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Reading Matthew 22:34-46 where Jesus is challenged on the greatest commandment in the law, and Jesus challenges the Pharisees right back on their knowledge of the prophets. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
Jesus was asked this question, what is the greatest commandment in the law? And the response that Jesus gave was really to show that all of the commandments and the law are important when we understand the text.
Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is committed to teaching sound doctrine and rebuking those who contradict it. Visit our website at www .wutt .com.
Here once again is Pastor Gabe.
Thank you, Becky, and greetings, everyone. I'm not able to hold on to my voice for very long. I've been sick over the weekend. So we'll see how well I do here. But we have one last portion of Matthew 22 to finish up, where the Pharisees make one more challenge of Jesus, and then Jesus challenges them right back.
And so we're gonna read here from verses 34 to 46 out of the Legacy Standard Bible. Here are the word of the Lord. But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together.
And one of them, a scholar of the law, asked him a question testing him. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And he said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
This is the great and foremost commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments, hang the whole law and the prophets. Now, while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question saying, what do you think about the Christ?
Whose son is he? They said to him, the son of David. He said to them, then how does David in the spirit call him Lord? Saying, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies beneath your feet.
Therefore, if David calls him Lord, how is he his son? And no one was able to answer him a word, nor did anyone dare from that day on to ask him another question. And remember, this is all happening on Tuesday of the week that Jesus is going to go to the cross.
So this is the final teaching that he gives in the temple. What's coming up next is the warning about the Pharisees in chapter 23. And we have there what's called the seven woes. And then after that, the Olivet discourse in chapters 24 and 25, which is the final discourse, the last of the five discourses in Matthew's gospel.
So here in chapter 22, we have that final challenge of the Pharisees beginning in verse 34, where it says the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees. If you'll remember back to last week, the Sadducees challenged Jesus on the resurrection and Jesus, I mean, showed them up.
He made fools out of them. Even straight up said, you don't understand the scriptures. So the Pharisees challenged him here on the scriptures and Jesus challenges them on their knowledge of the scriptures.
That's kind of how this particular section is split up into two parts. The Pharisees may not have been all that put off that the Sadducees were embarrassed like that because as I said last week, the Pharisees and the Sadducees didn't always get along, nor did they share the same doctrines.
They even had theological differences. And so hearing that Jesus had embarrassed the Sadducees, Pharisees were like, well, that's fine, but let's see if we can take this opportunity to embarrass Jesus on his knowledge of the word.
And so they asked this question, which is the great commandment in the law? And this came from a scholar of the law as said in verse 35. This is the challenge that comes from somebody who really knows the law.
There's some translations that will refer to this man as a lawyer. This is probably not a lawyer in the sense that we think of a lawyer in an American context, but he was a lawyer in the sense that he knew the law really, really well.
And he taught the law. That was his specialty concerning the Old Testament was to know the law. So he asked Jesus, which is the great commandment in the law? And Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
Now, that's not one of the 10 commandments, right? You might expect with that question that that's the kind of answer that Jesus is going to give. Which is the great commandment in the law? So surely Jesus is gonna draw from one of the 10 commandments and say this one is the greatest, maybe the first of those 10 commandments.
I am God, you'll have no other gods before me. Maybe that's the greatest commandment. But his quote, because that's an Old Testament reference there, his answer, you'll love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.
That's a quote. It comes from Deuteronomy 6 .5. This is in the Shema, which begins here, O Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one. You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
These words, which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart. So Deuteronomy 6 .5 is what Jesus is quoting there. And then the next line, he says, this is the great and foremost commandment. But then he says, the second is like it.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Well, that is also not one of the 10 commandments. So even the second commandment doesn't come from the 10. It's from Leviticus 19. You shall not take vengeance and you shall not keep your anger against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
I am Yahweh, Leviticus 19 .18. So that's what Jesus is quoting here with regards to the first and greatest commands. It's not even from the list of the 10 commandments. But then he says on these two commandments, hang the whole law and the prophets.
So even though he doesn't explicitly quote from the 10 commandments, he has just said that the whole law is important. The lawyer is trying to ask Jesus, what is the greatest commandment? And Jesus says, well, this one's pretty important.
And you know what? The second one, this one's important. And I tell you what, the whole law points to those two. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself.
And that is the summation of the 10 commandments as well. We refer to the two parts of the 10 commandments as the first and second tables of the law. The first four commandments are vertical commandments.
They have to do with our relationship with God. The next six commandments are horizontal commandments. They have to do with our relationships with one another. So the first commandment, as I said earlier, was you'll love the Lord your God and have no other gods before me.
The second commandment is don't raise up a graven image. The third commandment is don't misuse the name of God. Use the name of the Lord your God in vain. And then the fourth commandment is you'll honor the Sabbath and keep it holy.
Then you have the next six commandments. So that's the first table of the law. The second table, which begins with commandment five, is you'll honor your father and your mother. And then the next commandment, you shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. And you shall not covet. And that's the, there's the 10 commandments right there. But those 10 commandments, the two tables, first and second tables of the law, are summarized in this statement, love God, love others.
So you have the first four commandments that are about loving God. The next six commandments that are about loving one another. And if you do these two commandments, you are keeping all of the law and the prophets.
Jesus is saying on these two commandments, hinge the whole thing. So again, it's like his answer to the lawyer is, all of this is important. You're trying to whittle it down to one or two commandments.
All of it points to these two things, love God and love others. And of course, the Pharisees had lost their perspective on that. So they didn't understand that at all, especially when it came to loving neighbor, they weren't doing well with that.
And then with loving God, it was their own made up doctrines. They were believing it and trusting in the doctrines of man rather than following the word of God. So they had tried to challenge him here and failed epically.
And then to capitalize on the fact that they had just been shown up, Jesus puts it to them and asked them a question about their knowledge of the scriptures. Now, while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question saying, what do you think about the Christ?
Whose son is he? They said to him, the son of David. And he said to them, then how does David in the spirit? So Jesus is saying that the words that David wrote in Psalm 110, that's what he ends up quoting here.
These words that David wrote, he wrote in the spirit of the Lord. This was the Holy Spirit was guiding him to write this. So David is not sharing some sort of opinion. This is the word of God. So he says, how does David in the spirit call him Lord?
Saying, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies beneath your feet. Now, as I said, he's quoting from Psalm 110. This Psalm is quoted more in the New Testament than any other Psalm.
And Psalm 110 begins this way. Yahweh says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies as a footstool for your feet. Yahweh will stretch forth your strong scepter from Zion, saying have dominion in the midst of your enemies.
Your people will offer themselves freely in the day of your power, in the splendor of holiness. From the womb of the dawn, the dew of your youthfulness will be yours. Yahweh has sworn and will not change his mind.
You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek. It's not a very long Psalm. It's just seven verses. But anyway, this is how it begins. All of this pointing to Christ, of course. Yahweh says to my Lord, sit at my right hand.
So how does David call him Lord? Jesus says in verse 45, if David calls him Lord, then how is he his son? Now, it's true that the Messiah is gonna come from the line of David. And we saw at the very beginning of Matthew's gospel, how Matthew had established that Jesus was born in the line of David.
He is the rightful heir to the throne of David. So we know the Messiah will be born in that line. But how is the Messiah the son of David? Again, verse 45, where Jesus asked this question, therefore, if David calls him Lord, how is he his son?
Now, this is the challenge that Jesus is putting to them. Because again, of course, he's gonna be born in the line of David. But how does David call him Lord? A thousand years before he's born, by the way, David pens this Psalm in which he refers to the Messiah as Lord.
Calls one that would be born in his own line, Lord. So the reason Jesus asked this question of the Pharisees is to challenge their notion of who they think the Messiah will be. They think that the Messiah is going to be merely human, that he will be some emancipator, as I had said previously, that he's gonna come and ascend the throne.
It's gonna be an earthly kingdom that we're going to establish. And we're gonna take over this thing, kick out the Herods, we'll kick out the Romans, and Israel will become a superpower again. That's the notion that the Pharisees have of the King who is to come.
And the disciples have this concept in their minds as well, but Jesus is gonna open their minds to understand the scriptures after his resurrection. So because this is their notion of the Messiah, of the Christ, that he's merely human and one born in the line of David, then Jesus asked them this question.
If David calls him Lord, then how is he his son? And again, what Jesus is trying to point out to them is that this Messiah is more than a mere man. Why would David call him Lord if he was just his son that would be born in his line?
This is one who is going to be superior to David, that even David calls him Lord. And this was a confession on David's part in referring to him as God. He is his maker, his king. So yes, born in the line of David, but one that rules over David.
And so David makes the confession in Psalm 110 that he is the Lord. He is both his root and his offspring. And this is what the Lord, this is what Jesus had wanted to bring to the minds of the Pharisees, or maybe silence them, cause them confusion, challenge them in such a way that they would not be able to answer.
They're unwilling to answer. Even if they knew that answer, they weren't willing to give that confession because they didn't wanna think of the one who comes as Messiah as being more than a mere man. Maybe it's because they knew they were gonna have to give confession to Jesus as being the Christ if that was gonna be the case.
So whatever the intention was there, we know the result, verse 46, is that no one was able to answer him another word. They didn't answer the question, nor did anyone dare from that day on to ask him another question.
Now, again, the response that Jesus gave with regards to the question about the law. Again, Jesus shows that all of the law is important and all of the law points us to love God and love others. And by the way, that's not the gospel.
You will see a lot of churches that will use that slogan. They'll say, love God, love others, or we're teaching people to love God and love one another, something to that effect. But that's not the gospel, that's law.
That's straight up law. Love God, love others is law. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news that he died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the grave so that whoever believes in him will not perish under the judgment of God, but our sins are forgiven and we have everlasting life in Christ.
That's the gospel. Love God, love others is not the gospel, that's the law. And if a person believes the gospel, then the fruit in their lives that demonstrates that they've been transformed by Christ and are indwelt by his Holy Spirit, the fruit that shows, that gives evidence to a person being a follower of Christ is gonna be that they love God and they love others.
They love the law and they will keep the law. As the apostle Paul said in Romans 3, do we overthrow the law by this faith? By no means, on the contrary, we uphold the law. So we, as followers of Christ, delight to love God and love other people.
And what does that look like? Well, it's right there in the law. Those two commandments summarize all the law and then those individual laws that we follow would be taking us right back to those main points.
We're either loving God or we're loving one another. You can love God and if you don't love others, then are you really loving God? And you can love others, but not love God, and then you're still breaking the law.
Hell will be the result if you don't repent and turn to follow Christ. And only those who are followers of Jesus Christ truly love God. Because if you love the father, then you'll love his son. If you love the son, you love the father.
1 John 2 .22 says, who is the liar, but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ. This is the antichrist, the one who denies the father and the son. So we know the good word of God that has been given to us in the gospel.
And as the fruit of that gospel that we believe, we need to show our obedience unto Christ. And we know just as David knew that Jesus is the king. He is our Lord. And so we submit ourselves to him, delight to worship him and follow him all of our days.
I think that's as much as my voice is gonna give me for this particular lesson. So I hope that this was important to you, challenging to you and encouraging as well, that we would know Jesus Christ and desire to follow the words of our king.
Heavenly father, we thank you for what we've read here today and I pray that it takes root in our souls, in our spirits, that we live unto Christ today. We put to death those things that are earthly in us and we desire to live holy, upright, godly lives in the present day while we wait for the appearing of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.
We thank you so much for the goodness that you have shown to us in Christ and it's in his name we pray, amen.
Thank you for listening to When We Understand The Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website, www .wutt .com and click on the give tab in the top right corner of the page.
Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study when we understand the text.