The Great Commandment / Matthew 22:36-40
It is great to be with you all. We are landing the second of our four-part series in Serve Fresno as we talk about our desire as a body to really be outward-focused—cognizant and aware of the needs of our city.
We are going to find ourselves in a text that is probably very familiar to many of you. In fact, I taught it here a couple of years ago. It is such an important text that it appears in three different gospel accounts. We are going to look at the account in Mark chapter 12, verses 28 through 34. As we get rolling, it is a good reminder for all of us that even though there is knowledge that has passed through our brains before, the hard part isn’t in the knowing. If you’re like me, the hard part is in the obedience—in walking in the truth and walking in the light.
Let’s look at Mark chapter 12, beginning in verse 28:
Mark 12:28-34 (NASB)
One of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, ‘What commandment is the foremost of all?’ Jesus answered, ’The foremost is, ‘HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD; 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.’ ’The second is this, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.’ The scribe said to Him, ‘Right, Teacher; You have truly stated that HE IS ONE, AND THERE IS NO ONE ELSE BESIDES HIM; AND TO LOVE HIM WITH ALL THE HEART AND WITH ALL THE UNDERSTANDING AND WITH ALL THE STRENGTH, AND TO LOVE ONE’S NEIGHBOR AS HIMSELF, is much more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.’ When Jesus saw that he had answered intelligently, He said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ After that, no one would venture to ask Him any more questions.
The core issue Jesus addresses here is: what does it truly mean to love God? If we were to define this biblically, what does it mean? In the words of our Savior, as He gives us the cliff notes of the entire Old Testament, He walks through that exact definition.
The Smoker and the Frozen Turkey
A number of years ago for my birthday, my wife bought me one of those big 55-gallon drum smokers. Actually, Chris Epperly over at the Fig campus built it for me. He is a legitimate, professional barbecuer. Now, I can’t cook anything, but my wife bought me this smoker, so I was committed to cook something. I started with easy stuff like burgers, and then for Thanksgiving I announced, “Honey, I’m going to smoke the turkey this year.” She asked, “Are you sure?” The year before, I had tried something similar and it went terribly; we ate hockey pucks.
So I called Chris for some counsel. He gave me an elaborate twenty-four-hour process involving brining in a cooler with honey and seasonings. You had to babysit this turkey overnight like it was still alive. The next day, I put it on the smoker. Chris told me, “The most important part is that it will take four and a half to six hours to cook this bird correctly, but you have to check the internal temperature.”
I asked, “Can’t you just look at the outside?”
He said, “No, you’ll completely screw it up because the outside is going to look done long before the inside is. You can only tell by what is happening on the inside. You must use a meat thermometer. It will be tempting to take that turkey off too soon because the outside looks done, but the inside is still going to be frozen.”
Jesus is making a very similar point in this text. You can look a certain way on the outside, but the inside can still be frozen. If what is on the outside does not match what is happening on the inside, what is on the outside is not real. Until both are congruent, you don’t have what you think you have.
To explain to this scribe what it truly means to love God, Jesus quotes two foundational Old Testament passages: Deuteronomy chapter 6 and Leviticus chapter 19. He pulls them from memory and says there are none greater than these.
I want to look closely at five key Hebrew words behind what Jesus is quoting. Much of these insights come from Tim Mackey at The Bible Project, who is a brilliant teacher and a fellow word nerd. Walking through these words will help give us a much richer understanding of what it means to love the Lord our God.
1. Shema: Listen and Obey
Jesus begins in verse 29 with the foundational declaration:
Mark 12:29 (NASB)
Jesus answered, ’The foremost is, ’HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD;
That word hear in Hebrew is Shema. It was the centerpiece of a prayer that every Jewish person recited twice a day. It was like their ABCs; they knew it by heart.
Shema is used nearly 1,200 times in the Old Testament. Most often, it refers to the physical ear.
Proverbs 20:12 (NASB)
The hearing ear and the seeing eye, The LORD has made both of them.
Yet Shema means far more than just sound hitting your eardrums; it means to pay close attention and focus. When Jacob’s unloved wife, Leah, had a son, she named him Simeon, which comes directly from the root Shema. She recognized that God had paid attention to her plight.
Genesis 29:33 (NASB)
Then she conceived again and bore a son and said, ‘Because the LORD has heard that I am unloved, He has therefore given me this [son] also.’ So she named him Simeon.
Even deeper, Shema means to hear and respond with action. When the psalmist cries out, he is asking God to hear and act.
Psalms 27:7 (NASB)
Hear, O LORD, when I cry with my voice, And be gracious to me and answer me.
God uses the word the same way toward His people when establishing His covenant at Sinai.
Exodus 19:5 (NASB)
’Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine;
In biblical Hebrew, there is actually no separate word for “obey.” To Shema is to listen and obey. It is assumed that if you truly hear, you will act. If you do not act, you never truly heard.
2. Ahavah: Love in Action
How do we respond to God? Verse 30 tells us: you shall love the Lord your God. In Hebrew, this is the word Ahavah.
Mark 12:30 (NASB)
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.’
Ahavah can describe the affection between brothers, the tender care of a parent for a child, or the devotion of a people to their king. It is also used to describe God’s unmerited, covenantal love for Israel.
Deuteronomy 7:7-8 (NASB)
’The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the LORD loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the LORD brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
Biblical love is not merely an internal emotion or an abstract feeling; it is an action that moves someone to do something. Because God loved the fathers of Israel, He acted powerfully to deliver them.
Deuteronomy 4:37 (NASB)
’Because He loved your fathers, therefore He chose their descendants after them. And He personally brought you from Egypt by His great power,
We see the exact same truth in the most famous verse in the New Testament: God loved, so He gave.
John 3:16 (NASB)
’For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
God describes what His love looks like in practice. He executes justice for the orphan and the widow and provides food and clothing for the foreigner. Then He turns to His people and commands them to do the exact same thing.
Deuteronomy 10:18-19 (NASB)
’He executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and shows His love for the alien by giving him food and clothing. ’So show your love for the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
God demonstrates His love by meeting tangible, physical needs. And He tells Israel: you imitate Me. If your love for God does not express itself in love for the needy, the foreigner, and the neighbor, you are like a turkey that looks cooked on the outside while remaining frozen in the middle.
3. Lev / Levav: The Whole Heart
Jesus says we are to love God with all our heart (Lev or Levav). In Hebrew thought, the heart carried a rich, fourfold meaning.
First, it referred to the physical organ, but more importantly, it was seen as the center of intellectual activity. There is no separate Hebrew word for “brain” or “mind” in the Old Testament; you think, understand, and discern within your heart. Wisdom resides in the heart. Second, the heart is the seat of deep emotion—it can be broken, joyful, or in pain. Third, the heart is the place where you make choices. When David resolved to build a temple for God, Scripture says it was in his heart to do so. Our choices flow directly from our affections.
To love God with all your Lev means loving Him with every thought, every emotion, every decision, and every affection. It is offering the command center of your entire life over to Him.
4. Nephesh: Your Entire Being
Next, Jesus says to love God with all your soul (Nephesh). While translated as “soul” in English, Nephesh literally refers to your throat or physical breath.
In Numbers, the wanderers complain that their throat or Nephesh is dried up. When Joseph was imprisoned, his Nephesh was laid in irons.
Psalms 105:18 (NASB)
They afflicted his feet with fetters, He himself was laid in irons;
Because your life depends on what goes down your throat and the breath passing through it, Nephesh came to represent the whole physical person. When Jacob went down to Egypt, his family was counted as thirty-three Nephesh—thirty-three living human beings.
Genesis 46:27 (NASB)
and the sons of Joseph, who were born to him in Egypt were two; all the persons of the house of Jacob, who came to Egypt, [were] seventy.
Biblically speaking, a soul is not merely something you possess inside you; it is who you are. It is your whole physical being. The psalmist asks for his Nephesh to live so that he may praise God.
Psalms 119:175 (NASB)
Let my soul live that it may praise You, And let Your ordinances help me.
Loving God with all your Nephesh means bringing your entire physical existence—your body, your breath, your strengths, and your vulnerabilities—into His service.
5. Me’od: With All Your “Muchness”
Finally, Jesus says to love God with all your strength. In Deuteronomy 6, the Hebrew word is Me’od. This is an unusual word to translate as “strength” because Me’od is actually an adverb meaning “very” or “much.”
In Genesis 1, when God finishes creation, He declares that it is Me’od good—very good.
Genesis 1:31 (NASB)
God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
When the floodwaters rose in Genesis 7, they were described as Me’od powerful.
Me’od is an intensifier. When Deuteronomy calls us to love God with all our Me’od, it is calling us to love Him with all our “muchness”—with every capacity, resource, and ounce of energy we possess, cranked up to maximum capacity.
Loving the Neighbor Across the Street
Jesus does not stop with the Shema. He immediately tethers it to a second command from Leviticus chapter 19.
Leviticus 19:18 (NASB)
’You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD.
Mark 12:31 (NASB)
’The second is this, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.’
You cannot love God without loving your neighbor. In Luke 10, when a lawyer asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” trying to limit his obligation, Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan.
Luke 10:36-37 (NASB)
‘Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ [hands]?’ And he said, ‘The one who showed mercy toward him.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do the same.’
The religious leaders passed by the beaten man, but the Samaritan stopped, bound his wounds, and cared for him. Jesus redefined “neighbor” from someone who looks like you or shares your background to anyone in need whom God places in your path.
Leviticus makes this explicitly clear for the immigrant and stranger as well.
Leviticus 19:34 (NASB)
’The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God.
Most of us naturally spend a lot of time thinking about ourselves—making sure we are comfortable, fed, and secure. Jesus says to take that same baseline concern and extend it outward to everyone around us.
When the scribe hears this, the light bulb goes on. He realizes that loving God and loving neighbor is vastly more important than all the burnt offerings and external religious rituals. Jesus looks at him and says, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
Stepping into the City
Loving God in the abstract can feel simple because God is self-sufficient; He does not need anything from us. But loving people is rarely simple. It is messy, inconvenient, and costly. It requires our time, our money, and emotional bandwidth that we often don’t feel like giving. Yet this is where genuine faith meets the road.
Back in 2009, while we were teaching through Nehemiah here at The Well, God began stirring a holy discontent in my heart. I loved working on staff here, but God was breaking my heart for the division, tension, and deep inequalities across the city of Fresno. Leaders like Andrew Fyle and Artie Padilla helped open my eyes to what was happening in our neighborhoods.
I went to Pastor Brad and told him I needed to transition out of my full-time pastoral role, though I stayed on to teach in the residency program. I went home to my wife and said, “I think I need to leave a stable job that I love, give up our healthcare, and raise support to start a nonprofit to serve under-resourced kids and families in our city.” By God’s grace, she said, “Let’s do it.”
It was terrifying. I had no background in nonprofit work and felt completely unqualified, but I could not run from what God was asking me to do. Today, nine years later, getting to sit face-to-face with fourth graders, encouraging them, speaking life into their dreams, and reminding them of their value has been far more rewarding for me than I could have ever imagined.
As a church, our heartbeat through Serve Fresno is to help you take that step. We don’t want to simply gather, hear good teaching, and enjoy fellowship—as wonderful as those things are. If that is all we do, the turkey is only cooked on the outside.
May we be a people cooked all the way through. May we love God with all our heart, soul, and muchness—and may that love overflow into daring, sacrificial love for our neighbors and our city.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank You for Your immense goodness to us and for teaching us what it truly means to love You. Thank You that You are a God who intimately cares for the broken, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger.
We confess that it is easy to rest in comfortable knowledge while our hearts remain cold toward the needs around us. Would You give us courage to move into action? Would You shape The Well Community Church into a body known across this city for tangible, sacrificial love? Teach us to walk in the footsteps of Christ, who gave everything to love the unlovable. In His name we pray, Amen.