Sermon - February 14, 2010
Test
Question
Jer.
31:31-34, I Cor. 13:1-13, Mt. 22:34-40
The Pharisees heard that Jesus had
silenced the Sadducees, the lawyers – a rather amazing feat. So they
were out to out do the legal eagles one better. They approach Jesus to
test Him – really to trip Him up.
If they were playing Jeopardy it would be Law for $1000. They ask, “
Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” There were
six hundred possible answers. Jesus replied,
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your
soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest
commandment. Mt. 22:37. Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 6:4. They would
have known these words well - just as we would recognize “We the
People of the United States .” It is the preamble to the spiritual
constitution of a people God resuced from slavery and raised up for
Himself. Hear O Israel: the
Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your
heart, and with all your soul and with all your strength. These
words were inscribed on their doorposts, and worn in little boxes on
their foreheads, or tied with leather straps to their wrists. Each
Pharisee standing there could have said, “I know this one !” if he had
searched his heart instead of plotting his thoughts.
They would also know that in theory,
at least, to love the Lord with heart, mind, and soul, and strength,
meant to give Him all you've got. Allowing no rivals for your
allegiance, your obedience and your expedience: your loyalty, your duty,
and your immediate response. To the Pharisee, the elite religious leader
and example to his people, loving the Lord meant that you kept the Law
impeccably: all 600 rules without fail. Sound impossible? It was.
So there were offerings and animal sacrifices that had to be
made as prescriptions for every sin possible, and very specific laws
about how those were to be made. This was the religion and the life of
every Jew before the time of Jesus. Apart from animal sacrifices, it
remains the religion of Jews today.
But centuries before the birth of
Christ, one Jew, the prophet Jeremiah in his anguish over his wayward
people was gifted with both vision and insight of the future – a time
when the Law would be superseded by a new relationship with God. He
spoke forth God's own words,
“The time is coming, ' declares the Lord, ' when I will make a new
covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will
not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them
by the hand to lead them out of Egypt because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them.
The old Covenant, the agreement between
God and the children of Israel, “obey my laws and I will be your God
and you will be my people.” wasn't working out. They kept disobeying
God. When they did keep the law, with the exception of a few prophets,
it was out of fear of punishment or retribution. God wanted to change
all that. He wanted His people to know Him, to get up close and
personal, because of His love for them. “They broke My covenant,
though I was a husband to them.”
One of
the things that irks me the most about the quasi religion features on
the History Channel is that God is most often portrayed as being
wrathful, demanding, capricious, and destructive. The Bible affirms in
2 Samuel 22:27 “to the pure you show yourself pure, but to the
crooked you show yourself shrewd.”
So, if that's the kind of God you're
looking for to boost viewer ratings, or advocate independence from
religion, that's the kind of God you're going to find – indeed a very
narrow perception of God.. That was the kind of God people feared in
the time of Jeremiah.
But look at what God promised: “This is covenant I will make with
the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put My
law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and
they will be my people.” That new covenant is Christ. Rather than
having words on stone tablets or lambskin scrolls, God's highest good
for living would be inscribed in both heart and mind – the seat of
emotion, intellect, and decision. Christ living within. And how will
this come about? “because they
will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, “ declares the
Lord, “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins
no more.” God does not overlook sin, downplay or minimize sin.
Sin separates us from God. But if we repent and confess our sin, for
the sake of His Son Jesus, God forgives and forgets that sin. Then
there is nothing to prevent us from access to and personal communion
with our loving gracious God. All the resources of heaven are ours. Now,
that's a God you can love with all your heart, and all your soul, and
all your mind!
But Jesus didn't leave it at that. He
gave the Pharisees a bonus round. He says, “This is the first and
greatest commandment...And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as
yourself. All the Law and the Prohpets hang on these two commandments.”
Once
a theologian asked an astronomer to sum up his science in a few words.
To which the astronomer answered, “Twinkle twinkle, little star, How I
wonder what you are.” then the astronomer said, turn around is fair
play. “Sum up all of theology in
a few words,” The theologian answered, “Jesus loves me this I know, for
the Bible tells me so.”
As
you may remember from your high school geometry, a theorem is an idea
accepted as a demonstrated truth. And a corollary is defined as a
practical consequence that follows naturally.
Jesus silenced his critics by affirming the accepted truth
was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and
all your mind – with everything you've got. But then lifted from their
Scriptures, Leviticus 19:18: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
In other words, loving our neighbor as ourselves follows as a natural
consequence when we truly love the Lord God from the depths of our
being. The Apostle John
forcefully tells it this way, “If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet
hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his
brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” 1
John 4:20
When you transpose music, you take it
from one key to another, for example, from the key of C to the higher
key of F or G. Jesus transposed the law from the key of duty to the
highest key of love - devotion to God demonstrated by our love of one
another.
Jesus demonstrated God's love for us
in many ways when He walked the earth, but ultimately in His death on
the Cross. There we see love by what Jesus did. High on a mountain side,
we see see God's love in who Jesus is.
Jesus takes Peter, James and John to a secluded place up a high
mountain: It's just the four of them, no one else.
We read in Mt. 17:2 There he was transfigured before them.
His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the
light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking
with Jesus. This was a high and holy moment that left Peter, James
and John about dumb-founded because now they saw Jesus for who He truly
is: God. To know that Jesus, God loves me so greatly, so dearly, so
tenderly, and longs for me to love Him, rules out rules, dwarfs laws,
mitigates litigation, and redefines religion as relationship: an
intimate, personal, day by day, moment by moment communion with my
living Lord.
This is the God, the History channel
doesn't show, won't show. God isn't interested in endorsing their
sponsors. God desires only to endorse you as His very own child, by the
Holy Spirit write His will on your heart and mind, uphold and protect
you with His mighty arm, cover you with His tender hand, fill you with
His very own life. The test question is “Will you let Him?' Watch
this. (video clip, “Father's Love”).
http://www.fathersloveletter.com/Media/
(Father's Love Narration Video)
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