[Machine transcription]
In the name of Jesus, amen. Dear Saints, the gospel lesson from Matthew 22 is from Tuesday of Holy Week. It’s in some ways the very last throes of Phariseeism. They’ve been arguing with Jesus for years and years, and now that argument has escalated to this point, to where they’ve brought these challenges to Jesus. In fact, before our reading, they brought the taxes trying to trick him that way. They brought the parable of the woman who was married to seven brothers whose wife will she be in the resurrection. That didn’t trap him. And so now this is the final attempt, the question that they bring to Jesus this morning.
What is the greatest commandment? And that’s, in a really profound way, that’s as far as Phariseeism can go. It reaches its limit there. It can only think about what’s commanded and how to organize those commandments and how to think about those commandments and how to live or at least to attempt to live according to those commandments and really how to use those commandments to show that you’re deserving of life everlasting and so forth and so on.
So we get peak Phariseeism here as they bring this question to Jesus, trying to trap him, trying to trick him, trying to find a way to bring an accusation against him that would cause him trouble and give them ground to stand on, to have him arrested and punished and so forth and so on.
But it, like all of their attempts, fails. Well, because Jesus is the one who wrote the law, and he knows best how to teach him. how to explicate it, how to speak of it. He says, you know the commandments.
You should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second is like it. You should love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all of the law and all of the prophets.
And that’s it. There’s nothing left to say. This is as far as the law can go. It’s reached its fullness. Now, it’s profound, and we should think about these commandments not as something in passing. We should meditate on these commands to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength and love our neighbors, ourselves, as a profound explication of what God would have us do.
In fact, we talked about it this morning. This is a beautiful summary of the law. If you were to, my grandma had a, what is it a machine called that takes all the juice out of the thing? A dehydrator.
My grandma had a dehydrator. If you left the Ten Commandments in the dehydrator, they would boil down to these two commandments. To love God and love the neighbor. And if you left them in there too long, if you have like really shriveled up commandment jerky, It’s just this word, love.
Paul says it like this. Remember, we have it at the end of Romans 13. He says, love does no harm to the neighbor. So love is the fulfillment of the law. Everything is contained in that single word, love.
And it’s a beautiful word. It’s a word that compels us. It’s a word that shapes us. It’s a word that drives us. we have this beautiful commandment from God that we are to pour out our lives in service to God and to the neighbor but that word love also kills us because none of us can say that we’ve done it none of us can say that we have in fact loved the Lord our God with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength none of us can say that we’ve loved our neighbor as ourselves It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
It doesn’t mean we’re not always working towards us. But none of us have done it. All have fallen short of the glory of God. And so that command to love in the end puts us to death. I mean, you think about it. When you go to bed at night and you’ve got your checklist there, there’s some things that you can check off the list. Dishes done, you know, trash out sometimes, most of it. Clothes put away, phone calls returned.
But when can we ever lay there at night and say, love the Lord with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength? Check. I love my neighbor as myself. Check. It’s impossible. And so this command finally and at last not only shuts the mouths of the Pharisees, but it shuts our mouths also. this is how Paul says it in Romans chapter 3 when the law has done its work now every mouth is stopped and all will be sinners before God and this is true for you and for me we are in fact sinners who deserve God’s wrath who deserve his punishment who deserve his eternal depart from me all you workers of iniquity into the place prepared for the devil and his demons it’s what we’ve deserved like we confessed already. You’re temporal and eternal punishment.
But dear saints, the conversation doesn’t end there. You almost, when you’re reading the gospel, you get the sense that Jesus is just waiting for the Pharisees to kind of finish, to run out of stuff to say, to get to the end of all their tricks and there’s nothing more for them to do. And Jesus almost, it doesn’t say it in the gospel, but in my imagination, it goes like this. are you guys done? Is that all you’ve got? Well, then I have a question for you.
And Jesus brings up his favorite psalm, Psalm 110. He asks them, whose son is the Messiah? And they answer, David, because the Messiah is the son of Adam and Eve and Noah and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Judah. And then at last, David, 2 Samuel chapter 7, that’s the promise, and they know that he’s going to be a descendant from David. So they say, David, and Jesus says, good, you’ve answered right. So how can David call this son of his, his Lord, saying, Psalm 110, the Lord said to my Lord, sit here at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. How can he be David’s son and David’s Lord at the same time?
Hmm. That’s an addition that I put in there. Now, this is so good. It’s so good for so many reasons. Psalm 110, if you want some homework, look up all the times that Psalm 110 comes up in the New Testament. It’s the third most quoted Old Testament passage in the New Testament. It’s absolutely wonderful. It comes up all over. Peter’s first sermon in Pentecost, Paul’s first sermon in the book of Acts. Jesus is quoting it all the time, and it’s about the ascension, that Jesus ascends to the right hand of the Father, and he sits there on his throne, and under his feet are all of the enemies, sin, death, and the devil, and anything that would hurt or harm us. Psalm 110 is so wonderful, too, because it’s actually not only is it giving us this riddle that Jesus brings to the Pharisees, but it’s already answered a riddle that exists from the Old Testament, which was, how can the Messiah be both king and priest? The kings come from Judah, and the priests come from Levi. How can you be both?
And Psalm 110 answers that old ancient riddle by saying he’s a priest after the order of Melchizedek so that his he’s king from Judah and priest from Melchizedek so it answers that riddle and then gives an even more profound riddle that this Messiah is both the son of David and the son of God the Lord of David and how can you be both it’s impossible to be both both David’s son and David Lord you’d have to have well you’d have to have two natures you’d have to be both God and man at the same time for that to be true. And that’s the point.
That Jesus is bringing this confession of who he is from the Old Testament to the Pharisees. And they, dear saints, have got nothing. They have no idea how to answer this. They have no idea how to address it or how to think of it. They have no idea what in fact to say.
That Jesus is in fact David’s son and David’s Lord but this is not a problem for Jesus who is both God and man all together God and man and he’s all of these things also for us to bless us, to save us to rescue us from our own sin which is shown to us in the law of God, he’s here to save this whole text is so beautiful because where the law stops, where the law is silenced, the voice of the gospel carries on. Where we run out of juice, where we just can’t go any further, where our own failures make us come up short, then the Lord Jesus says, I’m here, and I’m here to save. I’m here to rescue. I’m here to deliver. I’m here to forgive. I’m here to bless. I’m here to die and to be raised on the third day and to bless you with my mercy and my love and my kindness the Pharisees wouldn’t have it in fact they like they always do understand Jesus own confession of who he is to be blasphemous and and and so they they go their way grumbling to to arrest him which they’ll do in two short days.
But we walk away from this conversation, dear saints, absolutely blessed. Because this Jesus is the fulfillment of the law for you. The keeper of the commands for you. The divine Son of God in flesh for you. for your life, for your forgiveness, and for your salvation.
How can Jesus be both David’s son and David’s Lord? Well, he says, that’s not even a problem. Watch this. I’ll be David’s son and David’s Lord and David’s Savior and yours too. So may God grant us this comfort that even as we begin to love God and the neighbor and fall short, we have this confidence that Jesus is for us now and always. May God grant it for Christ’s sake. Amen. And the peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.