It All Depends on Love

In , there is a scene in which we find Jesus, as He was so many time, being accosted by the bigwigs of the day…the high and mighty religious leaders. Who just couldn’t hack the things that Jesus taught and the way that He acted.

Starting in verse 15, we see first the disciples of the Pharisees, then the Sadducees, and then the Pharisees themselves doing their level best to trap Jesus into committing blasphemy, a crime punishable by death.

So what do they do? They send their disciples to do their dirty work.

Of course, Jesus schools these guys and doesn’t fall into their trap.

And that is their goal: to put him to death, as we see in v. 15

So the Sadducees think they are going to take a shot at him. They come around and a

And to do this, they are asking him questions about the law.

Because the Law was what dictated every aspect of life in those days

It it defined their covenant relationship with God. And to break the Law in many cases was punishable by death

One particular crime certainly punishable by death was blasphemy--”That is, claiming attributes that should only be claimed by God”.

The Sadducees are taking it a step farther and saying, “if this is the law about marriage, what is going to happen in the afterlife?”

Jesus, as He did on so many occasions is immovable.

English Standard Version Chapter 22

34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

I don’t know if anybody here has watched boxing. I know like good, non-resistant Mennonites, we aren’t supposed to like things like that.

I’m not really a boxing fan, but I’ve watched it on occasion. It’s amazing to watch the good ones, dodging and block and feinting this way and that.

It’s almost like they know where the next punch is coming from before their opponent lets it fly at them

And then just at that right moment, when their opponents guard relaxes just for a fraction of a second, here comes that knockout blow.

That’s what happens in this chapter in verse 41. Jesus lands the knockout punch and totally silences these guys.

But it’s in verse 34 that I want to focus

The Pharisees tap their best and brightest, a lawyer, who will ask

And then this happens

(ESV)

The Great Commandment

34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

The Pharisees are probably getting a little frustrated at their constant inability to trap Jesus so they send in their best and brightest; a lawyer.

This guy is supposed to land the knockout question.

Which commandment is the greatest? What a question.

You have to remember that there were over 600 laws

And Jesus is being asked to choose the greatest one at risk of answering wrongly and being guilty of blasphemy.

Even to choose the greatest law in the original 10 commandments is a tall order.

But again, another punch that fails to land. Jesus fields this question perfectly.

You want to know the greatest commandment? Here it is:

Commandment #1: You shall have no other god’s before me!

That’s what you would expect, isn’t it? That’s what I would expect.

But that’s not what Jesus says. Instead He says,

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind.

Oh, this lawyer expected this! I can see him and his colleagues nodding in approval. Yes, we know that! This is from the sermon that Moses preached shortly before his death, after having wandered for 40 years in the wilderness, and just before they took possession of the Promised Land

Deuteronomy 6:4–5 ESV

4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

Deuteronomy 6:4 ESV

4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Deuteronomy 6:4-5

For the last 200 years or so, the priests and religious leaders had been reciting this in their religious rituals and along with their other prayers. They knew this like the back of their hands.

But their nodding soon stops as Jesus continues:

Oh, and BTW, guys, there is another commandment that is a close second. in fact it is LIKE this one. It’s not the same command, but it carries the same weight, the same gravity. It is on the same par, the same plane, almost like a twin to the command that you recite all the time.

Have you considered this?

Leviticus 19:18 ESV

18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.

How often do you repeat this in your religious prayers and duties, oh Pharisees?

And then Jesus keeps going with a statement that must have sent them staggering against the ropes.

“On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets!”

CAn you imagine how the heads of these religious leaders must have been spinning as they tried to absorb this?

For the past couple of Sunday’s we have been looking at our new Vision Statement: Glorifying God, Loving People

Loving People is what we are thinking about today.

I’m trying to put myself in the shoes of these Pharisees today because this is something that I have heard all of my life growing up.

And I imagine that you have too. Love God with everything that you have inside of you and love your neighbor in the same way that you love yourself.

Yes, I’ve heard this all my life, but if I really stop and think about it too much, it still makes my head spin.

Do you really mean that, Jesus? Do you really mean that I can do everything right. I can be the best church attender, I can follow the standards the best of all, I can give to the poor, tithe, all of that,

And I don’t love God with my whole being and I don’t love my neighbor with the same fervor and passion, everything else crumbles to the ground?

Jesus says, “Yeah, that’s what I mean”.

It’s kind of like a picture that we tried to hang on our wall. It was a picture taken by our wedding photographer, Jerry Teats. We had arranged for Dan Kemp to have his old car, (what was it, a Model A?) at church. And Jerry took a picture of Heidi holding onto the skirts of her wedding dress and acting like she was trying to crank this car. And I’m standing in the background holding her flowers for her.

I like the picture because it has Heidi in it. I think the picture looks really good.

And we put it up on the wall with one of these 3M hooks. It really looked good for a bit.

Until one day, that 3M hook let go and this picture came crashing down.

It didn’t break the picture but it broke an outlet right below it.

I think that 3M hook is an example (maybe a lousy example) of love for God and people, and that picture is an exmple of the law and prophets.

The outworking of our faith (the law) is what people see. And sometimes it looks really good and it makes people sit up and take notice.

But it hangs on love. When love isn’t there, everything comes crashing down to the ground.

And Remember, there are two parts to this: Love for God, and Love for people

Both need to be there in order for your picture to hang properly.

If you only have one support for your picture, it’s going to hang crooked and nobody wants to look at it.

That is basically what Paul says in when he says that you can do all the right things and the most amazing things, but if you don’t have love, it doesn’t mean anything.

Unfortunately, I would dare to say that many of us in this room have first-hand experience with this, either from our families or our church backgrounds.

Maybe We grew up in families that looked good and beautiful, and which made other people look in from the outside and say, “Man, I wish I had a family like that”

But you knew the truth. You knew that your father was angry or abusive. You knew that your mom was controlling and manipulative. You knew that things weren’t right between you and your siblings.

And you felt like your life was like this picture. It looked good to folks, but it was crashing to the ground.

It was confusing. You didn’t understand how you could be so miserable, yet people thought you looked so good

There was no love.

Maybe this has been your experience with church as well.

I want to say that I hope it hasn’t been your experience here at Fairview, but I’m honest enough to recognize that tragically Churches hurt people

Religious institutions hurt people

In many of our conservative church experiences, we grow up with the distinct feeling that the religious system is more important than we are.

How we look, act, live....all of that is more important than we are.

We know that there is a world watching us and so we do our best to cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s.

All the while knowing that if we step out of line, we are going to get that dreaded visit from someone, or feel the coldness of our community.

Now hear me out. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t hold each other accountable for how we live and what the quality of our testimony is.

I’m just saying that in too many cases, there has been a greater concern about a religious system than about loving each other fervently.

That is why we decided to include this in our vision statement: Loving people.

Now some of you might be thinking, “that sounds kind of like you want us to be wishy-washy and just accepting of everyone. Kind of like love makes the world go around.”

I would admit that learning what true love looks like, might change our lives. But that’s not what I’m talking about.

Jesus was the example of perfect love and His love was always directional and missional.

His love always had action to it

And that brings us to our mission statement:

Our Mission is to Glorify God by

Bringing people to Jesus

Equipping Believers

Sending Messengers to take the Good News of the Gospel to the Nations.

If we say, that yes, we love people then the practical result of that profession is that we should be on mission.

Bringing people to Jesus

I challenged us with this a number of months ago as we saw the example of John the Baptist, Andrew, and Philip who pointed people to Jesus

Our profession of love for people should compel us as we care for each other within these walls to point each other toward Jesus

And it should propel us outward to bring others to introduce them to Jesus

Equipping Believers

Our love for people should compel us to equip Believers

What am I talking about? Discipleship

One of the things that is on my heart is how do we disciple Believers.

Often we hear, “More is caught than taught”.

it’s true that we need to model how to love for those coming along behind us. People are watching.

And this used to look a lot differently in our communities than it does now

Our communities used to be much closer knit, much tighter.

But it’s different now. We are much more scattered and mobile. We are much more distracted and busy. We may only see each other on Sunday for a couple of hours.

And I think we need to put more thought into making sure that things are both caught and taught.

In other words, how do we make sure that we are discipling our young people and children, not just on Sunday

How are we going to make sure that they are learning how to live out their faith?

How do we teach folks to put “boots on the ground”.

Sending Messengers

Our profession of love for people should compel us to think missionally about sending messengers to the Nations with the Good News of the Gospel

And maybe this should actually should be the second one.

It certainly goes hand in hand with making disciples

Because Jesus when He sent out His disciples said, “Go and make disciples”.

But maybe these two go hand in hand. Sending and making

That’s what Jesus did. He sent them and told them to make disciples.

We should be doing both. I want to be training our young people, our middle aged and old people how to make disciples,

And then sending them out to do just that.

The Gospel is good news.

But like I said last Sunday, it doesn’t stop at getting our tickets punched for Heaven.

It requires active discipleship. It requires teaching and modeling how Jesus wants us to live

It is constant and it should be on the forefront of our minds

Personally: how do I become a disciple

Missionally: How do I model this for someone else

Folks, our love for God and love for our neighbor is what supports everything.

How are you and I doing? For me, I think where the rubber hits the road is how well do we love our neighbors.

But I was reminded again yesterday as I was reading in 1 John, we can’t say that we Love God, yet we hate our brother or sister.

I know hate is a pretty strong word. But I think it’s safe to say that we can insert other words in there:

hold grudges against

not want to talk to

gossip about

close our hearts to the need of

You decide what goes in there.