharisees’ last effort to entangle Christ by questioning him, how did they proceed and what two points upon which they consulted?

2. What is the meaning and usage of the words “lawyer” and “doctor”?

3. What was the form of the question they propounded to Christ and why important to note its form?

4. What difference between the Pharisees’ use of the word “law,” and Christ’s use of it and in what did the trap here set for our Lord consist?

5. What was Christ’s attitude toward their oral law, what example of their setting aside the written commandment cited, and what example of their punctiliousness in the observance of their oral law given?

6. State clearly the question as they propounded it to him and give his answer verbatim.

7. What sermon cited on this passage, what is the substance of it, and what application of this interpretation to our own generation?

8. What evidence here that this lawyer was better than those whom he represented?

9. How does Christ follow up his victory in this instance?

10. What was their answer to his question, what his second question and what the purpose of our Lord in these last questions?

11. What is the value of this statement of Christ in its bearing on radical criticism and what is the fallacy of the position of the radical critics in this case?

12. Of what does our Lord’s last public discourse consist?

13. What items of the indictment?

14. What penalty denounced and its meaning and application?

15. What great hope suggested and its far-reaching meaning?

16. What great lesson of Christ and the treasury?