Sermon Notes / Transcript

Mark 12:28-34: Do Not Settle for Proximity to the Kingdom

Speaker: Daniel J. Coughlin
Date: September 13, 2026

Scripture Reading

Our scripture reading is from the book of Mark. Mark chapter 12, verse 28, is where we're going to start through 34. This is God's word and it is eternally true. 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 neighbour 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.” And after that, no one would venture to ask him any more questions. This is the word of the Lord.

Opening Prayer

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, may the words of my mouth and the thoughts of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

“I Can Do It Myself”

You've probably heard a young child, I'm thinking like a three year old, say, I can do it myself. Like when they go to put their shoes on and they're on the wrong feet but they think they can tie it, or if you've got a full gallon of milk and they've got a bowl of cereal and they try and pour the milk themselves, right?

I can do it myself. It's a natural part and a good part of children growing up, right? We want them to. If they couldn't do those things, if they couldn't learn how to do those things, we'd have a problem. The problem is sometimes we get stuck there.

Sometimes we get stuck in the I can do it myself mentality. And we never want to let anyone else help us. And that's dangerous. That's a different kind of developmental problem, right? Never wanting to do anything yourself is a problem, and then always wanting to do everything on your own and never getting help, never admitting that you need help, is the flip side of that problem.

The scribe captures this in the realm of religion well. He comes up to Jesus and he says, What's the most important thing I have to do? And in most of our life, this is exactly the right question, right? What's the most important?

When you wake up in the morning, you have to think, what's the most important thing I have to do. You make decisions. You can't do everything. You can't be everything for everyone. You have to decide what are you gonna do, right?

If you have a job and you get there, you probably have some sort of a task list or a checklist. You've got tools to put in the truck, you've got emails to respond to, you've got breakfast to make. Like we all have the to-do mentality because that's how we live.

Most of our life is I've got something to do and I need to do it. Alright, kids, you wake up, you gotta brush your teeth, you gotta pack your backpack, you've got to be ready for the school bus when it comes, otherwise they honk at you and and make you know, make you run out the door.

It's if for you it's me yelling to you to wake up, right? We're used to doing these things. We're used to earning our keep, to earn our paycheck. That's how we keep the lights on.

The Greatest Commandment

And so that's what the scribe wants to know. He wants to know what do I need to do? Tell me what I need to do. What's the greatest commandment?

What do I need to do? And Jesus doesn't make up something new and catchy. As the reason Phil read Deuteronomy 6 is because Jesus quotes Deuteronomy

6. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

Did you know that was from the Old Testament? and I bring this up because it's such a common misperception that the idea of loving God and God loving man is like some new thing in the New Testament. It's not. It's not. You are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.

And the second part, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, comes from Leviticus, which is also in the Old Testament, right? So these ideas. Anytime you have so scripture talks about the law, the law of God, the law of Moses, the commandments of God. There's different ways to summarize them.

One of the most famous is the ten, the summary of ten, right? The ten commandments. You guys have heard of the ten commandments, you're aware of the ten commandments, right? Okay, good. this is a this is a further summation, right? These are two. The two is a way to sum up the ten, which is a way to sum up kind of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, because a lot of that is just explaining the Ten Commandments, what they are, how they work.

But so you see the relationship. With the Ten Commandments, you have the first four are the ways that we're supposed to love God. The last six are the ways we're supposed to love our neighbor. And so you see that these are just different summaries.

Like you can take a whole book and you can summarize it into ten points. And then when pressed, you can take ten points and you can summarize it into two points. The first four of the Ten Commandments, though, are about how we're to love God. This is just explaining what that relationship is supposed to be.

What is our duty towards God? What is our duty to love God? And the first says that these are just unpacking the ways in which we are to love God with all our heart and all our soul and all our strength. Right?

Loving God: The First Four Commandments

1. You are to have no other gods before Him.

This is an exclusive relationship. There is one God and only one God, and you must worship him. With the negative comes the positive as well. You're to have no other gods before him, which means you're to have one.

And because it's before him, and he can see all things, he can see the mountains, he can see the depths, he can see into your heart, he can see into your brain, that means it's all inclusive, right? We have no secrecy of private worship in our minds that we can have other gods before God.

2. We will not make any images. Any images of things in the heaven or the things on earth or the things under the waters, in the waters. Right? God has warned against the power of idolatry, how easy it is for our eyes to be fixed on physical things, our hearts to be dedicated to physical things.

And so he says, No, you will worship me in word and in prayer and in song. You're not going to put up images. You're not going to build statues. You're not going to draw your eyes to the images of things that you're going to be tempted to worship.

3. You must revere the name of the Lord. And if you want to, I mean, once your ears get attuned to this, it is incredible. We watched, I'm pretty sure this is right. We watched the flood in Nepal and China, and there wasn't a word of English in the whole thing except for blasphemy of the name of Jesus.

Because as people saw this horrific event, they spoke God's name. Not in reverence, but in maybe in reverence. I don't know. I, the context was, you know, I had no context. But you know how this is. when you have, I mean, right at the construction site, I mean you hear people use God's name in vain all the time.

You stub your toe and you hear people swear, right? You know what swearing is, you know what taking the Lord's name in vain is. You say God or Jesus, not out of reverence, not out of love, not out of fear, but out of anger, out of carelessness. That's taking the name of the Lord in vain.

We are not to abuse holy things for profane purposes. That's the third commandment.

4. We are to remember that God commanded rest one out of seven days a week, right? He set up. Do you ever wonder why we have seven days in a week?

Isn't that a strange thing? Like there are some strange things. Right? That comes from the creation. Right? God created all things in six days and on the seventh day he rested and he gave that to us as a pattern, as an enduring pattern that we were supposed to replicate.

We have a day where we put aside our work, our labors, our concerns, and we exercise our trust in God. That is a unique thing about being made in the image of God and having his word is that we are supposed to rest, which also means we're supposed to work, right?

And the ratio of our work to our rest should be six to one. That is a healthy, good, if you rest six days and work one day, that is not a healthy way to live. You are to work six days and work looks different if you're, you know, four.

If you're four, right? Work looks different. If you're nine, work starts to get harder, right? And oh, you have to work all that work you have to do, writing all these papers, right? And as you grow, work changes.

Going to school is work. And then you do work after school too. And then you grow and you have your own household, right? And you work. And then your work becomes kind of going to doctor's appointments and trying to juggle all that and care for grandkids.

And you know, there work changes, but it's still work. This is how we love the Lord our God. This is how the Ten Commandments summarizes what we're supposed to do. It explains what it means to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

Loving Your Neighbor: The Last Six Commandments

And then the next six commandments explain how you're supposed to love your neighbor as yourself. Right? The fifth commandment in in the order in the list is that you're supposed to honor those in authority over you, your fathers and your mothers. Well, your fathers and your mothers in the household, of course, right?

You're supposed to honor your father and your mother. But also in the government, right? You have police officers, you have administrative agencies, you have code enforcers. You have people who are over you. how about the tax appraiser?

If we want to you know put a fine point on it, right? No one wants to honor the tax appraiser, and yet, they have been given authority. They have an office to fulfill. And the same thing in the church, right?

Pastors and elders have an office, have responsibilities. We are to honor them as church fathers, as city fathers, as father fathers. And then the list continues. And a lot of these are obvious how they're loving our neighbor.

6. You shall not kill. Right? You can't love your neighbor if you kill your neighbor. This seems obvious, and we're not in a point where anyone's going to probably contest me here, but there's a lot going on in our world where this is getting twisted in horrible ways, in particular with mothers and their children.

We must be active in resisting any implication that it is justified, it is worthy of empathizing, it is always selfishness. It is always wicked to kill. Now, there are situations where like the government has the death penalty, and then when men are sent to war and they have to exercise that responsibility.

But to voluntarily take the life of someone is always wicked and is always subject to moral judgments. God will repay evil. And a government that works well is to punish evil and to reward good. So if you ever hear someone saying that something justifies killing and really, you work out the logic of the pro-choice movement and the abortion rights advocates.

And no wonder we have such confusion among our society about a mother killing her children. Like it is, if if you're not following the news, there's a court case that is exposing a lot of evil and a lot of wicked hearts. And so we shouldn't take for granted that thou shalt not kill is something that is not going to be pushed back upon.

That's the sixth commandment.

7. You shall not commit adultery. As a society, I think we've given up on that one pretty well, too. This means fleeing from sexual immorality.

It means keeping intimate sexual thoughts and behavior restricted to the marriage relationship. Thoughts and behavior.

8. You must not steal, which means you have to pay for the things you want. If you want to buy something, if you want to get something, you do the work to get it.

You're honest in your dealings. You're not stealing from your boss. You're not faking how many hours you're working. That's stealing.

9. You must not bear false witness: no lying; be honest.

This is the way you protect your own name and protect the good name of your neighbor. You're honest.

10. Do not covet your neighbor's house or wife or servants or cattle or donkey, which means be content with what you have. Contentment. This is the summary of how you love your neighbor.

Right? Because it's easy. If I say love God and love your neighbor, what do you say? Sure, yeah, great, got it. But then you start to expand this out and you start to put a finer point on it, and you start to feel the weight that this is how you love God, and this is what it means to love your neighbor.

And Jesus confirms these are the greatest commands, right? The first is God, and the second is your fellow man. That's the there's a reason for the order. There's a reason that if the first table of the commandments is about loving God and the second table, right, if you think about it double-sided paper, right?

If the front side is about God and the backside is about our neighbor because there's a priority there. The priority is God, God first, neighbor second. And what's interesting is that unlike the other interchanges, right, we've been going through this for a couple weeks now, and there's a fly that's being really bothersome. unlike the these other confrontations that Jesus has had, this one doesn't seem to be confrontational, right?

Jesus tells him about you know these two commandments and the scribe agrees and so it's like well this feels different than the other ones right the other ones were confrontational. The scribe agrees and adds properly that to love God and to love neighbor is much more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.

Right?

Not Far from the Kingdom

And Jesus sees that he gives an intelligent answer. Finally, someone responds intelligently, right? Because scripture does testify to this, Scripture testifies that obedience is better than sacrifice. Probably most especially well known in Israel's history when Samuel rebuked Saul for not wiping out the Amalekites.

Right? And he took back some of the leaders, he took back some of the spoils of war, and when Samuel calls him out he's like, Well, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm just gonna I'm gonna I brought them here. I didn't kill them like you told me to. I just brought them here so I can offer them as a sacrifice.

Doesn't that sound nice? So okay, that was I guess we're gonna be done, right? Because this seems settled. You know, they're in agreement.

Like all of a sudden, where did this scribe come from who agrees? And Jesus is Jesus, I guess Jesus is confirming that we must obey all the Ten Commandments in order to be saved. Does that sound right? Jesus says this at the very end: you are not far from the kingdom of God.

That sounds like a good thing, right? You can hear that. Like you're you're getting pretty close. You're warm, right? Do you ever play that game with your kids?

You're oh getting warmer, getting warmer, getting hot. Jesus says, you're not far from the kingdom of God. And I think this is more of a warning than it looks like at first glance. There is danger in being not far from the kingdom of God.

The danger is being satisfied outside of the kingdom. Being close enough to it that you feel good about yourself, but not actually in the kingdom of God. Because you see, the commandments have a purpose in our salvation. They don't show the checklist of things that you need to do to be saved.

What they're there for is to crush you, to crush you under the weight of the commandments. So that you look and you say, I could never. I couldn't possibly. Right? If you know Pilgrim's Progress, right? it's it's Christian coming to realize there's this burden on his back, and it's weighing him down, so he can't do anything.

The commandments are not a comfort. The commandments show us our need of a savior. Right? If you heard the commandments and you thought, oh, I'm doing pretty good, you didn't hear the commandments and the problem is not the commandments themselves, it's not the law, right? The law is perfect, the law is holy, the law is just, the law is good.

We could study the law every day for the rest of our lives and be better for it. So what's the problem? The problem is us. The problem is you.

The problem is, there has not been a day that any man since the fall has ever kept the commandments of God. Except Jesus. We break the commandments daily. The commandments show us our guilt. And yet, like a moth to a deadly flame, we love checklists.

And we keep wanting to reduce religion to a list of things that we need to do, right? Read our Bibles, go to church, say our prayers, right? We want a to-do list. We want a checklist that feels comfortable and doable.

And that's what it sounds like the scribe's wanting here. It's like, what do I need to do? What are the commandments? What's the most important one?

That's the one I need to focus on first, and then I'll just focus on the next most important one.

The Purpose of the Law

But God's commandments are to show us our guilt and bring us. That's how they bring us nearer to the kingdom of God, right? When we see our guilt, we're like, okay, what do I do now?

Like, I can't. I can't work my way out of this, and yet that just means I'm left guilty. So what it does is it brings you to the cusp of knowing you need a savior. Our guilt reveals our need of a Savior. Our guilt shows us that we could never earn our place as a son.

Right? Look at the scribe. You see, sometimes we break the commandments without even knowing it, right? Here's the scribe talking to Jesus saying, Oh yeah, good teacher, good job. You know, who is Jesus?

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. What should the scribe have done? Because God is standing before him. What should the scribe have done?

Bowed down? I mean, respond like Isaiah did, I am a man of unclean lips. Like, oh forgive me, Father, this is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and the scribe's sitting there asking him trivia questions. He sinned against God. This is the Sun in the flesh, standing before him and, does he honor his father and mother?

Does he honor the authority before him? Instead of questioning Jesus by the law, the scribe should have been laying down his claim to rights, asking to follow Jesus, but we don't see that. It looks like the scribe is content to know that he has a right understanding of the law.

Which is our risk too, it's our danger too, right? Because just like the law can be misused, so can grace. We can look wonder at grace, we can study grace, we can dissect grace, we can track, you know, God's grace through the Old Testament and the New Testament, and we can have this great understanding of what God's law is and what God's grace is and yet never be partakers of God's grace.

You can study and study and study and never come to grasp it yourself, to be the beneficiary of it yourself. Right? The danger is that you're always trying to earn God's grace. But that doesn't work, right? I'm thinking of Bill, your poster.

Right? Grace is unmerited favor. How can you ever work to earn something that is unmerited? Right? It's a contradiction. And so, as you work, as you think, as you think about what God's commandments are, do you care about them because you're trying to do them in order to earn God's favor, or do you care about them because you see God has been favorable toward you and you want to behave and act and be how you were created?

You want to grow in holiness because of what God has done for you, not in order that God will do something for you in the future.

Sons Do Not Earn Their Sonship

A ticket to God's kingdom is always by grace and through faith. That's why adoption is such a glorious picture of salvation, right?

Or even sonship in general, right? What son has to consent to his conception? It doesn't even make sense, right? What child, you know, the conception happens before the child comes along.

There's no consent, there's no opting in. All the things that brought you to be happened before you could do a thing. Right? Even with adoption, most adoptions, the child doesn't get a say in the adoption. The judge gets a say, the parents get a say, the biological parents and the adoptive parents, but the child what?

There you go. It's a little more complicated than that. But it's it's essentially a thing that happens to them, not a thing that they opt into, which just reinforces the concept that sons don't earn their way to sonship. Servants are the ones who have to earn their way.

Employees earn their way. Slaves earn their way. Sons work from identity, from love as part of the training of the Father to the Son in love. You don't serve your father in order to become a son, you serve your father, because you're the son.

And this is what it means to be a partaker of God's grace. That we see daily our failures, that you see your sins, you see your shortcomings, you see the ways you fail, and instead of slinking away in shame, you remember God's mercies and God's grace. We remember that we're beloved.

We are loved by the Father. And so the hard part though is that we have to lay aside the thought that we're here by our own rights, that we deserve to be here, that we've earned our place. We have to remember that we're here because of God's kindness and God's mercy.

What that does is it just changes us. It changes us because all of a sudden we're not outside of the kingdom hoping to get in, hoping to earn our way in. We're inside the kingdom carrying out the will of the Father on earth as it is in heaven.

We learn to be thankful. We learn to be grateful. We see that the power of Satan to humiliate us and to accuse us is diminished. And it doesn't mean that our sins are better, our sins are worse, but we're washed clean.

We have a clean conscience. We come knowing that the burden of our sins, the weight of our sins, doesn't press us down into hell. We rest in the comfort and confidence of the work of Jesus Christ, his one-time sacrifice, paying the price for all of our sins.

Right? And that's the irony of how the scribe responds. He goes, Oh, you're right, obedience is better than sacrifice. And there's the sacrifice that all of the sacrifices were pointed to standing before him. To be a partaker of God's grace means to rest in the goodness of the Heavenly Father, that He is able to save us to the uttermost, and that we rest in the presence and the comfort of the Holy Spirit, that he's at work in us to perfect our salvation, to help us to see sin, all the ways that we fail to keep God's commandments and that instead of seeing that and then saying, “Guilty, guilty, punished, removed,” it's working in our hearts and working in our minds and working in our behavior to overcome that sin, to turn away from it, and saying, such were some of you, but you've been washed and you've been cleansed and you have been justified.

That is the hope. That's how we are partakers. Not by lying to ourselves or lying to others about our perfections, but of seeing the grace and the mercy of God in our life on a daily basis. This is the normal, daily, repentant life of a Christian.

Do Not Settle for Proximity

And so my warning is: don't settle for proximity to the kingdom. Don't settle for being close, but outside the kingdom of God. No, our comfort and our joy is to be found present in God's kingdom, covered by God's love, washed by Christ's sacrifice.

Closing Prayer

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, help us to see the ways we're tempted to settle for close enough.

Help us to see the ways that we're tempted to reject your grace and your mercy and instead to try and be good enough, to try and claim our position before you by right instead of by your grace, work in us humble gratitude that we might see and experience the mercy that you've shown us in Jesus Christ.

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.