First Things First

The passage that we will be studying tonight is Matthew 22:36-40 and it would help you as much as it helps me to have that open in front of you.

And as we come to read that again together, would you join me as I ask God to help us understand what we are reading. Let us pray.

Father, as we study this passage now we ask that you would, by your Holy spirit, bring alive to us these words that Jesus spoke. Help us to see what your plan is for our lives. Help us to understand what we read and give us the desire to grow in our love for you and our love for one another. Burn these words upon our hearts and minds lord, and may they change our priorities. Please Father come and do your work in each of our lives. Amen.

Introduction

The passage we are looking at is Matthew 22:36-40, and I’m going to begin by reading from verse 34 for us again.

34Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"37Jesus replied: "`Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: `Love your neighbour as yourself.' 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

At this point in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus has just made his triumphant entry into Jerusalem and is heading towards the time when he will be crucified on a cross. As he begins teaching he faces challenges from the Pharisees and the Sadducees and he answers them so effectively that they are silenced.

So they get together and decide to send their secret weapon to test Jesus. They send someone hoping to make him look a fool in front of the crowds. And of all the secret weapons to choose the chose a Lawyer. The Lawyer came not to learn from Jesus, but to trap him. Earlier in the chapter, in verse 15 we read that the Pharisees “went out and laid plans to trap him in his words”. He came wanting to catch Jesus and his method is to ask him a difficult question. This is a question that had kept the professors arguing and debating for hours. He asked Jesus what was the great commandment in the Law.

What an amazing question! The Lawyer may not have wanted to learn from Jesus, but there is so much that we can learn by listening in to this conversation. In the entire Bible, what is the most important commandment?

Jesus replied:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.v37

That is a quote from Deuteronomy 6:5. Jesus then goes a step further by giving him the “number 2” commandment, this time quoting from Leviticus 19:18:

Love your neighbour as yourself.

But then Jesus goes on to give some more information that the Lawyer didn’t ask for. Jesus says, in verse 40:-

All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

The answer Jesus gives is mind blowing. It is astounding. Some of us lose that because Jesus’ words have become so familiar to us.

I am going to ask, and answer, 3 questions.

1. What does it mean that the Law and the Prophets “hang” on these commands?
2. What does it mean to Love God?
3. What does it mean to love our neighbour?

So our first question is “WHAT DOES IT MEAN THAT THE LAW AND THE PROPHETS “HANG” ON THESE COMMANDS?”

What Jesus tells us here is absolutely mind blowing. He is explaining to us that everything else that is in the Old Testament in some way depends (which is another way of translating “hangs”) on these 2 commands.

He is telling us that God’s purposes throughout history are to have a world that loves God more than anything else and a world that loves each other, in a radical way.

And it is those purposes that have shaped everything from the beginning of time to this moment when we are sat in JPC now. It is Gods supreme plan that we love Him with all our heart and that we love each other as we love ourselves.

That is what Jesus was talking about when he said that on the two commandments the whole law and the prophets (2 sections of the Old Testament) hang. In this conversation, he is not saying that the whole law can be summarised or reduced to these two laws.

Nor does it mean that you can just scrap what the Bible says and just do what appears to be the most loving thing in the situation.

He was saying that the law, and notice he also includes the Prophets, hang or come from these two laws. The message translation of the Bible puts it like this:-

40These two commands are pegs; everything in God's Law and the Prophets hangs from them.

In diagrammatic form:-

Love -> lead to and find expression and fulfilment in -> law and the Prophets

rather than…

Law and the Prophets -> summed up in -> love

Why is this so significant? Jesus is telling us that these two commands are God’s priorities. They are what have shaped and led to everything in the law and the prophets. They have led to everything God has done in history.

And that is serious. If they are God’s priorities then they need to be our priorities. Together as a church, and as individuals, in it that is God’s PRIORITY for us for 2004 (and any other year for that matter). That we LOVE God and that we LOVE one another. We need to make sure we do not assume we know what he is saying to us. We need to make the time to get alone with him and deal with him about these things.

It is precisely these commandments that form the basis for our church vision Godly Living, Church Growth and Changing Britain. We need to constantly ask ourselves do our priorities reflect God’s priorities. Is everything that we do supported by these two commandments: That we love him with all our heart and that we love each other as we love ourselves.

And that leads me to my next question

2. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO LOVE OUR NEIGHBOUR?

Loving our neighbour is a huge command. Notice that Jesus says love your neighbour AS YOURSELF. He assumed that we love ourselves. By that he was talking about the instinct inside every one of us to care for and satisfy ourselves. In “Family Fortunes style” here are some of the things we typically want:-

1. To be happy2. Food3. Marriage4. Clothes5. Place to live6. Chocolate7. Meaningful activity to fill your days8. A good job9. Friends to spend time with you10. Your life to count in some way

So when Jesus said love your neighbour as yourself he was talking about this love that we have for ourselves. The self-love that motivates us to do what we do and seek the best for ourselves. It is common to all people, and doesn’t need to be learned. God created it.

The commandment for us to love our neighbours as ourselves is an overwhelming command. It seems to demand that you rip off the skin from your own body, wrap it around another person so all the longings that you have for my own safety and health and success and happiness you now feel for the other person as though they were you.

As you long for food when you are hungry, so long to feed your neighbour when he is hungry.
As you work for a comfortable place to live, so desire a comfortable place to live for your neighbour.
As you seek friends for yourself, so be a friend to your neighbour.
As you like to be welcomed when with new people (maybe in a new country for the first time), so welcome your neighbour when they are with new people.

And so on… In other words, seek for your neighbour the same things you seek for yourself. But also you need to seek them in the same way. With the same energy, creativity and perseverance. That is what Jesus meant when he says love your neighbour AS yourself.

But is important to understand an important point. Loving others in such a way demands total sacrifice and a willingness to give as if loving your neighbour instead of loving yourself. And that is where the crunch comes. This is where the pride and sin that is also in each on of us becomes apparent. The desire to be happy is not in and of itself wrong. But it becomes sinful pride when we forget two things:-

1. That we were created to find our satisfaction in God2. That we were created to help others find satisfaction in God.

And in the heart of every human being is a desire to be happy without God. There is a desire to find our satisfaction and happiness but NOT in God and in the good of other people.

And that is why, although that kind of love is what Jesus us asking of us, it IS NOT POSSIBLE without the first commandment. We cannot love our neighbour as ourselves without FIRST loving God. They cannot be separated. We cannot love others, unless we first love God.

Which leads on to our remaining question…

Question 3: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO LOVE GOD?

Jesus said that the FIRST and GREATEST commandment is that we love the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul and with all our mind.

What does that mean? Loving God means looking to him for our happiness. It means taking all the things that we long for and focusing them on God. It means looking to him until he satisfies our hearts and our souls and our minds. That is what it means to love God.

“ Love God with all your heart" means: Find in God a satisfaction so profound that it fills up all your heart.

" Love God with all your soul" means: Find in God a meaning so rich and so deep that it fills up all the aching corners of your soul.

" Love God with all your mind" means: Find in God the riches of knowledge and insight and wisdom that guide and satisfy all that the human mind was meant to be.

This involves a total abandonment of yourself to God. God is the only one who is worthy of that sort of love. He is the only one who can satisfy your hunger for life. He out that thirst in you and he alone can quench that thirst. He alone can provide you the life and satisfaction and happiness that you look for. God says, Come to me, and I will satisfy your heart and soul and mind. This is the first and great commandment.

We can come to him because Jesus has made that possible. He died on the cross to pay for the punishment that we deserved for turning away from God. He calls us now to turn back to him and look to him once more to be the source of our life. To give him the place he deserves in our life. The one we look to in all circumstances. All you need to do is come to him. If that is a question that you are asking, I would like to suggest you join a small group we are running called Christianity Explored. There is information about that in the blue flyers. If you are an international student, then you might like to consider something similar called “What Christians believe”. We also have a booklet called “Why Jesus” that is free to take away and will help answer that question.

And it is only when we know what it is to love God, and to be loved by him, that we can learn to truly love others! The way we love others is forever changed. Now we can really understand what Jesus meant when he says, "Love your neighbour as yourself," it means that we love others as we love ourselves, by finding our satisfaction in God.

We all have longings for joy and satisfaction and fulfilment and significance and security. But God has called us - indeed he has commanded us - to come to him first for all these things. He commands that I do not seek these things anywhere else. My love for my self has now become my love for God. My search for happiness is now nothing other than a pursuit for God. And he has been found in Jesus Christ. And my love for others becomes showing them, giving them – in every way possible – what I have found for myself in God.

These are challenging commands. As we begin the new year, we must keep FIRST THINGS FIRST: loving God will all our heart and soul and mind. And that should lead to use loving others more and more.

Conclusion
We have seen that God’s plan for our lives is that we love him and love each other. Loving God means finding satisfaction in Him and loving each other means helping others find satisfaction in Him.

As we end let me ask two questions for us to consider, as we begin this new year…

1. Am I falling more and more in love with God?2. Am I loving others by helping them grow more and more in love with God too?

A moment to think and pray on your own….

Father as we begin the year, we ask that you will help each one of us to fall deeper in love with you. We also ask that you will give us all we need to love those you have put in our lives. In Jesus name. Amen.