Well, good morning. If you care
to open your Bibles with me to Matthew chapter 22, that's where
our lesson will be from this morning. Matthew chapter 22. Before we begin, let's look to
our Lord in prayer. Our Father, which art in heaven,
holy and reverent is your matchless name. Lord, how thankful we are
that sinful men and women such as we are can come before your
throne of grace and call you our father. And we know it's
only in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. We come pleading
him, pleading his obedience as our only righteousness, pleading
his blood as the only cleansing for our sin. The only way our
sin could be forgiven is in his precious blood. And father, we're
thankful. We come reverently, boldly, reverently
and carefully, but yet boldly, because of our confidence in
our Lord Jesus Christ. And Father, I pray you bless
us this morning as we look into your word. Let us see the Lord
Jesus Christ by faith. Believe him, love him, and cling
to him. While we pray for ourselves,
we pray for your people everywhere who meet together today to worship
you. Father, bless your word. Bless
your people. Pray a special blessing on our
brother Eric, as he's in Danville, that you'd bless him in preaching
and give him traveling mercies to come back home to us. Father,
we pray for our country and our world at this difficult time,
that you would give peace in the land, that you would give
our leaders wisdom to maneuver and use them as an instrument
to give us peace and rest in the land. Father, we pray for
the sick and the afflicted, those who need you especially. They
need your healing power, they need your comfort, they need
your presence. Father, be with your people and deliver as quickly
as it could be thy will. All these things we ask in that
name which is above every name, the name of Christ our Savior.
Amen. We've been studying through Matthew
chapter 22. All of this happens all in one
day. And you may recall that earlier
in the day, the Pharisees sent their disciples along with the
Herodians, and they sent them to try to trap the Lord in his
words, and you remember how they failed. Then the Sadducees, they
came next, they gave it a try, and they failed. Well, now the
Pharisees themselves are coming. They're not sending their underlings,
they're not sending their disciples. The big dogs are coming. The
ranking members of the Pharisees are coming, and they're gonna
give it a try. So we pick up here in verse 34. But when the
Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence,
they were gathered together. And one of them, which was a
lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him and saying, Master,
which is the great commandment in the law? Now this lawyer is
not an attorney, a trial attorney, or somebody that does those kinds
of things. He's a religious lawyer. He's
a student of the law of God, and he's a student of the customs
that the Pharisees added to the law of God. And this is what
he spent his time studying. He spent his time studying the
law. He spent his time studying all the traditions of the Pharisees,
and then going out and telling people how to act, what to do,
what not to do. He looked out for people that
were doing wrong, who were sinning, and he judged them and corrected
them. It just had to be very uncomfortable to be in the presence
of this man. doing this had to make him just
a very self-righteous man. And he comes to the Lord asking
this question about the law, not for information, but Matthew
says to tempt the Lord, to try him, to try to draw the Lord
into a debate. And what he was trying to make
people see is that the Lord Jesus is not as informed about the
law as me. He's not to be trusted to lead
people in religion, you know, like I am. He came to try to
tempt the Lord, to catch the Lord in his words, because the
Lord Jesus just was not legalistic enough for him. You think about
that. The Savior is, he's not going
out around telling people how to live and what to do, what
not to do. That's not what he's doing at
all. And that just did not sit well with this lawyer. And before
I look at the Lord's answer to this man, I want us all to take
a look. at ourselves and heed a warning. Let's not us be this religious
lawyer. And I warn us about this because
the attitude of this lawyer is alive and well in all of us.
The nature of this lawyer is our nature. It's Adam's nature.
It's a legalistic nature. By nature, and see if you don't
think this is true, this is what we want to do. I want to find
out what are the two or three most important laws. But what's,
you know, just two or three most important ones. You know, if
I keep those, I'm gonna feel more, I'm gonna feel more religious.
I'm gonna feel superior, you know, to other people. I know
that nobody can obey all the law of God, but if you just give
me two or three, maybe I can do a better job of keeping those
than other people, and I'll just feel superior to them. I mean,
I know, you know, we can't keep the law and we sin, but now,
if I could just know what's the worst sin, and avoid that, well
then I'll feel better about myself compared to people that commit
this worse sin. I firmly believe this is one
of the reasons that people are so harsh on homosexuals. Now
homosexuality is given in scripture as the opposite of the picture
of marriage between a man and a woman. A marriage between a
man and a woman is a picture of Christ and his bride. It's
a picture of the union of Christ and his bride And that union
produces life. Homosexual union can never produce
life. And that's why it's in scripture.
It's not given to us in scripture to say it's the worst sin. It's
given as the opposite of the picture of the union between
Christ and his bride. It's given as a, as a picture
of false religion. Now, homosexuality, is absolutely
wrong. It's absolutely sinful. I mean,
you just look in scripture and see in civilizations where that's
been prevalent. It didn't last very long. I mean,
it's evil. But now listen to me. Their sin
is not worse than my sin or your sin. See, and to think so, to
think that is the attitude of this lawyer. I don't want to
be that guy, do you? I don't want to be that guy.
People make homosexuality the worst sin And see if you don't
think this is true. It's because of all the sins
you can think of, it's probably the only sin that you're not
naturally drawn to and don't want to commit. So you say, well,
that's the worst. When somebody does that, they're
the worst. It makes me feel superior to
them. That's the attitude of this lawyer. And we ought to
want to avoid that at all costs. Scripture is playing on this.
Sin is sin. Any sin, you can't say it's a
small sin, but what we would think is the smallest sin is
enough to damn our souls and defile our souls. There's no
sin we should ever commit, no sin. But what we want to do by
our nature is categorize sin and say this sin is worse than
this one. And the only reason we want to
do that is we want to feel superior to somebody else. They commit
that sin, I don't, so I'm better. That's so self-righteous. That's
so critical. That's being this lawyer who
came to try to tempt the Lord. And that ought to be enough right
there to make us fight having that attitude. But our Lord did
answer him. And the Savior's answer makes
obvious what is the purpose of the law. It makes obvious our
need for Christ. It makes it so obvious you can't
miss it unless you don't want to see it. Look at our Lord's
answer, verse 37. Jesus said unto him, thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul,
and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment,
and the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor
as thyself. On these two commandments hang
all the law and prophets. Now the Savior says all the law,
all the prophets, all the scriptures that the prophets have written,
All of it hangs on these two commandments. Love God perfectly
and love your neighbor perfectly. If you can do that, if you can
love God perfectly, you can love your neighbor perfectly, you
can keep the whole law, because it all hangs upon that. I mean,
think about it. If you love God, well, you're
not going to worship idols, are you? You're not going to even
worship your own righteousness. I mean, you know, when we think,
oh, this is the worst sin. I don't commit it, so I'm better
than that guy. We're making ourself an idol. You're not going to
worship that. You're not going to trust that
if you love God. You're not going to worship an idol. You're going
to worship God. You're going to trust Him. You're not going to
take God's name in vain if you love Him. You're not going to
try to rest in your own works. You're going to rest in Christ,
our Sabbath, if you love God. And if you love people, You honor
your father and mother, just natural. You don't need a commandment
to do it. You'll just do it because you love them. You're not going
to murder somebody. I mean, what could be more unloving
than murdering somebody? You're not going to commit adultery.
You're not going to lie on people. You're not going to steal from
people because you love people. See, you just don't do those
things to people that you love. All the law hangs on those two
commandments, love for God and love for people. But it's not
just the law, it's the prophets. It's all the scriptures. If you
understand these two commandments, love for God, perfect love for
God and perfect love for your neighbor, you understand all
the gospel. Let me see if I can show you
that. Let's start where the Lord started. Loving God, loving God
with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind. Now loving
God is at the heart of the first two commandments of the 10 commandments.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me. You will not make
any graven images to worship, and you'll not take the name
of the Lord thy God in vain. Like I said a minute ago, you
just can't worship an idol if you love God. See, love's the
key, isn't it? You won't take the Lord's name
in vain if you love him. Now, loving God, loving God with
all of your heart, all your soul, all your mind, you know that
was law long before The Lord wrote that with his finger and
tables of stone. Love the Lord thy God with all
your heart, soul, and mind. Lucifer's sin was not loving
God with all of his heart. Lucifer loved himself. That's
why he tried to take God's throne. You see, his sin was not loving
God. And that was Adam's sin. It's not loving God with all
of his heart. This is why Adam took that fruit. Adam wanted
to be God himself. Adam wanted to make the rules.
He didn't want to have to submit to God. He wouldn't do that if
he loved God. He loved himself more than he loved God. That
was his sin. And notice here what the Lord's
talking about. He's not talking to him. See this, this Pharisee's
talking about what can I do? What, you know, deeds of the
law can I do? Lord's not talking about deeds. He's not talking
about the works of the law. He's talking about spiritual
things. He's talking about the heart, the soul and the mind. He's talking about attitude,
isn't he? What's in the heart. He's not talking about what you
do outwardly. He's talking about what's in
the heart. Because what's in your heart directs what you do.
The Lord's talking about having a perfect nature. A nature that
always loves God perfectly. He's not talking about actions
of the law, is he? He's talking about attitude. He's talking
about the heart and the motive. And that's the issue. That's
the issue. You know, we make the outward
the issue. God makes the heart the issue. Wasn't that what the
Lord asked Peter? Peter, do you love me more than
these? And he wasn't saying, do you
love me more than the other disciples? Do you love me more than these
boats, this fishing, this stuff that you do to make? Peter, do
you love me? Peter, I know you're willing to die with me. You weren't
whistling Dixie when you said, Lord, I'll die with you. I know
you were willing. But Peter, that's not the issue.
Do you love me? Do you love me? Peter, I know
you're willing to go to the ends of the earth to preach. I know
you are. I know you're willing to endure
hatred and persecution. You won't let that sway you.
I know that, Peter. Peter, I know you're willing
to even be martyred upside down, to be crucified upside down because
you don't think you're worthy to die the same way that your
Savior died. Peter, I know you're willing to do all that. But Peter,
here's the issue. Do you love me? Do you love me? And I ask you and me the same
question. We may never bow down to an idol of stone, but the
question is, do you love God? Do you love God with all of your
heart? That's the issue. You may give your offerings,
and you do. This is a giving congregation. You bring an offering,
but here's the question. Do you love God perfectly? Do
you love God perfectly? You tend to services faithfully. You work hard in the service
of God's kingdom. You are fine, moral people. Fine
people. Just the finest you can find
anywhere. But here's the question. Do you love God perfectly? You
may have all of your doctrinal ducks in a row. You may be like
this Pharisee. This Pharisee knew the law. He knew the, all
the, what is it, the numbers and the sub numbers, you know,
the law one, sub number A, point B, whatever, you know. He knew
all that. You may know the gospel that
way. You know all the different points
of doctrine of the gospel. You may lead this congregation.
You may lead in preaching and teaching. You may lead the congregation
in prayer. But here's the question. Not
those things that you do. Here's the question. Do you love
God perfectly? Do you love God perfectly? Well,
we look at it that way. Our honest answer has to be no. I don't. I don't love God perfectly.
Now, by God's grace, a believer can honestly say this. I do love
God. Absolutely. I love Him because
He first loved me. I do love Him. But kind of like
the man said, Lord, I believe. Help thou mine unbelief. Lord,
I love you. Help my lack of love. Cause me to love you more. And
you say, but, you know, that's kind of unfair. In this flesh,
we can't do anything perfectly. And we can't, can we? We failed.
And you have to say, we failed on this one. No, I don't love
God perfectly. Remember that. We'll come back
to it in a minute. Here's the second thing. The Savior started
with what's most important. Do you love God perfectly? But
secondly, he deals with loving our neighbor as ourselves. And
our neighbor is not the person that just lives next door across
the street. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, our Lord
taught us Our neighbor is anybody that we come in contact with.
Now, we might love people in general. I'd say you do. You
love people. Just generally speaking, you
care about them. It makes you sad to see them suffer or something.
You love people. But the Lord says, do you love
others as you love yourself, as yourself? Let me ask you a few questions.
You're walking down the street or you're driving down the street,
you see somebody standing at a street corner begging. They
got a sign that says they're homeless. You love that homeless
person out there like you love yourself? Do you really? You stop and give them money?
Here's a better question. If you love them as yourself,
how come you don't give them your house and you stand on the street
corner? Do you love them as yourself? Do you love the drug addict as
yourself? Do you cut them some slack like you would yourself?
Think, oh, you know, maybe there are many. I got on this because
the doctor over-prescribed me opioids or something. You make
an excuse readily for yourself. Do you make the same excuse for
them? Do you cut them slack like that? How about the enemy, your enemy,
the one who harms you, the one who goes around murdering your
character and lying about your slander? Do you forgive them? As readily as you forgive yourself.
As easily as you forgive yourself. How about other people's children?
We all love children, don't we? We love babies. Do you love other
people's children like you love yourself? If there's some disaster at school, if there's
a school shooting, if there's a bus wreck, whatever, whose
child are you looking for first? See, we don't love our brethren
like we love ourselves, do we? I'm not even just talking about
our neighbor. How about our brethren? How about the people here in
this room? Do you love them like you love yourself? When it comes
time to get a new car, you buy one for yourself or you buy one
for somebody here. And you say, well, no, that's
impossible. It is impossible. You're exactly right. In this
flesh, that's impossible. And that is precisely what the
Lord's teaching us right here. In this flesh, it's impossible
for us to love God perfectly. It's impossible. It's impossible
to love our neighbor as ourselves. That's exactly what he's teaching. It's because of our nature that
we can't love God and we can't love others. Now, that's a problem. I mean, that poses a real problem
for you and me. All the law of God hangs on these
two commands. We can't keep them. I mean, it's
just impossible. We can't keep them. Then that puts you and
me at hell's doorstep. Because we can't keep them. To
break these is to break the whole law of God. Look at 1 Corinthians
chapter 16. 1 Corinthians chapter 16. In verse 22, if any man love not the Lord
Jesus Christ, let him be anathema maranatha. Let him be cursed
when God comes, when Christ comes back. That's the penalty for
not loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, let him be
damned. Look at 1 John chapter four.
1 John 4, verse 20. If a man say, I love God, and
he hates his brother, he's a liar. For he that loveth not his brother
whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?
And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth
God love his brother also. And if we don't love our neighbor,
we don't love people that we come in contact with as much
as we love ourselves, we don't love God. That's what God's word
says. And we're going to be damned
for breaking his holy commandment. I put this, this puts us in real
trouble, doesn't it? And that is exactly what the
Lord is teaching this lawyer and teaching us by reading, by
reading his answer. The Lord's teaching the lawyer
in all of us. We can't keep this law. It's
impossible because of our sin nature. And, You know, this,
this Pharisee, I'm just confident of this. He assumed he was keeping
the law. He's a student of the law. He's,
he's studying it. He's, he's keep and outwardly
maybe did. I don't know. Maybe he just felt
like if he didn't get caught, he kept it. I mean, I don't know,
but I'm sure this, he felt like he was keeping the law and Lord
showed him. No, you're not. And he did it
in just such brevity of words. He distilled the whole law of
God down to two commandments, which is impossible for the flesh
to keep. Impossible. See, the law is spiritual. That's what's one of the things
that the Lord's teaching us that we don't get by nature. We think
it's all outward, but the law is spiritual. The law has to
do with the heart. The law has to do with our motive,
with our nature. And, you know, I just don't,
I don't think any honest person can, be fooled into thinking
they keep the law. I mean, maybe you could be fooled
into thinking that you keep it outwardly. But now, if we're
just honest with ourselves at all, we know better. We don't
keep it inwardly. We don't keep it in our heart,
in our nature, in our desires. We may not physically murder
anybody. But we sure have thought about
it. Sure have thought about it. Sure have thought. I'd like to
just take a gun and just, the things we'd like to do. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Even murdering
someone's reputation, slandering them, lying about them, we're
guilty. Just thinking about it makes
us guilty. Our Lord said for a man to even
look on a woman, desire her in his heart, is to be guilty of
adultery. You'll notice, I remember when
I was in sixth grade, and it's weird, I thought about this this
week, but when I was in sixth grade, you couldn't do this in
public school today, I don't think, but then you could. You
know, we had to memorize and say out loud to the teacher,
in front of the whole class, the Ten Commandments. Ten Commandments.
And she gave us a little paper on it. And it occurred to me
this week, you know what she put on that paper? Thou shalt
not steal. That's not what the law says.
The law says I should not covet. I should not covet. See, it's
not just taking something that don't belong to you. It's wanting
something that belongs to somebody else that don't belong to you.
It's the desire. The desire makes us break the
law. Just wishing I could do it. That
just shows I love myself more than them. I like to have it
instead of them, you know? Bro. Henry said he was taught, you
know, don't say I want, Ooh, I want that truck or I want that
house. Cause that's coveting. He was
taught, say I want one like it. That's not coveting. You know,
it's, we just, we'd look for any loophole, how to get around
it. You know, my goodness, the law is spiritual. That's what to say. And we, our
flesh cannot obey it. It's just impossible. Or where does that leave us? If we can't earn our righteousness
by our obedience to the law, it's too late, we've already
broken it, where does that leave us? Well, I'll tell you where
it leaves us. We can't keep this commandment.
We can't keep any commandment of God. We need somebody to come
keep the law for us. We need somebody to come who
does love God perfectly. We need somebody to come and
fulfill that picture of that good Samaritan who loves the
poor sinner beating to death down in the ditch. He'll go where
he is and pick him up and redeem him. Clean him up. Clean all
his wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. We need somebody to come
take that poor beggar and fulfill and fully pay all of his debts.
We need somebody to come do that for us. See, we need Christ to
come. We need the Master. We need the
Savior to come and keep the law for us. or else we'll be damned. We need him to come obey the
law for us and give us his righteousness, or we'll never be righteous.
See, this is what the Lord's teaching, and this is what we
try to do every time we preach the gospel, is to preach the
gospel so narrowly that we're shut up to Christ. Preaching
the gospel is preaching the gospel, preaching it right, is preaching
it so narrowly that we see we have no hope but Christ, no savior
but Christ, no righteousness but His righteousness, no sacrifice
but His sacrifice, that the only way we can be accepted is in
Him. And that's what the Lord's teaching
this lawyer and the lawyer in all of us. We can't keep God's
law because it's spiritual. So we're forced to depend on
Christ. Now the Lord commands us to love
one another. He commands us. He commands us
to love one another perfectly. And I know we can't do it. I
understand that. But tell you what we can do.
We can strive for it. We can strive for it. And I want
to close looking at 1 Corinthians chapter 13. 1 Corinthians chapter 13. This shows us how important this
matter of love, love in the heart, love in nature and motive, how
important this love is. First Corinthians 13, though
I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, though I'm just,
I'm, boy, I've got the oratory of preaching, I can just I can
make it flow, I can have all my points rhyme, I can say it
in just, you know, this deep, melodious voice that sounds so
religious and it's easy to listen to. Though I speak with the tongues
of men and of angels, if I have not love, I'm as a sounding brass
or a tinkling cymbal. I'm an annoying sound if it's
without love. Love for God, love for people.
Though I have the gift of prophecy, and I understand all mysteries,
and I have all knowledge, Though I have all faith so that I can
remove mountains. If I have not love, I'm nothing. It's worthless. Though I bestow
all my goods to feed the poor, I give my body to be burned.
If I have not love, it profits me nothing. Now love suffers
long. It's kind. Love envies not. Love bondeth not itself up. It's
not puffed up. It doesn't try to get the, You
know, all the recognition, you know, as opposed to somebody
else. It doesn't do that. If you love somebody, you can
do that to them. You want them to get the recognition. You want
them to have the chief seat. If you love somebody, you bear
along with them. You'll forgive them easily, don't you? Love
does not behave itself unseemly. Seeketh not her own. It's not
easily provoked. Thinketh no evil. Rejoices not
in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things,
believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things,
and love never faileth. But now whether there be prophecies,
preaching, they shall fail. Whether there be tongues and
different miracles and gifts of the spirit, they shall cease.
Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For now we
know in part, and we prophesy in part. We see, but we see through
a glass darkly, don't we? We don't see it all yet. We don't
know now like we're gonna know in glory. These things we think
we know now, in glory we're gonna think, my goodness, I didn't
know nothing. All that knowledge is gonna vanish
away. We know in part, we prophesy in part, but when that which
is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done
away. When I was a child, I spake as a child. I understood as a
child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put
away childish things. When God calls us out of this
flesh, we're gonna put away all these things of the flesh. For
now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face. Now I
know in part, but then I shall know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope,
love, these three. But the greatest of these is
love. And you know why the greatest
of those is love? Because faith and hope, expectation, they won't
be in heaven. Faith and expectation will never
be in heaven. You don't need faith when you
see Christ face to face. You don't have expectation when
you already have everything, do you? But love's sure gonna
be there. Love will sure be there. Then
let's get right acquainted with love. now and make it our goal. Don't you think that'd be wise?
Believe it would. Now that's what the Lord is teaching
the lawyer and teaching the lawyer in all of us. I pray Lord, give
us a heart that would love him and love one another. All right,
Lord bless you.