St. Matthew 22:34-46
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
When Jesus was tempted by the devil in the wilderness, you’ll remember that the devil took Jesus up to the pinnacle of the temple and said that if Jesus was the Son of God he should throw should throw himself down, and even quoted the Bible at Jesus about how angels will take care to catch him if he did it. And Jesus responded, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” That is Deuteronomy 6:16, which comes right after the answer Jesus gave to the lawyer who wanted to test him. Why would someone want to test Jesus? The devil tried that out and failed. Why would anyone do it now, especially Christians seeing how it worked out for people in the Bible? Testing Jesus has to do with seeing if he matches up to your own thoughts and ways, or checking out if he will bow down to your own whims. Testing Jesus has to do with expecting certain things from him, as if he were a servant sent to do your bidding, not a servant sent to give his life a ransom for many. Jesus had silenced the Sadducees when they tried to test him, saying you neither know the Scriptures nor the power of God. (Matthew 22:29) When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, one of them, a lawyer, comes and wants hear Jesus’ ideas about the Bible, asking him a question to test him. And why does he do this? Well, to see if Jesus matches up to his own expectations and ideas about greatness. So here is the test question, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” This is devilish. You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. But that is the big deal of course; the lawyer doesn’t believe that Jesus is the Lord, his God. So he is free to test and prod to see what kind of teacher this Jesus really is.
The law of God isn’t a bunch of rules on a sliding scale of greatness. They are great and summarized by the Word itself as Jesus speaks it, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And Jesus adds, “On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.’ So the test is really a question of the law, Jesus gives much more than the Pharisee could ever expect. He gets to the heart of the Law of God, the whole of the Scriptures reveal that, complete and perfect love for God with your whole being, and then complete and perfect love for everyone else. That is what God commands and it is that Law of God that silences the sinner who would dare test his God. Notice there is no response from the lawyer. There is nothing to say, because when the law of God is preached by Jesus like this. There is nothing you can say, particularly when he then mixes things up so thoroughly by asking questions about the Christ, the Messiah. Turning the tables he asks, ‘What about the Christ? Whose son is he?” You couldn’t be much of a Bible scholar back then if you didn’t know the fact that a descendant of David would be the one who would be anointed to rescue the people of Israel. But Jesus follows with trick questions on his test – “How is it then that David in the Spirit calls him Lord? If David calls the Messiah Lord how can he be his Son?” No answer from these guys. How could David call his Son the very Divine Name of Lord and worship Him as His God? The answer is only if His Son is God. Only if God has come down as a man, descended from David, born in Bethlehem of a Virgin, taken out of Egypt to live then as a Nazarene.
