Reading Assignment: Matthew 22:23-46
Truth: Divine accountability is real.
Key Verse: Matthew 22:37
Overview:
1. Accountability in the afterlife
2. The standard of judgment
3. The Authority behind the judgment
Prayer:
1. Examine your own heart and see whether you are truly repentant or not.
Transcript
Let's pray and we'll begin our time.
God, You are the righteous God, the Holy God. You are the God of justice, and we know that we are all subjected under Your truth and Your law, because You are indeed the only Lawgiver and Judge in the entire universe. You reign supreme over all things, and we know there's a day coming in which You will hold each person accountable. We thank You that You are also the God of love, who has sent His Son to redeem all who truly believe. Thank You that even as You justified Abraham by faith that You still do the same with us. For all who truly believe in Christ as Savior and Lord, all who truly repent and seek reconciliation with You, there is total remission of sins through the blood of Christ. How glorious is that gospel of Your Son. We pray that You would guide us through Your word this morning as we look into it. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
The next reading assignment is Matthew 22:23-46. Let me first state the central truth here, which is this: divine accountability is real. The key verse is verse 37 where Jesus says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” There are three parts to this section. First, there is a controversy over the matter of the resurrection. But the truth that I want to draw out of that first section is divine accountability. The second part of the story is the greatest commandment, where we find our key verse. That's the standard. So we have the accountability and the standard. And thirdly, we have the authority, which is the Messiah, the Son of David, who is called the Lord. The Messiah is God and He is the one to whom every human being must give an account.
So first, the accountability (or the resurrection), verses 23 through 33. There is a particular religious group known as the Sadducees, who came to Jesus, and they asked Him a very clever question with which they were trying to trip Him up. Let me first introduce us to the Sadducees. The Sadducees were the aristocrats of the Jewish society. They were comprised of the chief priests and their relatives who basically ran the temple. They were also the highest authority among the Jews because their members made up the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court. Now, given their authority over the temple sacrifice system, they enriched themselves greatly through all the merchandising that was happening there. They became very wealthy, and with all that wealth, they wielded a great deal of power over the people. There was one interesting thing about their belief system: they denied the resurrection. Now, they didn't only deny there will be a future re-embodiment of human beings. They actually denied the afterlife altogether. They denied that there is any existence whatsoever after death. This also meant there was no divine accountability. So then, according to their doctrine, whether it's Mao or Pol-pot or Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin, even if they've murdered millions and millions of people, after death, they go scot-free, because there is no existence or consciousness beyond death. Now, you would imagine that if a person had no belief in divine accountability in the afterlife, that they would lead a very immoral lifestyle. And the Sadducees did exactly this. They lived a very greedy and godless lifestyle, because they denied any divine accountability. Now, they not only denied the afterlife, they were also very adamant about it. They argued for it, and one of their clever arguments was the issue they bring up to Jesus. They tell Jesus a story about a man who died without ever impregnating his wife; they didn't produce any children. Afterwards, then, according to the Jewish levirate marriage law, the next of kin (typically a brother) was required to marry the widow and produce children for his deceased brother. So the story goes that there were seven brothers and after the eldest died without children, each of the successive brothers married the widow without ever producing children. Then finally, after the brothers died, the woman died also. Given this story, they ask Jesus the following question: If the resurrection is true, then whose wife will she be in the resurrection? Since they all had married her, they thought there is no way resurrection can be true. But they were dead wrong. Jesus responds by telling them, “You are mistaken, not understanding the Scriptures nor the power of God.” Then Jesus begins to explain the power of God that can raise the dead and give them a new existence altogether. He explains that in the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but that they will be like angels in heaven. What Jesus means is this: by the power of God, God's people will be glorified unto an existence that is far superior to the one that they experience now. The power of God will take the bodies of God's redeemed people and glorify them, and their glorified existence will no longer be like the one that they had on earth. It will be more like the angels in heaven, in that there will be no death, and there will be no childbirth. This means there will be no marriage, no more exclusive relationship between a man and a woman. Now, that might sound like a deduction from the blessings of marriage that we may experience in this life, but according to Scripture, glorification is not a deduction of a blessing, it's an addition of a much more excellent and superior spiritual existence in union with God through Christ. This is to say that at the resurrection, earthly marriages are done away with, hence, any intimacy between man and woman. However, what the people of God will gain in its place is a spiritual union with Christ, where they will experience an unbreakable fellowship with Christ, and they will also have an everlasting bond of fellowship with one another. That will mean a communion and harmony and friendship with Christ and with one another, a connection that far exceeds any human relationship known in this age. Someone has described it this way, that in glorification, the people of God will experience a life that is as deathless and glorified and eternal as the existence of angels. The Sadducees did not understand the power of God that can transform God's people and elevate their existence to something more excellent than the one that we experience in this life. Then Jesus also explains Scripture which they failed to understand. He tells them that God said to Moses, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” and that God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. God spoke to Moses hundreds of years after these patriarchs died; yet He describes Himself as their God, that is, continuing to be “I am the God of these deceased people.” Now, this needs to be understood against the background of God’s promises to the patriarchs. He promised them that He will be their God and that they will be His people. Now, if these patriarchs were completely extinct upon death, then how could God maintain any relationship with them? This would be impossible. The only way that God would continue to say that He is their God and they His people is if they were actually alive to God. In Luke 20:38, in a parallel passage to this, Luke tells us that Jesus also said that these all are “alive to God.” They were alive to God because there is an afterlife beyond physical death. God continues to be their God because they are alive. There truly is life after this life. The shocking point of all of this to the Sadducees is that there is an afterlife. This means there is also divine accountability. And it is only those who have exercised true saving faith in the Lord, who trust in God, it is only they who enter into God's presence in heaven. As for all those who did not savingly believe in the Lord, they will enter into eternal damnation, because it is only those who truly believe who are justified in the sight of God, whose sins are forgiven, and thus they are qualified to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Now, this divine accountability is based on a particular standard, and this is the standard that we find in part 2 of this section.
After the Sadducees’ conversation with Jesus is over, the Pharisees then also try to stump Jesus. One of them, a lawyer (not like an attorney today, but an expert of the Old Testament Law) came to challenge Jesus with another tough question. The question on the surface may sound innocuous, but it's actually a very sly question. They ask: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” The man posed this question because he wanted to drag Jesus into a controversy that was impossible to resolve. And they expected Jesus to shoot Himself in the foot. What's the controversy? Let me explain. The Pharisees identified 613 laws in the Book of Moses, then they further categorized them into positive laws (i.e., affirmative laws) and negative laws (or prohibitions), and then further divided these laws into heavy laws and light laws. Heavy ones are absolutely binding, while the light were less binding. Now, these categories of laws became a controversy, because no one could agree on which laws belonged to which category. And so if Jesus identifies one law as being the foremost, He would inevitably set himself against some group. And this would drag Jesus into this foray and turn Him against somebody or some group, and someone will hate Jesus. They would use this as leverage to instigate a deep rejection of Jesus. But Jesus responds with such wisdom that will blow all of them away. He said to that lawyer, “’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 foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Now, why was this so wise? First of all, this was the one law which all the Jews had zero controversy over. And it is indeed the main feature of the Old Testament Law, which is to love God and love man. There was no controversy over this declaration of love for God, because every Jew recited this part of the Old Testament (from Deuteronomy 6), known as the Shema from their childhood. In fact, they did more than recite it, they kept these words written and rolled up in little scrolls to be stuffed into their phylacteries and mezuzas. Phylacteries were little square boxes which they would attach to their hand and their forehead, and within those boxes they would stuff the tiny scroll with the Shema on it. The Mezuzas were basically the same thing. They were little containers that they are affixed to their doors. And within those containers was the Shema written and rolled up and stuffed into that container. The point is this: everyone knew this law and held it up as the one law about which there was no controversy. And indeed, in the Old Testament this was the overarching law for God's people. Now, in terms of the commandment itself, loving God didn’t merely mean you had sincere affections or deep feelings for God. No, this was more profound than this. It was to devote to God all of yourself. It was to devote to the LORD all your heart (that speaks of your will), all your soul (that speaks of your affections or your delight), all of your mind (that’s your intellect or your meditation), and with all your strength (that speaks of your effort, energy, and labor). Genuine love for the Lord is meant to be “intelligent, feeling, willing, and serving,” as one author puts it. This is what man was created for, to love God with all that he is. And all who love God then naturally love the people whom God has created in His likeness. They also love fellow humans. Out of the love of God overflows love for others, and thus Jesus points out the second greatest commandment, which is “love your neighbor as yourself.” This was a brilliant answer. The Pharisees were at a loss. Jesus then adds, “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” This is to say, this is the entirety of God's requirements (the law of Moses) and this is also the entirety of God's call to repentance (the Prophets). This is divine requirement and the accountability. This is the standard by which God will hold everyone accountable, whether they have exercised love for God and love for man.
At this juncture, Jesus shifts gears and He goes on the offensive and He asks the Pharisees a question to show who the authority figure is who will hold every man accountable. He asks them, “What do you think about the Christ, the Messiah, whose son is He?” They gave him the textbook answer, “the son of David.” Then Jesus asks them, “How does David call the Messiah Lord, saying (quoting out of Psalm 110), ‘the Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, until I put Your enemies beneath Your feet”?’” Then Jesus says if David calls him Lord, how is He his son? Jesus's point is that the Messiah is God, and for that reason David calls this descendant of his, who will be the everlasting King of Israel, he calls Him his Lord. What this shows is that the Messiah is actually God himself, the authority, the judge. The Bible repeatedly tells us that on the final day of judgment, the one who will sit on the throne is indeed Jesus Christ.
What all of these stories show us is that there really is a divine accountability. The standard by which anyone will enter into the kingdom of heaven is whether they have repented and have been restored to God to love Him as they should. Now, of course, no one has lived up to God’s standard. The only person who lived up to that love of God is Jesus Christ, and this is the reason why Jesus came to make payment for the sins of His people, so that all who come to God with repentance will find remission of sins. This is the glorious message of the gospel that we see threaded through these three parts. We need God’s mercy that will cover all the ways in which we have spurned God and snubbed Him. Jesus was calling all to true repentance, and He was telling them the truth, that there is a way to get right with God. It is to repent and to no longer refuse God the love that is rightfully His.
We went a bit long today. Let me pray and wrap up our time for today.
God, thank You for sending Jesus. Thank You for the wonderful truth. We believe this is the truth and any other idea is a man-made and idolatrous religion. But we thank You that we have Your truth. I pray that You would bless each one here, that each one would come to true repentance and thus a true love for You with all their heart, soul, mind and strength. I pray that You would fill their lives with Your joy. And that on judgment day that they would have the assurance that they are justified through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on their behal,f so that they would utter Your praises forevermore. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
God bless you all and we are done for today.