"What Is Heavier than the Torah?" Matthew 22:34-40 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Matthew 22, verses 34 through 40 is the really the climax of the showdown between Jesus and the Sanhedrin.

Matthew 22:34–40

The Sanhedrin was a group of 70 religious leaders.

They are the foremost in Israel.

They are the ones that are in charge.

As far as the Roman government was concerned, the Sanhedrin was the representatives of Israel.

They were the religious leaders of Israel.

The Israelites viewed them as their kind of the Jewish leaders.

They had oversight and legal authority of the temple.

That was a deal with Herod the Great, the butcher of Bethlehem.

He had built them the temple in exchange for them being subservient to Rome.

That was the great bargain with the devil the Jews had made long before Jesus was born.

Herod has since died, really struck down by God.

And now Jesus finds himself in the temple that Herod made, surrounded by the Sanhedrin who don't want him there.

Jesus had made at least three other appearances in the temple throughout his life, if not more than that.

He was a known element there twice.

Now he's turned over the tables and really shut the place down during Passover week.

This is the height of the religious worship Passover week is for the Jews, and for Jesus to shut that down was horribly offensive to the Sanhedrin.

The Sanhedrin viewed Jesus as a threat to the peace that they had with Rome, a threat to their control over the temple.

And they wanted him dealt with.

So they had confronted Jesus already at the beginning of the week.

And it didn't go well for them.

If you recall, they demanded to know by whose authority he showed up in the temple.

There's 70 members of the Sanhedrin.

They're kind of asking you, like, did one of the rookie Sanhedrin members sign off on your paperwork?

Who let you in here?

How'd you get a key?

And Jesus, remember, responds by saying, I'll tell you that if you tell me by what authority John the Baptist baptized with.

And they didn't know how to answer that because they knew the the the crowd loved John.

The Sanhedrin didn't love John because John lambasted the Sanhedrin.

Remember, he called them a brood of vipers and all manner of things.

And so there's that.

And so they don't know how to respond to that.

Jesus curses the fig tree as a picture of Israel, that Israel is not showing faith to him.

So the fig tree will wither that evening when they walk back by the fig tree.

It had died.

The next day, Jesus comes back to the temple to do his uh last day of public teaching there, and he is surrounded again by the Sanhedrin, and this time they've crafted a plan.

They're going to ask him three questions.

That's what this series has been working on.

The first of those questions was brought by the Herodian.

Remember, the Sanhedrin is 70 people, and they are not all like-minded.

In a sense, they're like our Congress or Senate in our own government, where it's all one body, I suppose, but you have Democrats, you have Republicans, you have some libertarians, you have an independent or through or two thrown in there.

So you've got kind of a hot mess, a conglomeration there.

They don't all have the same worldview, even though they all have offices in the same building.

That's what the Sanhedrin is like.

It's 70 of these guys, and they do not all represent the same political party.

They do not all have the same worldview, but they are united somehow right now in their disdain for Jesus.

So first up was the Herodian.

That is the party of Herod.

Those are the members of the Sanhedrin that like Herod and like the deal that Herod the Great had made with Israel.

They like the temple.

They consider that's their biggest victory that Herod had given them the temple.

They want a close partnership with Rome.

That's the Herodians.

That's why the Herodian hypocritically asked Jesus, is it okay to pay taxes with Caesar's face on the tax?

Is it okay to use that if you're a Jew?

It's a question that's right up the Herodian's alley.

Jesus sees this hypocrisy, bats that away to the cheap seats, if you recall.

Next up was the Sadducees.

The Sadducees also, there's Sadducees on the Sanhedrin.

They have a minimalistic view of the Old Testament.

They elevate the Torah.

They reject the history readings, the wisdom, uh literature from the Old Testament.

They reject the oral tradition that the Pharisees loved.

They reject the resurrection because they say it's not taught in the Torah.

They reject the supernatural, angels, demons, all that.

They consider it far-fetched.

That's the Sadducees.

Their question was the one about the woman with all the husbands and they kept dying.

Who's she going to be married to in heaven?

Again, the Sadducees, like the Herodians' question, it was a very hypocritical question.

The Herodians love Rome, ask a question designed to get Jesus to go against Rome.

The Sadducees don't even believe in the resurrection.

They ask Jesus about who they'll be married to in the resurrection that they don't believe in.

It was pretty hypocritical.

Jesus sees through it, also deftly answers that question, rebukes the Sadducees, rebukes them, and says, Your problem is that you don't even know the Word of God.

Which is a pretty stinging rebuke.

And so now, third up.

The Herodian, uh the Pharisees.

You can imagine the Pharisees celebrating when they heard Jesus' answers to the Sadducees.

Because the Pharisees don't like the Sadducees, even though they're all part of the Sanhedrin.

The Pharisees don't like the Sadducees.

The Sadducees asked a question about the resurrection to make fun of it.

Jesus, in his answer, downplayed the Sadducees and kind of sided with the Pharisees.

When Jesus answers the Sadducees about the resurrection, you can picture the Pharisees high-fiving each other.

Like, hey, maybe he's on our side after all.

I'm going to find out that's not true.

So now it's the Pharisees' turn, and they bring forward their question to Jesus.

It is also a question that is designed to exasperate the wedge or expose the wedge, further the divide between the Sadducees and the Pharisees.

Jesus' last answer, he sided with the Pharisees against the Sadducees, so the Pharisees' question is designed to exasperate or expose that gulf.

Make Jesus dig in all the more on the side of the Pharisees.

It is still a trap, though.

They're asking Jesus, they're going to ask him what the most important law is.

Let's look at it in verse 34.

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.

It's their turn to ask a question.

Remember, all the groups of the Sanhedrin have asked a question now.

It's their turn.

They recalibrate.

So as I read this, it appears that they are recalibrating their question based upon the earlier exchange.

Maybe they had figured out what question they were going to ask, and then when they saw Jesus kind of side with them to the Sadducee, they're recalibrating and they're going to come up with a different question.

One of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.

Mark lets you know that he was sent.

So this is the guy from the Pharisee delegation, and he's going to ask a question.

Also, Matthew lets us know, it's also to test him.

That's the same word Matthew let us know has been used repeatedly with the Herodians and the Sadducees, of course.

They're trying to test Jesus.

They're such hypocrites here.

They're not really trying to learn.

They're not asking the question to learn from Jesus.

Oh, what a good question, too, that they're going to ask, but they're not asking it to learn.

Oh, if only they were asking to learn from him, but they're not.

Here's their question, verse 36.

Teacher, what is the greatest commandment of the law?

This is the perfect question.

What is the greatest commandment of the law?

They did not waste their question like the Sadducees did.

I'm still mad at the Sadducees' question.

What a dumb question.

Here's a woman with seven husbands, and they all died, and who's she gonna be married to?

That's the you get a moment with Jesus, and that's the question you've got?

Come on.

The Herodians' question, I don't really like the Herodians question either.

It's so like politically immediate.

Sometimes in the political world, there's some like nuanced political question that seems so important in the political world, it's it won't even be remembered next week, you know, much less forever.

The Herodians kind of wasted their question on that.

Sadducees squandered their question on something arcane and hypothetical and I would say silly.

But the Pharisee, man, this is a good question.

What is the most important law?

What is the greatest commandment in the law?

What's the main thing God wants me to do?

That's another way of phrasing that question.

And this is what I mean.

Like he asked the perfect question.

He has a moment with Jesus, and you get one question for Jesus, I would say this is a great one.

What is the most important thing you want me to know, Jesus?

What's the one if you're the author of the law, what is it you got for me?

Now, some commentators say it is still a trap because uh the Pharisees were likely trying to get Jesus to elevate himself above the law of Moses, for him to sit as judge over the law of Moses, and perhaps that's true.

But nevertheless, I appreciate the question.

What's the most important thing God wants from me?

What's the and you should have that same question, by the way, when you open your Bible.

God, what is the main thing you want me to learn today?

What do you got for me today?

Teach me from your word.

I want to learn.

What's the most important thing you have for me to learn?

What a great question.

Well, the background behind this question, the Pharisees were fond of saying that there were 613 separate commands in the law, the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, 613 different commands, uh, and there's all kinds of significance between 613 and Kabbalah and all kind of Jewish mysticism comes into play.

But the bottom line is that 365 of those commands were negative, which means don't do this, don't do these 365 things, and 248 were positive, meaning do this and live.

So they there they had set about to memorize the whole law, all 365 commands.

Why 365?

What's the significance of that?

Well, it's one command a day.

You can memorize a negative command every day, and you can eventually, over the course of a year, have all of the negative commands of the Torah memorized.

That was their approach.

It was a kind of a mnemonic device.

However, have you ever tried to memorize 613 things?

Some of you can't remember the grocery list.

Eggs and oh, what was it?

Comes from a cow?

I don't remember.

The Pharisees are yeah, right.

The Pharisees are trying to memorize 613 things, and so they're looking for the shortcut here.

Rabbis differentiated between these 613 things.

They differentiated between the heavy commands and the light commands.

The heavy commands they taught were parts of the Torah that were more important to remember, the most important, so important that if you broke one of them, there wasn't really going to be mercy.

If you broke one of the heavy commands, there was swift punishment, swift judgment.

Whereas the light commands, if you broke those, there might be mercy.

You could seek forgiveness in the person you sinned against.

It's not that sin is not that some sins aren't that serious.

It's just that just that the light commands, they're just the normal way of living.

You're gonna accidentally break some of commands here and there.

Those are the light commands, but don't break the heavy commands.

Again, that same kind of teaching uh lives on in the Catholic Church today between the mortal, the difference between mortal and venial sins, the kind of sins that if you commit and you're, you know, there's no forgiveness, no purgatory for you, there's that kind of construct that still lives on in many religions today.

The rabbis had that.

The Pharisees had that.

The problem with that approach to Scripture is once you start dividing the heavy commands from the light commands, you're in the world of kind of some arbitrary choices here.

What commands are heavy and what commands are light?

Which commands are the uber important commands, and which commands are like the oh, if you get around to them commands.

It becomes somewhat arbitrary.

And I think it's kind of a bad way to handle God's word.

I don't think you really want to approach God's word by saying which part is okay for me to remember and which part is okay for me not to remember.

I do understand there's practical decisions.

You can't download the whole Bible in your mind at once.

So there's practical choices you make when studying the scripture.

Nevertheless, as a system to understand the Bible, I don't think it's helpful to have a system that elevates parts of the Bible above other parts.

That's what I'm saying.

And it live it does live on today, by the way.

There's uh a view of the Old Testament that's very common in the Christian world.

It's called the tripartite view of the law.

I've talked about that before.

That's a view of studying the Old Testament that divides the law up into three categories uh civil, ceremonial, and moral.

Um, you know, laws for running the government, laws that are just you know fulfilled in Christ that pointed forward to him, and then moral laws that bind the conscience today.

It's a very common way of dividing up the old covenant law.

And uh I don't think that's helpful.

I don't think it's a helpful approach to understand the old covenant because it's also very subjective.

You're right away you're starting to wrestle with what parts of the law are moral versus which parts are civil and which parts are ceremonial.

And the most obvious example of that is the Sabbath.

You put the Sabbath in the kind of the government realm, it's part of their calendar, it's how their calendar functions, or the ceremonial because it's fulfilled in Christ, he's our Sabbath rest, or is it moral because uh it's part of the Ten Commandments, the first person you put to death was put to death for violating that command.

It's just not really a good way to divide the law.

It's not very, I would say it's not very helpful and it's very arbitrary.

But the Pharisees fully embraced that way.

Not the tripartite way, they would have laughed at that.

They would have said all the law is moral, but they fully embrace the dividing the law between heavy and light commandments.

And I want you to think about how the New Testament speaks of that approach.

James says if you break the law at one point, you've broken the whole thing.

It's there's not he doesn't say if you break a heavy command, you've broken the whole thing, but not a light command.

No, he says if you break it at one point.

Sin violates your relationship with God.

A small sin, a big sin.

I understand that not all sin is equal, and that some sins are more severe.

I definitely understand that, but all sin violates your relationship with God.

And so it's not going to be a helpful way to disentangle the law to separate heavy and light commands.

I mean, let me ask you this.

If one of your kids came to you and said, Dad, got a plan.

I'm gonna break one of our windows.

The big window out front, which part of the window is the best part for me to break?

I was like, okay, well, don't break any of it, please.

No, you don't understand, you're not listening, Dad.

I'm going to break part of it.

You just let me know which part is the best to break.

No.

Go to your room and never come out.

Law rises or falls together.

That's how the law works.

But I do like this question from the Pharisee because he is asking Jesus, what is the most important thing God wants me to know from his word?

Jesus doesn't dodge the question.

He doesn't, you know, avoid the question by saying, you know, all sin is equal, all sin is against God.

That's true in some sense, but it's not true in the sense in which the Pharisee means the question.

So I love how Jesus answers the question by just taking it head on and receiving the question and answering it straight up.

He answers it by pointing him to the perfect God.

And this is in verse 37.

You shall love, this is Jesus' words, the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.

This is the great and first commandment.

Jesus doesn't argue with the presupposition of the question.

Instead, he answers with basically the most famous verse in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 6.5, the Shema, which is Hero, Israel, Yahweh your God is one.

Every Jew would have it memorized, Shema Israel, Adonai El Chenu, Adonai Chad.

You memorize it as a young age.

It is what is written on the phylacteries, it's written on the little scrolls.

It's rolled up on tiny pieces of paper.

It is put in the phlactories that's tied to the sideburns of the rabbis of the Pharisees.

It's put in boxes on doors.

It's put on the end of tassels.

It is all over the Jewish world.

The guys asking Jesus the question probably literally have that verse written down on paper, rolled inside of a box, and tied to their hair.

Or put a lot of them would wear it with a band that goes around their heads right in the middle of their forehead.

If you go to Israel today, that verse is everywhere.

Now you don't see the verse, it's inside of boxes.

Almost every hotel in Israel has a little box on the side of all the doors.

And this verse is, I haven't busted open one of the boxes to see if it's actually in there.

But I'm told that this verse is written on a little piece of paper inside every one of those boxes, outside of every hotel room, outside of every house.

It's everywhere.

This verse is everywhere.

So that's the verse that Jesus uses for his answer.

Shma Israel Shema is listen here, Israel, Adonai, Yahweh, El Chinu, your God.

Elohinu is the plural for Elochim, which is the word for God.

It's in the dual form, the plural form.

So listen, Israel.

Yahweh, Elochinu, your God, but in a plural form, is one.

A huge verse in the Old Testament.

The foundation of the Torah, the start of the book of Deuteronomy, and before Moses recounts the law a second time.

It's got all kinds of mystery in it.

God is one, but El Chenu, which is the plural form of God.

How can you refer to God in a plural form but say he's one?

That's a mystery that's just cooked into the Old Testament.

Of course, you understand this with Trinitarian thinking that God is one being in three persons, one divine essence in three persons.

That's how you answer that riddle.

But that's the verse that Jesus answers.

Also, notice that what Jesus says, hear Israel, he's calling it back to the Shema.

That verse, Deuteronomy 6.5, it's a command for Israel to listen to Yahweh's voice.

Hear, O Israel.

It's Yahweh speaking.

Now imagine the scene.

Jesus is in the temple with the crowd and the Sadducees and the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees and all that, all seventy of them surrounding him with thousands upon thousands of people outside of that.

And now Jesus is addressing them.

Jesus is taking on the role of speaker here, telling the congregation, as it were, to listen to him.

He's the one taking the form of the speaker here.

He's the voice behind Deuteronomy 6.5.

He's the one telling Israel to listen.

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

I love Jesus' answer.

He tells them, listen, the answer to your question, the answer to your pressing question is literally tied to your face.

You can't miss it.

Moreover, the trap was to get him to elevate himself above the law of Moses.

He doesn't do it in his words, he does it in his actions.

He takes the form of the speaker of the law of Moses to answer the question.

Deuteronomy 6.5 is pleading with Israel to listen.

Oh, would you listen to the Lord?

Would you listen to Moses?

Would you listen to him to plead with you to turn from your sin and trust the God of Israel?

He is one God, he's the perfect God.

If you think about the Shema, the God is one.

You know, on a superficial surface level, that's not that big of a statement, right?

I mean, how many Zeus's are there?

There's only one Zeus.

How many dagons in the Old Testament?

Only one dagon?

That was the problem.

When he toppled over and broke, they had to tape them all back up together again.

Remember, there's only one of them.

They didn't have a second one in the closet to bring out.

No reserved agon in storage.

I mean, isn't every God only one of them?

But that's not really exactly what this means.

When it says Yahweh is one, it means there's nobody else like him.

He's unique above among all of the gods of the world.

He's unique.

There's nobody else like him at all.

In middle school, I had to memorize the Greek gods.

I don't know why.

I went to a public school.

Why'd they make you memorize the Greek gods?

I feel like that violates my First Amendment rights.

My teacher didn't go for that argument, though.

It's hard to memorize all those Greek gods because they get super confusing and how they relate to the Roman gods, and this, oh, this God is the Greek God, but he becomes this Roman god, and this was the Greek god of war, but becomes a Roman god of love, but the Roman god of love is the same, and but uh it's super confusing.

They all blend together.

Yahweh is not like that, there's nobody else like him.

He is so distinct.

There may be lots of so called gods in the world, but there are no other Yahweh's.

You know, there's one statue of Dagon, but Dagon is basically interchangeable with the God of the Phil.

The Amalekites, the Jebusites, all their gods are more or less interchangeable.

But there's nobody else like Yahweh.

And you need to remember that when somebody says, you know, all religions are the same.

No, they're not.

All religions in the world are not the same.

Christianity is different because Jesus Christ is different.

Yahweh is different.

I loved how Paul Washer made it known last week that if he was a religious philosophy professor, his class would be so easy.

There's only two religions.

Everything else and Christianity.

I love that way of saying it.

Yeah, it's okay to confuse the other gods, but they're not like Yahweh.

He's categorically different.

God is one of a kind.

There is no other God who forgives sins.

There's no other God who gives life.

There's no other God who brings justice while forgiving sins.

Of course, that culminates in the person of Christ.

There's no other God who cares for the oppressed, who created the world, who owns all everything the world, who's not needy from his people, and yet who cares for the brokenhearted.

There's no other God like that.

He is the perfect God.

There's nobody else like him.

That's the most important thing for you to know about the Bible.

There's Yahweh, and there is no second place.

Everybody else is disqualified.

There's only the true God.

Thirdly, Jesus' answer encompasses the perfect love.

This is in verse 37.

What do you do with the perfect God?

You're to love that God.

You're to love Yahweh.

You're to love your God.

It's a basic, simple command.

And it becomes the most basic and the most simple command.

You might even say it becomes the most important command in the Bible.

To love God.

To love God.

That's what God demands of you.

This is a constant Old Testament refrain.

God demands sacrifices in the Old Testament, but tells you that He doesn't require, He doesn't really need your sacrifices.

He wants your heart.

It's a broken spirit and a contrite heart, God desires.

The person who comes to him in faith with a heart filled with love will never be cast off.

It's possible to make the sacrifices and not be obedient to Yahweh.

It's not possible to love him and not be obedient to him.

That's the great gulf.

Matthew Meade, the Puritan, has this book called The Almost Christian Discovered that makes the point so well.

It's possible to go to church and yet but be almost a Christian.

To not be truly converted.

It's possible to give money to the church and yet but be almost a Christian.

It's possible to be part of a small group and yet but be almost a Christian.

It's possible to have daily devotionals and yet but be almost a Christian.

It's possible to evangelize your neighbors and yet but be almost a Christian.

It is possible to fake every element of Christianity, every single one, and yet but be almost a Christian.

The only exception is the love of God.

It is not possible to love God and yet but be almost a Christian.

Love of God is the authentic confirmation of saving faith.

Do you love God in the person of Jesus Christ?

That is the greatest thing in the Bible.

It's the greatest thing.

It's the most important command.

It follows, by the way, this is the most important command.

That the greatest sin, to answer the Pharisees and mnemonic here, would be failure to love God through Jesus Christ.

It's perfect love.

It's, you know, complex and robust.

Let me unpack it just for a few little sub points here.

First, notice in this command that God is concerned about the affections or the emotions.

Whatever word you want to say.

God is concerned about what you feel in your heart.

That's where the love for God is seen.

He cares about your heart.

Your main and your greatest act of obedience is to love him from your heart.

I've mentioned this before, but we often try to downplay this.

We talk about love's not, you know, love's not an emotion, love's an action.

I know the sentiment that's behind that.

Love may manifest itself in actions.

Of course, if love is genuine, it will produce itself in actions, but it's possible to have the actions and not have love.

This is Paul's point in 1 Corinthians 13 that a person can give all of his possessions to the poor and not have love, and all of his gifts then are meaningless.

A person could give his body to be burned as a martyr and not have love, and that would be meaningless.

It would be it's not real sacrifice.

True love is seen in the affections.

Love for God is seen in the heart.

If you have that, everything else is authentic.

If you lack that, everything else is a show.

It's fake.

God sees the truth in the heart, in the affections.

You could speak like an angel, Paul says.

But if you don't have love, who cares?

You can write like Shakespeare.

You can do that without love.

You can write a love sonnet, a Shakespearean love sonnet to the person you want to marry.

And she says, Oh, this is a great poem.

But do you love me?

And you're like, ah.

That's a good poem, though, right?

Same thing is true in your obedience to God.

This is why the greatest command is to love the Lord with your heart.

The bottom line is that obedience is seen in the heart, not with the hands.

If it is in the heart, it will show up in the hands, but that's not where you go first.

We're hitting this over and over again on Sunday morning.

The beatitudes start on the inside before it gets to the outside.

True love is seen in the heart.

You can do the right things, but if it doesn't come from love, it is pointless.

Second, perfect love is complete.

This is just the nature of the way Jesus describes this.

It's total.

It's all-encompassing.

It's not merely enough to acknowledge that God exists, it's not enough to assent to his existence, it's not enough to agree that God is true or that the Bible is true.

It takes love, and that love encompasses every area of your life.

He says here, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.

There are no half-hearted people in the kingdom of God.

There's no reluctant attendees at the wedding feast of the Lamb.

People are there because they love Yahweh.

That's who shows up at the wedding feast of the Lamb.

You might be a reluctant attendee at an earthly wedding.

Maybe you go to a wedding because your husband or your wife wants you to go, or your uncle or your aunt wants you to go, and you kind of don't really want to be there and you're drug there screaming and kicking.

It won't be like that in heaven.

There's nobody drug screaming and kicking at the wedding feast of the Lamb.

Everybody is there because of their fullness of love for Christ.

It's a complete command that it covers your affections, your actions, and all of that.

As I said, the greatest sin would be failure to follow that command.

This is why hell is real.

This is the greatest command.

The greatest sin is failure to do it, which would require the greatest punishment.

Failure to love God deserves the punishment of hell, because it's the greatest command in the Bible.

It's a complete command because it demands the greatest punishment for breaking it.

It's also a complete command because it lays claim on every aspect of human personality.

Your heart, your soul, your mind, your strength.

In Mark's version of it, Mark includes strength.

It's every part of the human existence.

The word soul is the word for spirit.

The word mind is the Greek word for thoughts.

Your strength is an idiom in Greek for as long as you live, all the days of your life, every moment of your existence has the love of Christ in it.

Because our God is one, love for him must be undivided.

Notice that the unity of God demands a unity in your love for him.

It covers every part of your life.

Your life is not divided, your tongue isn't divided, your affections aren't divided.

You are wholehearted in with your love for God.

We're commanded to love God not simply with our whole heart, but notice that it's from the whole heart.

From the heart.

The Greek word ek there means out of.

The love has filled your heart and it pours out of it in the rest of your life.

And then notice the impossibility of this command.

You can't do this without a new heart.

It takes the work of God on your heart.

It takes the love of God shed abroad in your heart for you to love God like this.

This is not a human love.

Your heart can't manufacture this own love.

You're not born with this love, you're born absent in this love, you're born distant from God, you're born in sin.

And so the thing that God requires you is the one thing you don't have.

God demands that you have a heart that loves him, but you don't have that heart yourself.

So it requires God to do this in your life.

This is why the scripture says, we love him because he first loved us.

So where did that love come from?

It came from him.

Love, that kind of saving love, has its source in God.

The Father and the Son and the Spirit's love for one another.

They then, the three persons of God, purpose to set that love in you.

They bring it to you through the person of Jesus Christ, God who becomes the eternal Son of God, who becomes man, takes on a human nature, takes that divine love with him to earth, manifests that love in a human nature as he leads a sinless life, shows that love by dying on the cross for your sins, rises from the grave to heaven.

Now the Spirit brings that love that points you back to Christ and puts that love in your heart.

The Bible says the love of God has been shed abroad in your heart.

The Spirit brings that love, inserts it into your heart.

Now you have that divine intra-trinitarian love in your own heart so that you can love God back.

He gave it to you.

It's his love.

That's why it's impossible for you to do on your own.

It requires a new heart, it requires regeneration.

And notice the exclusivity of this command.

The word all is repeated here three times in verse 37.

All your heart, all your soul, all your mind.

It's the only repeated word.

You can't come with half heart and be in the kingdom.

You can't come with divided loyalty.

Jesus says you want to count the cost.

Are you going to be all in or not?

You can't love the Lord in a way that you also love money.

You divide it.

This is why Jesus repeatedly throughout Matthew's gospel uses the word love, the love-hate contrast.

You can't serve two masters.

You love one and hate the other.

Unless a person hates his father and mother, he cannot love Christ.

It's not like we think of his hate as Americans like an actual act of hatred towards someone.

It's a, in the Jewish mind, it's a choosing.

If you're all in with Christ, you're all against everything else.

Any affection that you have that's not properly funneled to God is affection that is owed to God but robbed of him.

That's a Christian principle that comes from this greatest command.

Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church.

Your love for your spouse is rooted in the love of God seen in the cross.

This is the mystery of Christian marriage that magnifies it so well.

You know, a husband that loves his wife for the purpose of getting her to love him back is robbing God of her love and is robbing God of his love.

It's a little feedback loop between the two individuals there that's absent God, that's denying God the part of your affections that are owed to him.

Rather, a husband who loves God with all his heart loves his wife as a display of God's love, that's demonstrating the love of God given to the husband that's shown to the wife.

When the wife loves her husband because he's a gift from the Lord, she's demonstrating her love to God by how she loves her husband.

Now, that marriage, the love is going to be stronger than a love that doesn't have God in the middle of it.

Or a father who raises his children to love him is robbing God of those children's affections.

Those children should love God, not the father.

But a father who raises his kids to see the love of God that God has for them, the kids will grow in the love for God, and as a fruit of the love for God, will love their father in return.

That kind of child will end up loving his father more than the father who raises his kids to be loved as an end in and of itself.

That's true with every human relationship.

It's true with the work.

You work as under the Lord, it's true with your neighbors, it's true with your enemies, it's true with every human relationship.

The prerequisite to loving your neighbors rightly and to loving your spouse rightly and loving your kids rightly is love of God.

And when you love your people that are around you as an overflow of the love that God shows to you, then their love will be directed back towards God, not towards you, which is a good thing.

It's a good thing.

That's why the order of these commandments is so critical.

You can't have the second greatest commandment without the first.

You can't love your neighbor unless you've first understood that all of your love is for God.

And this is, people get confused by this, because the second command, I'm cheating a little bit in the second point, second command is love your neighbor as yourself.

But if you're supposed to love God with all of your heart, then how can you love your neighbor?

And the answer to that is you love God with all of your heart, and your neighbor is the fruit of your love to God, not an end in and of itself.

That's why when you hear people say, I just do the golden rule.

I love, I do unto others as I would have them do unto me.

I love my neighbor as myself.

That's the golden rule.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

That's not the golden rule.

Ah.

You can't love your neighbor unless you first love God.

That's the big E on the I chart here.

I don't get so fixated in how you read the bottom four lines of the I chart, you know?

You're three lines into it, the guys figured out if you need glasses or not.

Can you see the E on top?

Do you love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength?

Because that's where the action's at.

Anyway, this is the perfect love.

It's emotional, it's complete, it's impossible, it's exclusive.

This then leads to the perfect life.

The perfect life.

Perfect life.

You see here in the next uh part of the command, verse 39, the second is like it.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Jesus moves from Deuteronomy 6 to Leviticus 19, 18.

In the Old Testament, neighbor was explicitly a fellow Jew, and that's what stumped the lawyer earlier, by the way, who tried to justify himself by asking Jesus who his neighbor really was, and Jesus' answer was so earth-shattering by drawing a Samaritan into the whole thing.

But for Jesus, the requirements of the Shema, the requirements of the greatest commands, cannot be fulfilled in any way other than directed towards God wholly, and when it's directed towards God, it produces obedience in your life towards the rest of the law, particularly love of neighbor.

Jesus fulfills the Old Testament law, of course, by loving everybody perfectly.

And that's why Romans 13, verse 10 can say that love is the fulfillment of the law.

Romans 13:10

Everything else flows out of this.

When Christ has fulfilled the law in your place, your love is devoted to Christ, the law is fulfilled.

Now your life overflows in love towards neighbor.

And it is true that you can look at the old covenant law, and it's not like some of it is about love to God and some of it is love towards neighbor, but those two headings do cover all of it.

A lot of it is overlap, you know?

Like don't, you know, put a put a railing on your balcony so your neighbor doesn't fall off of it.

Well, that's because you love your neighbor, but you love your neighbor because you love the Lord, who gave you the law to keep.

I mean, it's all blended together.

So these two commands that are hard to disentangle, but there is a priority to them.

You love God first, neighbor flows out of that.

But it's hard to tell where love for God stops and love for neighbor begins when your love for God is consummate and all-consuming.

So this scribe who had come to ambush Jesus finds himself ambushed by Jesus with this answer, doesn't he?

Because you know where this is going.

Do you love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength?

Because Jesus is sitting there in the temple in front of him.

In fact, I want you to flip over.

I you know.

Matthew doesn't include the rest of this, but flip over to Mark.

You just gotta see how this conversation because the conversation goes beyond what Matthew records here, so I just want you to see the rest of it.

I'd feel like I cheated you a little bit if you didn't see what happens here.

Mark chapter 12.

Mark 12 · chapter mention

Mark chapter 12, verse 31, Jesus says, Love your neighbors yourself, know the commandment greater than thee.

Mark 12:31

So it's so far the conversation is basically the same.

I mean, it's the same conversation.

Mark describes it basically identically to how Matthew does.

But verse 33, Mark keeps telling you how the conversation goes.

To love him with all the heart, with all the understanding.

Alright, verse 32, the scribe says to Jesus, You're a right teacher.

You've truly said that he is one, and there's no other besides him.

Do you think Jesus was sweating, the scribe's verdict?

Like, I wonder if he's gonna be satisfied with my answer.

Of course not.

But the scribe, this is letting you know that he did not come to learn from Jesus.

He came to judge Jesus.

He tried to trap Jesus, Jesus answered the question.

Now the scribe is in the position of judge.

And the scribe passes the verdict on Jesus here when he says, You're right.

You're right, Jesus.

Verse 32.

You have truly said he is one, and there's no other beside him.

And to love him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the strength, and love one's neighbor yourself is much more than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices.

So that's his declaration.

This expert in the law declares you're right, and if you do that, it's better than the law.

Do you see the problem here?

Has the scribe done that?

I've titled this heading here, The Perfect Life, because the scribe is now condemning himself with his own words.

He's saying, You're right, Jesus, love the Lord with all your heart, love your neighbors yourself.

That covers everything.

It's better than the sacrifices.

When you speak like that, you're speaking the truth and you're condemning yourself at the same time.

Have you loved the Lord perfectly with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength?

Have you loved your neighbors yourself?

The answer is no, you have not.

And so the law requires the perfect life.

That's the dilemma here.

The law requires the perfect life.

His comment here references, it's an allusion to 1 Samuel 15, where Saul disobeyed God.

Remember, Samuel told Saul to wait for seven days and do the sacrifice.

Saul waited seven days and left without Samuel.

Then Samuel shows up and rebukes Saul.

Saul says, I couldn't wait that long and I had to do the sacrifice.

I went to battle, but at least I did the sacrifice.

And Samuel says, The Lord doesn't want your sacrifice.

He wants you to obey him.

He doesn't care about the sheep.

Obey him with your heart, Saul.

That's what this scribe here is referencing.

Jesus and the scribe didn't disagree on this point.

Jesus and the Pharisees are on the same page here.

That part of the law overshadows everything else, and everything else flows from it.

But the scribes and the Pharisees thought it wasn't a problem.

Keep the details of the law, you'll be fine.

And Jesus is exposing no, if you haven't loved the Lord perfectly, you stand condemned.

You stand condemned.

And that's where Jesus goes next.

We'll end here with the perfect problem.

The perfect problem.

Still in Mark verse 34.

When Jesus saw that he answered wisely.

So Jesus is not going to get outjudged by this judge, you know?

That guy arrogantly passes judgment on Jesus.

Jesus turns it around and passes judgment on him.

You don't get to judge me.

When Jesus saw that he answered wisely and said to him, You are not far from the kingdom of God.

What does that mean?

You're not far from the kingdom of God.

Is that good news or bad news?

I mean, I guess it depends on your perspective.

If it's the first day of class and you get the whole semester to learn, and the first day of class, and the teacher says you're not far, you're like, great, that's encouraging.

Is this the first day of class?

Oh no.

This is the end of the show.

This is Jesus' last day teaching.

Three years he's taught these people.

At the end of it, the guy doesn't get it.

What about if you stand before God for judgment?

And you hear God say, Oh man, you were so close.

That's not good news.

But that's what Jesus tells the person, you are not far from the kingdom of God.

You're nibbling around the edges.

Reminds me of Hebrews 6.

People that splashed in the heavenly fountain.

They got splashed by God's grace.

They tasted the water of eternal life.

They didn't drink it, they didn't own it.

They tasted it.

They knew where the church was.

They knew that Jesus was preaching the church.

They even went there a few times.

They just never believed it for themselves.

That's where the scribe is.

He's at Jesus.

Jesus' feet, asking Jesus what's the most important command.

He agrees with Jesus' answer.

He's not there though.

He doesn't love the Lord.

They're gonna huddle.

They're gonna regroup the Sanhedrin will?

They're gonna talk about the three questions.

And then they're gonna vote to execute Christ.

That's what this guy does.

He leaves this conversation right here.

This conversation.

He's one of the 70 that votes to crucify Jesus.

And he was so close.

So close to getting it.

He had the right person to ask, the right question to ask, the right answer was given, the right response to the answer.

He had everything right.

You know what he didn't have?

Love for Christ.

That's the huge irony of this story.

He had everything right except loving Christ himself.

He was so close.

He was missing a mediator.

He was missing the mediator.

He understood Torah.

He didn't understand it pointed towards the mediator.

You know what he didn't understand?

Is how the Savior could be David's son and David's Lord.

That's what he didn't understand.

That's what he's missing.

And that's where Jesus goes next.

But before we go there, look verse 34.

After that, no one dared to ask him any more questions.

Could you imagine getting to that point?

You're looking at Jesus and you say, you know what?

He knows everything, so I can't ask him anything.

I'm afraid of what he'll say.

But that's the heart of unbelief.

God, we're grateful that you have not given us hearts of unbelief, but hearts of belief.

You've drawn us to faith in your Son.

You've given us your love.

It's the greatest command, the greatest love, the greatest desire.

So, Lord, we're grateful for the love of Christ Jesus that you've given to us.

I pray for anyone here tonight that has never given you their heart, that has never given you their love.

I pray tonight that they would be convicted of their sins and would place their faith in you.

Jesus, who led the perfect life, who loved your neighbor as yourself because you loved God fully and died in our place.

Risen from the grave on the third day, you bore the penalty for our sin.

Our lack of love was paid for by you.

And your love was given in our hearts.

We're thankful for it.

In the name of Christ.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.