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INJ
St Matthew 22:34-46
'Love and David's Lord'
Divine Service
The 18th Sunday after Trinity Sunday | October 7th, 2007
Dear Saints,
There are a few times in the course of the long season of Sundays after Trinity Sunday that the readings from the Gospel take us right into the heart of Jesus' passion week, and today is one of those Sundays. The events recorded in the Gospel reading occurred on Holy Tuesday, two days after Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and two days before His betrayal and arrest.
This is also the last time Jesus is in public teaching. From the end of our Gospel lesson until His arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus is only with His disciples and friends, all His teaching is private. So we have before us Jesus last sermon in public.
And what does He preach about? It is no surprise that it is a sermon about faith and love.
The first part is about love. A lawyer asks Jesus a question about the law: 34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?"
This is the third question leveled at Jesus in a plot by the religious leaders to discredit Jesus. In Matthew 22:15 we read: “Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his talk.”
The first question was about taxes, if it is lawful to pay Caesar. They were had when Jesus asked for the coin with Caesar's image and said, “Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.”
The second question is about marriage and the resurrection. This question is from the Saducees who didn't believe in the resurrection and wanted to show the belief was silly. Jesus again confounds them with the Scriptures.
Then comes the third question, the beginning of our Gospel reading, the question about the greatest commandment.
34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?"
Jesus had this question before, but here it comes as a test. This is another question that stumped the Rabbis. But Jesus again confounds them with His wisdom, quoting two Old Testament passages which serve as a perfect summary of the two tables of the law:
37 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. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."
The entire law is summarized in one word: love. This is what St Paul says in Romans 13:8-10: “Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet," and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”
The Pharisees were experts at complicating the law, spending hours disputing what is legal and what is not, what is permissible and what is not, etc. Jesus is the exact opposite. He cuts through all the complicated jargon and put before us the central teaching of the law: love. What is the Lord's will for my life? Answer: that I love the Lord and my neighbor. It's so simple that no one will say, “I didn't understand what you wanted, Lord.” Love. It's that simple.
This command does what all commands do (this one especially), it accuses us. For which one of us can say that we have loved the Lord our God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind? Anyone? Which of us has loved all our neighbors as we should? Even begun to do this? “No one is righteous, no, not one.” And the simple command to love shows us that.
Now, back to the text, Jesus' answer silences that Pharisees and Sadducees and Jesus' enemies. But Jesus isn't finished; He has a question of His own.
41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, 42 saying, "What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?" They said to him, "The son of David." 43 He said to them, "How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, 44 "'The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet'? 45 If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?" 46 And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.
They have nothing to say. Why? Because Jesus is speaking of the most important piece of theology, and that which they understand the least: Himself. In fact, Jesus in this text is speaking of one of the two great mysteries of our faith: the Incarnation, or Personal Union, the fact that He is both God and man, two natures united in one Person. And Jesus is teaching this sublime fact by quoting the Old Testament, especially Psalm 110:1.
The Pharisees knew the promises in the Old Testament that the Messiah would come from the line of King David (for example 2 Samuel 7:12-16). This is the common understanding, and why people are always calling on Jesus as the “Son of David.” “Son of David, have mercy on me!”
This speaks of the humanity of Jesus, His human nature, His flesh and blood (Hebrews 2:14). But there is more to Jesus; He is more that a man, He is also God. I want you to see this in the text; take a look at Matthew 22:41-45.
Psalm 110 is written by David and is about the Messiah, and in the first verse David calls the Messiah “my Lord.” How could this be? How could David have the Messiah as both his Son and his Lord? You see the trouble? And why this question silences the Scribes and Pharisees? The only answer that makes sense of the text is that the Messiah is both man (the Son of David) and God (David's Lord). And this teaching is at the very heart of the Christian confession. Who is Jesus? We rejoice this morning to be given this answer by the Lord Himself.
And so our Lord's last words to the Pharisees, to the temple, to His enemies, is the word of His two natures, the word that they rejected. Their rejection would become, only three days later, the fuel of Jesus' passion, His arrest, his trials, and His death.
But what does this mean for us? We, after all, have not rejected this sublime teaching of the two natures of Christ. We confessed it already in the Creed, “And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God... who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary And was made man.” [The Nicene Creed]
And the words of the creed we have the answer to our question “What does this mean?” “For us men (that is: all humanity) and for our salvation [the Son of God] came down from heaven.” Jesus takes upon Himself our humanity as the tool of our salvation. In the womb of Mary Jesus now has flesh and blood; flesh for nails, blood to be poured out. He unites our humanity to His divinity so that He might taste death and the wrath of God and hell in our place, that He might bear our sins away from us and that He might bear us, forgiven, to the face of the Father.
That Jesus has two natures is at the very heart of the Gospel. If Jesus was not David's Son and David's Lord, if He were not both God and man, then there would be no cross, no ransom, and no salvation. But He has a human nature and He does all this, suffers all this, in humiliated in all of this for us. For we who do not keep His law of love, who do not love with all of our heart and soul and strength and mind, we are loved, loved by God, by the Father and by His Son Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit. We are loved all the way to death and the grave and then out again and ascended to the right hand of the Father.
Dear Saints of God, rejoice in this teaching of our Lord Jesus. Rejoice all the way to life, for all that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have done and continue to do are for us, and for our salvation. Amen.
And the peace of God which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller
Hope Lutheran Church | Aurora, CO