The Great Either/Or (Matthew 22:34-46)

Our gospel reading this morning comes from Matthew chapter 22, beginning at verse 34.

Matthew 22 · chapter mention

When the Pharisees had heard that Jesus silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.

Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?

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.

This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, Who do you what do you think about the Christ?

Whose son is he?

They said to him, The Son of David.

Jesus said to them, How is it then that David in the Spirit calls him Lord?

saying, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.

If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?

And no one was able to answer him a word.

Nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

And let us pray.

Almighty and everlasting God, you govern all things, both in heaven and on earth.

Mercifully hear the supplications of your people.

And in our time grant us your peace through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, in my experience, there comes a point where indecision becomes its own decision.

Do you know what I mean?

Have you experienced something like that?

I'm not above getting sucked into what I call the Netflix black hole.

And what I mean by the Netflix black hole is it's when you come to watch a movie.

You say it's 8 o'clock, it's 8.30, and you decide, I think I want to watch, I've got time for about an hour and a half, two-hour movie.

And then you start cruising Netflix.

And the question that comes to mind is this is good, but what else could I be watching?

And so one click becomes 10, becomes 20, becomes 100.

Suddenly 8:30 goes by, 9 o'clock, 9.30.

Now it's after 10 o'clock, and I'm still cruising all of my options on Netflix, having never chosen a single movie to watch.

Have you been there?

Have you been somewhere similar?

At some point, indecision becomes its own decision.

My indecision in which movie to watch has become a decision not to watch a movie.

See, a commitment of life and will becomes very important.

Those of you familiar with 12-step programs of recovery know that step three of the 12-steps is making a decision to commit your life and will to God as you understand Him.

That's a decision away from life under your own management, which hasn't been working for you.

Step two is recognizing that a higher power that God can and will restore you to sanity.

Step three is now making that commitment of your life and will to turn yourself over to God, get out of yourself and hand over your life and your will to Him.

See, I can think of no greater tragedy for someone who is in such desperate need of recovery to come to step one and acknowledge, yeah, I am powerless.

I'm powerless over my addiction.

My life is out of control.

And then come to step two and say, Yeah, I do believe that God could restore my life, but then shrink away from step three.

I'm still going to manage my own life.

I'm still going to exercise my own self-will.

We shrink back.

And an indecision becomes a decision.

Maybe it's fear, maybe it's whatever else that's holding us back.

But if it's indecision, it becomes its own decision.

There has to be a point at which our lives become completely and fully committed to God if we're going to experience the kind of transformation that He has in mind for our lives and whether or not we're in recovering addicts or not, that holds to be true.

In fact, at a certain point when we encounter Jesus, we have to wrestle with this question, this question of a decision, this question of an either or.

See, Jesus brings his opponents to a point of decision, a point where they have to ask, who exactly is Jesus claiming to be, and how do I respond to that?

Jesus is claiming to be Messiah, Jesus is claiming to be Lord, am I willing to turn my life and my will over to him and give him control?

Or do I shrink back?

Do I withdraw?

Because indecision is a decision to walk away, to reject.

See, Jesus' question for his opponents is a question for us to wrestle with this morning.

Who does Jesus claim to be?

And how do I respond to that?

Because if Jesus is who he claims to be, to be the Messiah, God's appointed Savior, and if he is who he claims to be, the Lord of all, then that demands a complete commitment.

A commitment of my whole self, a commitment of my whole life, my whole will.

It'll change everything.

There's no shrinking back from that.

There is an either or.

Now, if you're listening to this, maybe you're tuning in on Zoom, or maybe you're listening on Spotify or the website afterwards.

I suspect if you're tuning in, you're in one of two camps.

Maybe you're in a camp where you're kind of checking out Jesus, kind of checking out to see what he's about.

And if that's where you're at, I just think it's really cool that you're tuning in with us and that we get to be a part of your journey in this way.

Here's my suggestion for you this morning.

If you're just checking out Jesus, whether you've been hanging around churches for years or whether this Christianity thing is new to you, my suggestion to you is as we dive into our text for this morning, our gospel text, we ought to allow ourselves to be challenged by Jesus' words.

See, I don't think it's any use for us to encounter a fake Jesus and then decide what to do with him, what I want Jesus to be, so to speak.

I think it does us all the good to encounter who Jesus really claims to be, and then decide for ourselves what does that mean?

What decision am I going to make?

So if this message or if this text is challenging to us, I hope it's challenging in the best way because maybe we're brushing up against the real Jesus, and maybe that's going to challenge some of our conceptions.

Maybe that's going to challenge some of our own life.

Maybe you're in that camp, maybe you're in a second camp, and you've made that decision, you've made that commitment of your life and will to Christ, and now you're asking, what does that mean?

What does that mean for me?

Where am I going with this?

How do I put that into practice?

And if that's the case, I do think that our scripture this morning has something for us as well.

But we have to wrestle with that either-or.

We have to wrestle with the great either-or of if Jesus really is Lord.

What does that mean for us?

Let's dive into our text this morning.

We're in Matthew chapter 22.

Matthew 22 · chapter mention

Our lectionary has us here this morning, and here we come to the third of three testing questions that Jesus' opponents are asking him.

We saw the first testing question last week when we looked at that passage where a disciple of the Pharisees asked Jesus whether or not it's lawful to pay taxes to Caesar.

We saw that it's really a question of allegiance.

Who owns our greatest allegiance?

And Jesus turns the question on its head and now asks the disciple, Well, where does your greatest allegiance lie?

We saw that testing question.

The second testing question is in the verses that immediately precede our passage this morning, beginning chapter 22, verses 23 to 33.

The Sadducees ask Jesus a question about the resurrection.

They ask a question designed in their minds to bring up just how absurd it is to believe that our bodies could be resurrected on the last day.

But Jesus answers to show not only how biblical this doctrine is, but just how amazing the power of God is to accomplish this.

Now we come to the third testing question.

And this is the first testing question that Jesus gives a straight answer to.

When he's asked what the greatest commandment is in God's law, he says, love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself.

This is pretty undisputed stuff.

And I think what we want to do is we want to come back to this.

Because what we see Jesus ask right after is now a testing question to his opponents.

It's the first time he's now asked them a question.

They've tried to put them in a corner three times.

Now Jesus is going to graciously, severely, put them in a corner himself.

So what I want to suggest is we see the implications of what Jesus is saying in loving God and loving our neighbor in the question that follows.

So let's start there and let's work backwards a little bit.

Jesus asks a question to test his opponents, to challenge them, to reconsider their preconceptions and to reconsider their commitments here.

So the Pharisees are gathered, the religious elite, the legalistic religious scholars, and Jesus now asks them, What do you think about the Christ?

Verse 42.

Whose son is he?

Now a couple things we could say at this point.

One, the Messiah, or Christ is not Jesus' last name.

Sometimes we think Jesus Christ, and if we saw him, we might wave and say, Hi, Mr.

Christ, but Christ is not Jesus' last name.

It's actually his title.

The Christ is the Greek translation for the Messiah, the Hebrew word for God's anointed and appointed Savior.

He is God's chosen deliverer for his people, who's been promised.

So when Jesus is asking about the Christ, he's asking a question about the Messiah, the promised deliverer, the promised savior.

So whose son is he?

He asks.

He's not asking about the biological parentage.

He's asking about the lineage, God's promised lineage for this person.

So when the Pharisees respond that he's the son of David, they're answering correctly.

They're demonstrating that they know their Bible pretty well.

And they're drawing from passages like 2 Samuel chapter 7, where God makes a promise to David through the, yes, Samuel's pumping his fist.

2 Samuel 7 · chapter mention

I appreciate that.

You've got a good patron right there.

So in 2 Samuel chapter 7 here, the Lord makes a promise to King David, the ideal king of Israel, through the prophet Nathan.

2 Samuel 7 · chapter mention

And this is what God has to say to David through Nathan.

He says, When your days are fulfilled, and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you.

And he continues to say that your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me.

Your throne shall be established forever.

See, this is a forever kind of promise.

This is an eternal kingdom being promised to an offspring of David, who the Pharisees understand will be the Messiah.

They'll be he'll be God, uh God's chosen deliverer for his people.

So Jesus is saying we can all agree the Messiah or is David's son.

We can all agree on that.

That's the first point in Jesus' logic.

His logic is pretty watertight.

Here's his second point: the Messiah is David's son.

Now the Messiah we want to acknowledge is David's Lord.

Jesus continues, verse 43.

How is it then that David in the Spirit calls him Lord, saying, The Lord, the Lord, Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, said to my Lord, my curios, my Adonai, my master, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.

Man, I could preach a whole sermon on how what Jesus thinks about the Bible in verse 43, that David's the human author, that the Spirit is the divine author.

We don't have time for that.

Oh, I wish we did, but it's okay.

The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put all your enemies under your feet.

Here's Jesus' follow-up question.

He set them up.

Now here's his follow-up.

If David calls him Lord, how is he also his son?

Jesus is playing with Jewish convention here.

Because as prominent as a son may be, a son is always just the father's little boy, right?

I mean, a little bit we know that to be true, maybe in our relationship with our own parents.

Doesn't matter how old we are, we are always our parents' child, right?

Doesn't matter what kind of prestige we might enjoy, our parents knew us when we still had diapers on, right?

So this, what Jesus is saying here is, okay, so if if the promised offspring is going to be in David's lineage, if it's gonna be David's son, how is it that David esteems him higher than himself?

David is recognizing that Yahweh, the covenant Lord of Israel, has exalted this promised offspring above him, beyond him, that he's his master, he's his Lord.

See, for the Pharisees, the promised offspring was going to point back, point God's people back to the greatness of King David, but Jesus is saying, no, you've got it the other way around.

The promised offspring, or pardon me, David was pointing forward to the promised offspring, who is going to be even greater than David himself.

That's what's being said here.

The Messiah is David's son, the Messiah is David's Lord.

The bottom line is his greatness is going to last forever.

His is going to be an eternal kingdom.

He quotes from Psalm 110 here, by the way, which for the Pharisees, for everyone at the time, it was universally understood that this was a psalm that David wrote that anticipated the Messiah.

It anticipated a Messiah who had undisputed reign and rule.

Anything that would oppose him was put under his feet, was defeated completely.

But beyond that, this Messiah, this promised offspring, was going to be have a priestly role, an eternal priesthood.

His was going to be priesthood in the order of Melchizedek, which is to say it'll last forever.

It's established by God.

He will be an intercessor between God and his people forever.

So here's where we're at.

The Messiah is David's son, the Messiah is David's Lord, and now here's where Jesus is pushing them to the point of decision.

Because Jesus is implicitly claiming to be David's son.

And if he's David's son, what else does that make him than David's Lord?

And if he's David's Lord, he's all of God's people, Israel's Lord.

If he's all Israel's Lord, he is the Lord of all the earth, all of creation.

He's the Lord of all.

Here's the point of decision.

This is not a secret at this point.

Matthew has intended for the reader to know this since the very beginning.

In fact, we our lectionary kind of dropped us in here on Matthew chapter 22.

Matthew 22 · chapter mention

We're not supposed to read the Bible like that, by the way.

We just open it open and, you know, kind of start reading.

Sometimes I do that.

But these this is an inspired biography that Matthew's written.

He wants us to read this from the beginning.

And what's the very first thing Matthew wants us to know about Jesus?

Chapter 1, verse 1.

Matthew introduces by saying, This is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David.

Matthew begins his gospel by saying, I'm going to trace Jesus' lineage and show you that Jesus is the promised offspring.

He is the son of David.

But beyond that, Matthew says, He's not just a promised offspring.

He's not just mere mortal.

He's God with us.

He's Emmanuel.

In chapter 1, verse 23, Matthew describes Jesus as God with us.

How is it that the promised offspring can be David's son and David's Lord?

Because he's God with us.

He's God Himself.

He's God in the flesh.

He's God who dwells with his people, who tabernacles with his people.

Jesus is pointing to himself and saying, Psalm 110 that David wrote was inspired by the Spirit, is about me.

I'm the promised offspring.

I'm the Lord of all.

And now is the point of decision.

What are you, O Pharisees, going to do?

What are you, O Nu Song, going to decide?

See, the Pharisees in verse 46 respond by walking away.

That no one was able to answer him a word.

From that day, they didn't dare ask him any more questions.

One commentator suggests that out of fear for the answer that they all expect, they all slink back.

No one asks them any follow-up questions.

Have we ever felt like we're in that position?

Afraid to ask one question further, knowing how that'll be answered.

See, Jesus has claimed to be their Lord, their Messiah.

The Pharisees know they need a Savior.

They've acknowledged that.

They know that God can and will provide a Savior for them.

And yet here they are at the turning point.

Here they are at the point of decision, and they shrink back.

They shrink back from the Messiah, from the Lord who's standing in front of them.

Sometimes I wonder if I do the same.

See, like the Pharisees, I know I need a Savior.

I mean, we're in the middle of a pandemic.

It's hard to deny that we're powerless over so much in life.

We walk out the front door and we're powerless over our environment.

We're powerless to accelerate vaccine research and distribution.

We're powerless to make life go back to normal as we want it to be in our time.

We're powerless over politics.

We're in the midst of an election season, our neighbors down the south.

There is so much that we're powerless over, and we long to see justice and truth and an eternal kingdom realized, but we're powerless to realize it for ourselves.

And here stands Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, who calls to us to follow Him, who calls to us to put our trust and turn our will and our lives over to Him as our Savior.

This is the turning point for us.

This is the point of decision.

Do I trust in who Jesus claims to be?

Because if I trust in who he claims to be, then I'm going to trust that Emmanuel, God with us, bears my powerlessness, bears my sin, bears what I cannot save myself from.

And now through his cross and through his resurrection invites me to participate and anticipate a kingdom that will be fully realized, with his undisputed kingship and his eternal priesthood fully, completely realized.

We want to be caught up in that.

That's the decision we make when we make the decision for Christ.

This is who Jesus claims to be: the Messiah of the Pharisees, the Messiah for us, the Lord of all.

So what decision are we going to make?

See, maybe you're in one of two camps here.

Maybe you're considering Jesus.

And again, if you've made it this far and you're considering Jesus, I salute you.

Well done.

Here's what I want to suggest.

I want to suggest that you encounter the real Jesus.

I want to suggest that Jesus calls you to turn your will and your life over to him as your Savior who has accomplished what we ourselves are powerless to accomplish on our own behalf.

He calls you to acknowledge sin, the ways we fall short, the ways we put ourselves outside of the kingdom.

See, outside of grace, I'm like what Psalm 1 verse 4 describes.

Psalms 1:4

I'm like chaff that's being blown away by the wind.

We acknowledge our sin.

We acknowledge our need for a savior.

We ask for his forgiveness and trust that he will truly provide it.

And then we walk in newness of life by the Spirit in the way of the kingdom.

If you're checking out who this Jesus is, I want to encourage you to wrestle with this challenge.

Wrestle with who Jesus really reveals himself to be.

Because I suspect that as you wrestle with these words, you'll discover it's I find when I wrestle with Jesus' words, there's a certain point in which I'm no longer reading the words.

The words are reading me.

Do you find that to be the true?

Wrestle with these claims of Jesus.

Wrestle with them, and you'll discover them to be true.

I hope.

Maybe you're made the decision.

I do trust in Jesus as my Lord and Savior.

Now I'm trying to figure out what that means.

Here's what I want to suggest.

What is following Jesus look like?

I think our scriptures give us some ideas here.

Jesus, when he answers, What's the greatest commandment in the law says you're going to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.

This is the first and great commandment.

The second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

This is how we start our communion service off in our liturgy.

We're reminded of what the heart of God's law is for his people.

So if we're going to follow Jesus, we're going to take up this command.

Love God, love our neighbor.

Love is clearly more than fuzzy feelings here, because we can't command fuzzy feelings out of someone as much as we might want to sometimes.

This is a commitment of our will, a commitment of our life, a commitment of action.

Love God, love neighbor.

See, loving God is soaking up who he is, delighting in who he is.

I would even say Psalm chapter 1, our Psalm for this morning, gives us an idea of what that's all about when it says that, when it when it tells us to delight in God's law.

Psalms 1 · chapter mention

Let me read these words from Psalm 1.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked.

He doesn't take up the advice of the wicked.

He doesn't stand in the way of sinners.

He doesn't pick up the habits of transgressors.

He doesn't sit in the seat of scoffers, join in with the mockers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

What's a commitment of one's life and will look like towards God?

I think it looks like a commitment to delight in the law of the Lord, to soak up God's word in Scripture, to be to just marinate ourselves, to, in the words of the prayer book, to inwardly digest it.

It's being so versed in scripture that it begins to read us.

Begin to delight in God's will, or delight in God's word.

Set aside that time to meditate, marinate in Him.

And love your neighbor.

Because a love of God, a vertical love of God, is inevitably going to result in a horizontal love of one's neighbor.

Preacher Warren Wearsby puts it this way: He says, if we love God, we will love our neighbor, and if we love our neighbor, we will not want to do anything to harm him.

We get a picture of this in our Exodus reading, Exodus 22.

God's people Israel, fresh from exiting Egypt, received the Ten Commandments, and here God continues.

He says, You shall not wrong a sojourner and oppress him, for you yourselves were sojourners in the land of Egypt.

You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child.

And God goes on to say, I am compassionate.

You've received such abundant compassion from me.

Now you go and do likewise.

Go and show abundant, generous compassion to the marginalized, to the overlooked, to those who are in need.

In Luke chapter 10, Luke goes on to say that the lawyer asks the question, Well, who's my neighbor?

Luke 10 · chapter mention

And Jesus tells the parable of the good Samaritan, your neighbor is anyone in need, even someone you would qualify as an enemy.

We've received such abundant compassion from God in Christ.

Now we're called to go show that compassion outwardly.

Again, that's a commitment of our will, not just fuzzy feelings here.

That's a commandment to exercise ourselves towards the other for their benefit, to commit, to will the good of the other.

That's what Jesus is calling us to in following him.

A life of loving and delighting in the Lord our God and in his word, and a life of loving our neighbor, even as ourselves, looking out for their well-being, not exercising ourselves towards them in harm, but for their benefit.

And frankly, this is the phrase that I keep saying over and over again in the context of how we love our neighbor in a pandemic.

This is a weird time to love our neighbor, because loving our neighbor right now, I think, looks very different than it has in the past.

Opportunities like social distancing or putting on a mask, things that inconvenience us, things that might grind our gears a little bit, are opportunities to look out for the well-being of our neighbor, to exercise ourselves towards them out of love and care for their well-being.

Because if we really love our God, then we're really going to love our neighbor and we're not going to want to harm them in any way.

So maybe it's we start by praying for some inspiration.

God, how can I generously, compassionately love my neighbor and in so doing fulfill the law and the prophets?

In so doing, fulfill your word and your commandment.

This is the kind of life that Jesus is calling us to do.

This is the decision Jesus is calling us to make, to live a kingdom life for his sake.

So Jesus leaves us with a great either or.

If he is the Messiah, if he is our Savior, if he is Emmanuel, God with us, if he is our Lord, then this will transform everything.

He will accomplish that which we ourselves are powerless to accomplish.

And friends, there's no neutral place to stay with Jesus.

There's no playing it safe.

There is an either or.