25 Oct 10/27/19 Matthew 22:34-46 “All Your Heart and All Your Heart and All Your Heart”
10/27/19 Matthew 22:34-46 “All Your Heart and All Your Heart and All Your Heart”
I have noticed that sometimes we go along in life and we get very little feedback. I’m not talking about myself as I can just feel the love come from you from the feedback I get. I am referring to you folks out there in the trenches of life who get very little reward for being good Christians. Today I would like to thank everyone (listening) here for being a good follower of Jesus Christ. There is always room for improvement and you will improve. But I just wanted to take a minute today and tell you that you are doing a wonderful job. There are many times when being a Christian isn’t 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.
Jeremy Houck tells the story of when he was young. Actually, this could be a story about me in some ways. 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. 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 down-right 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 understand it.”
How true that is! And how simple! Just a little while ago someone said that they didn’t understand what it means to be a member of a church. He said that he thought that it was all about being a Christian and not just being a member. And he was right to a certain extent. However, being a member of God’s team can be different than being an Evangelical or a Catholic or a Lutheran or Presbyterian. Being a member in any church that I’m involved with is about following the greatest two commandments. We love God and then we do something about it. I know we try to do these things but we can always improve.
As we open today’s text, we find that Jesus had once again just silenced the Sadducees and Pharisees. If you remember from last week the 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. Sadly 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 and 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. 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 many people’s eyes. I think that if you know me well enough, you know that one of my pet peeves is fences around houses even if our house has one. People everywhere are building fences to keep others out. I think that we should be tearing down fences so that we can invite Jesus to come in. It’s called being counter-cultural.
When we were still serving churches I heard this huge compliment from the neighbors in our community. I heard that some people wished their church could be like ours because we were always reaching out and doing something. It is something that we just did naturally. We reached out. But it is something that even our own communities notice that is different. Let’s surprise everyone and reach out and tear down mental fences everywhere.
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.”
First I would like you to notice the simplicity of this. God had given Moses the 10 Commandments. From these 10 commandments the Pharisees and Priests had made 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 to their egos!
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 he is the son of David according to their Scripture. 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.
Our world today doesn’t know how to love anything except ourselves. A few weeks ago I asked that you count the number of times someone said ‘I’ or ‘me’ in a conversation you had with someone you didn’t know that well. How did you do? Or maybe just take a look at the ads on TV or in the newspaper. They are all focused on ‘me.’
Or maybe we should look a little closer to home and examine our own attitudes. How often do we do things because ‘I’ want to, or ‘I’ need to or maybe just because ‘I’ can? A few weeks ago I started to give the ten excuses for “The No Excuse Sunday.” And all ten excuses centered around (parenthesis) “me.” We are selfish beings. We were born into a world of sin. This old world is broken and is trying to draw us down its drain of sin. And many of us will be taken away with the flow unless we put our anchor in Jesus Christ.
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, thinking was done and desires were felt. In other words, all of these terms meant basically 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 our heart or all we have. This is the hard part. Also when we were still serving churches we would have to get ready for our annual meeting of the church where we discussed all sorts of things. Anyway, there was someone once who spoke up and said that we needed to find ways to be reading the Bible more and praying more. I know that the results from this would be amazing because any time we are obedient to Jesus, his rewards are amazing. This person had the right idea!
We not only need to read the Bible but also we need to study it in Bible study. We also need to be in regular church attendance. Sometimes we get people who think that regular attendance is Christmas and Easter. Others have different thoughts. 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 the 7th day we rest in the arms of Jesus Christ.
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 sure to make time to come to church on a regular, weekly basis. The 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. I know this for a fact as I tried for years to find peace on my own. Giving you inner peace is one of the things that Jesus does so well. So the next time you think about sleeping in on Sunday, think about what you are missing. Satan has done his work well in this area as we have a society where anything goes on Sunday. Fight back and attend church because you really cannot afford to miss.
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.
I mentioned this a long time ago but this is how different we really are. It has been scientifically proven that Christians live longer, are happier and lead more productive lives. This has been proven by several studies. We are different. We are rebels. I challenge you whether you are in Buffalo, or Tower City, or Fargo or Minneapolis, or Florida to go out of your way to spread the love of Jesus Christ to anyone and everyone you meet. Help tear down their fences. The world will be a better place because of each little act of kindness that you do. I know that you cannot save everyone from themselves, but you can sure try to help the person that is in front of you.
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, and then 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. 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 really 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.
I’m going to stop here because I could go on with this forever. This is one of those stories that is alive telling us what we should do all the time. Thousands of books have been written about loving our God. I cannot do this passage justice the few minutes that we have. 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 heart and all of your heart. And then love your neighbor. When this happens you will feel the presence of Jesus in your midst. And when you feel Him like this, then life doesn’t get any better. Thank you Jesus for first loving us. Let’s pray.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.