Sermon Tone Analysis

I praise our God that each of you is here for this installment of our series, “Who is Jesus Christ?”

Over the past two months, we have seen several answers to this question.

Who can remember what event we looked at last week in the life of Christ?

Go ahead, shout it out.

Yes, thank you, we looked at the Triumphal Entry.

And the Triumphal Entry showed us how Jesus Christ is a great king, but how the people misunderstood what He had come to earth to do.

We discovered that Jesus did not come to earth to establish a physical empire for His subjects.

No, He created a spiritual empire in which all of His subjects would be blessed with eternal life.

And this week, Jesus speaks to these same crowds about what is most important in life.

Have you ever met those guys that are in their forties, and all they can talk about is how they won the district championship their senior year of high school?

As if, somehow, the defining moment of their lives was a victory more than twenty years ago.

I really want to ask them what on earth they are living for.

And that’s the question I ask you this morning.

What is really important in your life?

What inspires you to get up each morning?

Maybe another way to view this question, “What do you want people to say about you at your funeral?” Do you want people to say, “I tell you what, that old boy sure could throw a pigskin?”

Or, “She always drove the nicest cars, didn’t she?”

This morning’s Bible passage tells the story of when a group of Pharisees approached Jesus and asked Him what the most important thing was in His life.

And if Jesus comes out and says what His number one rule of life is, I think we would do well to pay very close attention.

And so, if you are not already there, I invite you to turn to Matthew chapter twenty-two, and we will be reading verses thirty-four through forty.

So again, Matthew 22:34-40.

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

Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked Him a question, tempting Him, and saying, ‘Master, which is the great commandment in the law?’ Jesus answered unto him, ‘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.

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

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

Let’s pray together.

This morning, the title of my sermon is, “Jesus: The Demonstrator of Love.”

And this passage basically breaks down into three segments.

The first segment is the introduction, where the stage is set for this epic question.

The second segment is where Christ answers their question by saying what the most important commandment is, and then the third segment is where Jesus gives them a bonus answer by telling them His number two commandment.

Sound good?

All right then, let’s begin.

Let’s start off by seeing what is going on in verse thirty-four of our text.

Verse thirty-four reads, “But when the Pharisees had heard that He had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together.”

In this verse, Jesus is approached by a group of Pharisees immediately after Jesus had successfully answered a question from the Sadducees.

And this begs the question, “Who on earth are the Sadducees?”

But before I can answer that question, you need to understand the political climate of first-century Israel.

In Jesus’ day, there were at least six sects of people that were vying for the peoples’ loyalty.

The closest parallel that we would have to these religious sects would be political parties.

But instead of having two political parties that are constantly bickering back and forth, the Jewish people had at least six main groups of people that wanted their loyalty.

There was one group that was essentially a guerilla army that wanted to dethrone the Roman people.

There was also a group of people who were basically monks that lived in communities out in the desert.

And then there were the Sadducees and the Pharisees.

The Sadducees were like the liberal Protestants of the New Testament world.

I mean, sure, they liked the Bible and everything, but as soon as the Bible started talking about miracles, they would shy away.

In fact, the Sadducees denied that miracles took place, and they especially denied the chief of miracles, resurrection from the dead.

And in the passage immediately before the passage we are studying, Jesus successfully answers a sarcastic question from a group of Sadducees about resurrection from the dead.

And so that is the context of this verse.

The Pharisees would have been extremely pleased that Jesus put the Sadducee party to shame, because the Pharisees did believe that people could be raised from the dead.

And you know that old adage, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend?”

Well, that mentality lasted about two seconds with the Pharisees, because look what happened in verses thirty-five and thirty-six.

“Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked Him a question, tempting Him, and saying, ‘Master, which is the great commandment in the law?’”

So in this verse, the Pharisees sent forward a lawyer to ask Jesus a question.

And just like today, a lawyer was an expert in the law.

But unlike today’s lawyers, this lawyer was an expert in the Law of Moses.

Most likely, this lawyer would have had the entire law of Moses committed to memory.

And thinking that Jesus was just some carpenter from Nazareth, the Pharisees put forward their best lawyer, so that they could once and for all show that Jesus was not nearly as intelligent as they were.

To the common people watching in the crowd that day, this probably would have seemed like a modern day David and Goliath.

No doubt the people would have recognized this lawyer as a top authority in all things concerning the law.

And when this lawyer approached Jesus and asked Him what the most important law was, everyone there knew that Jesus was being set up for a trap.

Because, you see, in those days, there was a major debate going on about what the most important law was.

Some thought that the most important laws were the laws about cleanliness.

Some thought that the most important laws were the ones about murder.

And believe it or not, there were members of the Pharisees who believed that the most important law was the one that stated that they must wear cloaks with exactly four tassels on them.

And so when they asked Jesus what the most important law was, they were trying to entangle Him in their endless debate about which of the laws were the most important.

And just so you know, there are a lot of laws.

And in the Law of Moses, there are two basic types of laws.

There were the laws that told people what to do, and the laws that told people what not to do.

And there were exactly 248 laws that told the people what to do, which was fascinating because by the Pharisees’ count, there were exactly 248 parts of the human body.

And there were exactly 365 laws that told the people what not to do, which is interesting because there are 365 days in a year.

So the Pharisees would attempt to do the 248 positive laws with all 248 members of their bodies, and avoid the 365 negative laws 365 days out of the year.

And the two types of laws added up to 613 laws, which is the exact number of letters in the Ten Commandments in the Hebrew language.

All of that to make the point that Jesus was being set up for a trap, and the Pharisees were eagerly anticipating how He would mess up with this question.

But in the next verse, Jesus Christ says what He thinks is the number one greatest commandment in all the law.

Commandment #1

Look at what Jesus says in verses thirty-seven and thirty-eight of our text.

“Jesus answered unto him, ‘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.’”

While the Pharisees were expecting something about the kosher laws or the laws about cleanliness, our Savior cut to the heart of the matter by saying that the greatest law is to love God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your mind.

Jesus pulled this law from Deuteronomy 6:5, which I’m going to read to you now.

“And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”

And that passage that Jesus quoted from goes on to say that our entire lives need to revolve around keeping that commandment.

That passage commanded the Israelites to hide that law in their hearts, and to teach it to their children night and day.

Deuteronomy six says that we need to think about this law when we lie down at night and when we wake up in the morning.

As a matter of fact, they even had to wear a copy of this law on their hands, and on their foreheads.

Recently, Lydia and I were in a jewelry shop so that we could have her anniversary ring repolished.

And as I was trying to listen to the jeweler explain the repolishing process; my attention was drawn to a Jewish man sitting behind me talking to another one of the jewelers.

This Jewish man had a wrist watch that was made of very costly materials, and this watch had some Hebrew writing ornately engraved into it.

And the jeweler asked what the writing said.

And guess what, it was this exact same law from Deuteronomy chapter six!

At least one Jewish person took the verse very seriously that said to bind this law upon his hand!

And even though Deuteronomy six makes it very clear how important this law was, the Pharisees of Jesus’ day were so absorbed in all of their petty debates, that they had missed the big picture of what the law was all about!

They couldn’t decide if they needed to focus more on the tassels on their cloak or on the way they prepared their dinners, when they were neglecting the fact that they needed to love God above all else!

And while I do have some applications to draw from this, I want to keep moving for now, and talk about the second commandment that Jesus gave them.

And so…

Commandment #2

For this commandment, let’s look at verse thirty-nine of Matthew chapter twenty-two.

“And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

I love how so often in the gospels, Jesus answers a question that the people didn’t ask.