Sermon Tone Analysis

*Call to Communion*

At the table of Jesus the Messiah, we are surrounded by the love of our God.

At the table, we are called to experience and practice what it is to love and care for one another.

At the table, all conflicts can be set aside as we see and hear and feel God’s bigger picture.

At the table, the most important thing of all, the thing that defines the Messiah and defines us, is love.

* *

* *

* *

* *

*Prayer of Dedication*

 

We bring these gifts to you, Our God, as a sign of our love and devotion.

We pray that your blessing will be upon them and your Spirit will guide their use.

Fill them with your loving power that they might be a conduit of Christ’s peace and a beacon of your compassion for all people.

Amen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Philippians 3:4/b/-14) — You will need a boat anchor (a real one) or a large box with a rope attached.

If you use a box, write “500 pounds” on it.

Place the anchor or the box at the back of the sanctuary.

Gather the children.

As the children go to the front, you go to the back and attach the weight to your leg.

Start moving very slowly toward the front of the Sanctuary, dragging the weight.

*Sometimes, we let things drag us down and keep us from following the way Jesus taught us.

We might think that the mistakes we have made will keep us from God.

We might think we are not good enough to be a Christian.

We might think that everything*

*else can keep us from God.

But Jesus helps us to keep going.

*Ask the children to help untie the weight.

*In Christ, we are freed from what is holding us back.

Let’s pray.*

\\ *The Bible in a Nutshell* by Daniel Richter \\ \\ Matthew 22:34-22:40 \\ \\ Frances bought me a new computer desk and hutch.

Now I’m good with tools and assembly, but as I was putting it together this week.

I had a few problems, I started like I  always do – I open the box and then looked at the instruction manual.

It was for 6 different models and I had problems reading the plans.

Now I did alright, and the finished product looks nice, but I didn’t go about things in what one might call “the right way.”

I stepped back and boiled it down to the essentials and within a few minutes, I was happily working away

 

.

Don’t you wish we could do that with everything in life?

Don’t you wish we could take all of those things that are confusing, difficult to understand, or just overwhelming because of the sheer volume of what we have to digest, take them and boil them down to what’s important, to the basics.

Something that we can grasp and understand and when we can understand something, we’re more likely to accomplish what we need to and to do it well.

\\ \\ Do you ever wish that you could do that with the Bible.

It would be great to get all of the vast Truth and Wisdom of God’s word summed up for us in a few sentences.

What’s the central idea, what’s the most important thing for me to be doing in my life to grow in a relationship with God and to be fulfilling His purposes in my life?

If we could go beyond memorizing and knowing Scripture, which are essential things, to truly understanding the heart of the message, we would be much more effective in our walk.

As we turn back to the book of Matthew and continue to look at Christ’s teaching, we see that He does just this for us in another run in with the Pharisees.

Jesus has just finished telling three stories, the parables of the 2 Sons, the Tenants, and the Wedding Feast.

Each of these stories pointed out the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and we’re told that they are actively looking for a way to arrest Him but they are scared of the people.

So they begin to look for ways to discredit him publicly, to trick him into saying something that would prove that he was not a prophet at all and was certainly not the Son of God.

\\ They sent their disciples first with a question on paying taxes, hoping that they could get him in trouble with the Roman government.

It didn’t work and the Pharisee’s disciples were amazed at His answer.

Next, a group called the Sadducees posed a question.

The Sadducees were a group of men who fancied themselves very religious and, at the same time, they thought they were very intellectual.

These were deep thinkers.

As deep thinkers, they had concluded that God was a nice thought and they would accept that but that there could not be anything beyond this life, there was no heaven or hell.

They carried their perception of reality, of the current visible world, into their belief of the future invisible world, refusing to believe that God could do anything other than what they could see before them in the present.

It was a new belief system within Judaism that was gaining momentum and so to help their cause, they wanted to discredit anyone whose beliefs differed from theirs.

That would include Christ.

They pose their question about the afterlife to Jesus, hoping to reduce the idea of immortality of the soul, of heaven to absurdity.

Jesus wastes little time with these men.

He goes right to the root of the issue and says: A. You don’t know the Scriptures (eternity is a central Truth) and B. You don’t know God.

What they were seeing was just a glimpse of what God was capable of, not the maximum extent of His power and Sovereignty.

He fielded their question and answered with such authority that we’re told that the Sadducees, these deep thinkers, were literally speechless.

\\ I had a friend of mine who was ordained  a few years back.

He told me the oral interview was not going well and he was asked to defend his position on a certain topic with Scripture.

He struggled and hemmed and hawed and was getting frustrated because the men that were questioning him had a different interpretation and belief on this subject.

Finally, in frustration, he said to the pastors on the board, if you guys are so smart, you justify your position with Scripture.

Now, in ordination interview, this is not really a path you want to head down.

Without raising his head, one of the men, a godly man and an veteran pastor, began to quote verse after verse that supported his position.

When he had finished, my friend said that he was completely speechless.

The pastor had spoken truth in such a clear way and with such authority that there was nothing my friend could say.

\\ \\ This is how Jesus spoke to the Sadducees and they had no response.

The Pharisees saw, how Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, and they regroup for another attack.

\\ \\ *Read Matthew 22:34-40*.

\\ 34But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together.

35One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him,

 36"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?"

 37And 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 foremost commandment.

39"The second is like it, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.'

 40"On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets."

\\ In the old days of fighting wars when all of the combat was hand to hand.

If you had suffered a losses, you would retreat, regroup, and have another go at it.

That’s what the Pharisees do here.

Jesus has humiliated them with His parables, He has fielded their questions with authority and ease.

Instead of exposing and discrediting Jesus as a result of these confrontations, the people are getting a glimpse of the power and authority that he has!

So, they regroup and they take another crack at it.

This time they send a lawyer.

An expert of the law, to ask Jesus what the most important commandment was for the people to follow.

The hope was that he would trip himself up with His answer or that He would show an ignorance of the Law that would expose Him as a phony.

We’ve talked before about what these Pharisees had done with the God’s commands and the Law.

They had turned what was to be for their benefit into an impossible system of rights and wrongs that would guilt people into acting a certain way.

They had turned a relationship with God into legalism and the problem with legalism is that the focus is on following laws instead of imitating God.

They had taken the 10 commandments and the first 5 books of the Bible and came up with over 600 rules and regulations that they determined had to be followed in order to please God.

The thing that made it even more confusing, other than having over 600 laws to follow, was the religious teachers couldn’t even determine which of the laws were the most important to follow.

They would often debate which of the laws, was the most important.

They believed that if you obeyed many of the heavier, more important laws, some of the smaller, less important ones, could be overlooked.

\\ \\ Kind of like saying I stop at stop sign and red lights therefore I can drive a little faster the posted limit.

The system of laws the Pharisees had created was something like this.

Each one wanted to concentrate on certain laws so that they could have that outer holiness; they would look good for others.

So, they debated which laws should be worked harder at, which were the most important.

\\ \\ Well, Jesus answers their question and instead of being tripped up, Jesus’ answer encompasses all of God’s Law and God’s revelation to the people over the years.

Jesus gives us the essential of the OT.

He says: Love God.

That’s the most important, and love people, that’s right there with it.

All of the Law, those things that God commanded His people to obey, not the things the Pharisees had added, and all of the Prophets, those revelations from God spoken and recorded by men, were summed up in these commands.

He literally says that the Scriptures hang on these commandments.