23 Oct 10/26/25 Matt. 22:34-46 “All of Your Heart”
10/26/25 Matt. 22:34-46 “All of Your Heart”
I think that most of you know that this is my favorite time of year when we have all our church meetings. I’m only joking. The meetings are good but not all the paper work that goes along with them. Many of you don’t come to these meetings and that is ok but I would like to give you a little feedback from them. Sometimes, in our worlds, we don’t get much feedback. I’m not referring to myself because we can feel your love just about all the time. I’m talking about you folks out there who are in the trenches of life that sometimes get very little feedback for being good Christians. I would like to begin today by thanking everyone for being good followers of Jesus Christ. I know that there is always room for improvement and we will all improve. But I just wanted to take a minute today and tell you that you are doing a great job. There are many times when being a Christian is not easy but you seem to hang in there. Thank you. Today’s Scripture has Jesus giving us the very basics of what it is to follow Him. Let’s see if we can improve ourselves as we break down what it means to follow Jesus.
I know that I have told this story before but it has been awhile. Jeremy Houck tells the story of when he was young. When he was in high school and college, he was really big into the counter culture. He would dress differently, act differently and listen to music that drove his parents’ nuts. He even wore two different colored shoes once just to get a reaction. I remember when I did this a few years ago and only it was by pure accident that I put on a brown shoe and a black shoe. It was dark when I got dressed. Anyway, his mother would shop for him and buy the most outrageous thing in the store and she knew that he would love it.
In college he had a moment of reality. He was attending a rally with some of his rebellious friends when an older man came and stared at them. They figured that he would make some derogatory remark about what the world was coming to and they would reply that Jesus loves us anyway. They were rebellious but they still loved the Lord.
But that is not what happened. Instead he came up to them and said, “Hey, guys, do you want to be rebellious, counter-cultural, unusual, distinct, extraordinary and downright weird?” No one had ever addressed them like that and the man had their full attention. Then he smiled and said, “If that’s what you want, then love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. The world just won’t get it.”
How true that is! I get asked quite often “what does it mean to be a Methodist?” Many people think that it should be about being a Christian and not being just a Methodist. And they are right. However, being Methodist is a little different than being of other denominations. Being a Methodist is about following the two greatest commandments. We love God and then we do something about it. The Global Methodist Church is one of the greatest mission churches in the world. And I am proud to say that they do well in carrying out both of these two commandments.
As we open today’s text, we find that Jesus had once again just silenced the Sadducees. If you remember Pharisees were strict followers of the Law and the Sadducees were Jews who didn’t follow the Law very closely. We don’t have to look very far to find both of these kinds of people in our society. Our Pharisees today demand that we worship in a certain way, we have to confess in a certain way, and we have to take part in their services in a certain way or we cannot be considered Christians. We have whole denominations like this.
Our Sadducees are the approximate 70% of our population who acknowledge that there is a God but have to define God by their own standards. In other words, they, to a varying degree, throw the Bible away and make up a god as they go. And America wonders why God has forsaken them. But God has not forsaken us at all. God has simply left us to do our own devices. If we look at the Old Testament, any time the people were left on their own, they failed miserably until they begged God to return to them. We cannot do anything without God.
I think that our opening story is so fitting in today’s culture. I have stated many times that we are to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ in this world. And when we are, then we are being very revolutionary or just plain weird in some people’s eyes. In larger areas there is the problem of isolation. We isolate ourselves to keep others away from us so we can have privacy. We build fences. I think this is the wrong approach. We should be welcoming to all we meet and this means an invitation into our homes.
I also know out here in rural North Dakota things are different. If I go and visit people in Fargo, I usually have to call first or I might not be welcome. But out in the country, folks are almost insulted if I did that. I’m supposed to drop in. I think this is a complement to these folks. You are always reaching out and being inviting. Even as a church, many are known as a churches that reach out. You try to belong to a church that does things and not just watches things. Don’t ever quit doing this.
As we get back to our reading, a lawyer asks Jesus what is the greatest commandment in the Law. Jesus doesn’t even flinch and replies, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Remember that Jesus is talking to the Sadducees and the Pharisees or the Jewish religious leaders
First I would like you to notice the simplicity of this. God had given Moses the 10 Commandments. From these 10 commandments came 613 more laws. This sounds like our Constitution. Of these 613 additional laws, 365 laws were prohibitions and 248 were directions for living. All of these laws and the future laws to come can be broken down into what Jesus says here. Everything these men had ever lived for was reduced to these few words. This was a crushing blow. Jesus makes it so simple!
But Jesus wasn’t done yet and He asked them, “Whose son is the Christ?” And they answer in a human way when they say that the Messiah or the Christ is the son of David. And to this Jesus says, “If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” He has just quoted their Scripture back to them and they cannot answer. Jesus had just hit their religion with a torpedo and as the Jewish ship was sinking, He threw in a depth charge. These guys had been looking so hard for a mortal man to be the Christ that they had forgotten that he would also be God. We forget this also.
I remember back when I was still in seminary, one of the things that some professors talk about is Jesus and the historical Jesus. They talk about this like Jesus was two people. They refer to the historical Jesus like He was a man, which he was but also at the same time that He was really God according to these instructors. This has always been confusing to me because I don’t see anywhere in the Scripture where there was a separation like this. Jesus Christ was fully human and fully God at the same time, not separately.
Or maybe we should look a little closer to home and examine our own attitudes. We separate Jesus all the time. We have misinterpreted the constitution to say that Jesus doesn’t belong in the government. Jesus has been thrown out of all our schools. In Houston, they tried to get the ministers to turn over their sermons for scrutiny. Recently in Idaho people could face jail time and fines for following the Bible. This old world is broken and is trying to suck us down the drain of sin. And many of us will be taken away with the flow unless we put our anchor in Jesus Christ, who by the way belongs everywhere.
So Jesus is telling his audience and us exactly how to do this. It may be hard to imagine, but the world that Jesus lived in was just as broken as ours is today. He tells them to love God with all their heart, soul and mind. In Deuteronomy where Jesus is getting His text, strength is also added. In these early times, the heart, soul, mind and body were very special places. To make a long explanation short, each of these places was where decisions were made, emotions were felt, and thinking was done. In other words, all of these terms meant sort of the same thing. Jesus was saying the exact same thing in 3 different ways and this was understood by his audience. Today, I would say that we are to love God with all our heart, and all our heart and all our heart. We are to love God with all that we have.
So far, this is pretty easy. Now let’s see just how we are to go about loving God with all that we have. The hard part comes when we have to try to put this into practice. I was at a pastor’s meeting once where they didn’t even begin with prayer until I interrupted them saying we had to have prayer. Sometimes you have to stick your neck out a little but just remember that praying is always the right thing to do and it can be done at any place and any time. When we start to do these types of things, the results will be amazing because any time we are obedient to Jesus, His rewards are amazing.
We not only need to pray all the time but we need to read the Bible and study it in Bible study of some sort. You need to be in regular church attendance. I would like you to think about this in the next few days. God didn’t give us 99 days and on the 100th day we rest. God didn’t give us 30 days and on the 31st day we rest. No, God gave us 6 days and on every 7th day we rest in the arms of Jesus in Sabbath.
This is Scripture 101. If you can’t seem to find time to pray or if you can’t find time to read the Bible, then make time to come to church on a regular, weekly basis. People, who attend church weekly, come to be fed the Word of God and they go away with a peace that you cannot get any other way. This in turn may help you to figure out time for prayer and Bible reading. Come to church and try to achieve inner peace which is one of the things that Jesus gives so well.
I would like to say one last thing about loving God. When you are a stranger and go to a NDSU Bison football game, one of the best ways to blend in is to wear the green and gold colors. People will know that you are for the team and they will accept you on that basis. It is the same way if we love Jesus. People should know we are Christians just by looking at us. If you remember our opening story, it said we are radical, we are different and we are special. We are not like the people around us because we are set apart by the love of Jesus Christ.
This is how different we really are. It has been proven that Christians live longer, are happier and lead more productive lives. This has been proven by science. We are different. We are rebels. I challenge you whether you are in Colfax, or Kindred, or Fargo or Minneapolis or Pakistan, to go out of your way to spread the love of Jesus Christ to anyone you meet. Help tear down the fences that keep Jesus out. The world will be a better place because of each little act of kindness that you do. I know that we cannot save everyone from themselves, but we can sure try.
My closing story also comes from Jeremy Houck as he tells the story of a theological ethics professor who read a letter in class from a parent to a government official. The parent complained that his son, who had gone to all the right schools, done all the right things and was headed for a brilliant career as a lawyer, had gotten himself involved in a weird religious sect. The father continued and said that members of this sect controlled his sons every move. They told him who he could date and who he couldn’t date. They took all of his money. The parent pleaded with the government official to do something about this strange religious group.
Then the professor asked the class, “Who is this letter describing?” What followed was a wild debate about some off the wall cults. The Branch Davidian’s were mentioned, the Jim Jones cult, and the wacko’s who were going to join the spaceship at the tail of Haley’s Comet. Mormon’s and Jehovah’s Witnesses were mentioned. After 15 minutes of discussion the professor called the students back and revealed that the letter was from a 3rd century Roman parent concerned about a group called Christians. That’s right. We have been the radicals for centuries. We live in a really messed up world where you are weird if you are kind and nice. Let your love flow out of you as you go about your everyday tasks. Let everyone know that you love Jesus.
God’s story is one that is alive because we live it all the time. Thousands of books have been written about loving our God. The most important part of this whole lesson today is this: Love the Lord your God with all of your heart and all of your soul and all of your mind. And then love your neighbor. When this happens you will feel the presence of Jesus in your midst. And when you feel Him, life doesn’t get any better. Thank you Jesus for first loving us. Let’s pray.
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