The Great Commandment
Matthew 22:34-40
One of the very most important elements of our worship together is hearing God speak and He speaks through His word and I invite you to open His word, your Bible, and turn to Matthew Chapter 22. And this morning we're going to be looking at verses 34 through 40, Matthew 22:34-40. This is the time when we listen to the Lord's word. He confronts us with His truth and it's my prayer that truly we might respond in a way that would be pleasing to Him.
Someone has said, and I'm not sure who, that love may not make the world go around, but it sure makes the trip worthwhile. And thereby sort of gathered up general human sentiment the best of all experiences and the sweetest of all emotions is love. Whatever era, whatever age, whatever group of people you may be talking about it seems to be the rather universal thought that love is the greatest, that love is sunon bomen, that love is par excellence. The song, the poems, and the book, and the stories, and the films and whatever else that men have authored and participated in that are about love would fill volumes and volumes and volumes. And so I would say the world kind of comes together in a consensus that love is really that which is the greatest experience and at that point God would agree. However, it is quite a different kind of love that God affirms than that the world understands. And we're going to see that in our text. For our text is about love, not normal human love, but a divine kind of love, which only God can produce.
But let's remember the setting before we get into the text. And by now it ought to be very familiar to you. It's Wednesday of Passion Week as it's been called, Wednesday of the Passover, the Wednesday before the Friday when Jesus is to be crucified. And Jesus is in the temple. He has entered the city and been hailed as the Messiah, the Deliverer of the nation from Roman bondage, the one who would come to set Israel in freedom and liberty, the one who would come and make all things right. They hoped; they wishfully believed that He indeed would be that Messiah.
And so they triumphantly hailed Him on Monday. On Tuesday He went to the temple. Rather than attacking the Romans, as they thought He might, he attacked them at the very heart of their nation He attacked their false religious system, and cleansed the temple, threw out the money changers and the buyers and sellers who had desecrated God's holy house. That was Tuesday. Now it's Wednesday.
And after spending the night in Bethany at the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, whom He had raised from the dead, He with His disciples came back into the city, went back to the temple and is spending the day teaching there and preaching the gospel of the kingdom.
Well alongside of these events in the life of our Lord has been the mounting rising animosity hatred and venom of the religious leaders. They already resented Jesus Christ deeply. They already wanted Him dead. The Scriptures says they already were plotting His murder. You see they resented Him for several reasons. Reason number one: He taught contrary to their teaching and that irritated them. Perhaps reason number two: He was more popular than they were, had a bigger following than they did and it was hard for them to take because their egos really needed to be supreme. And thirdly: He demonstrated powers and abilities that they couldn't even conceive of. So here was a man who contradicted their teaching, who gained a greater hearing than they had, and who could do things they couldn't even imagine doing, and they wanted Him dead. He was a threat to their position, He was a threat to their popularity, He was a threat to their doctrine, and when He came into the city of Jerusalem and was hailed as Messiah that just heightened their desire to have Him eliminated because now the people were flocking after Him. But it wasn't an easy thing to eliminate Him because how do you eliminate a man when you for one thing don't want to alienate yourself from the entire populace that have gone after Him. And as long as Jesus had the ear of the people they were in a very difficult position and also the Roman government has restricted their right to take lives, to execute their own criminals, and so they really were in a difficult place.
So they attempt the only thing they can attempt and that is to publicly discredit Jesus. They attempt to make Him look bad with Rome and look bad with His own people Israel. Now that attempt takes place here in Chapter 22, as they confront Him with a series of questions. And the questions are designed to discredit Him. They believe He will be forced to answer them in such a way that He'll put Himself in a difficult position with Rome and with the Jews.
The first mounting animosity came just because He taught different than they did. It was escalated because of the tremendous power that He demonstrated and the popularity that He gained. It reached a fiery flame because He cleansed their temple. I mean who was He and what right did He have to do that? And He cleaned out the place at the most lucrative time of the year, Passover, when they made the most money. And so by now they're almost at a fever level wanting to eliminate Him.
And as if the cleansing of the temple wasn't bad enough, He spent Chapter 21 and the first part of Chapter 22 giving them three parables that spoke of their own exclusion from the kingdom of God. He said to those leaders in effect, you're like sons that say you'll obey and don't; you're like tenant farmers who lease out a farm and then you kill the servants and the son of the one who leased it to you before you'll pay the debt; and you're like guests invited to a wedding who refuse to come and therefore, are shut out. In Chapter 21:45 says, "They knew He spoke about them."
So the escalation of all of these things climaxing when He cleansed the temple and then pronounced in three parables doom on these leaders has made them angry with Him to a point that is beyond anything they've experienced heretofore. They gather some sense of control and they try to confront Him in a way that will allow them ultimately to see His death.
Now remember that the first question came in verse 15. And it was the Pharisees along with the Herodians and they approached Jesus and they wanted to ask Him a question the answer to which would bring Him into trouble with the Romans. And so they asked Him whether or not they should pay their taxes to Caesar. And they had already conceived in their minds that He would probably say no because He was a man of God, He claimed, and He represented the law of God, and He represented the word of God, He said, and there's no way He's going to acquiesce to the Roman government. And they figure too that He didn't want to become unpopular with the people, who were for the most part anti-Rome, and so they thought He would say, "No, don't pay tribute to Caesar," and they would send the Herodians to report Him as a insurrectionist leader, as a rebel leader, and the Romans fearing His popularity would eliminate His life. So that was the plot. We'll get Him to say a statement that's insurrectionist, that's rebellious, and the Romans will eliminate Him before they let Him start a revolution. But His answer confounded them all and that failed.
So the Sadducees came with the second question in verse 23, and they want to know His view on resurrection. Now what they're trying to do if they can't discredit Him politically they're going to try to discredit Him as a teacher before the people of Israel, and at least that's a step in His elimination. And so they talk about the resurrection and they make up an absolutely bazaar situation and they assume that if He says there is a resurrection He's going to be stuck with this bazaar situation and the people are going to see what an utterly inept and inadequate teacher He is. And they're trying to discredit Him if not politically, their trying to discredit Him theologically, theologically. But again His answer confounds and astonishes and amazes and that test failed. And that brings us to the third.
One more time they come to test Him. In fact it says that, that was their purpose. In verse 35, asking Him a question, testing Him. And their desire is that He would fail the test. They tried to test Him politically, they tried to test Him theologically with a major doctrinal issue and now they're really probing in the spiritual dimension again, and they have one more shot that they want to give to try to discredit Him with the people. This is their last attempt. In fact Mark 12:34, paralleling this passage says, "When this was over no man dared ask Him any more questions." This is it.
Now let's see what happens as we introduce the scene in verse 34. "When the Pharisees had heard that He had put the Sadducees to silence they were gathered together." He had silenced them already and the Herodians, and then He had silenced the Sadducees and they heard about it and they gathered together to discuss the situation. A couple of interesting things in this verse, it says He put the Sadducees to silence; the verb to put to silence is literally gagged. He gagged them. It wasn't that they wanted to be silent; they had no choice. He gagged them. It is a very used, for example, in Mark 1:25, of silencing a demon. It is used also in Mark 4:39, of silencing a storm, when the Lord did that. It is used in I Corinthians 9:9 of muzzling an ox. In other words it's an unwilling gagging. They had more to say, they just had nothing to say in a sense. They couldn't say it. There was nothing that they could speak. He silenced them. He brought their argument to an utter end where they were absolutely without another sound, without another thought, without another idea, without another retort. He made them look stupid rather than them making Him look that way.
And when the Pharisees saw this they had a meeting. Now they must have had mixed emotions. On the one hand they would have been glad to see their enemies, the Sadducees, gagged. They would have been very happy to see that terribly disturbing question that the Sadducees had do doubt had asked them for years and they had never answered right. They no doubt were glad to see that that had been answered right and in their favor and in their behalf. They were glad that Jesus had said He believed in resurrection and therefore took the side of the Pharisees. So on the on hand there must have been a certain amount of gloating over the Sadducees ineptness, but that was far outweighed by the fact that they would rather have seen Jesus discredited than the Sadducees discredited because Jesus posed a far greater threat to them than the Sadducees ever did, and seeing their foes unsuccessful in destroying a greater enemy, namely Jesus, must have left them dissatisfied.
And so it says in verse 34, "They gathered together." And in this gathering together I think we sense a real fulfillment of prophecy here. In Psalm 2, which is a messianic prophecy, in which the Psalmist looks ahead to the Messiah, it says in verse 2, "The kings of the earth set themselves," and then this, "the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed." And that seems to be drawn right into this particular verse when it says they were gathered together. It's the same idea that was predicted, that the rulers would come together and take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed, the Messiah. In fact, in Acts 4, that verse out of Psalm 2 is referred to. It says, "The kings of the earth stood up and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ." That's Acts 4:26. So Psalm 2 looked to the cross and said they would gather together against Him, Acts 4;26 looks back to that time that they would gather against Him. We're in that time right here. This is that, which is seen in Psalm 2:2, which is alluded to in Acts 4:26. And what's interesting about that is this plotting fits into the plan of God as He foresaw it in Scripture.
Now out of that little conclave comes the final question to test him. And let's begin with what we'll call the approach of the Pharisees, the approach of the Pharisees. We have to know what they have in mind. And this has not been clearly delineated by the way, I don't think in the church's understand of this passage. It's important that we understand what they had in mind. So often we refer to this passage, we talk about the passage, we isolate it from its context, and we major on the great 37th verse and we don't understand what they were really after, but it makes it really come alive if we understand what they're approach intended to accomplish.
Verse 35: "One of them, that is a Pharisee, who was a lawyer" now the word lawyer means a law expert, really the same as a scribe. A scribe was one who copied the law, who was an authority on the law, who knew the law, who interpreted the law, who taught the law, and so forth. And normally Matthew uses the word scribe. It's unlike Matthew to use the word lawyer. In fact some commentators think it shouldn't be there because it's so uncommon to Matthew. Well that's ridiculous. He can use a word he's never used before, that isn't any problem. But I believe the reason it's here is because it's a word that may suggest that this guy was a cut above the average scribe. He was a law expert. And all scribes were to some extent lawyers, half attorney, half theologian because their understanding of law was that it was biblical law and traditional law, not just secular law, and so they were sort of theologian attorneys and advocates and teachers. And so this may have been one who stood out from the many scribes as a real expert. And he is sent to ask question on behalf of the rest of the Pharisees.
Now it's interesting that this particular man is a mission-minded man. He's an emissary, he is going on a direct task sent by the Pharisees, and they're filled with venom and they're filled with hatred, and all they want to do is see Jesus eliminated, but it seems to me that he's not quite committed to that. He's a little more objective than the rest of them, and we know that because if we compare the Mark passage where Mark describes the same scene. The lawyer starts out thinking that Jesus answered those other questions very well, so he's attracted to the wisdom of Jesus. When Jesus answers this question the lawyer responds by saying, "You have said the truth." That's exactly right. And Jesus in turn said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom." So while he is acting as an emissary for the Pharisees, on his own terms he seems to have more integrity than they do. And while they are without any objectivity at all seeking only to eliminate Jesus, he at least has enough to come with a somewhat open mind to hear an answer that he may receive.
So, he's not quite as venomous as the rest and maybe that's why he was willing to go. He could sort of kill two birds with one stone. He could play out his role as a Pharisee and he could also get a direct contact and a direct answer for himself that might help in his own thinking.
But, we don't want to forget that it says in verse 35, "He asked Him a question to test Him." So he's not totally honest. It's not a heart-sincere question. He's not pleading for his own case. He's somewhat objective, but not totally. He puts Him to the test. And the idea, as I said before, they want Him to fail the test. They want Him to be discredited. They want Him to lose His popularity.
Now it's essential that we understand what this question is all about and what the approach is all about. Let me see if I can give you the background. The number one hero in Judaism historically, do you know who it is? Moses! Without question Moses is the number one hero of Judaism. Still is! Moses, who spoke to God face to face as a man speaks to his friend. That sets him apart from everybody else. Moses, whom when God searched the world for a man to whom He could give His law, was chosen, the recipient of the Decalogue, the divine law of God. Moses, the priority writer, who penned the first five books of the Old Testament; Moses was their great hero. Rabbi Joseph Ben Jalaffta, in the second century said this: "God calls Moses faithful in all his house, and thereby ranks him higher than the ministering angels themselves." Many of the Jews believe that Moses was in a category above the angelic hosts. He was it. He was the greatest one. In fact, in Chapter 23:2 it says the scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat because that was the seat of ultimate authority. That was the seat of absolute power. Moses had given the law of God. He was their greatest hero.
Now the Jews believed, and this is the important point, that the teaching of Jesus attacked Moses' teaching. They believed that. That is why in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:17, Jesus said I want you to know this: I have not come to destroy, what, the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them and not one jot and one tittle shall in any case be removed from this law. In other words Jesus is very sensitive to the fact that He would be accused of attacking Moses, of setting Himself up as a new authority and diminishing the role of Moses, was sensitive enough to that to say, "I have not come to obviate the law of Moses, I have not come to remove one jot or one tittle," not one little marking from it. But they believed that Jesus is a diminisher of Moses. They believe that Jesus comes to postulate something beyond Moses, something above Moses, something greater than Moses, and they want Him to say that. They want Jesus to affirm that He has a word that supersedes Moses so that they can accuse Him of being a heretic and an apostate, who has apostatized, that is departed from the faith delivered through the greatest of all, the greatest authority, Moses himself. If they can just get Jesus to say that He supercedes Mosaic authority He will become a blasphemer, He will discredit Himself, He will become unpopular with the people who revere Moses as the greatest of all. So they want to put Jesus in a situation to attack Mosaic law by superceding it. And they believe that He will do that because they saw His teaching as something beyond.
That wasn't true, by the way. He reiterated to them that God's law had not been altered. They had merely changed things with their traditions, but their goal is to make Him look like an apostate. So we see the approach of the Pharisees. Discredit Him with the people by setting Him against Moses, and pushing Him to a point where he articulates some law that's above Moses and therefore the people will turn against Him. That's the approach.
From the approach of the Pharisees we come to the question of the lawyer in verse 36. And here is the question that is set to bring Jesus His own demise. "Master," and again that flattery they always seem to attach, "Master," the word means teacher, "Which is the great commandment in the law." And it would be very fair with the Greek text here to make this word great a comparative in this usage, which is the greatest commandment in the law.
Now they had a lot of discussion about this kind of stuff among themselves. I don't know if you remember your history of Jewish law, but they claim there are 613 separate laws, because there were 613 separate letters in the Decalogue, or the Ten Commandments. I don't know what connection that has, but that's the way they did things. Some of the strange rabbinic letterism as it used to be called. But they had one law for every letter in the Decalogue, Exodus 20, the Ten Commandments. And they divided that into two parts. They said there are 248 affirmative laws, one for every part of the human body, I don't understand why they did that either, and there are 365 negative laws, one for every day of the week, or every day of the year rather. So they said one for every day of the year, one for every member of the human body adds up to 613, and then they divided the 613 laws into the light laws and the heavy laws. And the light laws were semi-optional and the heavy ones were binding. I mean you can't keep 613, you've got to have a break somewhere so they lightened up on some and got heavy on some others.
And in verse 4 of Chapter 23, we're reminded that they "bind heavy burdens grievous to be born on men's shoulders." So they were into the heavy and the light, and there was a lot of debate about what was light and what was heavy, what was really important, what wasn't so important, and so forth and so forth and so forth.
But their approach is this: if Jesus is who we think He is, and that is a man with a huge ego trying to establish Himself as the Messiah, if He is as false as we think He is, He's going to say something that supercedes Moses. He's going to set Himself as the authority. He's going to give some law that comes out of His mouth and thus we'll know He's apostate and He's a heretic. So what is the great law? Just give us one the greatest law, and they figure if He's got something new to say it can't be something old, right? If He's come with some new message it can't be an old law.
Now the Sadducees accepted only the Pentateuch so they really held Moses as the authority. They Pharisees accepted the Pentateuch and everything else but Moses was still supreme, so the issue is Moses. If Jesus will just speak some unorthodox law and so they ask, "Give us the number one commandment." What is it?
And so we go from the approach and the question to the response of the Lord. Look at this response in verse 37. There's absolutely no hesitation. Jesus said to him: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all they heart, and with all they soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment." What an answer. What an answer. You know where He got that? He quoted Moses, Deuteronomy 6:5. He quoted Moses. I mean he did exactly the opposite of what they wanted Him to do. They want Him to supercede Moses. He quoted Moses. Not only did He quote Moses, but He quoted the most familiar thing that Moses ever wrote, the Shama. Deuteronomy 6:4-5, "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one God. And thy shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might." That was the most familiar Scripture to all of those Jews.
Have you ever gone to a Jewish house and seen a Mezuzah on the door, a little box that they put by the front door. Look when you go to a Jewish house. You'll see a little box, usually has the Star of David on it. Inside there is Deuteronomy 6:4-5. Have you ever seen an orthodox Jew strapping to his forehead the phylactery, the little box strapping to his arm, the little box? Inside the box on his arm and the box on his head is Deuteronomy 6:4-5. Every orthodox Jew, every Jew at the time of Jesus who was faithful to his religion twice a day had to stop and recite this statement: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy might," out of Deuteronomy 6:5. I mean He hit them right at the very core of their own religion. He is saying, "I'm no apostate. I'm no heretic. I'm not coming up with something you didn't know about." He affirms the solidarity with Moses. He speaks to them of a verse that is most familiar to all of them. By the way verse 37, the authorized has the word Jesus there, but most of the Greek texts say He said unto them. It refers to Jesus, that's just a note for your understanding.
But He quotes something with which they were all familiar. I'm not here to tell you anything different than what Moses told you, same thing, same thing. The word in Deuteronomy 6:5, thou shalt love aheb in Hebrew, the verb, refers primarily to the love of will, the love of the mind, the love of action rather than the love of feeling, the love of emotion. It is that highest kind of love. Not the love that you just feel, but the love of dedication, the love of commitment, the love that says this is right and this is noble no matter what I feel. And that's the word, agapeo. Agapeo is the love of intelligence, it's the love of purpose, it's the love of will as opposed to phileo, which is the love of emotion or affection and eros, which is the love of the physical animal senses. This is the highest kind of love, the love of purpose, the love of will, the noblest, purist, highest, self-sacrificing love of that which is right and that which is worthy.
And so he says to them what they already knew, that the number one thing is to love God with your whole being, your heart, your soul, and your mind. And they're all called to participate. And Mark, in Mark's recording of the passage indicates that the Lord also said strength, your heart, your soul, your mind, your strength. Now I think the point here is He that He just collects all the parts of being. He just covers all the words and there's definitely some overlap in those words. Those words are used different ways in different times in Scripture. And He's simply calling together all that a person is with your whole being is what He's saying; you're to love God. And I don't think the intent is to sort out every individual sense of every word, but I think there is something to be learned just by looking a little more closely at the words.
The word heart basically in the Hebrew understanding is the core of a person's identity. You remember Proverbs 4:23, "Guard your heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life." Everything comes out of the heart. I see the heart in the Hebrew understanding is the intellect, which produces the thoughts, produces the words, produces the actions. It's as a man thinks in his heart that he is. And so it's the intellectual part that's most often stressed, although, as I say, the words sometimes used of other aspects of human nature.
And then the word soul, it seems to me that when it's isolated can refer best to emotion. For example in Matthew 26:38 it says, "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful." And maybe the emphasis could be on the emotional part. And mind, let me talk about that for a moment because mind here replaces might in Deuteronomy 6. And I don't think the Lord is out of line, I don't think He's misquoting. I think mind is another way to say might. Might is a very broad word but it seems as though might has to do with intention and will. It has to do with moving ahead with energy and I see that with mind. I see mind in the same sense, mind having to do with purpose or with intention or with will. For example, we say he had a mind to do this or he had a mind to do that. And then as I said Mark adds the word strength, which is all of our physical capacities.
And so you can see here that in an overlapping sense there are four channels for love to be perfectly balanced. It's an intelligent love, it's a feeling love, it's a willing love, and it's a serving love. It carried itself right out to how we act in our physical strength. So our intellectual part, our emotional part, our volitional part, our physical part all comes together to love God, to love God with a total being, all that we are.
And would you notice that these things are not pushed together. It doesn't say love the Lord they God with all thy heart, soul, and mind. It doesn't say that. It's not that they're pushed together, it's that they're spread apart. It says literally that you are to love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind. It's as if He wants to push them to as wide a possible level as He can. To really love God, that's the great commandment. You see God is not looking for people who go through religious ritual. God is not just looking for people who on the outside can go through the motions. God wants people with the whole being love Him. I mean when God loved us He really loved us, didn't he? When He loved us with His whole being He must have, He gave us everything He was and is and will be. He gave us Himself in death for our sin. And He who gave us His wholehearted love does not want our half-hearted love in return. And as He loved us enough to give His Son, we're to love Him enough to give ourselves as He said, "Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down His life for His friends." We're to lay down our life for Him. As He demonstrated that here in His love, not that we love God but He loved us and gave us His Son, as He showed that love can sometimes happen even where there's not initial reciprocation, so we are to love God not for what we gain but because it's right, because it's right.
And so we are to love God in comprehensive way as He has loved us in a comprehensive way, with every part of our being loving Him. See that's what God is calling for from humanity. That's what He's calling for from humanity.
Now let me say something that you might misunderstand, but listen carefully. God wants more than our believing. You understand that? He wants more than our believing. James 2:19, says the devils believe and tremble. And why then aren't they redeemed, because though they believe God they do not love God. And that is the distinguishing mark of the redeemed. They love God. And God demands that we love Him with a perfect love, with a love that is as wide as all of our capabilities and capacities. And no one is ever right with God no matt