“Cliff Notes to the Bible”
I have a confession to make: I never completed Moby Dick. I remember the opening line, “My name is Ishmael.” I remember Herman Melville going on and on about Leviathans, the great monsters of the deep. I remember the whale was white and that Captain Ahab was missing his leg. That’s as much as I know about Moby Dick. I never finished what many scholars consider to be the greatest American novel. There is no shame in failing to complete an important work of literature, except there was a paper due in my high school English class.
At the beginning of the school year my English teacher had recommended that we use Cliff Notes. You’re honest, church-going folks, so you’ve probably never heard of Cliff Notes. Allow me to explain. Cliff Notes are tidy summaries of great works of literature. My teacher told us that they were a perfectly appropriate tool to study for the test and to help write our papers, but they were not supposed to replace reading the book. Maybe I had another big assignment due; maybe there was a big dance coming up; maybe I had no excuse at all, but I stopped by the B. Dalton’s bookstore at the Cross Town Mall and purchased the Cliff Notes instead of finishing the book. I’m not proud of it, but Cliff helped me write the paper and pass the test. But to this day don’t know if Captain Ahab, Ishmael and Starbuck ever killed the great, white whale. The teachers were right. Whenever you cheat, you are really only cheating yourself.
In today’s scripture Jesus is confronted by a lawyer who has no qualms about cheating. The Pharisees wanted to publicly embarrass Jesus. Right after Jesus triumphed over the Sadducees, a lawyer for the Pharisees stood up and asked Jesus the impossible question: “which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Every Rabbi; every teacher of the law had their own idea about which commandment was the greatest. But it was dangerous question to answer in public. No matter what Jesus said, there were legal scholars in the crowd ready to pounce. The lawyer is cheating himself and the crowd because he doesn’t honestly want to learn from Jesus. He just wants to trap Jesus in his words.
Because he is a great teacher Jesus doesn’t let this teachable moment go to waste. Jesus is more than happy to summarize the law. What he offers in today’s scripture from Matthew 22:34-46 is the Cliff Notes of the Bible. Better yet, let’s call this passage the “Jesus Notes” of the Bible. Like Cliff Notes, Jesus’ words are not intended as a replacement for all of scripture. But they are a helpful tool for understanding the Bible. And if you just can’t finish reading the Bible, here’s everything you need to know about God’s law. Turn with me to page 900 as Jesus sums up all the law and the prophets.
Matthew 22:34-40
34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ 37He said to him, ‘“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” 38This is the greatest and first commandment. 39And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 40On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’
There are 613 laws in the first five books of the Bible. That’s just too much for most of us to remember! Even if you have read all the way through Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Number and Deuteronomy, it’s not likely that you are going to memorize all 613 laws. Most of us need a Cliff’s Notes of the Bible.
The most famous summary of Biblical law is the Ten Commandments. God in his infinite wisdom made his expectations on his people pretty simple by giving us an easy to remember Top Ten list. But how many of us actually know all ten on the list? Just a quick review of the Ten Commanments.
1. You shall have no other gods before me.
2. You shall not make for yourself an idol.
3. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God.
4. Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy.
5. Honor your father and your mother.
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 anything that belongs to your neighbor.
A recent survey conducted by Kelton Research discovered that Americans know the ingredients of a McDonald’s Big Mac better than we know the Ten Commandments. 80% remember the “two all beef patties;” 75% remember the “sesame seed bun,” but less than sixty-percent remembered “Thou Shalt Not Kill” was among the Ten Commandments. 66% knew that the Big Mac has “special sauce;” 62% remembered the pickle, but only 45% remembered “Honor Your Mother and Father” was on God’s Top Ten list. 25% of Americans correctly identified all the ingredients of the Big Mac, but only 14% knew all Ten of the Commandments.
Kelton Research also quizzed Americans on the names of characters from the 60’s television show The Brady Bunch. Most folks remember Cindy, Greg and Marsha, Marsha Marsha, but Poor Bobby and Peter! Only 43% could recall their names. But that was still a much higher percentage than the Americans who could identify such commandments as “remember the sabbath” (34%) or “do not make false idols” (29%)[i]. Americans know our burgers; we know our Brady’s, but we don’t know our Bible! Even though God gave us a wonderful summary of the law in the Ten Commandments, we apparently need Cliff Notes for our Cliff Notes.
Isaiah 33:15 makes it even easier by summarizing the law into six simple bullet points. In answer to the question “Who among us can live?” Isaiah tells us…
1. Those who walk righteously
2. and speak uprightly,
3. who despise the gain of oppression,
4. who wave away a bribe instead of accepting it,
5. who stop their ears from hearing of bloodshed
6. and shut their eyes from looking on evil.
The prophet Micah (6:8) suggests three convenient rules: He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to:
1. do justice, and to
2. love kindness, and to
3. walk humbly with your God.
If that’s still too much to remember, Isaiah 56:1 captures the law in two succinct points: Thus says the Lord:
1. Maintain justice, and
1. Maintain justice, and
2. do what is right.
Habakkuk 2:4 sums it all up in a single verse: “The righteous live by their faith.”
Amos 5:4 wraps up the law in an even shorter verse “Seek me and live.”
Those are all fine summaries of God’s law, but none of them is completely satisfactory. A debate raged among the legal experts of the day about which commandment was the most important of all. Some Rabbis taught that charity was number one. Others suggested that honoring mother and father was the most important. Some of you parents like that one don’t you? Rabbi Akiva argued that loving neighbors was the supreme commandment. But no matter what commandment was nominated as greatest of all time, there was always some critic to poke holes in the theory. The lawyer in today’s story put Jesus in a no-win situation. It’s not so easy to wrap up the whole Bible in a single sentence. And if you dare try, you are vulnerable to attack.
Nevertheless, Jesus takes up the challenge. He begins by suggesting that the greatest commandment is found in the Shema. The Shema was a prayer that every observant Jew offered twice a day to God. You’ll find it in Deuteronomy 6:5, “Hear of Israel, the Lord your God is one. Love the Lord Your God with all your heart, soul and strength.” The Shema was written on the doorframe of every Jewish house. The Shema was written on the tassels of men’s robes. The Jews were commanded to talk about the Shema as they walked down the road, as they sat around the house; when they woke up in the morning and as they fell asleep at night. Every man, woman and child knew this prayer by heart. Not only was there no danger that the Jews would ever forget the Shema, no one could possibly say a bad word about Jesus’ choice of Greatest Commandment.
But Jesus doesn’t stop there. Jesus refuses to play the lawyer’s game. He offers two greatest commandments for the price of one. While the Shema is about honoring God the Father, Jesus’ next commandment concerns how we treat other people. For this, Jesus turns to Leviticus 19:18 “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Again, Jesus leaves the lawyer no room to argue, because who can possibly disagree with loving others?
In the Ten Commandments, the first four are all about how to love God, and the final six commandments are about how we love each other. Jesus wraps up all Ten Commandments; all 613 laws in the Old Testament; all the wisdom of the prophets into a single word: love. Jesus breaks it down more efficiently than Cliff Notes ever could. If we could just love God and love each other we would totally fulfill the law.
The Greatest Commandment is like the Cliff Notes of the Bible. It is a great summary of all the laws that God has given humanity. If you master loving God and loving neighbors, Christ will certainly welcome you into eternity with the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” But just as I don’t understand Moby Dick because I never really read it, we won’t understand the Greatest Commandment and the rest of the Bible until we actually take the time to read it.
Jesus tells us to love the Father with all our heart, soul, strength and mind. A good way to learn what it means to love God with all your heart is to read about David who was a man after God’s own heart. If you want to love God with all your soul, learn the story of Job who knew God to the depths of his being. The story of Samson teaches us what it means to love God with all our strength. The story of Solomon instructs us on what it looks like to love God with all our minds. Because Jesus has given us the Cliff Notes on the Bible we know that all these stories are about love, but unless we actually read them we won’t understand what kind of love God is looking for.
In the same way Jesus told us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. But we won’t understand the Golden Rule until we read the Apostle Paul’s words that “love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” That’s not the kind of love you can possibly figure out without spending some time reading the Bible. No one would ever “turn the other cheek,” or “go the extra mile” and they certainly wouldn’t ever “love their enemy” unless they were persuaded by Jesus that this is what love really means.
Jesus sums up the law by telling us to love God and love neighbors, but we’re going to need more than just the Cliff Notes if we are ever going to grasp what that means. Dig deep into the Bible and discover what love really looks like.
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