Audio: The Most Important Question
You come to church this morning with many unanswered questions about your life and future.
Some of you young men and women don’t know who they will marry, what job they will have in the long-term or what their future financial security will look like.
Some of you older men and women have questions about health and the near future as well as changes in your life and the impact it will make on you and your younger family members you love.
Some of you middle aged men and women have different questions that center around the similar subjects of love, life, family, faith, health, suffering and money.
Many questions – sometimes, not a lot of answers.
But today in Church, Jesus asks you a question that helps clarify the importance of all the other questions.
What do you think about the Christ?
In Matthew 16, He asks similarly, Who do you say that I am?
This question is the most important question that you can know the answer to.
For this question and its answer sets the foundation to answer all answerable questions and gives a rock a refuge in the midst of all the unanswerable questions.
What do you think about the Christ?
Ask this every day and hour and moment of your life: What do I believe about the Christ?
The most important question and answer.
Now there is another important question and answer found in our text.
The question is asked to Jesus:
Teacher, what is the great commandment in the Law. And Jesus said to him, “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. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law the Prophets.
This is the second most important question you can ask every day and hour and moment all your life. What am I to do? I am to love God with all my heart and love my neighbor as myself.
But every time the great commandment and the second great commandment comes up, Jesus uses it to teach something even more important [Matthew 19; Luke 10]. He uses the great commandments to teach the great promises of God about the Christ. He uses the great Law to then teach the Gospel of Christ.
So also here. After answering their question about the great commandment, the Law, what we are to do, He asks a question to get to the heart of the great promise, Gospel, what God has done, is doing, and will do for us.
What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he? They said to Him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is then that David, in the Spirit, call Him Lord, saying, “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my hand, until I put your enemies under your footstool?” If then David calls him Lord, how is He his son?”
It’s really an interesting question that is worth meditating. And we know the answer even if we don’t speak in the same terms often.
The answer is the Christ is true man, coming from the line of David, and the Christ is also true God, always have existed:
In the beginning was the Word [the Son of God] and the Word was with God and the Word was God….All things were made through Him [including then, King David] and without Him nothing was made that was made.
The Christ is true God.
And The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Christ is true Man – became flesh as David’s great (10x) grandson.
Jesus is Lord – begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of God, begotten not made and
Jesus is true Man – incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary and was made man.
The Christian knows there’s more amazing truths that come from this, our confession:
Jesus is both our Lord and our brother.
Jesus is both our Judge and our defense attorney, the Law-giver and sentencer and the giver of evidence of His innocent suffering and death for us, evidence which proves that we are holy and innocent, without stain or wrinkle and receive not the suffering of God’s wrath and judgment but forgiveness, life, and salvation.
Both.
Jesus is Creator and also become a part of His creation.
Jesus is both Law-giver and Savior;
Jesus is both above us and present with us;
before Abraham and yet He says, “I AM.”
Jesus is both the giver of the heart and soul and mind we are called to love God
and the Son of God whom we are called to love,
and also partaker of heart and soul and mind,
the One who did perfectly love God with heart and soul and mind,
and also redeemer of our heart, soul, and mind, for your heart and soul and mind do belong to God, He has purchased it – and again is renewing your heart and soul and mind to love God your all.
This Jesus, really and truly God, and really and truly man is my Lord – the most life defining question answered, He sets again the foundation to answer all answerable questions and gives a rock a refuge in the midst of the unanswerable questions.
What do you think about the Christ?
Who do you say that I am?
I believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and that by believing in Him, I have life in His name [John 20:31].
Life that now begins again to 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. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law the Prophets.
Jesus as God and Man puts a face to the God you are called to love, He’s a face that was stricken, smitten, and afflicted for you and the confidence that the face of God smiling at you and being gracious to you and giving you peace.
And Jesus as God and Man puts again a face to the neighbor you are love as your love yourself. You see those faces often. They are in your home, around your community, in your workplaces, in church.
Love them.
For in loving them, they are served and you are also loving God.
Luther says, “How often we wish that if we had been at Bethlehem when the child Jesus was born, we might have picked him up, cradled him in our arms, and cared for him. But what is the good of such thoughts…No when you see a Christian in distress, know that Christ is in distress and is in need of your help.”
Your neighbor’s, from the newborn to the elderly are need of you picking them up by word or deed or both and are in need of you cradling them in their arms in word or deed and are in need you caring for them in word and deed.
And you have. And on the last day, “When did I do these things for you, Lord – beginning to love you with all my heart?” And He will answer, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”
What do you think of the Christ?
God help you continue to ask the most important question to help you answer the answerable questions and give us rest for unanswerable ones until they are answered by the Christ.