WHAT MAKES THIS COMMANDMENT SO GREAT?

WHAT MAKES THIS COMMANDMENT SO GREAT? Matthew 22:34-40 September 16, 2007 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introduction I want to express my appreciation to Shawn Willis for so capably bringing the teaching last Sunday in my absence. As usual he brought a brilliant word from the scriptures for our edification. I was able to listen to it on podcast. I hope you all are aware of the convenience that Bruce Betker has brought to our church web site recently. Our Sunday morning messages are now available to download and listen to from your computer or MP3 player. So if you miss being here for some reason or you just want to revisit the Sunday study later in the week, just go to www.mecf.net and click on Sunday messages, then Message Podcast or “list of audio messages”. There you will find the complete recordings of our Sunday morning teachings since mid-May of this year. There are also teachings in full text form for the past ten years. Charlotte and I were grateful to get away for a couple of days to Corpus Christi, Texas, and to be part of the wedding there of Cary and Katie Mathews. In honor of Texas and our Texas guests here this morning, along with our regular long tall Texans like Billy Mathews and Joel Massey, I’d like to share a little story. You know, of course, how Texans are prone to brag a little about how much bigger and better things are in Texas. Well there were a couple of buddies who met in college, one from Texas and one from Illinois, who following their graduation, got together for a week of fishing every year. This year it was the Illinois frat brother who got to host the event. True to form, they had a good time, and as usual they would argue back and forth about whose state had the biggest and best of any number of things. The Texan seemed to always win with proud comments of gargantuan farms with tens of thousands of acres and big cattle, the tallest buildings in Dallas and the greatest storms. The Illinoisan finally got fed up with the Texan’s rants about the superiority of the Lone Star State, so he slipped away from the fishing hole just long enough to catch a snapping turtle and he hid it in his buddy’s sleeping bag, zipped up the bag and went back to fishing. That night after wining another round of braggadocio around the campfire the Texan decided to retire. He unzipped the sleeping bag, slid in, then jumped straight up in the air and yelled, “Yeow!” He shined his flashlight onto the turtle and said, “What is that?” Proudly the Illinoisan said, “What, that? Why that’s just an Illinois bed bug!” The Texan studied the snapping turtle for a minute, then said, “Oh, a young-un’, huh?” The “Great” Commandment The Jewish religious leaders known as the Pharisees had a question about what was greatest in our text this morning. Turn to the 22nd chapter of Matthew, and let’s read there, beginning with verse 34. Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, and expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which 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 can’t be sure what drove the Pharisees and their lawyer-scribe friend to ask this question. Were they genuinely interested in what Jesus had to say on the subject? After all they respectfully called him “teacher.” Or were they, as they did many times before, trying to trick him into saying something politically incorrect or contradictory? Whatever their motivation, we know they did ask a very popular question. The scribes had been debating this issue for centuries. In their efforts to clarify the law for practical application and jurisprudence, they documented 613 different commandments in the Law. Beyond that there were countless “rulings” writings by them and the rabbis detailing thousands of specific applications of the Law. Since no one could really know all these laws and rulings completely, let alone obey them all, they kept trying to make it easier by dividing the commandments into “heavy”, or important, commandments and “light”, or less important commandments. Presumably then a person could concentrate on the heavy commandments and not worry so much about the trivial ones. Of course, the problem with this approach is that the Bible clearly teaches that if you break even one law (heavy or light) you are guilty before the holy God. James 2:10 says, whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. We’ve been taught from infancy this scriptural principle of loving God with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength, and ever since Mrs. Jones’s kindergarten Sunday School class, where it hung regally from the chalk-board AND the flannelgraph stand, we’ve known it as the “Great Commandment.” Today I’d like us to consider what makes this commandment so “great.” 1. One thing that makes this commandment great is that it is a direct, uncomplicated word, straight from Jesus. Jesus dealt with the commandments of the old covenant in the Sermon on the Mount. One by one he explained that the basic issue wasn’t in the idolatry, murder, slander, divorce and lying that we do when we break the law. The real problem is that our hearts are not right with God. That causes us to look for other gods, to hate one another, and to disregard the things that are honorable to God, like truth and keeping covenant and living in righteousness. The whole point of the Sermon on the Mount is that we sinners miss the whole point. It is not primarily in slavish obedience to 613 commandments that we please God (we sinful creatures will never measure up that way). It is primarily in LOVING God that we please Him. Our hearts are not right with God because we do not love Him. As a result the reasoning in our heads is fouled up and that further results in our hands doing unrighteous things. Jesus answers the all-important question, not by going to the first of the ten commandments—you shall have no other gods before me… (Exodus 20:3). He knew that this commandment was like most of the others—negatively stated and aimed not at reinforcing a healthy and positive relationship with God, but emphasizing certain wrong behaviors to be avoided. Please don’t misunderstand me, or Jesus, here. The Law is good, and it and all the commandments contained in it are from God, and its purpose is to promote holy, righteous living. But these laws dealt with the head and the hands—understanding right and wrong behaviors, and trying to do the right and not the wrong. They speak to the head and the hand, but not to the heart. Man’s deep need is for a restore, loving relationship with God. The other thing about the Law is, though it will never pass away, it would be superseded in the covenant Jesus was about to establish. Through him and the sacrifice he would become in our behalf we can be restored through forgiveness, reconciled to Him by His grace. Making our hearts right before God is the heart of the matter. And that can only happen through Jesus who came to ransom and redeem us. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. (Romans 8:3) Christians, it is a profound privilege that the Holy Spirit preserved this conversation with the Pharisees for our reading today. Here we find something more than the complicated theology of the law, something more helpful than the condemning message of guilt and our inability to obey the law enough to satisfy the holiness of God. Here, with profound simplicity, Jesus gives us the key to pleasing God. When our hearts are healed our heads think rightly and our hands behave properly. LOVE GOD! 2. The second reason this commandment is so great is that it is fundamental to all other commandments. Jesus says in verse 40 that all the Law and the Prophets “hang” on this fundamental principle. Notice, he doesn’t say that this commandment is great because it perfectly summarizes the whole law and its copious related commandments. He says that all the commandments HANG on this one great commandment. Did you ever see the circus act performed by the high wire people where one of them hangs upside down and places a special gadget in his mouth? Attached to the mouthpiece is a rope and dangling from the rope is a horizontal bar. Hanging from the bar are three more ropes tied into loops. Out come three more acrobats and they stand under the loops. About now you’re thinking to yourself, “No way—they’re not going to…” Just then the middle person jumps up, grabs the middle loop, sticks his foot into the loop and hangs upside down directly under the mouthpiece guy, who bears his weight with his teeth and jaws. And, yes the other two leap simultaneously to the other two loops, place their feet just right and also hang upside down! Then the bar begins to spin around. The full weight of three adults and the compounding force of the centrifugal movement is all supported by “super jaws” above. Picture that for a moment. Now consider the guy on top whose neck is as strong as iron. Would you say he is representing the 3 or summarizing them? No, they’re hanging on him. They depend on him. If he weren’t tenaciously holding onto his bit they would fall to the ground. Jesus insists that this commandment he is quoting is what all the other commandments hang on. It is fundamentally first in importance. Unless and until a person loves God with his whole heart, soul and mind, he will never be able to live up to the commandments of the law. They hang utterly dependent on this one great commandment. You will never be able to satisfy God by trying harder and harder to do everything right. You must first find someone who will free you and teach you to love God. Hebrews 10:1 tells us that the law that was given was only a shadow of what was to come in Christ. It could never make perfect those who draw near to worship God. The law made nothing perfect (Hebrews 7:19). God’s plan was to make us right in our relationship with Him through Jesus. And in Jesus He would put His law in our minds (Hebrews 8:10) and He would put His law in our hearts (Hebrews 10:16). Both those quotes are from the great prophetic promise of God in Jeremiah 31:33. So when Jesus answers the question of the Pharisees, instead of turning to the big ten in Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy 5, He chooses to quote from the great Hebrew Shema, that brief credo of faith recited by good Jews everywhere three times a day. It is recorded in Deuteronomy 6:4-6 – Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Here in this section of the Texas-sized sermon we know as Deuteronomy, Moses went to the heart—the heart of the matter and the heart of the genuine God-follower. Here the great patriarch leaves behind prohibitive terms like “do not” in order to reveal the most basic element of holiness and righteousness: LOVE the Lord your God! Everything else hangs on this one thing. If you have spent your life trying to please God by perfectly obeying the commandments, then I know two things about you. One, you’re miserable and sad. Two you’re lost, because you have not been able to do it. Three, you need someone to deliver you from your guilt and failure; someone to free your heart to love God. When we sin we fear God and His justice. We cannot love someone of whom we are afraid. But First John assures us that perfect love conquers fear. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The man who fears is not made perfect in love. (1 John 4:18) Jesus said, I did not come to judge the world but to save it. (John 12:48) There it is: we cannot love God until we are no longer deathly afraid of His wrath—the impending judgment for our sins. Jesus came to be our sin offering—to take on himself the punishment we deserve. Because he died for us, we may receive his righteousness to cover our sins. This is done by trusting him and following him in faith. Once the fear is gone, we are free to love Him. Forgiven and restored to a right relationship with God! And following the other commandments? No longer a chore, but the delightful preoccupation of children who have learned to love their Father. Even when they slip and disobey, they know the love of the Father extends to forgive them. Romans 3:21-22, though, says that now a righteousness from God, apart from the law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. You see, it is terribly important that we love God with all of our being because only when that healthy relational state exists are we capable of living in obedience to His commands. That’s the third reason the great commandment is so great! It must come first. 3. The third reason this commandment is so great is that it is pre-requisite to the fulfillment of the commandments. We’ve said nothing so far about the second part of the great commandment: And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The beautiful thing about becoming whole in Jesus is the restored relationship with God. But this second part of the commandment shows that the effects of a restored relationship with God affects our horizontal relationships with others in this life. God can and wants to heal the relationships we have with others. Did you know that? We have to be humble enough to admit, of course, that it is our own sinfulness and self-centeredness that gets us into these messes in the first place. The scriptures teach that through the death of Christ on the cross, those who trust him and receive that salvation become healed in their relationship with Him, but also are freed to have right relationships with others. How? Through the wonder of salvation. You see when we are healed vertically, horizontal healing happens. I’ve seen whole families restored to health through Christ. I’ve seen (and experienced) old relational wounds healed when people receive Christ through faith. Imagine that! Not only the beauty of a restored relationship with your creator God; not only forgiveness of your sins and freedom from guilt and condemnation; not only the sure promise of eternal life in heaven; but also healthy relationships with others in this life! How can we ignore so great a salvation?     [Back to Top]