The Great Commandment

Moore's Corner Church

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So let's turn to the gospel of Matthew chapter 22. Matthew chapter 22 and the title of this message is love thy neighbor as yourself or the great commandment because that's what we're going to be looking at here and by the way the great commandment or this statement you know love

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God that's the first commandment or the second commandment love thy neighbor as thyself some people believe this is the gospel this is not the gospel this is the law this is really the summary of the 10 commandments so here in Matthew 22 we're going to look at verses 34 through 40 this is where a scribe is asking

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Jesus yet another question this time about the great commandment in the law and Jesus responds by quoting what is called the

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Shema who's heard of the Shema it's sort of like a creed for the old testament

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Israelites Mark's account you don't have to turn to Mark just stay in Matthew but Mark's account

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Jesus gives the full statement which starts hear oh Israel the Lord our

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God the Lord is one and then he gives what is called the great commandment so love

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God and then the second love your neighbor as yourself so what does that mean what does that look like how do we apply that to our lives and then how is this often distorted in the modern day because these things are very much distorted today even in many churches so let's read

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Matthew 22 starting in verse 34 he says but when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the

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Sadducees they gathered together then one of them a lawyer asked him

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Jesus a question testing him and saying teacher which is the great commandment in the law and Jesus said to him you shall love the

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Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your mind this is the first and great commandment and the second is like it you shall love your neighbor as yourself on these two commandments hang all of the law and the prophets so if you've been following along with the messages in Matthew 22 you know that Jesus in this chapter is receiving a series of questions so the

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Pharisees they tried trapping Jesus in his words then the Sadducees a different sect they tried trapping

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Jesus in his words and now we see that a scribe is coming to him and it's the same type of thing they're not asking just to know he's asking to test

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Jesus that's what it says in the text so let's start out with this question who are the scribes because it starts out with a scribe or a lawyer ask

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Jesus this question so the scribes were basically the ones who originally their job was to transcribe

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God's law or the scrolls they would make copies they didn't have a printing press back then so you had to have professional scribes so they spent most of their time copying scrolls transcribing

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God's word but they also as time went on it developed and now they are basically the teachers in Israel they are called lawyers because they are experts on God's law and remember church and state for lack of a better term are mingled together so the religious law and the civil law is all kind of tied up into one thing so today you know we might say that they are the theologians and the judges and the lawyers all mixed up into one office so that's who the scribes were therefore when the scribe asked

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Jesus this question it's not like he doesn't know I mean if anyone knew the answer to this question it would be the scribes so keep that in mind look at verse 36 he says to Jesus teacher so he's calling him rabbi or teacher which is the great commandment in the law now does

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Jesus know the answer well of course he does and here in verse 37

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Jesus like I said quotes from the Shema this is from the book of Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 4 you can just make a note of that if you want if you take notes

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I encourage taking notes that's helpful helps you pay attention not only can you look at some of these points later helps you stay engaged but Jesus quotes the

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Shema from Deuteronomy 6 4 and he says you shall love so what's the great commandment you shall love the

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Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your mind now the reason why this isn't the gospel the gospel means good news if you in order to have a right relationship with God if you had to love

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God with your whole heart your whole mind who has lived up to that raise your hand if you can honestly say

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I love God with my whole heart I know there's people who say that I'm not going to question them but you know

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I think it's safe to say most people at times at least are not really doing that certainly not always loving their neighbor as themselves so this is the great commandment love the

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Lord your God first of all there's one God our Lord is one and then you shall love the

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Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your strength the only variation is this one word mind so from the gospel account to Deuteronomy you see a variation of mind or soul strength it gets mixed up that list but you get the point right love

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God with everything that you have so love God and put him first in other words so let's go to exodus chapter 20 for a moment because I want to look at exodus 20 this is where you find the 10 commandments and as I said the statement love

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God love your neighbor this is really a summary of the 10 commandments so exodus chapter 20

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I think most people know even if it's just because they saw you know the movie Charlton Heston and the 10 commandments you know they most people know that there are two tablets of stone right the first half of the commandments are written on one tablet the second half are written on the second tablet why is that significant because the first half of the commandments are vertical okay they deal with our relationship to God so you know do not take the name of the

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Lord thy God in vain that's vertical that's between us and God the second half of the commandments are horizontal they deal with our relationship with our fellow man's this again is a summary of the law but let's look at the law for a moment the 10 commandments exodus 20 starting in verse 1 it says and God spoke all these words to Moses saying

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I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage and you shall have no other gods before me so love

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God with all your heart all your mind that is a summary of this statement and then in verse 4

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God instructs them not to make any idols or graven images so worship

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God and worship him alone look at verse 5 you shall not bow down to them the graven images you shall not bow down to them nor serve them for I the

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Lord your God am what a jealous God now today the word jealousy usually has negative connotations which yeah there is a bad type of jealousy but what's

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God saying he wants his people the children of Israel really he wants all of mankind to worship him and to be faithful to him alone if you look at it in the

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Old Testament God Jehovah is depicted as the husband to Israel so Jehovah God is the husband

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Israel is the wife and at times in their history the book of Hosea for example

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Israel is said to be playing the harlot it's a type of spiritual adultery where they start worshiping other deities

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Molech and Asherah so God is saying no worship me and worship me only do not bow down to statues do not worship false gods and then

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God makes this statement for those who do worship other deities visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me but showing mercy to thousands to those who love me and do what keep my commandments so the whole point of me reading this and you reading this is to show what it means to love

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God okay love God with everything you have fine what does that look like how do we do that well according to this you show your love for God by obeying

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God by keeping his commandments so this is what love is love isn't just some emotion because you know how that goes people have these emotions of love and they're here today and gone tomorrow people say

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I love you and then fast forward a year all of a sudden they don't love that person anymore that's an emotion emotions change that that's not the divine love that's not love in the ultimate sense this love is a faithfulness towards God and then really a devotion to love and to serve other people but you cannot separate love from God's commandments also

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Jesus in John 14 verse 15 says if you love me do what keep my commandments so Jesus said the exact same thing all right so that with that in mind let's go back to Matthew 22

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Matthew 22 as you're turning there God continues to give the third commandment that we didn't touch on do not take the name of the

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Lord your God in vain so we shouldn't do that then he talks about the Sabbath day and that's something that doesn't get talked about much today

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Christians have always observed the Sabbath principle by setting aside usually

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Sunday as the day for gathering together worshiping God with the church but these are the command yes if you love

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God do what he says I mean sort of like a parent you know your child can say mom dad

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I love you and we love hearing that right but what if they say I love you and then they're just totally rebelling in every area of their life you you would rather have them submitting even if they don't say the word right now ideally you would want both but the the point is you know talk talk can be cheap so anyone can say

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I love God but the question is are you obeying God well this is what this is all the background for this conversation

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Jesus is having with the scribe look at Matthew 22 verse 37 so he asked the question what is the great commandment

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Jesus said to him you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your mind so again this is a summary of the first half of the 10 commandments the

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Shema if you read the full thing it would say there is one God and love God with all your mind everything you got pretty clear

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I think right we got that okay so the question is do people fall short of that yes people do fall short and that's where God's grace comes in so both

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Jesus and the scribe understand all this so look at verse 38

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Jesus says this is the first and great commandment and the second is like it and now