An Embarrassing Gift

“An Embarrassing Gift”

(Matthew 22:34-40, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, December 20, 2009)

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.”

I place my hand over my mouth (34-35)

There is something about the love of God that is so deep and wide, so profound, that when we are on the receiving end of it, and we feel our unworthiness, and we have some sense of the cost of it to God, we hardly know what to say. And maybe the best thing is not to say too much. Yet we have an almost instinctive reaction to really outrageous love, knowing that it requires some response, lest we feel yet more unworthy than we already do. We may think, “This person has been so merciful, gracious, generous, and warm-hearted to me. I cannot remain unmoved by that and still consider myself a decent human being.”

There is something about what God did in sending His Son for us that is like that. It was way too much to do for God to become man. (Read Luke 2:1-9) How are we to respond to a gift that big? If someone treats you in an unexpectedly bad way, you might reasonably say, "What did you do that for?" A surprise like that could be the end of even a very warm friendship. But there is also something about a Christmas gift that is too big that might cause a person to ask the same question. That is certainly the case with the gift of God's Son. It was too big. It was too much. "What did you do that for?" We might ask a question like that.

I imagine we could get some pretty sophisticated answers to that question, but it might be best for us to give the kind of answer that the Lord gives in Ephesians 2 concerning all His great saving acts. He says that it was “because of the great love with which He loved us.” Now I know that we are used to feeling happy about the love of God as we come to know the story of the Bible. We are thankful that God loves us. Yet there is another sense in which we might rightly feel uncomfortable and say something like this: "How am I supposed to respond to that?"

It would be one thing if God were just an impulsive being, so that one day, on a whim, He decided to send His Son as a lowly Israelite to be born in Bethlehem. But that was not the case. The very fact of a birth in the town of Bethlehem was announced by the Lord hundreds of years prior to the first Christmas. This love of God was a settled love, a plan that had been in the making for a long time. So there is nothing that can diminish the outrageous extravagance of what God did in sending His Son. It is way too much, and it was way too deliberate, like a surprise present that can make you feel ridiculous about what you were planning to give in return. You want to hide what you have wrapped up for him and tell him that you forgot your gift at home because its too embarrassing to give him your little gift after He gave you His Son to be born and even to die in your place. How are we supposed to respond to a gift that big?

The major religious groups of Jesus' day didn't want to see Him as a gift at all. They were not overwhelmed in a good way. They did not feel uncomfortable in a good way. They were threatened and responded with hate. They tried very unsuccessfully to embarrass and to trick him with their questions.

A question (36)

The group that was most law-oriented decided to send one of their experts to test Jesus with a question. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” This does not sound like a trick question to me. It sounds like an honest question from a representative of the group that cares about the law the most. But the circumstances seem to insist that there is some evil intent here, since a group that was against Jesus gathered together and came up with this plan.

There were many laws that the Jews knew of, some in the Bible, but many of them from tradition. The whole question of the right interpretation of the law was a source of great controversy between Jesus and many Jews. As we know there were Sabbath traditions and rules of clean and unclean, and Jesus did not agree with or practice many of the Pharisaic ways on these matters.

Yet the answer to this question was not a hard one. “Which is the great commandment in the Law?” Every little child in Israel was supposed to be taught something called the Shamah from Deuteronomy 6:4-5. This passage taught that there was only one God, and that every Israelite should give to Him an undivided heart of devotion. Was this expert in the Law testing Jesus trying to embarrass the miracle worker and teacher into admitting what everyone knew: that there was only one God, and that there was no room left for other beings, however great, after giving all our everything to the one God?

The great and first commandment (37-38)

Of course, Jesus does not deny this law in the least. He knows very well that the Scriptures teach that the Lord is one. He is very happy to teach what everyone knows, that "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. Jesus kept this Law and all of God's commandments for our sake. That was an essential part of His work of love for us. He not only believed in this great Law; He kept it, and then He died for us who have not kept the Law.

God calls us to love Him. This is a great Law, but what does it require of us if not a complete devotion. If we lack that devotion and obedience for even one moment we have violated this Law. If there is one idol that we choose above the Lord, or one instruction of His that we determine to ignore, then we have broken this wonderful way of life. It should be easy for us to see that if we searched throughout the world and through all the ages of history that we would only find violators of this perfect Law. But then the gift of Love came in person in the birth of a child, a child who became a man, a man who was despised and rejected by other men, a man who died for us. Now we have become receivers of this love of God in Christ.

The second is like it (39)

There is a second law that our Lord spoke of that day: that each of us should love our neighbor as ourselves, and He said that this second was like the first. This is also a beautiful law. If you have ever been in the presence of a loving person, someone who seemed to love you as he or she loved himself, you know that such a love, if you can receive it, is a great gift. As a law it admits of no compromise. If once you treat a neighbor as less that yourself, you have violated this commandment.

How is this second commandment like the first one? Probably in very many ways, but here are a few thoughts. Both commandments come to us from God, who loves us. Both commandments show us up as law-breakers. The second command flows from the first. If we love God with all of our being, and if this One we love so well commands that we love one another, then it follows that we need to love our neighbor as ourselves as a sincere expression of our love for God. It is a comprehensive way of life, in a sense, but then it is disarmingly simple (1 John 4:7-21). This life of love is lived out best in a quiet way, in a sense, but in a way that shines with boldness that is not self-centered (Matthew12:15-21).

How significant is love to God and to you? (40)

What do we do with these commands of God to love? Especially, how do we respond to the gift of Love to us in Christ, which is an embarrassingly large gift? How do we even understand the love of God? The depth of the love of God is too much for us to fathom. The direction we need to move toward a life of love and the change that we need to make that life real in us and not just a show will not come with lots of words, but with a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of the One who is love, and who laid down His life for us. What we should be able to see today is that this life of love needs to be of the utmost importance to us.

Love is the fulfillment of the Law, and it is what the Prophets of the Old Testament wrote of when they wrote of Christ, the Man of Love, and when they spoke of heaven, which is a world of perfect love. When Jesus came as God's greatest gift to us, He was willing to give up himself for our good. We are told that God is Love... We see that love matters most to Jesus, and to the apostles that He sends out with the message of His love... We are told that love changes things; in fact we are told that love never fails... We know that faith is a great gift of God, and that hope is a precious possession; but we are also told that when we look at these three, faith, hope, and love, the greatest of is love.

Finally we experience the embarrassingly large gift of love that God has given to us in Jesus, and we still need an answer as to how we are to respond. We don't want to get angry about it, and to question him in some strange effort to reduce the tension, thinking that we can make him fall and fail. That's what the Pharisees tried to do. We also know that it can't be right to ignore a gift this big. We are sure that we should yield ourselves to this Love, give in to it, and let it rule our hearts. And we also know that the faith demands an outlet not only in the worship of God, but in generous sacrifice for God, His people, and for the world around us, our neighbors. This is what the Lord is calling you to as you contemplate His extravagant gift. His love can work through you, and it can win in hopeless situations if you will yield to this gift from heaven in Christ. This is not a program or a marketing strategy to appear more loving to others. This is a matter of necessary divine blessing. This is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is heaven, and heaven will win. Yield to God. Yield to heaven. Yield to love, and let love win through you.