Our first scripture passage this morning comes from the book of Exodus and is, hopefully, quite familiar to many of us. Exodus chapter 20, beginning with verse 1. If you return with me in your Bibles,
‘And God spake all these words, saying, ‘I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them, for I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt do no work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Wherefore the Lord blessed the seventh day and hallowed it. Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.’
And all the people saw the thunderings and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they removed and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, ‘Speak thou with us, and we will hear, but let not God speak with us, lest we die.’ And Moses said unto the people, ‘Fear not, for God has come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.’”
Our second passage comes from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 22, verses 34 through 40.
‘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 a 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 the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Lord, you have given us your rule, your law, to command us, to guide us, and to keep us in the ways of the righteous. To guard us against the way of the wicked, guard our hearts, guide our minds, and keep our feet on your path according to your holy word. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Following the Exodus from Egypt, Moses led the Israelites, the people of God, to Mount Sinai to worship the Lord and receive further instructions from him. The Lord had chosen and claimed them, the children of Israel, as a people for himself. The Lord had redeemed his chosen people; he rescued them from their bondage to an oppressive foreign ruler who did not respect the Lord.
At Mount Sinai, the Lord gave his people his holy law, the Torah, which they are to obey. There is great similarity to the Lord’s instructions as given to Adam in the garden. In this moment, God had placed Adam in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it, told him that he may eat of any tree in the garden except for one. He was given a purpose and a rule, a law to obey.
There, God established with Adam a covenant of works: obey and live, disobey and die. At Sinai, this covenant was broadened in detail and scope as the Lord renewed it with Israel through their covenant mediator, Moses. It was made to be more exacting and particular, less ambiguous, but much more difficult. Yet it was still just as futile for any ordinary man to keep. All of Adam’s work, his obedience and his worship, were intended to glorify the Lord, the creator and maker of heaven and earth, purposefully, because the Lord alone is God.
But Adam’s failure resulted in the exile of mankind from the Lord’s presence, and our bondage and enslavement to sin. The people of Israel also failed to keep God’s covenant; so they too were banished and exiled from the land, and they were eventually destroyed as a unified people and family.
At Mount Sinai, the Lord came down from heaven to meet with his chosen people. The Lord drew them near to himself; he had brought them back into his presence. So it was necessary for the Lord to instruct his people in how they were to live, interact with others, and worship him. He instructed them in the way of holiness so that they might once more enjoy fellowship with him, continue in his way, and remain in his presence.
In short, at Mount Sinai, God told the people exactly what they needed to do and not do so they might live and remain in his promised land—a land similar to the longed-for garden, a land flowing with milk and honey. The Lord told his people just how he expected them to respond to all the great things which he had done on their behalf—for them to obey and be blessed by living in the land in his presence, or disobey and be cursed, exiled, banished, and die far away from the Lord’s presence.
The covenant at Sinai is the same covenant of works which the Lord had first established with Adam: the same requirement of obedience and the same penalty of death and separation from God. The children of Israel had an opportunity to try again to correct their mistakes or to correct the mistakes of their former Adam, but like Adam, they also sinned and fell short of the glory of God until the second Adam, the last Adam, came and kept the whole law down to the last jot and tittle, who dotted every i and crossed every t.
But let’s fast forward now to Jesus’ day in the Roman province of Judea, some 2000 years ago. The Jewish people believed that they were now finally living in full obedience to the Lord. They felt that they had learned from the divine lessons given them due to their ancestors’ disobedience, idolatry, and sin. They had been brought back to the promised land from their exile in Babylon, had rebuilt the temple, and reestablished what they believed to be correct God-honoring worship.
Yet these Jews living in Judea were not their own masters; they were still held in bondage by foreigners in what should have been their own land and home: first by the Greeks, then the Seleucids, and now the Romans with their Herodian puppets. The Jews believed that they had done and were doing all that the Lord required of them. Now they were merely waiting on God to show up and do his part, for him to send them the Messiah to make all things right, right?
Of the many social, political, and religious groupings of Jews in that day, the Pharisees were the most religiously strict Jews. Even though they were not necessarily of the priesthood, they were considered the most devout Jews and the greatest students of the law. They were the ivory tower religious elite types, viewed by the people to consider themselves as being better than everyone else—not because there was anything intrinsically better, but because of the degree of their piety, of their strict obedience to God’s law.
They considered themselves to be righteous under the law; they assumed that they were fulfilling God’s covenant of works. They thought they had it right; they thought they had it all together. Yet even with all of their studying and piety, they still seemed to miss the point of the law, considering it to be a means to an end, a strict taskmaster for their lives and not a joy and a blessing for their relationship with the Lord.
The law was, and is still, very important to the Jewish religion, and it is important to our lives of faith in Christ as well. But the law cannot save us; we cannot ever satisfy its requirement of obedience unto holiness to merit entrance into God’s presence.
The law is like a lock whose tumbler we cannot turn because of our sin—sin which makes us to not fit the lock perfectly because our key is bent and deformed out of shape.
So if the law was not given for us to be saved by, why do we have the law then? The Apostle Paul says that we, as Christians, are not under law but grace. Now this does not mean that the law has been discarded, replaced, or invalidated, or does not apply to us. Paul is just describing our current relationship to the law. The law remains to explain how we are to be holy and obedient disciples and how we are to worship the Lord.
Now the law that which the Pharisees and Jesus were debating in our text is the Hebrew Torah, but the word Torah is complicated in its meaning. It is layered and used for different aspects of law within scripture, so the particular context is always critical to understanding just which Torah is being discussed.
When we read about the law and the prophets in scripture, the Torah first in mind is the first section of the Hebrew scriptures called the Pentateuch, or the five books of Moses. When we read the plain expression of the law, or just have a simple mention of the law of Moses in scripture, this has the same Torah in mind.
Additionally, the entire Hebrew scriptures are commonly but incorrectly referred to as Torah; they are more rightly called the Tanakh, which is an acronym for the three sections of scripture: Torah, Nevi’im, Ketuvim—law, the prophets, and the writings.
Then we understand the law as referenced throughout Psalm 119 to refer to the eternal covenant, this moral law as given to govern our lives as was given to Moses at Mount Sinai. Furthermore, there is also an oral Torah, the oral law, which is referred to as the tradition of the elders in scripture. This Torah is said to have been passed down from God to Moses and to the rabbis down through the centuries as a commentary and explanation of the written Torah.
Today, much of this oral Torah and tradition has been compiled and written down in a book called the Talmud, and the Talmud expands upon Torah and is the explanatory source for all the 613 distinct commandments which all righteous Jews are required to obey.
However, in the Gospels, Jesus himself condemns this expansion upon God’s word as being law-breaking itself, as being following the traditions of men. This is akin to Eve adding and attributing a prohibition on touching the forbidden fruit to God.
So when the New Testament writers speak of the law, they’re referring to the eternal, unchanging law of God which the holy sovereign Lord has always required complete obedience from his elect people—the covenant of works, the moral law.
But I’m sure many of you have read your Bibles and you may be thinking to yourself: what about all those strange rules and regulations found in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy? You know, those rules about clean and unclean animals, the treatment for and treatment of people with various skin conditions, the prohibition against pork? I just ate bacon and eggs for breakfast; am I going to hell for that? Are those rules still the law of God? Must we follow all of those?
Isn’t loving others as Jesus did enough? Must we still be following all those rules? No. Yes, not exactly. May I still eat bacon or pork chops? Yes—see Acts chapter 10 or Mark chapter 7.
And isn’t loving others like Jesus did enough? No, it simply isn’t. There is an ancient and recurring church heresy called antinomianism, coming from the Greek word for law, nomos, which suggests that because of the finished work of Christ, we no longer have to obey the law.
It was the folks believing like that whom Paul was addressing in First Corinthians chapters 6 and 10—those who think that because of our freedom in Christ, we have license to do anything and everything we want without it being considered sinful. People who believe that sin just doesn’t matter anymore because Jesus wrote us a blank check for forgiving everything in his mercy and love.
But that idea is false—that is heresy of the first degree, capital H-E-R-E-S-Y—heresy. Unfortunately, that is what many people believe and put into practice today in our country because that is what is being taught in many church buildings by the so-called liberal or progressive Christians.
Matthew chapter 5, verses 17 through 19, Jesus says, ‘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. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.’
You see, Jesus did not abolish the law; he fulfilled it. He satisfied it and completed its requirements. For all of its intents and purposes, the law remains and is still good for us because not only is it the means by which Christ saved us, but it is also our guide for how we should live.
We are saved by grace because Jesus satisfied the requirements of the law, the terms of the covenant of works. He died justly due to our violations of the law so that we can live by grace. Offering license to sin is not love; endorsing or promoting sinful practices under the claim of Christian freedom, not calling for repentance from sin, not speaking the hard truths about sin, keeps sinners in bondage to sin, enslaved and wrapped up in golden chains.
The law is necessary for us to repent, for without the law we cannot recognize our own sin. Being saved by grace does not free us from obligation to the law, although it frees the redeemed in Christ from the penalty for our failure to keep it. It frees us to obey the law in love instead of fear and terror. The law still guides our lives.
Jesus Christ is the only righteous one, and when we say that we are clothed in his righteousness, when we say that we have been washed in the blood of the Lamb, we refer to our justification by faith in him. This understanding is attributed to Martin Luther—that justification by faith is the article on which the church stands or falls.
When we speak of our justification, we contemplate the divine transaction of double imputation, where all of our sin and guilt were imputed to the righteous one, Jesus, on the cross. All of his righteousness, all of his obedience, all of his holiness, and his good works are imputed to us by God’s grace through faith: trust and dependence on Christ alone, by sovereign grace.
All of our evil deeds, our wickedness, were accounted to the person of Jesus when he paid our just penalty on the cross, while his complete obedience to the Lord is accounted to us by his grace. So despite our regular and frequent disobedience, by our union with Christ, we are made God’s obedient children. The Lord is just according to the law, and the Lord is merciful according to his grace. God is good all the time. Praise the Lord!
But back to the law. Historically, the church has understood the Torah as given to Moses to consist of three distinct forms: moral law, ceremonial law, and judicial or civic law. The moral law is contained in the portion of Exodus which we read this morning and is called the Ten Commandments. The purpose of the moral law is to govern all of our relationships—those with one another and those with our personal relationship with the Lord.
This law is fundamental and intrinsic to our base humanity as bearers of the imago Dei, and this is the rule written on the hearts of all mankind and is what culture calls conscience while denying its divine origin and relevance.
The ceremonial law was given to be the rule of faith and practice for the ancient Israelites, given specifically to govern their personal holiness, their ritual cleanliness, and the required sacrificial rites of atonement and fellowship with the Lord for use in the tabernacle and later in the temple. The purpose of the ceremonial law was to foreshadow the coming Messiah until he arrived, so that God’s people would recognize him when he appeared and understand God’s gracious work of salvation for us.
The judicial law was given for Israel as a political entity, a theocratic state with the Lord as its absolute sovereign, even while they had a monarch ruling on God’s behalf. But ever since at least 70 A.D., Israel has ceased to exist as such a nation. The modern country of Israel is not biblical Israel; it is neither a Jewish state nor is it a theocratic monarchy, for it is not governed by a Levitical priesthood, nor is there a recognized descendant of King David serving as their head of state.
It is a secular state governed by a representative democracy, albeit one populated with a majority of people of Jewish ancestry, consisting of many practicing adherents to the Jewish religion as well as professing Christians of every flavor, and the satanic occupiers of the temple mount.
The judicial law was given to punish and restrict sin among the people, using consequence as a deterrent. But just ask almost anyone incarcerated— even knowing beforehand what the consequences and punishment for their crimes would be, they still did it anyway. Whether they believed they would never be caught or if they just did not care about the consequences, they did it anyway; they broke the law.
This is why, in part, legislating morality or codifying the Christian faith and practice into civil law does not long improve society; instead, it just increases the amount of sin and moral and civic law-breaking. Fortunately, the obligation of the judicial law has since expired according to the Lord’s providence following the destruction of the worldly Jewish nation-state of Israel and the heavenly enthronement of the eternal Davidic King, Jesus Christ, where he now rules over creation until he returns in glory.
Jesus Christ is the lawgiver, our advocate, the judge and jury, and he is our justifier who renders us the verdict of not guilty before the Lord. Also fortunately, the Jewish system of sacrifice has been stopped ever since the temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. by the Roman legions, for Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross satisfied all justice and covered all of our debt of sin as the final complete sacrifice. Jesus fulfilled the ceremonial law; therefore, no further sacrifices are necessary. The shadows of anticipation are removed where the light of the truth shines.
But now only the moral law remains in effect for us. We constantly break this law, especially when understanding it in light of Jesus’ teaching about the law during the Sermon on the Mount, which ended when Jesus finished these sayings.
The crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority and not as their scribes.
See, we are no longer bound to the law’s punitive nature. Even the redeemed break it during every moment of our lives, for we are being sanctified; we are not yet made perfect and spotless in Christ. We still need to repent and ask his forgiveness often. We are sinners redeemed by grace.
The moral law remains to remind us of our need for Jesus, reminding us of our own insufficiency and failures at obedience apart from him, reminding us of our own wickedness and constant need of God’s mercy. The law remains to shepherd us back to the way of the holy Lord who commands our absolute devotion, reminding us to rest on and trust Christ in faith, who is our obedience.
This brings us back around to the question of what is the law we must obey. When Jesus was asked by the Pharisees, ‘What is the greatest mitzvah (or commandment)?’ he said, ‘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.’ But Jesus did not answer them with one of the Ten Commandments; he responded with the first four of them and then he followed up with the final six, completely summarizing and affirming the whole law of God.
These two mitzvah, these two commandments, summarize the totality of the moral law as contained in the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments command how we are to honor and worship the Lord as our first priority and then command how we are to worship and honor him through our interactions with others.
Everything we are to do, everything within our entire being, is to be God’s honoring and done for his glory alone.
So this question from the Pharisees to Jesus was intended as a trap to trick him into both elevating and denigrating different portions of God’s holy word, God’s divine law, by saying or suggesting that one rule was more important than another.
See, ranking God’s Torah or mitzvah would have been as much of a theological impossibility to the Pharisees as it is to us because they also would have affirmed that all scripture is God-breathed when they considered the origin of their law, having been written by the finger of God on the tablets. No rule should have been declared greater or lesser, for they are equal and absolute because the lawgiver is absolute and without compare.
Thus, when Jesus answered them with the two mitzvah, he covered the whole. The first mitzvah, the greatest commandment, is part of the Shema, which is recited by every devout Jew three times daily—first thing in the morning, immediately upon their waking; at evening time when the first three stars come out; and lastly, immediately before going to bed and falling to sleep every single day of their lives ever since their age of accountability. They speak the Shema to fulfill their mitzvah.
The goal, intent, and purpose of this commandment is for the Jew to be focused on the Lord, mind, body, and spirit, their whole self to be entirely devoted to the Lord and his transcendent glory all the time.
Then, as he continued his answer, Jesus said that a second mitzvah was like the first: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ for we are all created in the image of God. We are created to be God’s stewards of the world; we are his representatives on earth, made to rule over all creation.
So when we look at those folks around us, our neighbors, whether strange or similar, the good, the bad, and the ugly, the bold and the beautiful, or the wise and the wonderful, we are to remember that the Lord God made us all in his image—not just the Jews, not just the Christians, but including all the unrepentant pagans in the world.
Doing what is good, what is right and honorable to and for others, possessing the imago Dei, is service to the Lord; it is godly worship, serving him through our service to them—even serving those without faith, those who do not believe on Jesus, for by this service they might come to believe.
When Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, as you did or did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it or do it to me,’ this is what he meant. That golden rule of ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ fulfills the moral law of God.
Serving others is serving the Lord. This was neither a new nor revolutionary idea presented by Jesus; Hillel the Great Rabbi is quoted in the Talmud telling a gentile who asked to be taught Torah: ‘Whatever is hateful and distasteful to you, do not do to your fellow man. This is the entire Torah; the rest is commentary. Go learn.’
So you see, even while the Jews missed the mark of faith in the revealed Messiah, they still got some things right. Jesus showed us what kind of service is expected from us through the demonstration of his entire life and ministry.
Even as the Son of Man came to serve, he came not to be served but to serve. It is in this way we keep God first in our lives—serving others for his sake and glory, living out our faith by acts of service proving our religion true, because the why matters: glorify God, not yourself, by service.
The lowest and most humble acts of service often bring God the greatest glory. Think about Mike Rowe in his TV show, Dirty Jobs—anybody seen that?
Jesus truly did the dirtiest jobs of all. Jesus put on a towel and washed the feet of his disciples, including the ten whom he knew would abandon him in a few short hours, the one who would deny him three times that very night, and the one who had already betrayed him—twelve men who were the most ungrateful and undeserving of our Lord’s kindness but whom Christ gladly served to God’s glory.
Jesus served us—you and me—when he died for sinners on the cross. Jesus told the Pharisees that on these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets, because they are the foundation of the law, the Torah, and scripture as a whole.
The historical books tell us of Israel’s regular cycle of disobedience to the law, their punishments and their repentance and restoration. The prophets condemn Israel’s covenant violations, their law-breaking, calling the people to repent and do what the Lord commands.
The Gospels tell us the story of how God atoned for his people, justifying us through the work of Christ. The epistles again tell us of how we are meant to live lives of holiness in accord with God’s law. Just like Hillel said, the rest is commentary.
After the Holy Spirit regenerates us, after we are born again, then with repented hearts, we await our final restoration. Jesus said, ‘If you love me, keep my commandments.’
The law still matters for us as redeemed sinners saved by grace because our obedience to Christ is how we demonstrate our love for the Lord. Everything we do is to be done for God’s glory alone; everything we do is an act of worship to our holy Lord.
We are commanded to obey him and to love his law, not so that we might receive salvation, but because we have been saved already.
So respond to God’s law by serving God—loving God, serving others, loving others to serve God, by obeying the Lord’s commands. So, love Jesus and keep his commandments. Amen.