The Great Commandment – Sermon 1: Loving God Series

The Great Commandment – Sermon 1: Loving God

Series: The Great Commandment

Chuck Sligh

July 22, 2018

NOTE: A PowerPoint presentation is available for this sermon by request at chucksligh@hotmail.com.

TEXT: Matthew 22:34-40 – “But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they gathered together. 35 Then one of them,…a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, saying, 36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law? 37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

INTRODUCTION

Do you ever think about all the “things” you do in a given day? Think for a moment about all the tasks—routine and not-so-routine—that you accomplish each day—beginning with the moment you get up out of bed. I read recently where the average person thinks over 50,000 thoughts and accomplishes hundreds of tasks—some minor—some major, every single day. Whew!—It makes me tired just thinking about it!

Thank the Lord, we don’t have to consciously think about everything we do each day. For instance—you don’t have to consciously think about brushing your teeth, or taking a shower, or eating. When brushing your teeth, you don’t say to yourself, “Okay now—up, down, up, down, up, down. Now let’s do the tongue. Now the roof of the mouth. BINGO. All done.” No, you do it without thinking about it.

Sometimes we don’t even think much when we’re driving. Did you ever get way down the road and suddenly ask yourself, “How in the world did I get here?!” You were thinking about other things, but you sure were not consciously thinking about your location minute-by-minute. Your brain was kind of on auto-pilot.

On the spiritual plane, deep down inside you, there is a guiding force driving your life. It’s what drives your spiritual life when you’re spiritually on auto-pilot—by which I mean when you’re not consciously thinking about your walk with the Lord.

What is it that drives you? What makes you tick?

Churches have these driving forces as well. For some churches, it’s TRADITION; with others, it’s FINANCES; with still others, it’s programs, or personalities or the building they meet in.

Today is the fourteenth anniversary of the organization of Grace Baptist Church As I was preparing to start our church, I asked the Lord to show me what should be the overall force that should drive our church. What should be our purpose for existence? What are we HERE for as a church?

I discovered part of the answer in our text. One of the key guiding forces that has defined and guided our church is found in our text.

Let’s look at the context of this passage. Verses 37-39 are what is often referred to as “The Great Commandment.” This passage takes place very close to the end of Jesus’ ministry. In fact, Bible scholars place it on the Tuesday of Passover week of His death, so if this is correct, these are some of Jesus’s last teachings on earth.

The entire chapter of Matthew 22 reveals an attempt by the Jewish authorities to destroy Jesus’s credibility before the crowds by asking Him a series of difficult questions designed to trip Him up and either make him look bad or pit him on one side or the other of the great debates of the day—dividing the people over Jesus. But Jesus, the all-wise Son of God, handled their questions deftly and wisely, in the foiling the Pharisee and the Sadducee plots.

Verses 34-35 tell us that when the Pharisees heard that Jesus silenced their opponents, the Sadducees, by His teaching, they put forth one of their own to try his luck at tripping Jesus up. They chose a lawyer who, though the Pharisees used him as a pawn in their attack of Jesus. was actually earnest and respectful in his question.

There are two clues that he was more than just a set-up man, both from the Gospel of Mark’s version of the story. First, Mark tells us that the lawyer was present when Jesus “reasoned together” with the Sadducees, and Mark tells us he perceived “that he [that is, Jesus] had answered them well” (Mark 12:28). Second, at the conclusion of his discussion with Christ, Jesus said to the man, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” (Mark 12:34).

Back in verse 36 of our text in Matthew, the lawyer posed his question to Jesus.

He said, “Master, which is the great commandment in the law?”

This was not a new question, for the scribes had been debating it for centuries. They had documented 613 commands in God’s Law—248 positive; 365 negative. No person could ever hope to know and fully obey all of these commandments. So, to make it easier, the experts divided the commandments into “heavy” (that is, important) commandments and “light” (unimportant) commandments. A person could major on the “heavy” ones and not worry about the trivial ones.