Sunday – February 25, 2018
Scripture: Matthew 22:36-40
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Chuck Swindoll once shared a story about focus. It was Flight 401 bound for Miami from New York City with a load of holiday passengers. As the huge aircraft approached the Miami Airport for its landing, a light that indicates proper deployment of the landing gear failed to come on. The plane flew in a large, looping circle over the swamps of the Everglades while the cockpit crew checked out the light failure. Their question was this, had the landing gear actually not deployed or was it just the light bulb that was defective?
To begin with, the flight engineer fiddled with the bulb. He tried to remove it, but it wouldn’t budge. Another member of the crew tried to help out … and then another. By and by, if you can believe it, all eyes were on the little light bulb that refused to be dislodged from its socket. No one noticed that the plane was losing altitude. Finally, it dropped right into a swamp. Many were killed in that plane crash. While an experienced crew of high-priced and seasoned pilots messed around with a seventy-five-cent light bulb, an entire airplane and many of its passengers were lost. The crew momentarily forgot the most basic of all rules of the air-“Don’t forget to fly the airplane!”
Our passage for this morning is meant to help us, as a church and as Christians, to get our focus where it belongs. Matthew 21 begins with the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. At the end of that chapter we find Jesus really giving it to the Pharisees and they are getting pretty steamed at Him. So they respond by laying trap after trap for him in Matthew 22. “Hey, Jesus, should we be paying taxes to Caesar?” “Hey, Jesus, some woman has a zillion husbands during her life, which one will be her husband when she gets to heaven?” “Hey, Jesus, with all these commandments, which one is the greatest?” Trap after trap to try and get Jesus to say something wrong so they could really get him and shut him up. If you keep reading beyond our verses for this morning you will see Jesus go on the offensive again. In Chapter 23 he addresses the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and offers his seven statements of “Woe to you” where he calls them “hypocrites,” “blind guides,” “snakes” and a “brood of vipers.”
The Pharisees were attempting to entrap him, find a reason to de-legitimize his ministry and make a case for his death. Jesus made this impossible for them because he saw through their tactics and he always knew how to respond. Eventually the Pharisees were left with only one option: make up their charges and have Jesus unjustly crucified. They succeeded because Jesus let them. In their efforts to entrap Jesus, the Pharisees asked Him “which is the greatest commandment in the law?” Jesus gave them two commandments that summarized the whole law: “Love the Lord your God” and “Love your neighbor.”
So the Pharisees send one of their lawyers, an expert in the law of Moses, to go and talk to Jesus. His gambit is to ask Him what his stance was on which commandment was the greatest of them all. The Pharisees had figured out a total of 613 laws that had to be followed. 248 were positive in nature and 365 were negative. They figured 248 was the number of parts in the human body, 365 was the number of days in a year and 613 was the total number of letters in the 10 Commandments. The different sects of Judaism argued amongst themselves about which law was the most important out of those 613. The key here is that this lawyer wasn’t asking about which of the original 10 Commandments was the greatest but, rather, which of the 613 commandments had that position.
Let me stop here for a moment. That’s a lot of commandments. Sometimes, as fine and upstanding church-going Christians, we are good at making up a lot of rules for everyone to follow. It’s not usually on purpose but I want to remind everyone that each of us is in a different place on our journey. The rules belong to Jesus and He likes a word called “grace” an awful lot. So be careful. We’re in this world together and God doesn’t need any help making up new commandments.
So, 613 commandments. And they argued over the littlest of things. Surely it’s that commandment about fringes on a garment that is the most important. Maybe I should be most concerned about that one about not murdering anyone. Coveting – it has to be coveting. Hey, Jesus, what do you say? Which is the greatest of the commandments?
The greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind. The account in the book of Mark adds in “all your strength” as well. But here in Matthew, Jesus gives us three elements to how we are to love God. By the way, Jesus isn’t making this up out of the thin air. He’s quoting and important passage from Deuteronomy 6:4-5. The whole paragraph is referred to as the Shema – it’s the Hebrew word for “hear” – as in: “4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” It’s so important that the Jews still recite it all the time in their prayers.
Not that long ago we talked about this special word for love that Jesus liked to use – agapao. Here’s what I said a few weeks ago: “A very short summary of a study on agape love would be that it involves an unconditional love that is by choice. It is not a merit-based love, but rather a love based in something far deeper and immutable [“not capable of or susceptible to change” – Merriam-Webster]. It is a love that recognizes a fundamental value that cannot be altered.” Now let’s apply that to our current verse. It is this special love that God is deserving of. It’s the kind of love that does not change, no matter the circumstance. In great tragedy, in good times and in bad times our love for God should never change. No matter how personal the circumstance, our love for God should remain immutable. Go ahead and ask the hard questions of God: “where were you when . . .?” “Why did this happen?” Ask those questions but don’t waver in your love for God. Our love for God should overrule our doubts, our misunderstandings, our emotional reactions, our lack of knowledge and our lack of wisdom. It accepts that God’s will comes before my will. Look out, because this same word is coming back in the second greatest commandment in verse 39.
Let’s take a brief look at the three elements of this love for God that Jesus mentions in Matthew 22. First, we are to love the Lord with all of our hearts. It’s fitting that we start with the heart. It’s the heart that represents the seat of who we are. It’s our motivational center and it’s where morality sits. It’s also a mess ever since that first sin back in the Garden. It’s corrupt and it’s the place where we decided what’s right and wrong. Do you get the problem here? How can we love God with a corrupt heart? No matter what we do, it will never be worthy of the One we are loving. So a corrupt heart leads to corrupt actions and corrupt love. No surprise there. However, Jesus came to fix that. By His blood, through His grace, we love again as God heals that corrupt heart. Albert Barnes says, “To love him with all the heart is to fix the affections supremely on him, more strongly than on anything else, and to be willing to give up all that we hold dear at his command.” I like that. Here’s what Jesus means here: God first, everything else second. Your heart needs to belong to Him. It’s a matter of priorities. It’s a matter of right focus.
The second element of action is to love God with all your soul. What a great thought. This complicated term refers, ultimately, to the life we all have. It’s more than breathing as it involves what we are in the most essential way. What we devote our lives to matters. Jesus reminds you to love the Lord “with all your soul.” The purpose of your life is to serve God with all that you are, with your very life. All of who you are, in your innermost being, must be captive to God’s will and way.
The third element of action is to love God with all your mind. The word here for mind really refers to that which we think about or our understanding of things. Jesus is saying that loving God with all your mind means to meditate on the ways and teaching of God. Devote your intellect to the discovery of His principles and guidance. Is Jesus telling us all to move into monasteries, become monks and devote all our time to the Lord? Of course not. But He is saying our highest goal should be a heavenly one, not an earthly one. This is what the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) is all about. Consider some of the teachings from the fuller passage: this command is to be on your hearts (vs. 6); teach them your children by talking about them while you sit, while you walk and all times in between (vs. 7); tie them as symbols on your hands and foreheads (vs. 8); and write them on your doorframes and gates (vs. 9). The point was to eat, sleep and breathe the teachings of God. A. W. Tozer said, “As we begin to focus upon God, the things of the Spirit will take shape before our inner eyes.” God first; everything else follows after.
Henry Blackaby, in his excellent series on Experiencing God, says “You never find God asking persons to dream up what they want to do for Him.” He adds, “To live a God–centered life, you must focus your life on God’s purposes, not your own plans. You must seek to see from God’s perspective rather than from your own distorted human perspective. When God starts to do something in the world, He takes the initiative to come and talk to somebody. For some divine reason, He has chosen to involve His people in accomplishing His purposes.”
Now here’s where Jesus goes the extra mile. The lawyer asked for the Greatest Commandment and Jesus give him a bonus commandment that he refers to as the Second Greatest Commandment. This also has an Old Testament counterpart back in Leviticus 19:18. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” In Matthew 19:16-30 Jesus is talking to the rich young man who asks him what he must do to get eternal life. Jesus responds by telling him to keep the commandments but the young man asks which commandments he needs to keep. That’s an interesting discussion in itself but Jesus starts naming commandments: do not murder, commit adultery, steal, or give false testimony. Honor your parents and love your neighbor as yourself (verse 19). In Romans 13:9-10 Paul says, “9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” Jesus is telling that lawyer that real love for God will lead, naturally, to real love for your neighbor as well. Jesus is in a similar situation in Luke 10:25-37 where the expert in the law asks Jesus, “And who is my neighbor? (verse 29).” Jesus responds with the parable of the Good Samaritan. This must have been a challenging story for that man as it pushes forth a person from a hated class of people and holds him up as the hero with the good Jewish men as the bad neighbors. What Jesus really did was push everyone out of their comfort zones into the reality that they had to love all their neighbors, not just the Jewish ones. “Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” Paul knew what he was talking about. The story of the Good Samaritan shows one man caring for another man who was in need. It didn’t matter what class he belonged to or what his heritage was. The hurt man, who had been beaten, robbed and left for dead, simply needed help. The Samaritan man saw a neighbor and loved him the way he was supposed to.
What Jesus just did was cover 613 commandments with two. In fact, He found a way to sum it all up in one word: Love. Love God and love your fellow man. It’s that simple. Yeah, there are a few more rules that help us understand the nature of sin and what God is doing to fix it, but it really is that simple – Love God and love your fellow man.
Here’s some quick ways for you to apply what we’re talking about today. First, a whole bunch of rules don’t mean anything if you don’t have love. Yeah, Paul said that in 1 Corinthians 13:3 and he got it from Jesus. Second, there are two relationships you need to maintain, in the proper order: Love God and love your fellow man. And third, the Church has two purposes found in this passage. One is an inward purpose: Love God. We come to church help one another to grow in our relationships with God and to give Him all we are. The focus is on Him first. The second purpose is outward: love your fellow man. If you get the first one right, you’ll find it a lot easier to get the second one right as well. We learn to love from God and we also learn to love our fellow man from God. All this stuff we do on Sundays is meant to lead us to what we do on Mondays – go and love our fellow man.
It’s a question of focus, really. Here we are – gathered together on a Sunday morning. Are we wasting all our time on a 75 cent bulb or are we learning to love God and our fellow man? Where’s your focus this morning? Where will it be on Monday?
Red Cloud Wesleyan Church 