The Great Commandment
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2014 · 26 October 2014
In church is the time when we should listen intently to the Word of God. He confronts us with His truth so we might respond in a way that would be pleasing to Him. No matter in what era, at whatever age, with whatever group of people you may be talking, it is universal that love is the greatest experience possible. However, the love of God is quite a different kind from the love that the world understands. And that is God’s message for us in tonight’s text. Our text is about a divine kind of love, which only God can produce.
Now remember it is still Wednesday of the last week, the Wednesday before the Friday when Jesus is to be crucified. And Jesus is in the temple. He has entered the city on Monday and was hailed as the Messiah, the one who would come to set Israel free. And they hoped that He indeed would be that Messiah. But on Tuesday He went to the temple and 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.
And after spending the night in Bethany at the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, Jesus with His disciples came back to the temple and is spending the day preaching the gospel of the kingdom. Now the religious leaders resented Jesus Christ deeply. The Scriptures say they already were plotting His murder. They hated Him because He taught contrary to their teaching. Reason number two: He was more popular than they were. And thirdly: He demonstrated powers and abilities that they could not even conceive of.
So they attempted to publicly discredit Jesus. Their first question came in verse 15. The Pharisees with the Herodians asked Him whether or not they should pay taxes to Caesar. In their minds they were convinced that He would say no because He represented the law of God and He was not going to acquiesce to the Roman government. And if He did they would send the Herodians to report Him as a rebel leader and the Romans would kill Him. Well we know the answer, “And Jesus said to them, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” So that did not work.
So the Sadducees asked the second question in verse 23; they wanted to know Jesus’ view on resurrection. They make up a bizarre situation and they assume that if He confirms a resurrection He's going to be stuck with this strange situation and the people will see that Jesus has His failings. But again His answer confounds and astonishes them and that test failed too as we saw last Sunday. And that brings us to the third question.
One more time they in verse 35, ask Jesus a question to test Him. This was their last attempt. Verse 34. "When the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Herodians, and then He had silenced the Sadducees they gathered together to discuss the situation.” It is interesting that it says He put the Sadducees to silence; the verb means to gag them. It was used, for example, in Mark 1:25, in silencing a demon. Also in Mark 4:39, of silencing a storm. They had more to say, but they just could not say anything else.
In this exchange of words we see a fulfillment of prophecy. In Psalm 2, in which the Psalmist looks ahead to the Messiah, it says, "the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed." In Acts 4:26, it says, "The kings of the earth stood up and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ." This is exactly what happened. So let us look at the approach of the Pharisees.
We have to know what they have in mind. And this has often not been clearly delineated. It is important that we understand why they asked this specific question. Usually we refer to this passage, we talk about the passage, we isolate it from its context, and we focus on the great 37th verse while we do not understand what they were really after. However when we understand what they intended to accomplish, it makes sense.
Verse 35, "One of the Pharisees, who was a lawyer." Now the word lawyer means a law expert, who knew the law, who interpreted the law and who taught the law. And now he is sent to ask a question on behalf of the rest of the Pharisees. He is an emissary directly sent by the Pharisees who are filled with hatred, but it seems that he is not quite as committed. He is a little more objective and he is attracted to the wisdom of Jesus.
And it says in verse 35, "He asked Him a question to test Him." So he is not totally honest. Now it is essential that we understand what this question is all about. The number one hero in Judaism historically still is Moses! Only Moses spoke to God face to face as a man speaks to his friend. Moses was chosen to be the recipient of the Ten Commandments of God. Moses penned the first five books of the Old Testament. Many of the Jews believe that Moses was in a category above the angels.
The Jews believed that Jesus attacked the teachings of Moses. That is why in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:17, Jesus said, “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.” But they believed that Jesus diminished Moses and they wanted Him to say that. They want Jesus to affirm that His word supersedes Moses so that they can accuse Him of being a heretic who has departed from the faith delivered by the greatest authority, which is Moses himself.
So here is the question in verse 36, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" Now the Jewish law has 613 separate laws, because there were 613 separate letters in the Ten Commandments. That is the way the Jews did things, it is called rabbinic letterism. And they divided that into two parts. They said there are 248 affirmative laws, one for every part of the human body and there are 365 negative laws, one for every day of the year. Then they divided the 613 laws into the light laws and the heavy laws. The light laws were optional and the heavy ones were binding.
So 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. So they thought: if Jesus is trying to establish Himself as the Messiah, He is going to say something to set Himself as the authority. So they ask: just give us the greatest law, and they figure if He has something new to say, it cannot be an old law.
Look at His response in verse 37, "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” What an answer! Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 6:5, He quoted Moses. 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 you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind." That was the most familiar Scripture to all of those Jews.
In a Jewish house you will see a little box, usually with 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 and inside the boxes on his arm and on his head is Deuteronomy 6:4-5. Every Jew at the time of Jesus who was faithful to his religion twice a day had to stop and recite that statement. Jesus affirms His solidarity with Moses.
The word in Deuteronomy 6:5, you shall 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, which 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 senses.
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. The heart in the Hebrew understanding is the intellect, which produces the thoughts, produces the words and produces the actions. It's as a man thinks in his heart that he is.
And the word soul refers best to emotion. For example in Matthew 26:38 it says, "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful." The mind is another way to say might. Might is a very broad word but it has to do with intention and will. It has to do with moving ahead with energy with purpose or with intention or with will. And then 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 with our total being, with all that we are to really love God, that's the great commandment.
God is not looking for people who go through religious ritual, who on the outside can go through the motions. God wants people with their whole being love Him. God loved us with His whole being, Because 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 are to love Him enough to give ourselves, as He said in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” We are to lay down our life for Him. God loved us and gave us His Son, as He showed that love can sometimes happen even where there is no initial reciprocation. So we are to love God not for what we gain but because it is the right thing to do.
God wants more than just our belief. James 2:19, says the devils believe and tremble, 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. No one is ever right with God until his heart and soul and mind and strength manifests love for God.
A person does not become a Christian just because they may believe. A person becomes a Christian when they demonstrate a consuming love for God. Paul said that in Romans 7, the things that I do that are sin I don't want to do, but in me is my flesh and it does these things, but that is not what I choose to do. The essence of what he is saying is I love God and I love what is right and I love what honors God and even though I don't always do it I love it. And even though sometimes I sin, I hate that.
It always starts with a love for Jesus and as a result of that love there is a desire and a commitment to obedience. When Jesus gathered in the Upper Room with His disciples He says in John 14:15, "If you love Me, keep My commandments." 1 John 4:19 says, "We love Him because He first loved us." Ephesians 6:24 says, "Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity."
And so what God desires is that we love Him, and what kind of love is this? It is a love that trusts in God's great power in Psalm 18. It is a love that seeks fellowship with God in Psalm 31:23. It is a love that secures the peace of the soul in Psalm 119:165. It is a love that is sensitive to how God feels in Psalm 69:9. It is a love that loves what God loves in Psalm 119:72, 97 and 103. It is a love that loves whom God loves in 1 John 5:1. It is a love that hates what God hates in Psalm 97:10. It is a love that grieves over sin in Matthew 26:75. It is a love that rejects the world in 1 John 2:15. But above all this love is a love that obeys.
And so we are those that love Him and keep His commandments, and that is the mark of a believer. You show me someone who doesn't have any interest in keeping His commandments and I will show you someone who doesn't love Him and someone who doesn't know Him. We must be forgiven for that and God wants to forgive us for that and that is why Christ died on the cross. He bore on the cross the sin that we should have born. And what sin was it? Primarily it was the sin of rejecting God.
But God also infuses us with an ability in the present and future to love God. And that is what it means in Romans 5:5 when it says, “The love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.” The Spirit of God when given to us in salvation enables us to love God. We can't love the way we are supposed to love, and because we can't love that way, we need enablement, so Jesus comes to pay the penalty, to forgive the sins of the past and to enable us to love God in the future.
Let us look at verse 39, “The second commandment is the same, you shall love your neighbor as yourself." This flows from love for God, when you love God right, you love people right. The Pharisees didn't do that. They used people. They were cruel to people. Witness their treatment of the prophets, and their treatment of Christ. They were not lovers of men. They were haters of men, they stole their money, they took bribes and did all kinds of evil things. They are self-lovers.
So you are to love your neighbor as yourself. In other words I take care of somebody else the same way I take care of me. We are very concerned with our own comfort, with meeting our own needs, we are very concerned that our own goals are met. When I see somebody else hungry do I take care of them with the same speed, the same concern? Do I have the same feeling toward someone else who has a need? When I'm uncomfortable I want to find comfort. Do I have the same feeling for someone else who is in discomfort?
Christianity isn't that complicated, it just says love God and love men. If you love God you will do what He says. If you love men you will do what they need. Verse 40 sums it all up, "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." If you just love God with all your being and love everybody as you love yourself, you don't need any more rules. Everything else is just an explanation of that.
The lawyer who asked the question said in Mark 12, "You're right," and he repeated what Jesus said. And Jesus said to him, "You're not far from the kingdom." You see if you believe this you are not far, but just believing is still one step short of loving Him. The answer was so right and so clear that it says, "No one dared ask Him any more questions."
So the message for us as Christians is, look at yourself, do you really love God? Look in your heart. Do you sense that it is there? And do you love others as well in the name of Jesus Christ? Let us ask for His help so we learn to practice that love in our lives every day, Amen? Let us pray.