Quick – what is the most important thing to Christian faith?  Whether you are a Christian or not, have studied the bible or not, you probably have an opinion…you’ve seen what Christians emphasize, or not.

Now let’s see what Jesus said:

Matthew 22:35-40

…a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 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. 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 and the Prophets.”

Love God, love neighbour.  Jesus says loving our neighbour is the second most important commandment in the world.  Depending on your interpretation of “like it” the commandments may even have equal stature!

This was a testing question – the Pharisees, religious lawyers, would have been happy to see Jesus was giving their enemies the Sadducees a hard time just before this story happened, but would be very concerned not to support him unless he was orthodox – teaching the right things.  He was risky – he seemed to be a religious rebel, too creative and original.  Was he really one of them?  Was he really a devout Jew?

So they asked this question to see if he was law abiding.  Their faith had 613 laws – all equally valid – so they asked him to pick one that is most important, hoping he’d fall into their trap and say some laws are not important, or invalid, and contradict God himself in the process.

To answer their question, Jesus quoted directly from two separate sections from the Old Testament part of the Bible.  He gave the perfect answer, in many ways it was orthodoxy in a nutshell.  The first was said every day by a devout Jew, so very familiar.  It’s possible Jesus was the first to put that familiar saying together with the commandment to love one’s neighbour, but it has a beauty and elegant symmetry to it.  Love God, people.

He didn’t dismiss anything and prove himself to be a heretic.  All ten commandments, and all other 600+ laws can be seen to “hang” under these two “hooks” or as this translation says, “depend” on these two commands.

Question: Make two columns on a piece of paper, or in your phone.  One column says “love God” and the other “love neighbour.”  Go through the ten commandments below and try to fit them in.

  1. “You shall have no other gods before me.
  2. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
  3. “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.
  4. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
  5. “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
  6. “You shall not murder.
  7. “You shall not commit adultery.
  8. “You shall not steal.
  9. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
  10. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”

Exodus 20:3-17 ESV

Ryan Sim - May 5, 2014

Monday - A New Idea - Pioneer Story

Look down at your hands. Chances are you’re holding an Apple device. Well over ¾ of Redeem the Commute’s mobile users use Apple devices. It’s incredible technology that has ended up in the hands of millions quite quickly. It’s more powerful than computers in the space shuttle that put humans into orbit, yet we mostly use it to crush candies and fly birds into buildings. We take it for granted, we know iPods, iPhones, iPads have been around long enough we forget how they came to be. Whose idea was this? How did they do it? How did they market it so effectively? How did they become such a high theft item? How did they travel the world? Answering those questions is why there’s been so much fascination with the life of Steve Jobs. Many an article, a feature film, and more have been produced. We love our founding stories. In the story of Steve Jobs and his garage startup, you can find the character of Apple the company. The ingenuity, the creativity, the resolve and drive, the secrecy, and the mystique. Even as other leaders have their turn leading the company after his death, they always have his legacy to contend with. As we walk the streets of Western countries, we can get used to seeing church buildings – big and small, traditional and contemporary architecture, Roman Catholic, Anglican, United, and more. But how did they get here? Why are there church buildings, much less people who build, maintain and use them? I used to pastor four churches in Eastern Ontario, and one was a very old church. When I arrived, they were about to celebrate what they thought was their 150th anniversary, but while I was there, we discovered that was wrong. The bricks and mortar were indeed 150 years old, but the church was in fact much older than their building. The church is a community of people learning to follow Jesus. And in the days of early pioneers, this community was meeting in a tavern, then a hall and a school before they ever built a structure of their own. They met in those spaces because they could learn about Jesus together as a community. We had to go back to our founding stories, and our founding figures to realize we were much more than a building…we were a church…we were supposed to be all about Jesus. We needed to be shaped by our founding story, and our founding pioneer – Jesus Christ. That building is being closed in less than a month, but the church will carry on. They’ve joined with the other nearby churches to follow Jesus together in another building. As we talk about Redeem the Commute becoming a church community, we aren’t talking about a building either, we’re talking about a community shaped by our founding pioneer Jesus. The book of Acts in the Bible tells the founding story of those who established church communities after his death and resurrection to keep following him. In this series, we’ll be looking at that pioneer story, how the first Christians survived, thrived, and organized. We’ll read through the highlights of the Book of Acts. You can do this as an individual watching the videos each day and discussing with others as you go, or we have a new option if you’re meeting weekly with a group. You can watch the videos each day, but we’ll also produce a weekly small group study guide with all the week’s Bible readings and questions in one place. Question: Tell your pioneer story to someone. This can be as simple as explaining how the lifestyle choices and priorities that you do are based on the teachings of Jesus, or why you dedicate time to Redeem the Commute’s challenges.

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From Series: "Pioneer Story"

We read through the Book of Acts as a Pioneer Story for the church.

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