I invite you to open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 22. Matthew chapter 22 will be in verses 34 through 40. Matthew 22 verses 34 through 40. Last time I got to preach, we talked about the Great Commission. If you're not familiar with the Great Commission, the gist is that Jesus, after his resurrection, before his ascension to the right hand of the Father, told his disciples to go and make more disciples. And we talked about how that carries on for us today as our mission as Christians. Today we look at what's often called the Great Commandment. You'll see that phrase is taken straight from the text. The great commandment, it will be familiar to many of you, possibly even if you're not someone who normally comes to church. You may have heard some of the words of these verses before, but today we'll look at Matthew 22, verses 34 through 40. Scripture says, but when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test 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 first commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. This is the word of God. Now we're jumping into a random passage, so I want to give you a little bit about what's going on a little bit more broadly. We're in the New Testament, so this is the time that Jesus is walking the earth, he's going around teaching. This is the Gospel of Matthew, so Matthew is one of Jesus' disciples, sometimes called Levi. He was a former tax collector who had become a follower of Jesus. And he writes the book of Matthew primarily to show us that Jesus is the promised Messiah of the Old Testament. If you read through Matthew over and over again, he quotes the Old Testament, and he's like, and this is Jesus, and this is Jesus, and this is Jesus. Next time you're reading through it, you'll notice that. One of the major themes, though, that Matthew covers is kingdom ethics, kingdom priorities. What shapes our lives as Christians? If we call ourselves follower of Jesus, what do our lives look like? What do we spend money on? What do we spend time on? Matthew covers a lot of that, and in this passage, he hits on it even more. Now we're gonna see several things today. We're gonna see the command, we're gonna see our problem, and we're gonna see the solution. The command, our problem, and the solution. Just looking back through the passage, we'll see the command. Verse 34 says, but when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. Now, if you are not a church person, or if you haven't been paying attention for your 50 years in church, you're like, what on earth is a Pharisee and what on earth is a Sadducee? Pharisees were very religious people, okay? They were seen as the religious leaders. They were the keepers of the law. They made sure that everybody was doing their due diligence. Good church folks, right? Like some of us. The Sadducees were similar to the Pharisees, however, they did not believe in a physical resurrection from the dead. They thought that was totally bogus. Now, my dad taught me a great thing that I'm gonna help you with right here, so you'll always remember about the Sadducees, you ready? The Sadducees did not believe in a resurrection, so they were so sad, you see? It's cheesy, but you'll remember it forever, you're welcome. It says though, it's setting this up, that the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees and they gathered together. What was happening is people were bringing questions to Jesus in this chapter, trying to test him, trying to trap him, trying to make him look like he didn't know what he was talking about, trying to make him look like he was blaspheming. And so far, Jesus was two for two, knocking their questions out of the park. Just on a personal note here, I love sections where they question Jesus, because, y'all, Jesus was not the guy to question. He would shut people down. I don't know that Jesus was sarcastic, but sometimes it reads that way. I like seeing Jesus' answers to people. Here, though, we're gonna find the third question in a series, and it's gonna come from the Pharisees. Verse 35 says, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, notice it says, to test him. So they're continuing this, we're testing him. This idea of a lawyer, it could have been a scribe of the Pharisee. The point is it's someone who knew the law of God. So when this lawyer comes with this question, it's a loaded question, okay? He's trying to trap Jesus. Unfortunately for this guy, Jesus not only knew the law, he kept the law, and oh yeah, he's God, so guess what? The law is his word. Teacher, verse 36. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? Maybe you've had this same question, maybe you've tried to read through the Old Testament before, you try to do your yearly reading plan, you get to February or March, you're in Leviticus and you're going, why on earth do I have to read all of these laws? I know, I've done it too, I get ya. So this guy comes and says, which one's the greatest? Sometimes that's what we want, just boil it down for me. But Jesus is gonna give him the great commandment, which is actually two commandments. Verse 37, and he said to him, this is Jesus speaking to the lawyer, 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 first commandment. The lawyer brings a question to Jesus and Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6.5. When's the last time you quoted Deuteronomy to somebody? Jesus knew it. And so would all Jewish people, even today. You see, this comes from a passage that's really famous, known as the Shema. And that actually is your Hebrew word for the first words that come out of that that say, hear, O Israel. The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And then it says, you shall love the Lord your God. To sum this up, Jesus says, you should love God with everything. Yes, he gives those with all your mind and with all your heart, and you're looking at that and saying, what does he mean by each one of these? His main point here is actually group those together, not to give you certain components. He's saying love God with everything that you are. God should be your first priority. Some people are already offended. They're like, God is my first priority. This is always my test. I've given this to lots of people before. I don't think I've given it here at this church. My test for whether or not God's your first priority. When you sleep at night, assuming you get any sleep at night, if you get to sleep at night, when you wake up in the morning, the first thing you're gonna think is I. You know how I know that? Because you're gonna say, I need to turn that alarm off. Or, I need to go to the restroom. Or, I'm hungry. Or, I can't believe this dog is licking my face. Whatever your thing is, that's how we wake up, right? We start with us. I start with me. But Jesus says you're supposed to love God with everything. Now this goes against our culture a lot though. Because this isn't really Nicholas Sparks romantic stuff, is it? Y'all pray for my wife, Laura, pray for her, because even when we were dating, I was starting pastoring right at the time we started dating, and we had a really serious conversation early on of like, Laura, I think the world of you, I love you, I'm so glad to love you, I'm so glad you give me part of your life. You're always gonna be second at best in my life, because God's gotta be first. They don't make movies about that, right? Some of the women in here are offended right now, like you better never say that. Trust me. It is better for both of you if God is the priority. Jesus says, love God with everything that you are. Notice what he says, though. This is the great and first commandment, which means he's about to give us another one. And he does, verse 39. And a second is like it. The way he says like it, he's saying these are connected. You're not gonna do one without the other. Okay? A second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. So he gives him Deuteronomy 6-5, first time. This time he gives him Leviticus 19-18. Now, if you've quoted Deuteronomy lately, I bet you haven't quoted Leviticus lately. Jesus bringing the heat here, knowing his Old Testament, saying, here are the great commandments. The first is love God. The second is love your neighbor. Now, he told us to love God with everything. He tells us to love neighbor how? As yourself. How do we love ourselves? We already talked about how we wake up in the morning. But you could apply that to almost anything. None of us like doing anything that we don't want to do. Right? None of us like being forced to do anything. None of us like to be inconvenienced. None of us like to be uncomfortable. Do we look out for our neighbors the same way? If we want nice things for ourselves, we want to wear nice clothes, do we want nice clothes for our neighbors? If we want our kids to have the best education, do we want our neighbors to have the best education? Do you see how this quickly applies? Things we prefer for ourselves show our love for ourselves, and Jesus says, love your neighbor that way. Love God first and foremost, and then love your neighbor as yourself. Some of you are like, this is the worst church I've ever been to, this is so cheesy, he's saying love God, love people, we hear this all the time. It's because it's important. Verse 40, notice what Jesus says. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. That's Jesus' way of saying all of scripture hangs on these two things. If you're gonna be obedient to God, you're gonna have to love God and you're gonna have to love people. Got to. If you're not loving God, you're getting it all wrong. If you're not loving people, you're getting it all wrong. Do you love God? Do you love people? Now, I'm not gonna have anybody stand up and say, who thinks they're doing these two perfectly? Because if you stood up, I wouldn't believe you. Because this leads to our problem. You see, the commandment is love God, love people. But our problem, is that we don't do that perfectly. We read this, and we often side ourselves with Jesus and his disciples, right? Like, ha ha, take that, Pharisees. When really, as we read this, we go, oh no, I'm a Pharisee. I'm one who knows this law, and I don't do this perfectly. What can I do? If you say, well, you don't know me. I love God pretty well. Let's just think about that for a second. God says to love them with our whole selves. Some of you are teenagers. Some of you used to be teenagers. Some of us used to be teenagers. It seems like it happens in every generation that two teenagers start to like each other. They go through a talking phase or whatever they call it now. Don't really want to call it a thing. Inevitably, one of the teenagers comes out and says, I want this to be a thing. I want you to be my girlfriend. I want you to be my boyfriend, right? And sadly, what happens in every generation, some of you may have experienced it, the other person will look at you and say, I just wanna be friends. Right? Almost verbatim, that's what gets said. Every generation, there are teenagers in here right now who are like, other people have experienced that? Yes, it's terrible, isn't it? It's awful. When you wanna be more than friends, but they just wanna be friends. God looks at us and says, love me with everything you are, and so many of us look at him and say, I just wanna be friends. I don't want to be that serious, God. I'll take you on Sundays. I'll take you on Easter and Christmas. I'll take you when I'm down and really need to pray, but I'm loving you with everything. I've got stuff I want to do. I've got plans. God as our first priority sounds good on paper, but in practice we wrestle against it, don't we? If that wasn't enough, Jesus also tells us to love people. A lot of times when I talk to people about loving God and loving people, they'll defend themselves that they love God, but when I say love people, everybody's like, yeah, I don't do that that well. Notice it doesn't say, Jesus doesn't say, love your neighbor as long as your neighbor is nice. Or love your neighbor as long as they cheer for your team. Or love your neighbor as long as they vote like you do. Kind of had chuckles at the first of those, and they kind of teared off. Did you notice that? We are to love our neighbors as ourselves. And in another passage in Luke, when somebody says, who is my neighbor? Jesus tells the story of the good Samaritan. Now, I'm not gonna go over that whole story, because that's not the passage we're preaching today. But the point is, the person who is culturally opposite of you is still someone that Jesus is calling you to love. You know what God's word says about what we should do with our enemies? Love them. So whether they're not like you, or whether they're your enemy, or whether they're somebody that's easy for you to like, you're called to love all of them as yourself. Now naturally, we look for ways around this. I'm not just pointing the finger at you. We look for ways around this. I often hear in churches a phrase like this. I'll love them, but I don't have to like them. Some of you are like, but that's okay. No, it's not. Because what we're doing is excusing not loving them and just using some different verbiage to make ourselves feel better about it. Let's be honest, y'all. If we really wanna see, though, whether or not we're loving God and loving our neighbors well, if we really don't think there's a problem, you say, oh no, these are commandments, we'll follow them. I'm telling you there's a problem. Check your calendar and your budget. Better yet, get someone else to check your calendar and your budget. because they reveal who or what we really love. And the people that we're around every day already know what we really love. Some of you may not know, but I'm from Alabama originally. Hate me, love me as you need to, whatever. But in Alabama, there is this other religion that people are very devoted to. And y'all, it is like life or death for some people. We're talking tattoos, we're talking statues, we're talking the whole deal. And this religion is the Iron Bull. Alabama versus Auburn. You think I'm joking. And some of you are like, well, it's Clemson, South Carolina. There's a big rivalry here. I get it. It is a rivalry. It's not like the Iron Bull. It's a religion. And I've met people who are such big Alabama fans or such big Auburn fans that whenever you're around them, it's what they talk about. And in a year when their team loses, they're depressed for the whole next year until they get another shot at it. And I'm only talking about football, because nobody cares about other sports in Alabama. They'll pretend like they do when their team makes March Madness or whatever, but nobody pays attention otherwise. It's football. It's that one Saturday late in the season. And they build their entire lives around it. And they talk about it. And everyone who knows that person knows that that's what they love. What is it in your life that's so evident that you love? What do you think about when you're alone? There's nothing else to think about. What do you naturally gravitate toward talking to? What do you prioritize? Again, look at your calendar and your budget. Where do you spend your time and your money? Because we can say we love God and we love people, but do our lives show that? Now, if you're saying, well, that's not entirely fair, well, let's define love as Scripture does. 1 Corinthians 13, four through seven, love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Do we love God and love people this way? I admit to you folks, I struggle with this. Now, some of us, our problem is we look at this and we say, we misinterpret it completely. We completely miss what Jesus is saying. He says, love God and love people, and we say, well, does that mean if I love God and love people that I don't have to obey the laws of Scripture? We say, as long as we love, we don't have to do all that stuff that Scripture says, right? That's old-fashioned, that's not what we do in our culture today, but that would actually go way beyond what Jesus is saying here and what is said throughout the Bible. Take for instance in Matthew, earlier in this same book, chapters five through seven is a famous sermon of Jesus called the Sermon on the Mount. Listen to Jesus' words in Matthew 5, 17. Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. Now Jesus fulfills all the law. Some laws that he fulfills, like ceremonial laws, that is sacrificing animals, things like that, we don't have to do anymore because he's the one sacrifice for all, right? But moral laws, he actually raises the bar on. You can go check this for yourself. Matthew 5 through 7, it's one long discourse from Jesus. It may have been multiple sections that Matthew put together. but he raises the bar compared to the Old Testament, because this is what people inevitably want to do. If you're here today, you're not so sure about Christianity, people are like, well, what about that stuff in the Old Testament? We don't have to do all that. I always take them to the New Testament. I take them to Matthew five through seven, because Jesus raises the bar. He says, you've heard it said, don't murder. I tell you that if you've hated a brother, you've murdered them. He says, you've heard it said, don't commit adultery. I tell you, if you've lusted after someone, you've committed adultery. Do you see how Jesus raises the bar? He sets the standard at God's perfect holiness. He says, be holy as I am holy. He says, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees, you will not see the kingdom of God. Jesus in John 14, 15 even says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. We say, well, I keep most of the commandments. Isn't that enough? Not if we're gonna be holy like God. Well, let's start simple. Let's go with an easy one. How about gossip? And let's look at it through the lens of loving God and loving people. If I gossip, I'm loving being in the know or being seen as funny more than I'm loving my neighbor. Uh-oh. What about greed? If I'm greedy, I'm loving money more than I'm loving God or my neighbor. And let's not pretend like you have to be rich to be greedy. What about pride? You see how quickly we realize that we have a problem with Jesus' command and our problem is we can't do it? Our problem isn't our own, we can't do this at all. Lord, I wanna love you with everything that I am, but in my flesh I can't. Lord, I wanna love my neighbor, but have you met my neighbor? And also, I'm quick to anger, and I'm irritable, and I don't hope all things. Maybe you have a tendency even to emphasize law or love. You're gonna pick one or the other, but I need you to know that law without love is legalism. It'll become resounding gong. Love without law is relativism, because then you just say what's best for you is what's best for you. Jesus doesn't do these things. He brings together the law and love. He gives us a commandment that tells us to love. He doesn't separate them. Only the gospel. brings law and love together to reveal the majesty of God's holiness and the beauty of his affections for his people. And that brings us to the solution. So the command is to love God and love people. The problem is that we can't. And the solution is Jesus Christ. Keeping these commandments is only possible in Christ, who perfectly obeyed these commands. His entire life, he loved God with everything he was and loved his neighbor as himself, perfectly. Never a stray thought, never a stray word. And he displays this ultimately at the cross. Out of his love and desire to glorify God and saving a people for God's glory, he lays down his life. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And he tells us, greater love has no man than to lay down his life for his friends. And when Jesus says that, he's telling you what he's going to do. That's what he does for us. And he doesn't wait until we've done good enough. While we are sinners, he goes to the cross for us. He displays love for God and love for people perfectly in laying down his own life. Now fortunately, this is the week after Easter, so we know the story does it in there, right? Jesus was dead three days and rose again, proving that he has conquered sin and he has conquered death, proving that he is the solution to our greatest problem. Our greatest problem is that God is holy and we are not. And there's good news, is that if you trust in Jesus, his righteousness is credited to us because he took our sinfulness at the cross. Have you trusted in Him? Have you received a right standing with God that's only possible by grace through faith? I know many of you have. And many of you are now striving, I hope with me, to glorify God with our lives. But how do we do that? 1 John 5, 3 says, for this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. It goes on to say, and His commandments are not burdensome. So you're saying, you spent so much time making us feel the weight of these commandments, now you're saying they're not burdensome? In Christ, they're not, y'all. We have new life in the Holy Spirit. God has given us new hearts. And if his commands seem burdensome to us, look at those commands again through the lens of loving God and loving people. Look at these commands again through the lens of Jesus perfectly loving God and people through his life, death, burial, and resurrection. When we do that, we begin to see that all the commands of Scripture are for the glory of God. All the commands of Scripture are for the good of our neighbors. All the commands of Scripture are for our joy. They're for your joy. When Jesus says, love God, love people, if we say, I don't have time for that, we are passing on abundant life. We're passing on it. And I know many of you, you've tried so many other things in this life to find joy and to find hope and to find peace. And until you look to Christ, you'll continue to come up short. If you have looked to Christ, look to him again today. We gather each week together as brothers and sisters. Why? To stir one another up to love and good works. How do we do that? We remind each other of the gospel. And we're transformed by this gospel. We're shaped to be more like Jesus. We grow in our affections for God and for our neighbors, not because we have become better at loving God, but because he is worthy of our love. And in his grace, he transformed us. We become better at loving our neighbors, not because our neighbors have become more lovely. but because of who God is and what he's doing in us. We recognize they were made in his image. We recognize many are our brothers and sisters in Christ. I've seen this in many of you here. I've seen your love for God and for people, I really have. I've seen people in this church who love God, I've seen it displayed in how you worship. I've seen it displayed in how you respond to God's Word, whether it's being preached or in conversation. We hear and submit to God's Word because we love Him, because He loved us first. I've seen people in this church love their neighbors well. I've seen you give sacrificially of your money and your time. I've seen you love God and people and your willingness to submit your preferences so that we can walk in unity as a church. So much of our problem comes back to these two commandments that Jesus says sums up everything. Often if I find myself in conflict with other believers or if within my heart I know I have conflict with God, I can come back to am I loving God with everything that I am? Am I loving my neighbor as myself? And oftentimes I'm not. But just as we prayed a prayer of confession earlier in this service, and we talked about the fact that Jesus forgives us. There's no condemnation in his name. If you are in Christ, his mercies are new every morning. And what's even better than that? Because of the Holy Spirit in you, I really do think we can love God with everything that we are. I really do think we can love our neighbors as ourselves. Will we do it perfectly and consistently in this life? No. But we'll get glimpses of it, we'll get taste of it. And one day when we are with God, we will do it perfectly. And we will be perfectly satisfied in Him. No longer thirsty, no longer worried, no longer hungry, no longer tired, no longer hopeless. Now, if you look at the slide, it says the Great Commission and the Great Commandment, and you say, well, last time we talked about the Great Commission, which one's more important? The Great Commission or the Great Commandment? Sadly, I've often heard one emphasized over the other in a church. People almost make excuse for mission of bulldozing people out of the way, that, ah, we've gotta make disciples, those people have to wait. That's not really godly. I've often heard people say, we can wait, we don't have to make disciples, these people just really need to be loved. That's not really godly either. We want to do both. The lives of Christians, the lives of us as a church should be shaped by both. We'll be making disciples while we love God and people. We'll be loving God and people while we make disciples. We don't want to leave one out and be disobedient to Jesus. Some of you, when I talk about commandments and I talk about obedience, you feel a weight come back over you. And I want to remind you that His commandments are not burdensome. Every one of God's commandments for His people are for His glory and for our good. They're for our good. And when He commands us to love God and to love people, He does that for our good and for the good of those around us. Is God first in your life? Do you love others as yourself? I hope you do. I hope, by the grace of God and Jesus Christ, you're striving to. If you've been really bad at it lately, we're gonna have a moment to reflect after this sermon, and I pray that at that time you'll confess that to God. Ask him to help you, because you will. If you have someone here that you've sinned against, I pray that you would ask them for forgiveness. Confess your sin to them. Some of you just got really uncomfortable. You're like, did he really expect us to confess sin to each other? I know, crazy idea in a church, right? It may be somebody in your household. If you're here today and you don't know the Lord, all this sounds crazy to you. You say, how can I love God whom I can't see? How can I love neighbors? Have you seen my neighbors? I'd love to talk to you more about that and how you can know Christ and how you can have abundant life in him now and forever. Please pray with me. Father, we thank you that your commandments are not burdensome. We thank you that Jesus tells us to love God and love people because he knows it will glorify God and it'll be for our neighbor's good and then it will be for our joy. I pray that we find that to be true by your grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Father, I pray that Charleston will be a better place because we who are gathered here today will look to you again and will grow in our affections for you. And because of that, we will grow in our affections for our neighbors, whether they know you or not. Father, we thank you for loving us when we didn't love you. We thank you for continuing to love us though we fail you. Make us more like you. We pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen.