"The King's Riddles: What Weighs More Than the Torah?" | Matthew 22:34-40 | Sunday Morning Worship Service

Matthew 22, verse 34.

Matthew 22:34

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

And one of them, a lawyer, asked Jesus a question to test him.

Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the law?

And Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

This is the great and the first commandment.

There's a second like it.

On those two commandments depends all the law and the prophets.

This is the word of God, and I pray that he would seal it in your heart.

This exchange takes place on Tuesday of Passion Week.

Jesus is in the temple walking around like he owns the place because he, well, owns the place.

He has done a hostile takeover, and he has proceeded to tell parables that condemn the Sadducees.

The Sadducees are that religious body, 70 leaders that oversee and manage Judaism in the life of Christ, made up of some Pharisees who are the leaders, the scribes, the Sadducees, and of course the Herodians.

They gathered together to make the Sanhedrin.

So it's Passover week, Jesus is teaching, and he starts telling a series of parables condemning the Sanhedrin.

That's that large body again, condemning them.

He told a parable comparing them to the tenants of someone who rented a vineyard.

When the vineyard owner sends slaves and even his own son to collect payment, the tenants murder them.

So the tenants are the bad guy in that story.

And the tenants hear it, and the Sadducees and the Sanhedrin deduced from that.

Maybe Jesus is speaking these parables against us.

They were obtuse, the Sanhedrin, but not obtuse enough to miss that point.

After Jesus told that parable, they then got together and conspired how they might kill Jesus.

They had done this before with John the Baptist.

He was a problem, he was a thorn in their side.

They had him killed.

Now they're going to do the same thing to Jesus.

The problem, though, is the crowd.

The problem is the crowd.

The crowd loves Jesus.

They're hanging on every word that he says.

So murder is not beneath the Sanhedrin.

They will definitely murder Jesus.

But going against the crowd, that's a bridge too far.

And so they think, how can we get the crowd to turn against them?

What they come up with, Matthew 22, tells us is a series of tests to put to Jesus, hoping that he will fail them, turn the crowd against him.

They come in the form of riddles.

What can Caesar tax but not rule?

That was the first one asked by the Herodians.

These are not honest, truth-seeking people.

The Herodians are asking Jesus what he thinks about paying taxes to Caesar.

The Herodians are the pro-Caesar party for goodness sakes.

Jesus navigates that well, escapes the trap.

The second one comes from the Sadducees who don't even believe in a resurrection.

They come to Jesus and tell them a story about a lady who married seven brothers and they're all dead.

And so who's she going to be married to in the resurrection?

Ha ha, aren't resurrections dumb kind of question.

Jesus navigates that well in a way that rebukes them.

In fact, if you look at verse 34, it says that his answer silenced the Sadducees.

That word silenced is just a great Greek word.

It's not the normal word for silence that is used all over the New Testament.

This is the word that is used in 1 Timothy 5 for muzzling an ox.

It's the word that's used for the demons.

When Jesus casts out the demons, he muzzles them, he makes it so they can't speak.

He muzzles the wind and the waves.

When he says, be still, it's that word again.

Matthew 22 describes the Sanhedrin as trying to trap Jesus.

And Jesus turns the tables and muzzles them.

Imagine if you tried to put a muzzle on your dog and your wife comes home and finds you wearing the muzzle.

That's what happened to the Sadducees here.

They tried to trap Jesus and they end up muzzled by him.

And so now there's a heavy sigh from the Sanhedrin, and the Pharisees figure out you know what?

Strike one was the Herodians, strike two is the Sadducees, so now it's third pitch.

We've got to take it ourselves.

You can almost picture the head Pharisee saying, if you want something done right around here, you got to do it yourself.

And so he comes forward.

He's a lawyer, verse 35 says, certainly one of their top ones.

And he goes to ask Jesus a question to test him.

This is not a theology seminar.

This is a conspiracy.

This is not a truth-seeking question.

Notice it says in verse 34, they gathered together.

That phrase, they gathered together, that is a reference, a quote, it's the same word used in Psalm 2.

The Hebrew in Psalm 2.

Why do the nations rage and the people plot together a vain thing?

That is the word that is used here in Matthew 22, for the Pharisees got together to conspire against Jesus.

They're acting out Psalm 2.

Again, not realizing they're the bad guys.

They are raging.

They are conspiring against the Messiah to trap Jesus with this question.

Of course, it is their probably top lawyer who asks it.

This is the pop quiz on Jesus to get the crowd to turn against him.

Jesus is going to navigate this very well.

I'm going to outline this with how Jesus passes the perfect test.

And it is a test.

Look at the end of verse 35.

They asked him a question to test him.

If you remember, Greek only has one word, where English has two.

We have test and tempt.

Greek uses the same word for both of those.

And so sometimes that's confusing because we know that God doesn't tempt anyone, but he does test people.

The devil doesn't test people, he tempts them.

And you almost have to see how you come out of the temptation before you know if it was a trial or a test.

That's confusing because of the Greek.

However, in Matthew's gospel, the last time you saw this word was back in chapter four, when the beginning of Jesus' ministry, when the devil took Jesus up to the temple mount to tempt him.

He was tempted in the wilderness, but do you remember one of the temptations was to go on top of the temple and cast himself down?

Now, three, four years later, some number of years later, here is Jesus at the end of his ministry, and he is at the same spot being tempted the same way.

It is not good what these religious leaders are doing, and that's really going to lead to what I think is arguably the main point of this passage this morning.

It's setting you up for chapter 23, which is that the religious leaders are particularly evil.

And it's hard for us in our Western, postmodern world to appreciate the severity of the indictment that we're going to see this morning and over the next few weeks in Matthew 23.

Because in our world, religious leaders tend to be elevated.

We think highly of them.

You know, even if we don't agree with their religion, we think those leading their religions generally must be very good and virtuous people.

But that is not the way the New Testament presents people who are leaders of false religions.

They are building fences to keep people from God, not building bridges to God.

They are putting obstacles in people's way.

They are teaching that they must live a certain way and do certain things and say certain things in order to have access to Christ.

That is blasphemy.

False religious leaders are everywhere and they are not to be esteemed.

In Matthew's gospel, they are compared right here to the devil.

They are testing or tempting Jesus.

That's the setup.

And the question starts unless he addresses Jesus as teacher.

That's another dead giveaway.

In Matthew's gospel, this is something I noticed just this week.

In Matthew's gospel, the word teacher, as far as I can tell, is only used negatively.

The disciples never call Jesus teacher.

The disciples call him Lord or rabbi or Jesus.

But it's always the people who are trying to poke Jesus that call him teacher.

Oh, teacher, we know you're a good teacher, because no one can do what you do unless God is with him, teacher.

Oh, teacher, you we know you're not a respecter of persons, teacher.

Oh, teacher, here I am to tempt you and test you and working for the devil here.

Oh, good teacher.

Come on.

But that's how they address Jesus.

Well, right away, you know, before this lawyer asks a word, you know where he's coming from.

Let's get into our outline.

He starts with the perfect question.

He does ask a good question.

As much as this guy is, you know, a hypocritical, false religious leader, he does start with a good question.

What is the greatest or the great commandment in the law?

It's a maximalist phrase in Greek, so you could translate it.

What is the greatest commandment in the law?

Which commandment matters the most?

That's the question.

The Jews numbered all kinds of commandments, 613 of them, they said.

They took the Torah and divided it into 613 commandments.

Of those 613, 365 were negative.

That's one negative command for every day of the year.

And that's how they would memorize them.

So a Pharisee would have all 613 memorized.

They memorized them one every day of the year.

And then they had the other positive commands, the positive commands, 248 of them.

That's one in the skeleton system that they understood.

The human body had 248 bones.

So they had one negative command for every day of the year and one positive command for every bone of the body.

The idea is that the Torah covered every day, your whole life, and covered every part of your body.

That was the point.

Well, once you have 613 commands, you realize you're going to have to prioritize them.

That's what they mean by which is the greatest.

And the Pharisees had great debates about them.

Most of the answers consisted of one of the Ten Commandments.

You would draw the greatest, certainly the Ten Commandments are the greatest part of the law.

So if you're going to say what's the greatest command, maybe the first commandment, have no other God before Yahweh, maybe the fourth commandment, the Sabbath that regulated all of their life, their calendar, and all that kind of thing.

That's generally where the debate was.

Nevertheless, it's a very good question.

I mentioned that just because I feel like the guy last week burned his question.

You know, if you stand in line with a massive crowd and you get to ask Jesus one question, don't waste it on something like, what about a lady with seven husbands and they're all related and they die?

Who will she be married to in the afterlife?

What a dumb question.

You know, don't stand in line and then ask him, Did Adam have a belly button?

Back of the line, middle schooler.

Come on, man.

This guy asks a good question.

What's the most important commands God gives?

That is a great question.

Sometimes we short circuit this question by saying you can't prioritize.

You can't make a hierarchy.

All commands are equal.

There's a sense in which all sin is equal and that it's against God.

There's a sense in which all commands are equal because they're from his word.

There's a sense in which if you break the law at one point, you break the whole thing.

That's all true.

And yet you also recognize if you're dealing with 600 plus commands, you need a priority or a hierarchy to them.

You recognize this all the time.

You know, you recognize you have to prioritize things to get through them.

Jesus never critiques the prioritization of the law.

He does not reject the premise of the question.

He doesn't say, don't rank the commandments.

It's not what he says.

In fact, in the chapter that comes next, chapter 23, he grants the Pharisees the distinction between the weightier and the lighter forms of the law, but condemns them for elevating the lighter above the weightier.

Their problem isn't they ranked them, the problem is they got their rankings all backwards.

A lighter law, by the way, in their mind, was one that had very little financial or effect on your will.

You could obey it easily enough.

It didn't cost much money, it didn't take much effort to obey it.

That was a lighter command.

A heavier command was one that cost you something.

So now you can start to see why it's a debatable question and why it's a trap.

Jesus isn't from one of their rabbinical schools.

If he chooses one command, he's going to have people in the crowd that would have chosen one of the other 612.

And so that's the nature of the test.

Nevertheless, it is a very good question.

What is the most important part of the law?

The second point of our outline here is the perfect God.

The perfect question gives way to the perfect God.

Look at verse 37.

Jesus does not dodge the question, he answers the question headlong.

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

This is Deuteronomy 6.5.

And of course, Deuteronomy 6.5 comes after Deuteronomy 6.4.

It's not recorded here in Matthew 22.

But in Mark's version of this, Jesus starts with Deuteronomy 6.4, which is the Shema.

Hero is called the Shema, Shema Israel, Adonai Elchinu, Adonaichad.

Starts with Shema as the first word.

Shema means hear or listen.

That's Deuteronomy 6.4.

I know it's not included here in Matthew's version, but it is in Mark's.

It's obviously present in the text.

It would be like me saying, for God so loved the world, dot, dot, dot.

You would all know that he gave his one and only son.

You would all know that.

It would be implied just by saying it.

That's what Jesus is doing here.

Jesus is answering with Deuteronomy 6.4 and 6.5, which is not a random Bible verse.

This is easily the most well-known Old Testament passage of all of them.

This is it.

In fact, the Jews would write out this passage.

They would roll it up in little tiny paper, and they would put it in a little box on their wrists.

They would tie it to their sideburns.

They would have it on tassels hanging off of their waist.

Sometimes they would tie it on their shoulders.

The Pharisees would tie the box to a strand that goes around their head and put it on their foreheads.

If you go to Israel today, you might see people walking around the little boxes and their thing or their tassels right here.

It's still very common today.

Hotel rooms.

Every hotel room in Israel has this little box on the door, maybe next to the door, maybe on the door knocker, maybe above where the lock scanner is.

But every hotel room in the country has these little boxes on it.

That's this verse written up and nailed to the door.

So I want you to catch the scene here that the Pharisee is asking Jesus, what is the most important commands?

And Jesus answers him with, It is the one that is stapled to your face.

It's meant to be a little funny here.

The guy has it tied to his hair, dangling off of his body, tied to his forehead, and is expecting a debate with Jesus about the order of the Ten Commandments.

And Jesus responds with Shema Israel, Adonai Elichanu, Adonai Echad.

Kir, O Israel.

You maybe even heard me say, the way the Jews memorize it is Adonai Elichanu, but the Hebrew is Yahweh Elichanu.

They take out the word Yahweh, replace it with Adonai.

Even when they write it, they might write Yahweh, but they would all be trying to read and say Adonai because they say it so often they don't want to take the Lord's name in vain.

So they take out his name and put in Adonai.

That's followed by Adonai, the Lord is one, Ichad.

That's an odd way to say one.

That might be one.

It's kind of a collective one.

Like there's one group.

That's what that means.

There's even in English, we have like collective nouns.

There are few and far between, but like manes.

What's the plural of manes?

There is no plural.

It's a collective noun.

There's one manis.

That's this kind of word in Hebrew.

The hero is real, the Lord, Yahweh, your covenant God.

Our God, El Hainu.

It's our it's our God is one ihad.

This is the doctrine of divine simplicity that God is one nature, one essence, one being that's not divisible.

God is not made up of parts.

He is one.

He is, in a sense, infinite.

He has an infinite number of attributes.

I suppose we describe them as different attributes, but underneath all those attributes, the distinctions between them aren't real.

He is one being.

There's one God.

We describe him different ways, but he is singular.

He is one God.

Now, at first glance, that doesn't seem like a big statement, does it?

I mean, isn't every God one God?

Dagon.

How many dagons are there?

There's one Dagon.

Remember the statue they put the ark in front of?

There was one dagon, but then Dagon fell over and broke into a bunch of pieces.

So there were lots of dagons, I guess.

And they stapled them back together, taped them up, propped him back up, nailed them down, back to one dagon.

There's one Zeus.

So of course there's only one Yahweh.

But when the Old Testament refers to God as one, it is, it means more than just numerically there's one, which again is still very odd.

It means there's nobody else like him.

He alone gives life.

He alone takes life.

He alone heals and he alone hurts.

That's what Deuteronomy 32 says.

It is I, Yahweh, and there is no one like me.

There is no God besides me.

I wound, I heal.

I put to death, I give life.

Isaiah 46, verse 9.

Isaiah 46:9

I am God and there is no one like me.

Samuel tells Saul that God is a unique God.

He's not like man that he should change his mind.

He's totally different than us.

He is one God.

That's the idea.

The Old Testament has a bit of mystery to this for sure.

The Old Testament has God who speaks and God who is the Word and God who is the Spirit.

There's three distinct manifestations of God, even in the Old Testament.

And yet, behind all of that, there is one God.

There is God who speaks the universe into existence.

There is the God who is the Word, even in the Old Testament.

There's the Spirit who hovers on the water.

That's before any animals or any angels were made.

And yet there is one God.

That is a mystery in the Old Testament.

It becomes more clear in the New Testament with the incarnation.

Nevertheless, even the most well-known Old Testament passage has hidden inside of it this mystery of God, that God is one, but why with the collective noun?

God is one and there is no one else like him.

And you enter into a relationship with him through covenant.

It is his covenant name.

Yahweh is the covenant God.

That's the point.

The other nations don't get to call him Yahweh.

Only his people can call him that.

That is the perfect God that we're talking about.

There is no other God who gives life.

There's no other God who makes a people who are not a people into a people, so that he can multiply them and have a relationship with them forever.

There is no other God who judges his people while forgiving his people and saving them from his sins.

That's the relationship the Israelites had with Yahweh, the one true and perfect God.

That is the greatest commandment in the Bible.

It starts with knowing who God is.

That's where the command starts, the perfect God.

Well, the perfect question reveals the perfect God, which gives way to the perfect love.

This is the heart of the greatest commandment.

You shall love, verse 37 says, the Lord your God, with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.

The greatest commandment in the Bible starts with knowing who the true God is and then loving that God.

He just gives you one word here, love the Lord your God.

That's the imperative, that's the part of the command.

Our world can water down the concept of love.

And, you know, we make much of it and make nothing of it at the same time.

And so let me kind of unpack what biblical love is here just very briefly.

First of all, this is love that is felt.

Biblical love is an emotional love, it's something you feel.

I draw attention to that just because we do live in a world that tries to downplay that, that says love is a commitment, love is a decision.

And it certainly is a commitment, it involves a decision, obviously.

But it is never less than emotional.

It's never less than the joy or the delight or the love that you feel.

Of course, love requires commitments.

I've heard people say that love is not emotional because this is I read it in premarital books of all places.

You know, if you want to find very bad concepts of love, premarital books have them.

You know, they'll tell you like one day you're gonna wake up and you're gonna look at the picture, the wedding picture on your wall and not recognize the person you're married to.

You're gonna roll over in bed and look at the person next to you and you're not gonna feel like loving them.

So at that moment, it's important.

To remember that you made a commitment to love them.

Well, that's all true, but that doesn't change the definition of love.

Love requires you to feel love towards the person you love.

That's what love is.

And it would be ridiculous to say, I don't feel like loving you, but I made a decision to love you, and that's therefore love.

No, wrong.

I can prove it.

Go back to your wedding day.

You're looking at your beloved in the eye, and the pastor says, Do you declare your love for her?

And you say, Well, I have an intellectual love for her.

I've decided to love her with my mind.

I'm sure my heart will get there eventually, but my heart is not in love now.

The wedding would probably end at that point, I would guess.

I would get up and go eat the cupcakes, is what I would do.

Now, love is a motive.

And yes, there will be times you don't feel like loving, but that the response to that is not to downgrade love, but to repent of your lack of love and pray for God to fan the flame in your heart.

Now that's true in marriage.

It's absolutely true with God.

I dwell on this because you can see people that reduce biblical love or biblical commands to just obedience.

And that dilutes the idea of saving faith.

That leads to works, righteousness where you say if you do all these things, you'll be saved.

After all, if love is seen in action, I may as well do the works, and there's the action, and that equals salvation.

No, I mean, listen, you can do all the right things, but if you don't love God, your right things don't mean anything.

You could give your body to be burned as a martyr for Jesus Christ, but if you don't love Christ, it's a meaningless death.

You can have all the right speeches, but if you don't have an actual love for the object of your speech, your words are annoying more than anything.

So don't waste your life by thinking your actions constitute love.

Your actions might reveal love, but they don't constitute it.

If you feel a lack of love in your life, that's not an excuse to disobey, obviously, but it is an excuse to repent and pray that God would fan the flame of your heart back alive again.

Imagine Jesus saying, the greatest command is to love the Lord your God, but you don't actually have to, you know, love him.

Second, this is a love that is full, it covers every area of your life.

The most common word in this greatest command is all all all.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and all your mind.

All all all.

This captures every part of your being.

There are no half-hearted people in the kingdom.

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

Everyone who's worshiping Christ in eternity is there because they love Jesus.

This is why saving faith is not some mere mental ascent to the gospel.

And there can be a well-meaning form of evangelism that asks, especially it's usually targeted at kids, like asking kids, do you believe that God is real?

Yes.

Do you believe the Bible is real?

Yes, do you believe that Jesus is real?

Yes, then you're saved.

Don't let anybody ever question you otherwise, kind of thing.

But that is not what salvation is, and that is not what love is.

That is not the greatest command.

The greatest command is a totality of your life delighted with God.

It's not mental ascent.

The demons believe that the Bible is true and that Jesus is real.

The demons get that.

At least they shake a little bit, too.

No, real biblical love.

It's something that you feel and it is the totality, all your mind, all your soul.

This is the doctrine of divine simplicity, but applied to people.

Your soul is singular.

You have one soul.

You don't have parts of your soul.

You have one soul, and you need to love Jesus with all of it.

With all of it.

Any affection withheld from God is robbed from God.

Because Yahweh is one, love for Him must be one, singular, and undivided.

Somebody earlier this morning asked, How can I love my spouse if all of my love is due to God?

And it is a very good question with a somewhat of a complex answer.

I'll try to make it as simple as I can.

You don't love your spouse as an end in and of his or herself.

The end of all our affections is God.

So you love God completely and totally.

Then you recognize that God gave you your spouse as a gift.

And so you love your spouse.

Your love for your spouse is not different than your love from God.

It's a result of your love for God.

And so the more you love God, the more you'll love your spouse because she's a gift from him.

And it works the other way around too.

The more you love your husband, it's going to be an overflow, the more you love God.

You recognize, wives, that your, you know, your husband might not be the best leader.

He might be a bit of a villain kind of thing, but he's your villain, at least.

And so the more you love God, the more you recognize that your husband is a gift from God to you.

And so you grow in your love for God as you grow in your love for your husband, and vice versa.

This is true targeting back to God.

You love God, that's the greatest commandment, and it should be all of your life, all of your heart, all of your mind, it says at the end of the verse.

Now, in English, we tend to divide heart from minds and all of that.

Mind is my you know, intellect and my commitment, and my heart is my emotions.

The Greeks and the Hebrews didn't have that same kind of division, so don't read into that.

In fact, they don't even use the word heart usually, they use the word for guts, splanktha, you're you know, the inside of you.

And they would tell somebody, I love you with all of my guts.

We don't have that in English still.

We have the opposite, right?

We said in English, I hate you with all of my guts.

But we don't have a I wish we did, but we should bring it back.

I love you with all of my guts.

If this pastor thing doesn't work out, I'll write Hallmark cards, I think.

That's because when you like go over a hill or something, you get butterflies.

That's how we say it.

Um and butterflies sound so much better than you make my stomach turn.

Oh, that's bad, but you give me butterflies, that's good.

That's the Roman worlds.

When you have compassion or you have something exciting happen, like you're holding on at the end of the soccer game and you're about to win, you're like, you feel it in your guts, but we sometimes say in my heart, I knew it in my heart.

No, it's you feeling it down there.

That's the idea.

You love the Lord with a fullness and a feltness, and then finally, you love him first.

Don't lose sight of the main point of this command is that you love God, it is the greatest commands.

The greatest commands.

And that's why there's this nature to the command that God demands it, everything else flows out of that.

This is why somebody who doesn't start with the greatest commandment can't do other commandments properly.

Underneath this question is a really, really complicated and difficult question, even to this day.

Have you noticed that all three traps they spring on Jesus are still argued about today?

What's the connection between church and state?

Who is responsible for ordaining and defining marriage and what happens after you die?

And then this third question, it could be reframed in an American way.

What happens to a good person who dies who doesn't know Jesus?

And Jesus' answer is that all the good things they do don't have a kind of virtuous element to them if they're not done under the love for God.

The greatest commandment is to love God.

That's the most important thing.

And if you don't have that, all the other stuff is window dressing.

I mean, non-believers can do good things under the umbrella of common grace.

You know, a traffic light can reduce traffic accidents, whether or not the traffic light is Christian, so to speak.

Doctors can reduce suffering and bring help and healing to the world, and you can help people cross the street and return lost dogs and all of that kind of stuff.

And there's a sense in which that's common grace and it makes the world livable, and in that sense it's good.

It's not evil to return a lost dog, but in a more particular sense, none of that is virtuous before God if it's not done out of love for God.

That's the greatest command.

Love for God is the big E on the eye chart.

If you don't see that, if you're doing your eye test and you miss the first row, they don't ask you to keep going.

Like, how far down can you make up letters for?

They start bringing in other nurses to watch and laugh.

That's why I hate eye tests.

This is the idea.

You have to start with love for God.

You have to start for with love for Him.

Well, the perfect love gives way to the perfect life.

That's verse 39.

This is what's surprising.

The second is like it.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Who said anything about the second greatest command?

That was not what he was asked.

Jesus was asked, what's the greatest command?

He's now answering with the greatest and the second greatest.

This is the kid in class where the teacher says, Anyone have the answer to number three?

And answer is number three, four, five, six, and seven.

Jesus says, I'll tell you what the greatest command is, and also the second greatest, which is like it.

This is a statement of similitude.

He doesn't say it's under it.

He doesn't say it's less than it.

He doesn't say it's above it.

He doesn't say it's equal to it either.

Like it is a very particular word.

He moves from Deuteronomy 6 to Leviticus 19.

Love your neighbor.

That's Leviticus 19, verse 18.

Leviticus 19:18

Love for neighbor, Jesus is saying by connecting these two passages, is the same kind of love.

It's the same kind of love.

The love in your affection, undivided affection towards God, which is the greatest command, will then produce another kind of, I mean the same kind of love, but lived out in other spheres in your life towards your neighbor.

It is not another kind of love, because for the Christian, you recognize your love for neighbor is because your neighbor is made in the image of God.

How we talked about spouses earlier applies to neighbors.

You don't have one kind of love for God and another for your neighbor.

No, you have one kind of love for God.

Its overflow is in your love for your spouse, your love for your kids, and your love for your neighbor, because your neighbor is in the image of God.

This is why, if you don't start with the greatest command, you can never properly get to loving your neighbor.

If you don't recognize your neighbor is in the image of God, then anything you do for him or her is basically in service of your own self-interests.

That's what it is.

It's idolatry of self.

When somebody says, I don't believe in God, and I've heard lots of people say, I don't believe in God, I believe in the golden rule.

Part of me, like I immediately want to, I feel it in my guts at that moment.

I say, the golden rule, where did you where's the golden rule come from?

Who taught you that?

I mean, that comes from Leviticus 19.

That's the golden rule.

But moving aside from that, you cannot do the second greatest command without the first.

There's an order to them, one, two.

The Greek word is taxis, that one comes before or after the other.

You can't reverse them.

There's an order in a sense of sequence.

One comes before two.

Love for God comes before love for neighbor.

And if you don't have love for God, your love for neighbor is basically just living out the golden rule because your neighbor, you want to do a good thing for your neighbor because if you need a good thing, you want it back.

This is a true story.

Somebody, a long time ago, when I was at a different church, somebody told me, I'm not coming to church tomorrow because my family's gonna stay home and help our neighbor build his fence.

And I said, that's great.

Have fun.

But after they left, it occurred to me they're staying home from church to work on their own fence.

That's what your neighbor's fence is.

It's your fence.

Man, I get mad when I think about that.

That's the golden rule without the love for God.

It's your own self.

I'm helping my neighbor because I like me.

He's in my image.

Maybe I'll need help.

The golden rule: the second greatest commandment can only be seen in light of the first.

You love God.

And of course, we love God, but we don't live in a world in isolation.

We don't get to sit in our prayer closet all day long.

We love God, and it has to spill out into the world.

We live in community.

And so the greatest command is first vertical to God.

The second greatest command is horizontal to the people we're around, the people that you have lunch with tomorrow, that you work with, that you parent, all of those people.

They are the people that you need to show love to.

And one more comment on this: you have to have a priority to these loves.

It's first and second.

Ego, beyond second, also.

You're supposed to love your neighbor, you're supposed to love your enemy.

I mean, think of all the people the Bible commands you to love.

You're supposed to love God, your wife, your kids, your neighbor, and your enemy.

You can't confuse that order.

So much confusion comes from people not understanding that that is an order, there's an ordered nature of your loves.

You know, I read somebody who's arguing that you shouldn't, if your wife is being attacked by your enemy, you shouldn't stop your enemy from attacking your wife out of love for your enemy.

I the article I was reading said, why would you even you can't justify shooting your enemy because you can't shoot someone you love, kind of thing.

To which I'm thinking, I could probably make an argument.

The most loving thing to do to someone in a certain circumstance would be to shoot them.

I could probably make that argument.

I don't even need to make that argument, though.

You have to have an order to your love.

If somebody is attacking your wife, you defend your wife because you love her higher on the flow chart than your enemy.

If your enemy needs a ride to the grocery store, give them a ride to the grocery store.

If they're hungry, feed them.

If they're cold, give them a jacket.

But don't give them a ride to the store while you make your wife walk home, kind of thing.

There's an order to your love.

It should be a little humorous when you think of wife versus enemy.

So many more people confuse it with neighbor to God.

There's an order, you love God first, then spouse, then children, then neighbor, then enemy.

Anyway, this is the second greatest command that your love flows out to the world.

There's a perfect weight behind these commands.

Jesus says in verse 40 on these two commandments, all the law and prophets hang.

Depend is the ESV word here.

It's the word for hang.

It's a picture on the wall.

You drive the nail on the wall, then you hang it, you drive the nail in, you level it, you put the cable on, you adjust the cable with the leveler so it's the right level.

That's the idea.

You've all done that.

Jesus is using that language, a very household illustration.

Love for the Lord is the nail.

The cable that comes out of it is love for neighbor.

And every other law is balanced perfectly on that.

And don't mess up that order.

Don't attach the cable to the wall without leveling it.

Don't nail it down without attaching the, you know, the cable in the picture to it.

There's a sequence: love for God, love for neighbor, everything else.

611 commands after that, and they're all subsumed under love for neighbor, which is subsumed under love for God.

Everything else hangs on it.

And Jesus says, all the law and the prophets.

This is an incredible statement.

Everything commanded by God fits under that heading, which leads finally to the perfect problem.

Hopefully, you have you've been a Christian long enough to deduce the problem with this.

Well, it's a great answer, isn't it?

I mean, this is gonna this is gonna muzzle the Pharisees now.

But there's a problem, there's a Christian problem with his answer.

Hopefully you noticed it.

Have you always loved the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind?

Of course not.

And if that's the greatest command, that means that you, and I'm not talking the abstract you, I'm talking actually you.

I could look each one of you in the eye, I'm talking to you.

That means that you personally have committed the greatest sin possible.

If it's the greatest command, failure to do it is the greatest sin, and you've all done the greatest sin.

Again, that's why hell exists, not because God is petty, but because justice demands punishment for the greatest sin imaginable.

Have you always loved your neighbor as yourself?

Of course not.

You've withheld things from your neighbor that you would have given to yourself.

You get so agitated at your neighbor for things that they do that you would do without even thinking twice.

You have a friend coming over later in the day, so you move your trash can in front of your neighbor's house so that your friend has the place to park.

You wouldn't think twice about it.

Your neighbor does that to you, and you get so mad for like a month.

That's just a silly example.

But there's hundreds of those in life.

We've all failed.

We've all failed.

So now what?

Jesus' question has silenced the Pharisees, but it leads us to the table that's in front of us.

There's an impossibility to this command.

I want you to notice the end of this, Jesus says, all the law and the prophets.

The last time that phrase was used in Matthew's gospel was Jesus saying that he has come to fulfill them.

He has lived the life that we can't live.

He has kept not just all the commands in our place, but he has kept for us the first and second greatest command.

He has loved the Lord his God with all of his heart, with all of his soul, and all of his mind.

And he has loved his neighbor as himself.

And that is in our place so that we recognize we are sinners, we can't do that, we confess our sin.

And he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins.

This isn't horseshoes.

Close doesn't count.

You can't tell God, I tried to do my best, and I'm sure you'll understand.

No.

If you failed the greatest command one time, you deserve to be judged by the whole law.

And yet Christ has taken that judgment away from us.

Lord, we're grateful that you rescue us from the penalty of the greatest commands.

We have failed to keep it.

And yet you have set your affection on us.

You have saved us through the mercy of Jesus Christ.

We're so thankful for Him.

It is the greatest commandment that led you to the cross.

It's the second greatest commandment that held you there.

You did your Father's will in going.

You stayed to show your love for us.

We're thankful for the marvelous grace displayed at the cross.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or you want more information about what it means to follow Christ, please go to our church website, ibc.church.

If you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to see you at one of our own worship services at Emmanuel Bible.

Now may the Lord bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.