DISCIPLE MAKERS PART ONE: THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT

DISCIPLE MAKERS PART ONE: THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT Matthew 22:37-40 July 17, 2011 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introduction Convening a series on Disciplemakers. How might you answer the question, “What is the most important thing God wants me to do?” Consider 2 questions posed to Jesus in scripture. Mat 22:34 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?” 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 friend, the scribe to ask this question. One issue at play here is the fact that the Pharisees and the Sadducees were bitter political enemies. Verse 34 says that when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had bested the Sadducees, they jumped at the chance to see if they could stump the itinerant teacher named Jesus. 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 contradictory or incorrect? 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 jurisprudence, they had created 613 different commandments in the Law. Beyond that they wrote countless “rulings” along with 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 this was so 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 let’s consider what makes this commandment so “great,” especially in terms of how it applies to us a disciples and disciple makers. 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. T he whole point of the Sermon on the Mount is that we sinners too easily miss the whole point. We do not, and cannot, please God in slavish obedience to 613 commandments (we know we will never measure in that way). Jesus said that 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 this key question rendered by the scribe 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 here, or, more importantly, don’t misunderstand Jesus. 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 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 restored, 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. (Rom. 8:3) God arranged for this conversation with the Pharisees to be preserved for us today. He wants us to understand something radically important. And it’s more than the complicated theology of the law, something more helpful than the condemning word of guilt over our inability to obey the law well 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 a prerequisite to obeying 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. You can’t just say, “Oh, I believe in God and love Him, so I’m fine.” He says that all the commandments HANG on this one great commandment. I remember going to a circus where I saw a stunning performance by the high wire people. One of them climbed like a monkey to a high point, positioned himself upside down and placed a special gadget in his mouth. Attached to the mouth-piece was a rope with a horizontal bar dangling from it. Hanging from the bar there were three more ropes tied into loops. Then out came three more acrobats and they stood under the loops. I thought to myself, “No way—they’re not going to…” Just then the middle person jumped up, grabbed the middle loop, stuck his foot into the loop and hung upside down directly under the mouthpiece guy, who then was bearing of the second guy’s weight with his teeth and jaws. Then the other two lept simultaneously to grab the other two loops, they placed their feet just right and also began to hang upside down! Then the bar began to spin. The full weight of three adults and the compounding centrifugal force of the movement were all supported by “super jaws” above. Picture that for a moment and consider the guy on top whose neck is as strong as iron. Would you say he is “representing” the other 3 or “summarizing” them? No, they were hanging on him, depending 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 come and rescue us from our sins, and make us right in our relationship with Him through Jesus. And by means of the Spirit of 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 promises were first given in the great prophetic promise of God in Jeremiah 31:33, hundreds of years before Jesus came to our planet. 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. There in that section of the book of Deuteronomy, Moses went right to the heart of the matter—and right to the heart of the genuine God-follower. Here Moses 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 are spending your life trying to please God by obeying the commandments, least trying your best to be acceptable to Him by doing more good than bad, then I know 3 things about you. One, you’re miserable and tired and sadly disappointed, because you have failed at that goal. Two, you’re lost, without hope and without God in the world, because you have not been able to do enough to overcome your sinfulness and please God. Three, you need something or someone to deliver you from your guilt and failure; someone to free your heart to love God. Jesus is your answer. He has provided for your forgiveness and the chance to have a new life in Him. 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. 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 as for following the other commandments? That is no longer an impossible chore, but it is 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 Him. That’s the second reason the great commandment is so great! It comes first. It has to. Without the reconciled relationship with God we’re lost. 3. The third reason this commandment is so great is that it is essential to all of God’s purposes in us. 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 how the effects of a restored relationship with God affects our horizontal relationships with others in this life. One of our biggest problems as human beings is our inability to sustain good, healthy relationships with other human beings. We argue, we compete, we struggle, we are disappointed – all because we are messed up by sin. We’re not whole people, and so we have nothing to give to one another. God can and wants to heal the relationships we have with others. And He wants to start that healing right where it has to start—by healing our hearts. Did you know that? When we are humble enough through faith to admit that it is our own sinfulness and self-centeredness that gets us messed up in relationships in the first place, we understand the prayer, “Lord, let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.” The scriptures teach that through the death of Christ on the cross, those who trust him and receive His 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 can begin to happen. 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? I started by saying this is the first message in a series on being disciple makers. And it is. God desperately want to reach every man, woman and child with the good news offer of salvation in Jesus. And He has chosen to do so through people who have already been saved and are in process. So, the first step is to understand the great commandment. Love God, love people.     [ Back to Top]