Your Question, My Question

Your Question, My Question

Eighteenth after Trinity

October 4, 2014

Gospel: Matthew 22:34-46 (KJV)

34 But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together.

35 Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying,

36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

38 This is the first and great commandment.

39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

41 While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them,

42 Saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? They say unto him, The son of David.

43 He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying,

44 The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool?

45 If David then call him Lord, how is he his son?

46 And no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions.

Suppose I were insensitive enough to ask one of you ladies, “How old are you? “ You answer, but that entitles her to ask me a question, so you say, “How did you ever persuade your wife to marry you?”

In today’s Gospel, the Pharisees ask Jesus a question about the commandments; Jesus answers but then asks them a question about the Messiah.

1. Pharisees’ Question

1.1 Controversy. The setting of Matthew 22 is Jesus’ last week. He entered Jerusalem on Sunday. Now he engages in controversies with Jewish leaders. Some disciples of Pharisees asked Jesus, “Should we pay taxes to Caesar?” Jesus said, “Yes, give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” Then some Sadducees, who did not believe in a future resurrection, asked, “If a married woman is widowed, the remarries, and does that seven times, whose wife will she be in the resurrection?” Jesus rebuked them, “You don’t know the Scriptures or the power of God.”

1.2 Test. When the Pharisees, who believed in the resurrection, heard how Jesus shutdown down the Sadducees, they decided to ask Jesus another question to test him about the Law of God.  One Pharisee, an expert about the Law, asked, “Master, which is the great commandment in the Law?” We may think, “Everybody knows that,”  but it was a real question for them. There was a debate among the experts about whether you could take all the Old Testament Laws and rank them in importance, and, if so, how to rank them. Were some laws weightier and some lighter? They wanted to draw Jesus into this debate. Also, since Jesus said and did things that raised questions about his views on the Law, they wanted to spring a trap by getting him to say something against the Law.

Suppose someone asks you, “Who’s your favorite candidate for President?” Their purpose is not just to gain information but to test your political views, so they can put a label on you, and classify you as a good guy or bad guy. That’s what the Pharisees are trying to do. The lawyer’s question is not sincere but an attempt to trap Jesus into saying something that would form the basis of an accusation.

1.3 First Commandment. Jesus answers: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.” He is pointing back to Moses’ words in Deuteronomy 6:5: “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.“ Jesus and Moses both speak of loving God with you “heart and soul.” Where Moses says to love God with all your “strength,” Jesus says with all your “mind.” Putting the words of Moses and Jesus together we are to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. These are not different distinct parts of our human personalities. What both Moses and Jesus are saying is, “Love God with your whole being. Hold nothing back. Love him with everything you are.”

1.4 Love. Jesus’ answer points us to root of obedience which is love. We don’t just grit our teeth and obey. Love motivates us to obey.

How can we love God?  Our love for God is our response to God’s love for us. “We love because God first loved us.” Love for God is motivated by our grasp of what God has done for us in Christ. Totally apart from any deserving or merit in us, he did everything necessary to save us by giving his own Son to die for our sins.

When we say the word love, we tend to think of a feeling. Feeling is often where love starts. A man and woman “fall” in love; it’s a compulsion that creates an intense attachment. A mother looks at her newborn baby and loves him. She help can’t help herself. But genuine love is than feeling. Feelings are changeable. They wax and wane. Real love includes emotion, but also commitment and action. You love your husband when he is not loveable, because you vowed to love him. When you would give your right arm for sleep, you do the loving thing by getting up to care for your baby.

So with loving God, we don’t just do what we feel like doing. We do what we know pleases God. If you wake up on Sunday morning and don’t feel like going to church, do you stay home because you can’t go with the right attitude? No, because you love God you are committed to him and to doing what pleases him. You love God by worshiping and serving no god but him, by  worshiping  him purely without images, by worshiping him  sincerely, not taking his name in vain, and by preserving the day of worship as a holy day.

1.5 Second Commandment.  Jesus went beyond the man’s question to say, “And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Jesus goes back to Leviticus 19:18: “Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.”

The command assumes we naturally love ourselves. We consider ourselves, what we need and want. If we want to know how to treat others with love we can ask, “How would I would I love myself in this situation? What would I do for me?”  As long as it is not sinful, show love to your neighbor.

The Apostle Paul explained it this way:

Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law (Romans 13: 8-10).

1.5. Summary. The Pharisees knew the commands to love God and neighbor. But Jesus linked them and showed their relationship to the whole Old Testament: “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”  These are the two great commandments, and all the moral commandments and exhortations of the Law and the Prophets hang on these. The Old Testament commands are not just rules. They guide us how to express love for God and neighbor. But there is also is no obedience apart from obedience that expresses love and is motivated by love.

2. Jesus’s Question

2.1 First Question. It was Jesus’s turn, and he used to draw attention to a matter of greater importance: “What think ye of Christ? whose son is he?” “Christ” is the Greek word for “Messiah.” Whose son is the Messiah?

They answered without hesitation, “David’s son.” The Lord had promised David: “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom...I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son…” (2 Samuel 7:12-14). They understood that promise would find its final fulfillment in the Messiah.

2.2 Second Question. Jesus followed up with a second question: “How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool?’If David then call him Lord, how is he his son?”

Jesus quotes from Psalm 110, a Psalm written by David in which, the Pharisees agreed, David was speaking of the Messiah. David says, “The LORD that is the God of Israel says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’” The Psalm uses two different words for Lord. The first is the God of Israel. The second is a lord or ruler. So, David says, “The Lord God said to my Lord or Ruler, ‘Sit at my right hand…’”.

So who is it that David, the greatest king of Israel, calls his Lord? If the Messiah is a son of David why does David call him his Lord? A son is not greater than his father is he? So how can he be David’s Lord?

The Pharisees have no answer: “And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.”

Jesus did not ask them to show them up but to call them to consider his claims to be the Messiah and God’s Son. The reason David called the Messiah his Lord was because the Holy Spirit was saying through David that the Messiah would be not only David’s son but God’s Son.

At the Table we commune with the only one who ever perfectly loved God and his neighbor, God’s Son the Messiah. He considered us his neighbors and did for us what only he could do. He died for our sins, and rose again for our justification, and now freely offers himself to us in all the fullness of his saving grace.