---

Psalm 90:1–6, 13–17 • Deuteronomy 34:1–12 • 1 Thessalonians 2:1–8 • Matthew 22:34–46

The theme for this Sunday is Jesus is God’s love in human form. The psalmist calls forth the lovingkindness and faithfulness of God. In comparison to the Creator’s eternal glory, humans are weak, faulty, and short lived. The psalmist asks the Lord to give his favor, to enable God’s people to rejoice rather than only grieve their afflictions. Deuteronomy tells the story of Moses’ final days. The Lord has a close, face-to-face relationship with Moses. Through Moses, God keeps his promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, bringing Israel to the promised land. But in the end, the Lord shows Moses the promised land from a distance. He allows Moses to die without ever setting foot in it. Moses is a great prophet, who does great deeds. But Joshua now leads Israel in his place. In the Gospel passage, the Pharisees approach Jesus. They ask him which was the greatest commandment in the Law. Jesus answers, quoting the Scriptures. He says it is to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind. He says the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. Then Jesus asks them who the Messiah is the son of. They say he is “the son of David.” Jesus shows them how David, in the Spirit, called Christ (the Messiah or Anointed One) Lord or Adonai. Then David said the Lord (YHWH) raised this Lord (Adonai) to his own right hand. In this way, Jesus challenges their beliefs about who the Messiah is: If David calls him “Lord”, how is he his “son”? In the New Testament passage, the apostle Paul shares his concern and love for the believers in Thessalonica. He reminds them of how he and his coworkers shared the gospel with them in sincerity and humility amid great opposition. He and his coworkers spoke and acted in order to please God, not man. They also lovingly shared their own lives.

Reminder: This introductory paragraph is intended to show how the four RCL selections for this week are connected and to assist the preacher prepare the sermon. It is not intended to be included in the sermon.

How to use this sermon resource.

---

Jesus Is God’s Love in Human Form

Matthew 22:34–46 ESV

Wherever we live, we have regulations and laws which limit, guide, or aid our actions and behavior. Often, we don’t even realize how many regulations and laws are applicable to us. We may simply run into them and find we have a problem.

An example of how many laws may be applicable to us simply because of where we live is the California Civil Code. It contains 3,710 unique sections each containing dozens of statutes. These address the rights and obligations of US citizens in the state of California. And that is just the state code. Each city and county has their own list of laws that regulate their citizens. [You may wish to use similar information related to your own location and context.]

Compared with 3,710 laws, the writings of Moses (the Bible books of Genesis through Deuteronomy) contain only 613 commands. There are 248 which are positive commands, stating what a person should do. And there are 365 commands which are negative, stating what a person should not do. It is obvious that one would need to be very attentive to ensure that every command was correctly kept.

In Jesus’ day, the scribes or legal experts debated about which of these Mosaic laws (laws of Moses) were the most important. Some of these laws were considered less important or lighter. Others were considered very important, with serious consequences.

There were scribes who believed the law about fringes on the garments was most important. Others were certain that failing to wash correctly was a crime worthy of death. At the heart of these debates was one question: How do we determine which Mosaic laws are most important?

In our passage for today, Jesus is asked this question by a lawyer or scribe. The lawyer isn’t genuinely interested in Jesus’ answer. Instead, he wants to trip Jesus up and get him to say something that will enable the authorities to arrest him. But Jesus has something else in mind that is more important. Let’s read today’s passage:

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?” 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.” 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. Matthew 22:34–46 ESV

Notice how Jesus completely changes the direction of the conversation. Jesus doesn’t focus on specific laws or criteria for deciding which law is most important. Instead, Jesus summarizes of the Law and Prophets (the entire Old Testament). And he says this summarization is directly related to who he is. He is the full expression of God’s love. Jesus is God’s love in human form.

Misdirected Priorities

The law given to the ancient nation of Israel, the Mosaic law, was a description of what it looks like to live in a covenant love relationship with their God. This covenant relationship was established by God with Israel as he brought the people out of slavery in Egypt.

For the last couple of months, our sermons have centered on the nation of Isreal. God brought them across the Red Sea to Mount Sinai. There he invited them into a covenant relationship. He would protect and provide for them. They would respond with gratitude, worship, and faithful obedience. He invited them to make this covenant with him, which was affirmed by sacrifice.

God provided Israel with a means of living in covenant relationship with him as imperfect human beings. He gave them his law.

Three Sundays ago, we talked about  God giving the Israelites the Ten Commandments, which are a core part of the Law of Moses. The Israelites had spent generations living as an enslaved community. They now have to learn how to live as God’s priestly nation. The Ten Commandments were given as a way for God to begin to create his kingdom community.

Part of this law was intended for civil order — this provided ways for them to live as a nation under God’s rule. Another part of this law had to do with how they worshiped God. Another dealt with how they handled their personal life. These laws described how they were to live in right relationship with God and each other.

Over time, God built his relationship with Israel. He cared for them as they wandered in the wilderness. He provided them bread from heaven (manna) and water from the rocks. He kept them safe and brought them across the Jordan River into the land he had promised them.

There, God enabled them to drive out the other ungodly nations, and they settled in the promised land. They built cities, planted farms, and eventually chose kings to rule over them in God’s place. One of the greatest kings of Israel was King David. He loved God, and God promised that David’s descendants would continue to reign over the nation.

Sadly, ancient Israel did not keep their part of their covenant with God. Their kings often led them astray. The Israelites often worshiped the gods of the other nations. They adopted patterns of behavior that reflected those of the nations around them including practices like child sacrifice. They did not treat one another with respect and kindness. They neglected the poor and needy. And they did not obey the laws they were given. They were unfaithful to God.

Ancient Israel and her sister nation, Judah, often experienced distance in their relationship with God. This was due to their disobedience. Invasion, oppression, famine, and sickness resulted as they did life on their own apart from God. Painful consequences came with not living in loving ways with God and with one another.

In the end, God allowed his people to be exiled from the land he had given them. The northern tribes, Israel, were taken over by Assyria and sent away into other lands. The southern tribes, Judah, were taken captive by the nation of Babylon.

Eventually, King Cyrus, a Persian king, allowed some of the Israelites to return and rebuild their temple. But eventually, the ancient people of Israel, also known as the Jews, lived under the oppressive rule of the Roman government.

Because of this history, the Jewish people of Jesus’ day longed for a Messiah (a rescuer sent by God) to save them from Roman oppression. Between the first century B.C, and the first century A.D. there  were over a dozen would-be deliverers. They want their people to be restored to their former glory. In fact, they want their people to be given an even greater glory, where they will rule over all the nations. This is what   the population believed was predicted in their scriptures (the Old Testament).

Sadly, the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day  focused on the details of the Mosaic law and how it  was to be  kept or not kept. They believed keeping the law perfectly would hasten the restoration of this kingdom.

They missed the whole point of this law.

The whole point is love: life with God that overflows into love for one another. The leaders  missed that center by treating the law as a system of ranked commands rather than as a gift pointing them toward God’s faithful love.

These Jewish leaders did not understand that they cannot love God and others by their own strength. They need a Savior who can bring them into the relationship with God they cannot create for themselves.

Jesus is God’s love in human form, and he is there to rescue them from evil, sin, and death. He is their Savior, but they do not recognize it.

God’s Law is Love

Jesus responds to the lawyer’s question. First, he says, we are to love the Lord with our whole being. Second, we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. He says that these two commands are what the Law and Prophets depend on.

He does this by quoting first Deuteronomy 6:5; “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”  Then he quotes Leviticus 19:18: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus, as the Word and the God of the Old Testament, inspired these verses and is the only one who can rightfully comment on them.

Jesus turns their attention to the purpose of the law. The law describes how we are to live in right relationship with God and with our neighbor and ourselves. We are to love God and love one another as we love ourselves.

“Who Am I?”

And then Jesus turns their attention to himself. He challenges their assumptions about who he is. He asks them a direct question: “What do you think about the Christ — whose son is he?”

These ancient Jews had long awaited “the Christ” or Messiah. The Messiah was “the Anointed One.” He was the one destined by God to rescue them from their Roman oppressors. He was to restore their Jewish nation to glory.

When these ancient Jews read the Scriptures, they saw a human king. This king was one of King David’s descendants. He would deliver them and reign over them forever in peace and prosperity. King David had been a powerful and prosperous king, who God said was a man after his own heart. This man, Jesus, though, does not look anything like King David — how can he possibly be the Messiah?

Jesus quotes from their scriptures. According to the Scriptures, the Anointed One was to be the son of David. But how could the son of David also be their Lord? And even more astonishing — their God called him Lord, which makes the Messiah God. How can a human descendant of David also be God? Jesus asks them a question they cannot answer. If they agree, they deny everything they believe in.

The problem is that their real Messiah, Jesus Christ, is standing right in front of them. They do not recognize him. They reject him as being a fraud and a devil.

They do not see that Jesus is God in human flesh, living out the truth of what it means to be human, purchasing for them an eternal glory while freeing them from sin, evil, and death.

These Jewish leaders only see that Jesus is a human. He is a human who doesn’t act or talk like they think he should. He doesn’t keep the Law the way they think he should.

They do not see who Jesus really is. They do not see that Jesus is the Son of God, who is living out the Law perfectly in his humanity. And he is forming within humanity an ability to live in right relationship with God and other people.

God’s Love Forged in Human Hearts

Jesus loves his heavenly Father in the Spirit and he loves every human being. And he will soon express that love for every human being by laying down his life. He will ultimately allow himself to be crucified, to die so that all may live forever. He will lay down his life so that every human being may be included in his own  relationship with his heavenly Father in the Spirit.

Jesus is the full expression of God’s love. John writes about this when he says:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. John 3:16–17 ESV

The love of our heavenly Father is expressed to us in Jesus Christ. In Jesus, God enters the darkness of our inability to live in right relationship with him and one another. The Son of God takes on a truly human existence and lives as one of us.

Jesus is God’s love in human form. Filled with the Spirit, Jesus lives each moment in right relationship with God and humanity. Though sinless, he enters our suffering and dies the death of a slave and robber on the cross.

Jesus dies, is buried, rises from the grave, and ascends to the Father, carrying our humanity into God’s presence. Now our life is hidden with Christ in God, and the Spirit enables us to share in Jesus’ own love for the Father and for others.

A True Expression of God’s Love

The apostle John reminds us that it is impossible to hate people and love God at the same time (1 John 2:9, 11; 3:15; 4:20). When we hate people, we deny the God who came to us in Jesus, who laid down his life for us on the cross.

The apostle Paul says that “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8 ESV). Jesus is God’s love in human form. Jesus loved those who hated him — how can we hate anyone?

The good news is that God first loved us. In Jesus, God comes to us, meets us in our darkness, and brings us out into the light of his love. He gives us his Spirit so that Christ can live in us and through us, enabling us to love God and love others.

Living in Love

It is much richer and deeper than merely, “Jesus loved us; therefore, we should love others.” Jesus is creating a new kind of humanity, and the Church is meant to be a visible expression of that new humanity.

Jesus does not merely save isolated individuals. He gathers people into a new family. A congregation shaped by Jesus learns to see one another differently. We belong to him, and therefore we belong to one another.

By the Spirit, the Body of Christ, the Church becomes a visible expression of God’s love in the world. The Spirit draws us together into a community of faith, hope, and love. Jesus lives in and through his Church, drawing believers together so they may share his love with others.

In Jesus, we see that love means caring for the poor, the needy, the outcasts, the widows, the orphans, the sick, and the oppressed. To live as Jesus lives is to practice justice, mercy, humility, faithfulness, purity, and generosity — the way we were created to live as truly human beings.

When the Church lives this way, it becomes a sign of God’s kingdom. People who have never known Christ begin to see what his love looks like in flesh-and-blood relationships.

The Father is drawing the world to himself through the Son and in the power of the Spirit. He invites the Church to participate in that mission by embodying the love we have received.

Because of Jesus, we can love God and others as we were created to love. In Christ by the Spirit, we are made truly, fully human. And as his Body, the Church, we become a community of faith, hope, and love in a world that desperately needs it.

Thanks be to God: Jesus is God’s love in human form.

---

Go Deeper Study 1 John 1:1–10; 2:1–15, noting the difference between walking in darkness and walking in light.

---

---

Small Group Discussion Questions