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Morning Message Text: Matthew 22: 34-46
The Greatest Commandment
34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together.
35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’
38 This is the first and greatest commandment.
39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Whose Son Is the Messiah?
41 While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them,
42 “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?” “The son of David,” they replied.
43 He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says,
44 “ ‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.” ’
45 If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?”
46 No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.
Morning Message:
Sometimes in my preparation, I don’t lean very much on the Old Testament reading. Today I want to start with our text from Leviticus. Leviticus is at times a difficult read; it is filled with customs and rituals that in our modern day world make little sense to us, but there are still some very important lessons for us to learn from this book. Every word of God’s Word is important and meant for our edification. Take the first two verses. God tells Moses to instruct the people to be holy because the Lord is holy. Now we could read right past that and think to ourselves, well of course God is holy, but maybe we should pause and think about what God is saying to them and to us today. It is impossible for us to be holy 100% of the time, and apart from accepting Jesus and having the guidance of the Holy Spirit, no one can experience holiness. But that doesn’t mean that as Christians we should not do our best to be holy before our God.
First, we must identify what God views as holy. Verse 15 says, “Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.” We are to care for the poor and the disadvantaged among us, but that doesn’t mean that we should give them unfair advantages over others just because they are needy. I want us to contrast that with what you here and see today. Take from the rich and give to the poor. This is not what God calls us to do. We should give to the poor. But not at the expense of others. On the other hand, we should not show favoritism to anyone but treat everyone equally. This is a call to fairness, but not what people today think is fair. Fairness does not include taking from others, that in and of itself is unfair.
Here is one for the news media, “Do not go about spreading slander among your people.” Slander is telling convenient lies that tears down one person while promoting another. The TV news does this constantly. Sometimes suddenly, and other times not so much. The news media loves to point out every negative aspect of a story and conveniently leaves out the other side; that’s slander. “Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. I am the Lord.” Maybe we should tell the protesters in the streets that protests should not be hateful and endanger lives. “Love your Neighbor as yourself.” Why? Because the Lord commands it.
I have come back to this verse throughout my Christian life. “For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” The word world can have at least three meanings in the New Testament. It can refer to planet earth and all it contains. It can refer to the people in the world. And it can refer to the world system—the underlying principles and assumptions that stand in opposition to God and His purposes and programs. When we are told in 1John 2: 15, not to love the world, it obviously does not mean that we are not to love God’s creation or the human beings made in His image. Rather, we are not to love the system of values and priorities that manifest into ungodly actions and behaviors. Pride, greed, selfish ambition, immorality, spiritual idolatry, anger, violence, and the like are all characteristics of the world we are not to love. God redeemed us out of that world system, and we are no longer to have affection for it. There is a quote by Warren Wiersbe: “Identification with the world and its needs is one thing; imitation of the world and its foolishness is quite another.”
1 John 5: 4-5 says this, “For everyone born of God overcomes the world.” This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.” Do we all believe that? How do we overcome our fleshly attraction to the things of the world? The answer is simple: We overcome the world by our faith. And by faith, John means obeying God’s commands. Do you know any of God’s commandments?
There are two stages to our overcoming the world through faith. The first is when we put our faith in Christ, overcoming Satan’s desire to keep us from yielding to God (“has overcome”-past tense). The second is when we continue to obey God and His commands by faith (“overcomes”-present tense). These two tenses in 1John 5: 4-5 – past and present – represent the beginning and continuation of our overcoming the world. First, we obey God by putting our faith in Christ. Second, we continue to obey God as we follow Christ as Lord of our life. By obeying God, we overcome the world. So what can we do? If we find ourselves yielding to the temptations of the world, look for an area in which you are failing to obey God. John MacArthur said this: “If I could simplify the Christian life to one thing, it would be obedience.” So, let’s recap. We must identify our weaknesses; the world provides so much that weakens us spiritually. Then, in order to overcome the world, we must obey God’s commandments.
The last part of today’s scripture is Jesus revealing to the Pharisees and Sadducees exactly who He is. They would prefer to think of the Messiah as simply the son of David, a mere man anointed by God. But Jesus, using scripture shows them something that proves He existed as God before His human birth. They were so stiff necked and set in their ways, thinking about the ways of the world and what they wanted out of life, that they either could not or did not want to see that they were in the presence of God. They could try to fool a man, even a prophet, but how could they have the world that they wanted if Jesus was God. Once we acknowledge Jesus as Lord and Savior of our lives, it must become about what He wants for our lives, not what we want.
So how do we overcome the world? Jesus tells us. The reading from Leviticus told us. We overcome the world with love. Not the kind of romantic love that we tend to think of; that is a very human kind of love. We can sit around and sing, “All we need is love,” or one of the other thousands of songs about human love. We can quote philosophers and think of feel-good movies that give us examples of what love could be, or we can look to God’s Word and find the true cure for our souls. It starts and ends with our love of God. A complete and uninhibited love for our creator and Savior which will lead us to love our neighbors. Who is my neighbor? The whole world is your neighbor. Every evil thought that enters our minds, every sinful thing that might pull at us and try to move us away from God can be overcome by obeying God’s commandment to love. This is the only thing we truly need to live a victorious Christian life. I used this example before, but it fits today’s message. The new preacher stood up week after week and simply read the first commandment and then sat back down. When he was asked when he might preach something else, he said, “Once you fully understand and get that one we will move on.”
In Christ’s Love and Peace,
Pastor Bob
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