Now we turn our attention to the preaching of the Word, and ask you to turn with me to the Gospel of Matthew. This morning we'll be looking at chapter 22, verses 34-40. Matthew 22, verses 34-40. If you're using your pew Bibles this morning, you should find this on page 1052. So hear now the word of God, Matthew chapter 22, verses 34 through 40. But when the Pharisees heard that he 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, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. Let us once again pray. Our gracious Lord and our Heavenly Father, Do, Lord, pray that You would guide and direct us as we look at these words this morning. We pray, Lord, that You would inscribe Your truth upon our hearts. And may You, Lord, bless my mind and my mouth that I may think and speak clearly this morning. It is in the name of Jesus Christ that we do pray these things. Amen. Well, this morning, as we begin to look at this text, just as we introduced this section by way of reminder, last week we looked at Jesus's interaction with the other group of the religious leadership of his day, the Sadducees. And that group, which rejected the resurrection or the existence of angels Jesus confronts, or they confront him, asking him a hypothetical situation, he brings them an answer. Well, as we see here in verse 34 through verse 36, we see that the Pharisees then, again, come into the picture. And instead of sending their disciples to test Jesus, as they did a couple weeks ago, this time they come together themselves to Him. And having seen that He silenced the Sadducees, in many sense their polar opposites and their enemies within that religious setting, they come to Jesus and One of them speaks up. Now it says here a lawyer, but it could be translated as a scribe, as someone who is an expert at the law. And he poses a question to Jesus of how would you summarize the law? What is the greatest commandment, Jesus, in the law? This was an issue in their day that they liked to discuss and debate. How would we summarize the law of God? How could it be put into a singular package? And the law here is not just the Ten Commandments, it's the whole thing, the whole package, the law, as was given by Moses on Sinai. Now as we look at these verses this morning, and we'll be focusing mainly on the response of Jesus to this question, verses 37 to 40, the theme we'll be looking at is probably not something that we would summarize all the Old Testament. It's not something that our society would necessarily, if they were posed a question, how would you summarize the Word of God as the Old Testament and your understanding of it? The word love is probably not the first word that would come to mind. Our society likes to put this false distinction between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New. You know, they falsely claim that, well, the God of the Old Testament is all vengeance and anger and wrath, whereas the God of the New Testament, He's the God of love and grace. You know, Jesus, in His response, He summarizes His law, His word, in the concept of love. To love God, and to love our neighbors. So the theme we'll be looking at is for you and I, beloved, to love, by God's grace, as God has loved us. It's really the thrust of what Jesus is pointing us to here this morning. To, by God's grace, love as we have been loved. In verses 37-38, Jesus answers the lawyer, the scribe. He says 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. It is, after all, what this lawyer, what this scribe asked. He asked specifically, what is the greatest commandment in all of the commands that we have? What is the greatest, Jesus, and the first and the foremost? So Jesus answers him straightforward. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. Jesus here is quoting from Deuteronomy 6, verse 5. Deuteronomy 6, verse 5. You can turn with me if you like to look at it, but I'll find it here and read it for you. It begins really in verse 4. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And then in verse 5, You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all your soul, with all your might." Now, as Jesus quotes this, he changes the word might to mind. And if we consider also Luke's account of this, in Luke's account there's a slight variation where Jesus is asked a question, but Jesus kind of flips it around and says, well, how does the law read to you? And it's the lawyer then that says, well, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And so he lists four things. listing both mind and strength. Now as we consider the answer here in this idea of to love God with all of our heart, soul, and mind, or if we add strength as the Deuteronomy passage has strength and the Luke also, let us not get caught up by these various categories and hung up upon them. Jesus isn't giving us a breakdown of how human beings are made up, that there's three or four parts to us. What He is doing here, and Scripture clearly teaches throughout its pages that we are made up of a soul and a body. So He's not saying here that we've got all of these three or four parts. He's not addressing that at all. The point that Jesus is getting at here and He's emphasizing is we're to love the Lord our God with every ounce of our being. With our very core. Who we are in our essence. Our whole, entire being and all that we are. Our heart, our soul, our mind. Basically three ways of saying the same thing. The very core and essence of our being. So now that Jesus answers that and explains, we need to love God with everything that you are, your whole life, all that is you. How do we do this? Is there any other instruction or direction in how we love God in this way? Well, if we look at the commands of God, specifically what we call the moral law, the 10 commandments, We traditionally break them up into two tables. There's commands 1 through 4, which deal, as we say, mainly with God. And then there's commands 5 through 10, which deal with our interaction with one another. Well, as Jesus gives this command, as to love the Lord our God with all that we are, really we find how we do that, especially in those first four commands. Those first four commands show us how we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Have no other gods before Him. We're not to make any graven images. We're not to take His name in vain, which means not just in how we use His name, but also in how we live our lives. If we profess Christ, we have His name on us. So if we live a life that is contrary to that profession, we are taking his name in vain, and to honor this holy day, the Sabbath day. These are ways, practical ways, that we show our love to God. But especially that first command, you shall have no other gods before me. What that means is, anything that we place as a higher priority than God, that is an idol. That is a false god that we have set up in our lives. And it can be anything. It can be something that is normally quite good. Or it could be an actual idol, depending on what culture you're in. Brothers and sisters, as we consider this, I want to remind us, and I've said it before, when we consider that first command, you shall not set up any other gods before me or have any other gods but me. Each and every time you and I sin, each time we stumble and we fall and we sin, we sin against God in that particular act, but we are also sinning against God and breaking the first commandment. Each sin, is a breaking of this first commandment, because at its core, when we sin, we are setting ourselves up as God. We are saying, as Adam and Eve said, and they were tempted by, well, God knows, Satan told them that you'll be like him. Well, when we sin, we set ourselves up as God and we follow our own desires rather than the desires of God himself and what he has told us to do. So how do we love God with all of who we are? We follow His commands. But especially, we make sure that He is the first and foremost. Now, this cannot be done in our own strength. And that's why this theme has, at its center, by God's grace. That is what we must rest upon, what we must rely upon, praying to our Lord, Lord, help me love you with all that I am, because on my own strength, I cannot do it. But as we consider this concept of loving God with all that we are, we also need to consider the chief example that we have been given in the love that is required of us. As we consider this type of love, we must remember that it is God who gives us the example to follow. And he says to us in Romans 5, verse 8, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Now, what Paul is saying in Romans there is, while we were ugly, unbeautiful, undesirable, filled with our own filth and stink of sin, God loved us. God loved us. He chose us from all of eternity, and in the fullness of time, He sent His Son to die on the cross for us, to cleanse us of all of that filth of our sin, so that through faith in Him, by His grace, we will be saved. Now, in relation to God, it's not the same at all. You know, God is beautiful and good. But there will be times in our life where from our small, finite, frail viewpoint, we may look at what God is doing in our life, or maybe some condition throughout the world, and not like what He is doing. We might think it looks ugly. Like, Lord, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? Now I bring this out because this is a real danger for us, brothers and sisters, that we must be careful of. And by way of example, I'll give you two illustrations. I had a coworker I worked with at Starbucks back in Kansas City. We talked and conversed and he professed faith in Christ. He kind of was introduced to Christ through going through AA and the concept of God. He began meeting with my pastor. We helped him pick out a Bible. My pastor began going through it with him. He began coming to church with me. We started to see some growth in his life and it was wonderful. Then all of a sudden he just stopped. And so as a few weeks went by, he didn't show up to church. My pastor said he stopped coming to the meetings that they were having. I began talking with him. I was like, what happened? He said, well, the God that I was reading about in the scriptures wasn't the same God that I believed in. And he was reading through the Old Testament at the time. He became hung up on some of the things that someone from the outside looking in can read about the destruction of the enemies of God's people. He began to question of whether or not this is a truly loving God that I want to serve. He didn't like what God was doing. I have a cousin who grew up in a Christian home. profess Christ all their lives. When she grew up to adulthood, all of a sudden they said, well, I don't want to believe in a God who allows such evil to go on in the world. These basic thoughts, what it boils down to at its very beginning, is a dislike of what God is doing. And it's a dislike of what He is doing from our small, finite vantage point. We have to remember, first of all, that God is good. Everything He does is for His own glory and the good of His people. And we have to remember at all times that our sight is limited and finite. We are getting one glimpse of eternity. Whereas God has a sovereign and perfect and good will that He is working and unfolding. In essence, what it comes down to in that way of thinking is again, idolatry and a breaking of that first command. Putting what we think should be happening. Putting what we think is right and good. and then calling what God says is right and good, wrong. So in this, brothers and sisters, as we are called to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, it is a call to put Him before anything else in our lives. It is a call to set Him above all other things. When we begin to be tempted to sin, A great prayer that you and I should remember to drop down on our knees and pray is, Lord, forgive me for wanting my own desire. Help me to want Your desire. Mold my will to Yours. Submit my heart to Yours. And help me to love You as You required to be loved. This brings us to our second point. We're called to love each other as God has loved us. In verse 39, Jesus adds a second command. It's not asked for, but he gives it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Our neighbor. For a full definition of who our neighbor is, see Luke's account of this interchange. It is in that interchange that Jesus then gives the parable of the Good Samaritan, Luke chapter 10, verses 29 through 27. For the lawyer asks, after Jesus gives these two commands, he says, well, who is my neighbor? And so Jesus gives that parable to explain who our neighbor is. Who was a neighbor to the man who fell among robbers and was beaten. It wasn't those that should have been and that knew better. It was the despised and hated Samaritan. He was a neighbor to the one who fell among robbers. So this command that Jesus gives us It's not just to those who live physically near us. It's not just to love those who are in our community, although that is the first context. It is our fellow image bearers of God. As we consider who we are to love and how we are to love, well, first, who we are to love. Again, God's call here to love our neighbor goes beyond just simply those who are brothers and sisters in Christ. There's also those who are apart from Him. See, at the bare minimum, as we interact with people on a day-to-day basis, even those who are apart from Christ, at bare minimum, they are fellow image bearers of God. It doesn't matter if they reject Him and they spit in His face and they spurn Him. They yet still are image bearers of God, and we are called to love them if given an opportunity. But above all, especially our brothers and sisters in Christ, we are to love. They share our faith. They have been renewed in their image and are being renewed all the more each day as the Holy Spirit works in them. Now, how we're to love our neighbor is expressed in the phrase, as yourself. We, at our very core, love ourselves. At the very core, we love ourselves. Now, we do live in a fallen world where that love for ourself may be greater or lesser, depending on the circumstance. But we all love ourselves. We will, by nature, seek what will help us survive and be for our benefit. An aspect of loving ourselves that probably gets overlooked is that we are very easygoing with ourselves regarding our shortcomings and our faults. Now, I know we would all say that we have shortcomings and we have faults. We all know the ways in which we stumble and we fall. And if the Holy Spirit is at work within us, we grieve and we mourn over those. But there are also other faults and shortcomings that we each have that we gladly look over and we think aren't that bad. Now in loving our neighbor as ourselves, especially in the context of the household of faith, let us keep that aspect of loving ourselves in mind. You know, in some ways, the household of God, here and now on earth, is much like each and every one of our households. Wherever there are children involved, brothers and sisters, or brothers or sisters. There's sibling rivalry. There is anger over a perceived wrong that was done among siblings. and what we are called here, brothers and sisters, as we in our particular context I'm not saying here that if a genuine sin has been committed, that we're just to overlook it and not deal with it. No, that is not what Jesus is saying. What Jesus is saying is that those faults which aren't sin, that maybe rub us the wrong way, issues of personality, issues of, well, I don't like this, but I'd rather be doing that, that rub us the wrong way. Jesus says we're to love one another as ourselves, overlooking those small, meaningless faults that are not sin. That is what He is calling us to do. At the heart of sibling rivalry is really a heart of pride and arrogance. And Jesus calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves, keeping in mind that we all have faults. We all have blemishes. And overlooking those which can be overlooked in loving one another. So remember, brothers and sisters, we are called to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Now in Matthew, in closing, looking at verse 40, Jesus closes this section by saying, on these two commands depend all the law and the prophets. So first of all, the question asked to him was just pertaining to the law. That was the specific question. The lawyer says, or the scribe says, what is the greatest and foremost commandment in the law? But Jesus here expands it out. Well, this is the first and foremost commandment, and then the second one is like it. And on these commands depend the whole law and the prophets. It's a way of saying, you ask specifically about the law, Well, here's two commands that summarize all of the scriptures at that point. All of the Old Testament. From Genesis to Malachi. As we have it in our Bibles. Now, when Jesus says, depend here, another way to translate that word would be hung. It's like those coat hooks that we have. Or the hangers that we have. You go, you take off your coat, and you hang it. It's supported by it. So these two commands can be looked upon as kind of these coat racks where all of the scriptures of the Old Testament were hung. As I mentioned in this introduction, how many people, when they say, what is the summary of the Old Testament, would even consider the idea of love? But that is how Jesus interprets it, and that is what Jesus gives us. that the summary of all of the Old Testament is to love God with all that you are and to love your neighbor as yourself. Brothers and sisters, as we read in our devotions through the Old Testament, as we look at the Old Testament from time to time in the sermons as you read its pages, and then including in it the full revelation of God that we have in the New Testament. Let us at all times read it with that understanding in mind. That what is going on here, what is being taught here, is how to either love God with all that we are, or to love our neighbor as ourselves. That is what God is teaching us. And through its pages, He shows us how far we fall short and how incapable we are in and of ourselves to obey these commands. So that again, brothers and sisters, is what brings us back to the grace of God found only in Christ. Brothers and sisters, beloved, by God's grace, Let us love as we have been loved. Amen. Our gracious Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank You for these summaries, statements of all of Your Scriptures. We thank you, Lord, for giving this clear representation of what it is you require of us. To love the Lord our God with every ounce of our being, with who we are. Showing that love through humble obedience to you. And loving our neighbor as ourselves. And when we see those in need, meeting that need, but also, Lord, interacting with one another in humility and love. with a willingness to overlook that which may rub us the wrong way. Father, we pray that you would, by your grace, help us to heed these commands, to love you with all that we are, and to love one another as ourselves. And may you forgive us, Lord, in the many ways that we daily fall short. In the glorious name of Christ we do pray, Amen.