Question Concerning the Greatest Commandment

In this part of the sermon: Martin highlights Jesus' unhesitating, 'reflexive' response, quoting the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-5) and Leviticus 19:18. He explains that Jesus' answer asserts God's absolute unity…

Martin uses the examples of blinking when a hand passes before the eyes or jumping at a gun's sound to illustrate Jesus' immediate, unhesitating response to the scribe's question, showing His perfect knowledge.

A reflex response is one you don't even think about. Someone passes his hand in front of your eyes unexpectedly and without thinking you blink. Someone shoots off a gun in your ear and without thinking you jump. That's a reflexive response.

17:15 - 17:29 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Sin has so turned you inward upon yourself, that all you do is love yourself. But if your heart goes out in the kind of love that is required to God, then it will also go out in love to those who are made in his image.

The analogy of lights hanging from a roof is used to explain how 'all the law and the prophets' hang on the two great commandments, emphasizing their foundational importance.

And in the parallel passage in Matthew 22 and verse 40, Jesus said, On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets, as surely as on this roof hang all these lights. Jesus said, On these two commandments you can hang all the prophets. So if you are looking for a classification which will help you to range all of the other commandments of God, here are the two structural beams of God's law. Here are the two great commandments, love to God with all the heart, love to one's neighbor as himself.

26:05 - 26:47 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Now that's a penetrating insight, that millions of Israelites, never, never, never came to understand. You read in the prophets, again and again, God condemns his people, for their sacrifices. Because they thought, that …

Martin explains the nature of a 'whole burnt offering' (Holocaust) as totally consumed by fire, symbolizing God's wrath against sin and the worshipper's utter consecration, to highlight the scribe's insight that love is greater than these rituals.

Well, let's stop for a minute. When did the worship of an Israelite, come in a sense, to its most tangible point, of intense expression? Was it not, in the sacrificial ritual established by God, the whole Levitical system? When in a very tangible way, God was saying, that through his appointed priest, and his appointed sacrifice, communion and fellowship, between Israel as the covenant people, and Jehovah as the covenant God, is maintained and sustained, on the basis, of the sacrificial ritual, where the innocent victim is slain. And there, with blood spattering, all the accouterments of worsh...

29:15 - 30:37 Read in full sermon

The point: Examine yourself to see if you have truly loved God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself, acknowledging your failure.

Martin uses the metaphor of an 'ocean of wrath' that God 'scooped up' and 'funneled down upon His Son' on the cross to vividly describe the extent of divine judgment Jesus bore for His people's sins.

My friend, learn from this passage why you so desperately need what Jesus was about to accomplish as He was making His way to the cross and in just a couple of more days would hang upon that cross not a helpless victim before the malice of men, but in terms of His own words, laying down His life voluntarily taking into Himself all the arrows of divine wrath against the sins of His people, welcoming all the billows of that ocean of wrath created by the sins of His people, having God, as it were, scoop up the ocean of His wrath, carry it to Golgotha, and then make a sluice gate with His own hand...

46:44 - 47:54 Read in full sermon

The point: Understand that God's commandments are not steps to heaven but a mirror showing your need for Christ.

God's commandments are described not as 'steps by which you will climb to heaven' but as 'a mirror to show you that you are already on the slide to hell,' emphasizing their role in revealing sin and the need for salvation.

My friend, listen, when you start talking about God's commandments, never think that God's commandments are steps by which you will climb to heaven. They are a mirror to show you that you are already on the slide to hell. But then the second lesson to learn from this passage is this. Learn from Jesus Himself what it is His death for sinners was intended to produce in them.

49:29 - 50:01 Read in full sermon