The Wisdom of Jesus, by Pastor Ed Evans

Scripture: Matthew 22:34-46

22:34  When the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together,
22:35  and one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question to test Him.
22:36  "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"
22:37  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.'
22:38  This is the greatest and first commandment.
22:39  And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'
22:40  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
22:41  Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question:
22:42  "What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is He?" They said to Him, "The son of David."
22:43  He said to them, "How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying,
22:44  'The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet"'?
22:45  If David thus calls him Lord, how can He be his son?"
22:46  No one was able to give Him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask Him any more questions.

          First it was the Sadducees, those who did not believe in the resurrection, who came after Jesus with their pride of wisdom and rules and regulations and laws.  But when He had silenced them, then it was the Pharisees, in fact, it was a lawyer from the Pharisees who was determined to put Jesus in His place.  They would show Him who had the better knowledge of the scriptures and the law.

          But this son of a carpenter, from the small town in the hinterlands known as Nazareth, so befuddled them they couldn't continue.  And it tickles me to read that last verse in today's scripture: "...nor from that day did anyone dare to ask Him any more questions.

          Not having the whole of scripture and the insights we have today, they didn't realize that Jesus, as God's Word and Wisdom, was and is eternally an attribute of God the Father.  When you or I speak, you cannot separate us from our speech.  In the same way, we speak of Christ as "the Word of God," in other words, God's "speech" in living form.

          We see the power of God's spoken word emphasized through the Old Testament in Psalms 33:6, 107:20, Isaiah 55:11, and Jeremiah 23:29.  Richard N. Longenecker, in his book "The Christology of Early Jewish Christianity," shares with us that "Judaism understood God's Word to have almost autonomous powers and substance once spoken; to be, in fact, 'a concrete reality, a veritable cause.'"

          When we were newly come to Christ, accepting His gift of eternal life on the cross for our salvation, we probably read the opening lines to John's gospel, that disciple who loved his Lord so dearly, without understanding the depth of what John was telling us when he wrote, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made."

          The authority with which Jesus Christ spoke was such that it left no room for questioning, no ground for arguing, no doubt about its authenticity.  And when the Sadduccees and Pharisees tried to trip Him up, He answered them with such finality they were afraid to ask Him anything else!

          If then, the Son of God speaks with such authority in response to the questions of those who don't know Him, don't like Him, and wish Him ill, with how much more love and authority does He speak to You and me through the living word of scripture?

          Notice where Jesus goes in answering the Pharisee lawyer -- asking what he thought was the most clever question to tie this upstart man from Nazareth in rhetorical knots -- Jesus goes not only to the very word of God in His answer, but He goes to the law of love.

          The lawyer teases Jesus with the honorary title of "teacher," asking Him, "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"  For this was a subject argued daily among the most studious, among the best trained of the Jewish rabbi, an old, old bone they gnawed on daily going back and forth.
          And Jesus says to him simply, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.'  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

          Now, wait just a moment.  Any good lawyer will tell you that you should never answer more than the question asks.  There is always the possibility of giving your opponent ground to attack you verbally on another level.  And yet, Jesus, not being at all ignorant of the devices of Jewish debate about the law, answers the question, and then He goes further and talks about the second commandment.  Why did He do that?

          First, it is clear that Jesus could give them all the leeway He wanted to, and they were not coming back at Him with an argument.  He spoke with such a fearful authority, such as they had never heard before, that they were not about to feed that fire again.

          But from what we know of the Pharisees, I believe this tells us that Jesus now went beyond mere discussion and was pointing a finger of judgment directly at the Pharisees.  "Love your neighbor as yourself"; a commandment of God, yes, but a foreign concept to these who stopped to pray publicly on street corners in supposed holiness, who judged other men guilty of the smallest infraction of their "laws", who had created a confusing web of God's law and made being holy a fetish that only they, not God, could reward.

          For if they understood Him at all, they realized there is no other law like this one, no other commandment so far reaching, plumbing to the very depths of human experience; nothing on par with it in any moral codes, no ceremonial regulations; nothing else.  It stands by itself in Leviticus 19:18 as all scripture in a nutshell, the supreme law of human duty. 

          In many of the man-made religions of the earth, we find similar ideas to "do unto others as you would have them do to you," but that is not what this is.  For in phrasing it as He did, God both removed all limits and yet imposed a limit.

          See what wisdom there is standing firmly in this commandment, for it is not limited to those who believe in God, or in Christ, it holds us to a human duty toward every living, breathing soul created by God Almighty.  And yet notice there is a limit, for we are not to worship our neighbor as a creation by the Creator, because the law says we are to love them as we love ourselves.  And we already know we are not to put ourselves above God.  He is first.  He keeps His requirement of us in perspective: love them as we love ourselves.

          And adding emphasis then to God's first two commandments, John documents Jesus' words to us in chapter 13, verses 34-35, going a step further:  "A new command I give you: Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.”

          Again, love one another.  But how are we to love one another?  "As I have loved you...."  How much did Jesus love us?  Enough to give up his life for us.  Enough to suffer for us.  Enough to die in our sins, be buried in a grave, and be resurrected for us.  

          That's some love.  That may be more love than some of us feel we can manage.  But remember that Paul reminds us in Philippians 4:13, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

          It is not in our own strength we are to love others, but reaching out with the hand of Christ, to do His will.  Can we do that?  We must.  For it wasn't Paul who said that, it wasn't Peter or even Moses or Isaiah or even King David from the lineage of Jesus.  No, it was Jesus Christ, the Son of God who loved us first, who says to us, today, tomorrow, and into eternity, "A new command I give you: Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.”

          Amen.