The Greatest Commandment

 Read Matthew 22:32-40

We began the new year with a series we call the Words of Jesus. We had spent a year in the Old Testament and wanted some words from our Master. We surely find them here.

This part of Matthew brings the ministry of Jesus to a crescendo. He has his triumphant entry into town—that had to push the buttons of the religious leaders.

Jesus was teaching, frequently in parables. The Pharisees and Sadducees wanted to discredit Jesus.

Jesus was a new force to be reckoned with and he spoke with authority, not like the Teachers of the Law or the Pharisees or the Sadducees. He had been all over the countryside and had a substantial following.

Anyone who could take him down publicly would surely have some street credit. We are not talking a gunfight at the OK Corral. We are talking about discrediting the One who claims to be from the Father with the law that came from the Father himself.

The Pharisees and Herodians teamed up with the perfect question. Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar?

Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar?

It may seem like just a coffee shop question.  Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar?

Answer yes, and many of these people think that Jesus is a sellout.  At the moment when people were ready to follow this revolutionary. Telling the people not to pay taxes to Caesar would certainly end up in a jail cell for Jesus.

You don’t have to be right. You just need to give the Roman soldiers a reason to lock this guy up and throw away the key. The Romans were fond of their taxes.

If the Romans governed your area but you paid your taxes, they didn’t much care if you worshiped the one true God or a carved wooded pole and made offerings to it all day.  Just pay your taxes.

All the Romans wanted was to conquer the known world and have that world pay them taxes. It’s good work if you can get.

Tell people to go ahead and pay taxes to the emperor who said he was god would make Jesus a sellout.  Either way this question will take Jesus down a notch or two no matter how he answers.

It was a perfect setup.  So, there Jesus, is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar?

Jesus said, who has a coin?

A coin is produced.

Whose image is on the coin?

Caesar’s.

Then give Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God that which is God’s. 

What did Jesus say?

First, Caesar is not God.

Second, if it is of this world, don’t get wrapped up in it. It belongs to this world. It is something that the pagans chase after and make into their gods. It is neither here nor there as far as we are concerned. It’s just stuff. If we need it, God will provide it.

Third, there are absolutely things that belong to God and are not to be shared with others.  He is God. He is sovereign. He is holy. He is righteous. The list goes on.

Give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s.

Not only were the people amazed, so were the Pharisees.  They surely didn’t see that one coming. They left the area. There was no victory for them on this occasion. There was no street cred. They had been publicly humiliated in a single sentence.

If the Pharisees struck out, that didn’t mean game over, it meant there was an opportunity for the Sadducees to score big. You see, the events of this day were more like a Shakespearean play than just a day in the town square.

The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. That is why they are SAD YOU SEE. That explanation is required neither by law or prophecy but by the pastor’s guild that it be used twice a year.

So the Sadducees had this little scenario dreamed up, probably for the torment of the Pharisees, but surely it would work on Jesus as well. I mean, it was well thought out.

A man had a bunch of brothers. There were 7 in all. The oldest took a wife and then died. The next brother took his brother’s wife as the law required, but he died.

The woman is still unmarried and childless, but her original husband had more brothers. They marry and die without child, so the question is: Whose wife will this woman be at the resurrection?

That’s a good one. The Sadducees had put some effort into this one. They had surely frustrated the Pharisees with this one. It would get Jesus for sure. They could chalk up this victory for sure. This was the no-win scenario for Jesus.

Mathematically, I can prove that 0=2. The math is flawless but the logic is absent. We need to understand that if the premise is false, you can prove whatever you want to prove. If the premise is false, you can make just about anything you want look to be true.

Jesus replied by saying, “Your premise is false. There is a resurrection. The insurmountable question quickly dissipated into nothing.

Jesus said, there is a resurrection. You got that part wrong and everything thereafter that you have painted as truth is false as well.

There is a resurrection of the dead. It’s coming. You might want to prepare. What’s not coming is all this physical restraint. We will be like the angels, ready and able to worship God in everything that we do.

Here is how Jesus ended this encounter.

Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”

When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching.

The Pharisees got wind that Jesus had put an abrupt end to the efforts of the Sadducees to trick him. They shouldn’t give up so quickly. They thought they might give it another try.  It was time to pull out the big guns.

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

That seemed straightforward enough.

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Jesus answered directly and without hesitation. He took over the conversation at this point.  Here’s the typical answer to your question and here is the full answer.

You must love God with everything that you have and are and will be. He is God. He is worthy of you worship and praise, and OBTW—love each other while you are at it.  This is the whole of the law. 

Love God.

Love one another.

Everything in the law and the prophets is anchored to, rooted in, and otherwise connected to these two basic statements.

Love God.

Love each other.

This is our answer to most questions that come up in our lives.  What do I do?  Do that which shows love for God and for each other.

Jesus turned his teaching point into a route of the Pharisees. He flipped the script on them.

While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?”

 

“The son of David,” they replied.

 

He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says,

 

“‘The Lord said to my Lord:

    “Sit at my right hand

until I put your enemies

    under your feet.”’

 

 If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.

 Jesus had answers for those who would confront him. Within those are answers for us. He has more answers for us if we will take his yoke and learn from him.

Jesus has plenty of answers for those who will put his words into practice. He has plenty of answers for those who want to challenge him as well. I prefer his counsel over his admonishment.

I would rather be on the teaching end of a Jesus parable than the stinging end of one of his woe unto you sentences.

Jesus told us in the clearest terms that the essence of what we do—the things that are important in our lives—is to love God and to love each other.  Everything is built upon this very real premise. It’s all about love.

So just what is the greatest commandment in the law?

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

We know what we need to know to please the Lord. Love God. Love each other. Everything else stems from these two premises.

These premises are true and our instructions for life are clear.

Love God.

Love one another.

Amen.

 

All the Law and the Prophets

Read Matthew 22:34-40

Let’s make sure of our perspective before we begin.  We say GOD LOVES YOU – LOVE ONE ANOTHER time and time again.  Do we fully believe that God loves us?  It does make a difference.

We know God is holy.  He is righteous.  He is all powerful.  He is sovereign.  He is all knowing.  He is immutable.  He is God and he is Creator and he is the Judge of his creation.

Most people acknowledge these things and those things should give us pause to think and reflect and maybe shake a bit in our boots.

But until we accept that the very essence of God is love, much of the Bible is obscured to us.  Until we believe that God loves us, our growth is minimal.  Until we accept that God is love and that he loves us, it is sometimes impossible to believe that he has good plans for us. 

Before we were just a little blimp in our mother’s womb, God knew us; but did he love us?  That’s the question that must no longer be a question for us.  If you question whether God loves you or not, the answer is that he does.

The struggle might be to know this with everything that you are—heart, soul, body, spirit, and mind.  Everything that makes you, you, must know that God is love and that he loves you.

When we say or read or think God is Love and God loves me, it must be more than theory.  It is reality for us.  Actually, it is reality for everyone, but we have eyes to see the truth.  We believe these things and therefore can move forward with this topic of love being more than an academic exercise.

Knowing the truth of God’s love for us produces action in us.

Love is not only real, it drives the universe.  Love propels everything with purpose.  And so we come to those words that we have said over and over and worn on our wrists and share with thousands:

GOD LOVES YOU – LOVE ONE ANOTHER

There was a path to get to this point.  Here is the tweet version:  Creation, sin, preservation of a remnant in the flood, choosing a people to be his own, and the law.  Yes, there is a bit more in the 39 books on the left-hand side of your Bibles, but God was best known to his people for a time through the law. 

To keep people pointed in the right direction, God occasionally sent prophets.  People didn’t always do a good job on the home study and correspondence courses when it came to knowing and obeying the law.  Sometimes, they needed a person to point the way.

So the guiding forces for God’s people as they tried to be people of God were the Law—often called the Law of Moses—and the prophets.

By the time that Jesus came into this world as God with Us, there were many experts in the law.  They were Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, and other religious leaders who thought they had a good handle on the law.  They were not always in agreement with each other.  There was much discussion and commentary among the experts.

They would have loved Facebook because everyone surely had a special insight that others had missed.  Some surely emerged as more expert than others.

This is the first century world in Judea and Galilee and in those areas of the Promised Land where knowing the law as important in daily life.  

Understand knowing the law often came with unique perspective. 

Rabbis—teachers—would accept disciples and train them.  The disciples were said to have taken on the yoke of their master—of their teacher.  That meant that they would learn his insights and adopt his perspectives, at least while each was a disciple.

But some would become experts.  They would dig deeper than most.  They had more analytical skill.  They connected the dots better.  They might have touched the edges of what today we call the full biblical witness, absent the other 27 books that came later.

Today, we take with a grain of salt anyone who claims to be an expert.  We see experts on television all of the time and many of them don’t seem credible, much less an expert in anything.

Most of us do know or have known experts in at least one area.  Perhaps we are or have been an expert in this area.  We all know expert parents.  What constitutes an expert parent? 

An expert parent is a parent who knows exactly what to do in each and every situation.  You might think that would take decades of parenting experience, but quite the opposite is true.

It seems to be that those with no children of their own have all of the answers.  Those who have never been a parent are always the expert parents.

The irony is that two weeks after having a child of their own, their expert status is revoked.

Today, you don’t always find experts where you think you should.  It seems that all of our state’s expert educators are in the state legislature.  Oops!  Did I leave that in my message?

My point is that today being an expert doesn’t carry the same weight that it did 2000 years ago.  A man believed to be an expert in the law would have been given this status by his peers.  It was not likes on Facebook or text your vote to the Sanhedrin.  Among all of the men who believed that they knew their stuff, a few were held in very high regard.

In this 22^nd chapter of Matthew, we see 3 distinct encounters between the religious leaders and Jesus.   If you need the big picture context, the religious leaders of the day don’t like Jesus.  Jesus is bringing truth and the leaders prefer comfort.  They like things the way they are.

The Pharisees reinforced by the Herodians took their shot with is it legal to pay taxes to Caesar?  The question itself should have been escape proof.

Answer yes, and Jesus has told people to pay taxes to a very unpopular conqueror—the Romans—who just happened to have an emperor who had declared himself to be god.

Answer no, and the Jesus problem would be taken care of by the Romans.  The Romans didn’t care much what the Jews believed, but they would not stand for someone advocating not paying taxes.   Such a man gets locked up.  He can run a prison ministry but he won’t be circulating around the countryside anymore.

We know what happened.  Jesus asked for a coin and one was offered.  He presented a question:  Whose image is on the coin. The people answered:  Caesar.   He proffered a solution:  Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s.

The Sadducees took their shot with their 7 brothers for one bride question and were told they were just wrong.  There is a resurrection.

So the Pharisees want to take another shot at tripping up Jesus.  They are still licking their wounds, but they select the best among them to test Jesus in the law.  The trick question didn’t work.  Let’s just see if Jesus paid attention in school.  Let’s just see if he knows his stuff.

The expert is polite and professional addressing Jesus as Teacher.  He asks, “Which is the greatest commandment in the law?”

Visualize the wheels spinning in the expert’s mind.  Depending upon how Jesus answers, the follow up questions will exploit anything that seems to be weak or incomplete.  He has been sent by his peers to test Jesus.

Jesus answers, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.”

He answered the question and even reminded the expert of the question in his answer; but Jesus does not allow the expert a follow-on question as he continues in explanation.

He continues, “And the second is like it.”

Hold on, the expert only asked for the greatest, but the first and greatest commandment is incomplete without the second which is like it.  An expert should know that.

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”  Both of these commands come out of the law.  They are not paired together in what we call the Old Testament.  Jesus has connected two big dots.

It’s not that the Pharisees were a bunch of dummies.  At least one other expert in the law had connected these dots.  Read the beginning of the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  Here, the expert gives the answer:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, Love your neighbor as yourself.

The pairing here is not new and some of the religious leaders had put these two commands together as very important.  But Jesus continued.

All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

The expert had asked about the law, but Jesus added the complete context.  God gave you law and he sent prophets.  If you read these words and listen to the words of the prophets, then you will realize that the foundation for all that you have received from God is loving God and loving your neighbor.

If you are truly expert in the law and in the books of prophecy, you would know that the infrastructure to what God is telling us rests on loving God and loving our neighbor.

If each of the books of the law and the scrolls of the prophets were cloaks, they would all hang on the coatrack called love God and love your neighbor.

If you were not blinded by your own self-righteousness, you would see that loving God defines the state of our hearts and minds.  Loving our neighbor calls us to live what is inside of us.

If you had eyes to see then you would realize that what comes in the law and through the prophets are not book answers but life answers.

Jesus was teaching that everything that you have learned from God’s laws and his prophets up to this point have pointed you to love God and love your neighbor.

There is a command that comes after what came in the law and prophecy.  We know it.  Jesus told his disciples, as I have loved you, so you must love one another.

It sounds like the old command, but it is more.

How did Jesus love us?  How did he love his disciples?  With everything that he was, that’s how he loved us.  He gave his very life for us.  That’s love.  That’s raising the bar.

The law directs us to love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves.  That’s tough but doable.

Jesus tells us to love our neighbor more than we love ourselves.  We love with the totality of our lives.  He has raised the bar.

What is the first and greatest commandment? 

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

The law and the prophets take us to this pairing of fundamental directions.  Jesus takes us a step farther.  Love one another with your very life.  Love one another as much as I have loved you.  Love each other as much as God loves you.

I ask again.  Do you believe that God is love and that he loves you?  It is not a question of what you have read, though reading helps.  It is a question of what you believe.

You may not be an expert in the law, but you must be certain in this belief.  God loves you.

For once you truly believe that, there is one irresistible response within you; that you love one another.

Everything in all of history up to the advent of Jesus, said love God and love you neighbor as much as yourself.  Jesus takes us to the place where we love God by loving our neighbor as much as he loves us.

I remind you once again that God is love and that he loves you.  Let’s respond in love in all that we are and all that we do.

God loves you.  Love one another.

Amen.