First, some explanation. Who were the Pharisees and Sadducees?
The Sadducees are the least important group. They were sort of liberal intellectuals. They didn't believe in angels, and reserved judgment about whether there was or wasn't an afterlife. They are skeptical about anything spiritual or supernatural and they see scripture as metaphorical or symbolic. Jesus really has very little time for them. He tells them that they don't know two vital things: the scriptures or the power of God. That's the Sadducees. They get very short shrift from Jesus. That why they're sad, you see. (Groan). The Pharisees were very religious – and passionate about in the Law, the Jewish scriptures, which they took literally. In fact, they were so worried about breaking any of God's commandments that they added to them.
They called this “putting a fence around the Law” and it's still done today by orthodox Jews. For example, the Law in the Bible says that you must not cook a baby animal in its mother's milk. (I think the underlying principle is one of animal welfare.) but even today Orthodox Jews will not mix any meat and diary produce – even if the meat comes from one species (e.g. lamb) and the milk or cheese from another (e.g. cows). That's why you can't get a cheese burger in Jerusalem. They do this to remove any risk of breaking the law about calves or lambs being cooked in their mother's milk.
Jesus said to the Sadducees that they did not know either the scriptures or the power of God. But the did Pharisees know the scripture inside out and fear the power of God. What they didn't know is the love of God. People think that Jesus is tough on the Pharisees and they the Pharisees in turn hated Jesus for not being religious enough, but that's not entirely true. For a start, they both care. Jesus engages with the Pharisees and the Pharisees with Jesus because they both care about God. In this respect, the Pharisees are to be commended but caring can lead to some fiery exchanges. After all, to be passionate about something is to open the possibility of becoming angry and both Jesus and the Pharisees are passionate about God and how he should be understood and related to. So hats off to the Pharisees, also, some of the Pharisees secretly admire and even adore Jesus. The most famous is Nicodemus, who was a leading member of the Pharisees' governing body and who came out to meet Jesus at night when nobody else would see him. So if the Sadducees are non starters then at least there something for which we can commend Pharisees, and there's some hope for them.
Now the Pharisees love the Law. The Law is all God's commands to Moses about how people should live. We say “Law” in the singular but it comprises over 600 different commandments, rules, and regulations, and that's before the Pharisees put their fence around it and added more laws of their own so that people couldn't get close to breaking God's law even by accident (A bit like putting up your own handwritten 20 mph signs on 30 mph road). The trouble is, the Pharisees were missing the point, they were missing the heart of God, they were missing the love of God. God gave the law, yes, but it was meant to be a safety net, a fall-back position. God is love and he made us as his children in his image to love and to be loved, but, alas, there's the "S" word – sin.
Sin isn't necessarily what you might think, when the church says that we are all sinners, it means that we are imperfect. God is perfect but our thoughts and words and deeds are not always in tune or in step with him. Sometimes we are deliberately bad, sometimes it's fair to say that we could have helped it, we could have done better, but even when we might not think of ourselves as guilty of sin we are still weak, limited, stupid. We're only human. We cannot trust ourselves to always know what is right and good and even when we do know what is right and good we can't always trust ourselves to do it!
So God gave the law to show us right from wrong and to put in black and white what we should and shouldn't do.
Now the Law is God's Law – not just some good advice that we can take or leave. It is Law, not advice, and it is from God, not from some lesser power, but it is a means to an end, safety net, a bare minimum. It's there for when we don't know what to do or for when we do know what we ought to do but would rather not do it. Actually, God what God really wants is for us to love him and to love others just as much as much as we love ourselves. If we do that, Jesus says, then we will be keeping the law and a whole lot more besides.
The Law is there to stop all sorts of loveless behaviour. When we don't love God or others then we think and speak and act towards them in ways that are hurtful and harmful.
The law is there to cover the times when love runs out or else people in all honest good faith genuinely don't know what to do. That's when the law kicks in, but if you love God and others then the law is surpassed, transcended and fulfilled.
Imagine a marriage where the only thing that kept the husband or wife faithful to each other was their wedding vows. You might ask: Where's the love? Where's the desire to stay faithful? Let's imagine for the moment that the love has run dry, but they keep their vows as though it was legally binding contract. Then let's say that after some time the love comes back into their marriage. Suddenly they want to be faithful to each other – regardless of what a bit of paper says. Now they can keep their vows easily because it is what they want to do.
So it is with the Law; the law is there for when we don't know what we ought to do or for when we do know what we ought to do but we'd still rather not do it and so here we have the story of God and us.
First God makes us out of his love to be his children made in his image. We were made to love and to be loved, but then we were unreliable at best and unfaithful at worst. So God gave us the Law, but even having it externally in black and white can't change a person's internal desires. So the law was bent and broken. So then God sent prophets to remind the people what they should do and how they should be, but the people went from bending and breaking the law to bending and breaking the prophets. The trouble is that there was no love in their hearts. They didn't love God and they didn't love each other and the law didn't really work because it was an external imposition on them, which they didn't really want to keep. So they bent and broke the laws in order to get their own way. What they wanted, deep inside, was to dominate, manipulate, abuse and exploit other people and laws have loopholes or exceptions; they only really work if the people basically agree with them and try to keep them.So in the end God did something amazing and dramatic. He stopped sending Laws and Prophets and he tore off a piece of himself and sent that to us instead.
Last of all God sent his only Son, Jesus Christ, as the supreme way of reach out to the world and Jesus made a direct appeal to our hearts – because he loves us but we don't love him he wants to woo us and win us, to set our hearts on fire with the same flame of love that burns in the heart of God. Then we will be changed from the inside out and not from the outside – which never really worked anyway.
Jesus said that all the Law and all the prophets were summed up and surpassed in these two commandments: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' and 'Love your neighbor as yourself. '
Nearly time to conclude, but before we do lets look at two things very briefly.
The first is that many people have taught the negative version of this rule, which goes “do not do to others what you do not what them to do to you.” Confucius said it, the Stoics philosophers said it, Aesop in his fables said it, Epicetus said it. Everybody said it. Rabbi Hillel, (c 200 BC) was challenged by a heathen who said that he was prepared to convert to Judaism if Rabbi Hillel was able to teach the whole law standing on one leg. Hillel replied, “What is hateful to yourself, do to no other; that is the whole law and the rest is commentary. Go and learn.” Now that's snappy, but it's still in this negative form. All of these philosophers are saying: “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself.” It's all very negative and you can keep this golden rule simply by staying in bed. A dead atheist can keep this negative form of the commandment, but Jesus says it differently; he says it positively. It seems like a small difference but it's a profound one. Jesus was the first to formulate this role positively in two of his sayings: "Love your neighbour as yourself" and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". Nowhere in ancient literature is there a parallel to the positive form in which Jesus puts it. Followers of Jesus are called to say not only: "I won't do anyone any harm, but also, "I will go out of my way to help them, I will seek their good, I will want for them what I want for myself."
For example, it is not enough that we do not break up marriages; we must also help to put them back together. It is not enough not to steal; we must give generously. It is not enough not to harm our neighbours; we must also positive help them. This requires us to be active – even proactive – in showing and sharing love. We are to continually ask the question: "What good can I hope for or get for myself? That, therefore, is the good I can seek or cause for others." This is called the Golen Rule.
As J C Ryle once commented:
"This is a golden rule indeed! It does not merely forbid all petty malice and revenge, all cheating and overreaching; it does much more. It settles a hundred difficult points, which in a world like this are continually arising between man and man; it prevents the necessity of laying down endless little rules for our conduct in specific cases, it sweeps the whole debatable ground with one mighty principle; it shows us a balance and measure by which everyone may see at once what is his duty. Is there a thing we would not like our neighbour to do to us? Then let us always remember that this is the thing we ought not to do to him. Is there a thing we would like him to do to us? Then this is the very thing we ought to do to him - How many intricate questions would be decided at once if this rule would honestly be used!"
So that's the first of two things: that Jesus puts it in the positive and that therefore it's not enough to just avoid doing to others what you don't want them to do you; no, we have to be active in loving others. OK, now for the second of these final two things:
Jesus says that
1) Loving God with all we've got and 2) Loving our neighbour as ourself "sums up all the Law and the Prophets" Take a Bible, find page 77 (Exodus 20) hold it open there and then find page 207 (Deut. 28). This 130 page block is, more or less, the whole of the Law. Feel it! Then find page 685 (Isaiah chapter 1) hold it open there and then find page 962 (Malachi ch. 4 – the very end of the Hebrew Bible). That's 304 pages, which, give or take a bit here and there, is the whole of the prophets. Combined, that's 434 pages which can be summed up in the two commandments "Love God with all you've got" and "Love your neighbour as much as you love yourself."
Easier said than done?
Yes, and we can't do it in our own strength, by ourselves. This love for God and for others is only possible if we first receive and are transformed by God's love. The Bible says "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4.19)
I want you to pray now and ask God to change us, transform us, kindle in our hearts the fire of his love so that he will make us love him with all we've got and love our neighbours as ourselves. It's like lighting one small candle from a big one. If you want to agree with this prayer, and offer it to God, simply say "Amen" afterwards. I must warn that prayers are powerful things and you if you say "Amen" you have to be prepared to have God hear and answer your prayer – and that might mean some changes.