Blogger Friend School #126 Can You Hear Me Now

Memory Verse: Mark 12:28-34

28 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 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.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” 32 And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. 33 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 oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” 34 And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.

Intro: When Jesus starts his response with “Hear O Israel”, he’s referencing back to the Shema - from Deuteronomy 6-4 - Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One and Only, Blessed Be his Glorious Sovereign Name for ever and ever. Jesus says this is His greatest commandment. Like.. if you asked your child(ren) to clean a room.. and it wasn’t done.. they responded to you and said.. I heard you. What good is it if they heard you.. but didn’t DO it. So for us to say, we heard God.. but ignored his instructions.. that’s not good enough.

Assignment: What does God mean when he says HEAR.. he says it often.. if we don’t have an auditory reception of His voice. why is he saying HEAR.. what does it mean, what are we losing in translation? The word Shema doesn’t just mean Hear.. like what your ear receives.. it means more. Tell in your assignment what you think Shema means whether it’s active hearing or auditory hearing. I’m very anxious to read your thoughts on this. I hope you will all enjoy doing this assignment, as we are trying to dig deeper into the Word and have a better understanding of what the Bible really is about.

No photo opps this week.

After last week's word study, I decided to do the same thing this week with this assignment. Upon reading this verse and putting no study to it, we assume that Jesus is asking us to "hear" what he is saying. Hear usually means what? To listen. But not in this verse. Jesus is not asking us to merely listen....I love the meaning of this word...He is asking us to UNDERSTAND and OBEY what He is asking of us.

What is He asking us to obey and understand? We are to understand that the Lord our God, He is one. We are to obey this: Love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and all our strength. Do we always obey that? No. I have been guilty of that myself.

To even study that further, in Deut 6:4, that hear also means to obey, but not just obey, but to DILIGENTLY obey. That means all the time..not just sometime.

Today, let's hear Him...I mean really hear Him. Understand what Jesus is telling you and then OBEY it to the fullest!