Our Duty to God, Our Duty to Man

Let’s open our bibles to the gospel of Matthew, chapter 22 verses 34 through 40.

34 But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”

37 Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

May the Lord bless the reading and preaching of his word to us today, Amen.

Dear congregation, Jesus Christ is not merely a good teacher, he is not merely a good teacher. Sometimes we hear people, who perhaps want to hedge their bets, they’re not Christians, they don’t believe in the deity, the full Godhood of Christ, they want to hedge their bets, they want to say something nice about Jesus, and they say well,

“I’m not a Christian but I do respect Jesus as a good teacher”,

sometimes you find these kinds of attitudes certainly during the 20th century with the rise of liberal theology, these things work their way into the professing Church of Christ to the point where, in many respects, in some sense cease to be the professing Church of Christ in many places because they only see Jesus as a good teacher.

CS Lewis in his book Mere Christianity addresses this issue, he says:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. (CS Lewis)

But at the same time as believers in Christ, fully God, fully man, our only hope for salvation, the redeemer of souls, believing all of that, we must at the same time recognize that Jesus IS a good teacher, in fact, He is the best teacher.

He is the greatest expositor and explainer of Gods law that has ever lived. Ephesians 4:20 speaks of Christians

having learned Christ indeed, having been taught by Christ the truth as it is in Jesus, so every true Christian who

looks to Jesus as savior, can also say through the work of the Spirit of Christ in his or her heart, that he or she has been taught by God, has been taught by Christ, through the word of God, and especially the teachings of Jesus.

Now, certainly all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, reproof and correction, but there is something significant about the words of Jesus, the teachings of Jesus throughout the gospels, especially the ones that expounds and explains the righteousness and truth of God in a unique and powerful way.

Jesus has a perspective that is higher than anyone else who has ever lived. So who better to explain the law of God.

It’s also interesting that Jesus gives these teachings in a context where He is actually being attacked by his enemies. The Sadducees together with the Pharisees get together, and as usual they try to trick Jesus, and they fail again and again, but now they send this lawyer, with a question for Jesus regarding which is the greatest commandment in the law, and they think that perhaps they can catch him here.

And I just think it’s such an illustration of God’s providence that here we find one of the most glorious statements, one of the most glorious teachings that our Lord ever gave in explaining the law of God, and it comes as the result of Christ enemies attacking him.

See they meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. And through out the history of the church this has often been the case, that some of the greatest statements of theological doctrine that the church has ever expressed in writing, in confessions, catechisms and counsels, most of these, many of these came because the church was attacked by heresy, so we can give thanks to God that he uses even the wrath of man, even the opposers of Christ, in a sense to draw out some of the most glorious teachings of Christ for our edification.

So here Jesus is brought this question, which of the many commands, the Pharisees probably had drawn up a list of

commands, some say that their list included 613 commands in the Old Testament law, and so they ask, which of these 613 commands is the greatest commandment?

And notice how Jesus responds, verse 37, it says “you shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, this is the first and great commandment.”

So he begins by saying that the full force, the emphasis of Gods law is upon God himself, loving God with our entire being.

Love God with everything, all your heart, all your soul and all your mind, this is the first and great commandment.

But then he goes further and explains that there is a second commandment that really is connected to it, it's like, it

comes after it and in a way that it shows that these two are inseparable and connected together, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” to love God with everything that you have, everything that you are, and then love these neighbors who bear the image of God.

You can see the logic of it there's a first and great commandment,

loving God, and a second similar commandment to love others and to love them as we love ourselves.

And then he says that on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets, in other words every bit of ethical teaching you have throughout the entire Hebrew Bible from Genesis to Malachi, all of the ethical teachings and commandments of God in all of those books of the Bible are really summarized in these two commandments, they hang on them, they're derived from them.

And so what Jesus is doing here is he's answering the question by giving a summary of the law.

Now that should be something we're familiar with as Christians because, you know sometimes we can look at the whole Old Testament, all 39 books and it can be intimidating sometimes, it's a lot of pages a lot of reading but we can really summarize God's moral teachings in those books by looking at what? The Ten Commandments.

God gave us a summary to boil down his moral law for the people in the Old Testament, he gave that summary in the form of the Ten Commandments through Moses at Mount Sinai.

And what Jesus is doing here, he saying: I'm going to push it even further, not only do we have a summary of God's moral law on the Ten Commandments

but he then takes those Ten Commandments and summarizes them even further boils it down even further to so that we can understand better the law of God.

Because in the Ten Commandments, the first four commands deal with our duty toward God, loving God, the first table, and the last six Commandments often called the second table, speaks of our duty toward our neighbor, how to love our neighbor.

So Jesus is saying look: I'm going to make it even simpler, even more concise, here is a summary, here are the two great commandments summarizing the righteousness of God in the law.

Now what I would like to do in the remainder of our time this afternoon is to think of what we can actually say for certain about these two great commandments. What can we say about them, how can we describe them, how can we understand them, what can we learn from them.

The first thing that we can say about these two great Commandments is that they are ancient,

They are ancient

There's no doubt about it, Jesus is not just coming up with a new commandment here or new commandments, rather he's quoting the Old Testament itself. He's quoting Deuteronomy chapter 6.

The first great commandment is something that had already been revealed to Israel through Moses in the book of Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 6:4 says: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. 6 “And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.

You see Jesus is quoting essentially the same commandment that was already given, this is an ancient commandment.

The Second Great commandment comes from The Book of Leviticus

The Book of Leviticus chapter 19

There's a description of our duty toward our neighbor there's actually a long list of Commandments, let me begin in verse 9

“When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field, nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10 And you shall not glean your vineyard, nor shall you gather every grape of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I am the Lord your God.”

So being charitable to those who don't have food to eat

Going on 11 ‘You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another. 12 And you shall not swear by My name falsely, nor shall you profane the name of your God: I am the Lord. 13 ‘You shall not cheat your neighbor, nor rob him. The wages of him who is hired shall not remain with you all night until morning.”

So pay your laborers on time

14 You shall not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but shall fear your God: I am the Lord. 15 ‘You shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty. In righteousness you shall judge your neighbor. 16 You shall not go about as a talebearer [gossiping essentially] gossiping among your people; nor shall you take a stand against the life of your neighbor: I am the Lord.

17 ‘You shall not hate your brother in your heart [some people think Jesus just came up with that in The Sermon on the Mount, he is expositing the law of God]. You shall surely [b]rebuke your neighbor, and not bear sin because of him. 18 You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”

You see, this commandment even under Moses god revealed it as a commandment summarizing those second table duties toward other people. How can we love them? Well in all these specific ways but to summarize it, just love them as you would love yourself, or as the Golden Rule says, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

So Jesus is taking these ancient laws and saying these are the greatest laws in the Old Testament and they summarize the 10 commandments, the law and the prophets, they summarize it all.

Now, the reason I'm mentioning this and perhaps even belaboring it it’s because you have many Christians in the church today who take these two great commandments and say well, this is a New Testament ethic and it replaces the law and the prophets, it replaces Leviticus and Deuteronomy, it replaces The Ten Commandments and so here you have this law of Christ and if we just would love God with everything and love our neighbor as ourselves and and so on and so forth and we can just disregard all the details of the Ten Commandments and of the law and the prophets

and what I'm saying to you and what Jesus is saying to you today is that you can't do that, because how can these laws from Leviticus in Deuteronomy replace the law and the prophets when they're part of the law and the prophets how can they replace the Ten Commandments when they're quite clearly in context including and expounding the Ten Commandments themselves.

Jesus came not to destroy the law but to fulfill it, that is, to explain its full and accurate meaning so that that law might be written on our hearts by the spirit of God, that's New Covenant Christianity, and these Commandments are ancient Commandments.

In addition they are simple, they are very simple, such that our children not only often memorize the 10 Commandments but it's even simpler, we have them memorize these two great Commandments.

Now we do live in a world where laws are not simple, they're rarely simple. Just think of the thousands and thousands of pages of the laws in our justice system, the rules, regulations, all the bureaucracy.

But when you'll start to look at biblical law, you see the Simplicity by which God gives his people, laws they can meditate on day and night I mean how are you going to be the blessed man or woman of Psalm 1 if you have millions of words to meditate on, no God gives us very simple not simplistic, simple summaries to meditate on.

There's no excuse for us not meditating on these Commandments, these teachings of Christ, because they're so simple they make wise the simple they're simple enough for a child, simple enough for all of us.

In addition these two great Commandments are personal

They are supremely personal,

Notice the command you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your mind you shall love your neighbor as yourself

These commands first and foremost are not directed to the government to end their tyranny or whatever, they're not primarily instituted for the right ordering and government of families per se, but these Commandments first and foremost come to the individual, and everyone of us as individuals needs to give attention to what Jesus is saying, because he's saying it to you, he's saying it to me

and there's a danger Jesus warns about of always applying God's word to other people, always applying it to this guy or that guy, in other words, we see a speck in our brothers eye and we rebuke our brother and we're all worked up about the sins of others when in fact we have a log in our own eye,

And these laws, these Commandments rebuke that, and they remind us that we ought to take heed first and foremost to ourselves, to our own obedience.

This is personal first and foremost.

We see a great example of this in Ezra the priest, Ezra chapter 7 verse 10 says “For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel.”

Notice that he studied the law of God to do it, and that before he began to teach others how to do it, so it was very important in Ezra's life and in all of our lives, the need to seek to put the word of God into practice and then through that experience we are more equipped to help and assist others, so it's personal

More than that these two great Commandments are spiritual,

They're spiritual,

notice that there's nothing in this passage, in these two Commandments that deals with outward expressions of obedience.

Not that those things aren't important, but Jesus here is not dealing with things, first and foremost that would be outward, that would be visible, he's dealing with the inner person of the heart. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul with all your mind, love your neighbor as yourself,

so this law is getting under the surface again it's personal and because of that it's spiritual because as an individual you can examine your heart your soul your mind yourself you can't do that for other people, but by the grace of God you can examine yourself and apply these things deep down in your heart and soul.

And this of course is in great contrast to what the Pharisees were doing, they were prioritizing those laws that were visible, the fringes on their garments, certain outward aspects of Sabbath keeping, so those things that were most visible were most important to the Pharisees and Jesus in chapter 23 of Matthew's gospel confronts them for this externalism,

verse 25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also.”

He goes on to compare them to whitewashed tombs that appear beautiful outwardly but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness,

And so what God is chiefly interested in is really the root and ground of all other expressions of obedience even outward obedience, is this inner person of the heart

1st Peter 3 it says, speaking especially of wives that it's that inner person of the heart that the Lord loves to look upon and delights in and that's true for husbands as well as wives, man as well as women, it's true for all Christians that God chiefly looks upon and delights in the working of his grace inside our hearts, and that's why in the Proverbs the writer essentially says “my son give me your heart, guard your heart, everything else flows out of the heart,

we start on the inside, we prioritize the heart soul mind and self and then of course the outward obedience will follow and it must follow.

so these commandments Are Spiritual

More than that we can say that these two commandments are Relational

They are relational

Now how relevant is that? how refreshing is that? In a culture and society like our own where at least in terms of the rhetoric everybody wants to be relational, we love the idea of sharing, of community, of intimacy, of authenticity in our relationships

these two great Commandments I can tell you without a doubt in my mind are the most relational Commandments that you will ever find in all the world.

If you're looking to be relational the law of God is relational,

it speaks to us of Love, of a loving relationship between human beings and their Creator, between sinners and their redeemer, you shall love the Lord your God, think of that beautiful relationship between God and man through the man Christ Jesus and then we see flowing out of that there's this relationship between one neighbor and another, between man and man

such that one loves the other as he loves his own soul, it's a great picture of friendship that you find between David and Jonathan, that they loved each other as they love their own soul, perhaps even more, they had a kindred spirit, a love for one another, and that's what Jesus is saying the world should be like, a place where people love each other like they love their own selves and they love God with everything in their being.

So these laws are relational, and that's what the gospel is all about, having God as our father, having Jesus Christ is our elder brother, as our husband, having the Holy Spirit as an indwelling comforter living inside of us as his Temple, having other believers as siblings, brothers and sisters

and even looking to the outside world and seeing in every person created in the image of God a neighbor to be loved.

The sad fact is that our society while it talks much about being relational, it is really growing less and less relational every single day.

Jesus explains why that is in Matthew 24 he says that because lawlessness will abound the love of many will grow cold. And we know that “love is the fulfillment of the law”. (Romans 13:8)

Notice the connection between lawlessness/iniquity and a lack of love.

So in our society today we see this more and more, in the relationships between men and women for instance,

a rise in the objectification of men and women as objects of lust and pornography, there is fornication, a cheapening of sexuality, a cheapening of human dignity. Thinking of husbands and wives, the marriage relationship, we see adultery, divorce, we see people abandoning biblical marriage in favor of you know, men marrying men, women marrying women, trying to somehow fix this relational problem and it just doesn’t work,

it’s not solving the problem. The fact is that if we stopped loving God, if we reject the the first great commandment we have relational problems.

In addition, these Commandments are God-centered

They are God-centered

Now by nature we're all humanists, by nature we make man the measure of all things, by nature we define selfishness as putting myself against the common good of mankind, but in doing so we make the common good of mankind the ultimate, we deify human beings and human kind, and these commandments repudiate that, they present a priority scale that says God is number one, God is most important, God’s Rights are more important than the Rights of Man, God's holiness, God's worship, obedience to God's Commandments, loving God, relationships with God, all these things are more important then their counterpart in the human realm. Vertical trump's horizontal.

And this is important for us to think about because in our own society even as christians we can begin to fall into the trap of having the right answers to the wrong questions.

We're finding biblical answers to the many questions that are going around our society, especially at election time, but throughout the years we're finding biblical answers to the questions, but you see, we're stuck on the wrong questions.

We've taken this humanistic spirit that says man's rights are really the topic of the day, we need to focus on this debate between the right of the mother and the right of the unborn child, we need to focus on the right of the citizen to have healthcare versus the right of the other citizen to not be taxed to pay for that,

these are the debates that usually goes on and Christians come up with great biblical responses to these issues and rightly so, but why is it that we’re always following the lead of the world and it's humanism in setting up the questions that are debated?

why do we never hear questions about the rights of God to be worshipped, to be honored as the Creator and sustainer of every human being in this country, as the one who has appointed our leaders to serve him first and foremost and to kiss the sun,

why don't we talk about that the right of God to not have his name publicly blaspheme

to have his Sabbath publicly desecrated, the right of God to be recognized as the only living and true God,

why do we not talk about these rights of God…

It's great to have a Biblical view of man's rights but we need a God-centered perspective, and that's what Jesus gives us, because you see you'll never solve the issue of Human Rights until you recognize the rights of God, and if you recall Leviticus 19 in the passage I just read a few moments ago,

what was the refrain that is repeated over and over as we read those laws? it says “I am the Lord”, “I am the Lord”, in other words,

if we think that in our Zeal for human rights we're going to solve the problem without first dealing with this first great commandment, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, love the Lord your God with all your heart soul mind and strength, until we deal with that, we're going to fail again and again if we don't deal with the worship of the creature, God will give over Society to pretty much an abolition of Human Rights, and that's what we're seeing sadly today.

Well in addition, these commandments are balanced

They're balanced

It's not just love for God, this is balanced. Noticed that there's an emphasis on love for others, that one of the great commandment deals with how we treat other people not just other Christians but other people, people that hate us, people that are against Christ.

How are we showing our love for them, for Muslims, for Mormons, come up with your list. Non-christians, how are we loving them? how are we reflecting our heavenly father as Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount that just like our heavenly father sends rain and sunshine on the just and the unjust, so ought we as children of our heavenly father, to love everyone else who bears the image of God and to love them as ourselves, that's the commandment here

But it also goes further than that, there's enough balance here in this commandment that Jesus is even confident enough to even tell us that we should love ourselves, that there's enough weighing on the side of God centeredness and of love for others, that Jesus doesn't have any problem saying that we should love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Of course we need to be careful there, I’m not saying that we just accept ourselves as we are as sinners, and we don't need to repent or humble ourselves, no, Job says “I repent in dust and ashes and I abhor myself” in the sense of hating our sin, Jesus is not just saying turn a blind eye to your sin.

He's not saying love yourself more than you should. 2nd Timothy 3:1 says in the last days men will become lovers of themselves and lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, no, don't make yourself the ultimate, it's God first then others, but there ought to be love for yourself, I mean Ephesians 5 tells us

“what man ever hated himself, who ever hated his own flesh? No, a person loves and cherishes himself because it's a gift from God, you should love your body, take care of it, God gave it to you.

For the glory of God seek physical health and life, but above all for the glory of God, seek eternal life.

I mean if you really want to love yourself, repent in dust and ashes, abhor your sins and come to Christ, as a humble sinner seeking salvation.

These Commandments are also inseparable

Inseparable

It takes two nails to hang the law and the prophets, all these things hang on these two Commandments, it takes two nails,

love for God and love for others and we ought never to think that we can separate them, that we can just love God and yet hate our brother, 1st John says if you think that way you don't love God you're a liar.

That we can love our neighbor and turn a blind eye to the God who made them, absolutely not, these laws are inseparable, break one you broke them all, if you don't live before God you're not going to love widows and orphans.

We're coming down to the end here, I just have two more observations

These commandments are scary.

You should look at these commandments and say, I can't do that, and if this is the standard of being acceptable before God such as that the wages of sin is death, and this is the standard of righteousness, that should frighten you. That should frighten you. It should frighten you especially if you're like so many in our society who when you ask them, how do you know you're going to heaven? what do they say, they say well, I'm a good person, and you say, why are you a good person?

Well I always want to treat others as I want to be treated, I love my neighbor as myself… I don't know about you but I have heard that many many times.

But I mean think about it, have you really kept these two great Commandments?

Think about a chronological record of how you have lived your own life, your schedule, how you spend your time, could it be said of you that you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength, that God was the priority? Your thought life, was it God that rejoiced your heart more than anything you love, to think and meditate upon God, that in your emotions and affections nothing captivated you like God himself,

brothers and sisters, don't we all fall short of that, shouldn't that frighten us if we seek to be justified by our own righteousness in God's sight.

Look at the word neighbor, you say, well I love my neighbors, okay but you see, when Jesus answered the question elsewhere who is my neighbor, he defines neighbor in such a way that it includes your most vicious enemies, people that lie about you, people that gossip about you, people that steal from you, people that reject you and despise you. Think about what is required here and how much none of us, none of us loves our neighbor as we love ourselves, and if we're not trusting in Christ, that is absolutely frightening.

Here is my last point, and this is really the main point.

These two great commandments are gospel-centered

They are gospel-centered

You shall love the Lord your God

That means that although the law is meant to frighten us and cause us to turn to Christ, it's chiefly intended for us in relationship with the Lord as our God, the Lord Our God,

the Lord our righteousness who purchased us at the cross of Calvary, the Lord who sanctifies us by his Spirit, enabling us to say I can do all things through Christ, the Lord who writes these laws upon your heart, the Lord who forgives you and shows compassion to you, who is kind to you and then says to you now forgive others as I have forgiven you, and love others the way I have loved you

Love me because I first loved you, and extend my love to other people, and my friend, that's the only way that these two commandments are going to be a delight to you, if Jesus fulfills them for you and in you, by the grace of God.

So as we think about Jesus, as we think about our Savior, Our Redeemer, our King on this day, let us think about the beauty and glory of his law and even more of his salvation. Let's pray

Father in heaven

You are the judge of all the Earth, and you will hold us all accountable, we will one day stand before the Judgment seat of Christ, either receiving the Wrath of the Lamb for our sin for our unwillingness and inability to keep these great commandments or we will stand before the judgment seat of Christ as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, even our sin.

Give us faith to put aside the filthy rags of our own righteousness, to cling to the righteousness of Christ and to hunger and thirst that we might be filled with his righteousness worked out in our lives day by day, by your grace we ask in his name, Amen.