The Greatest Commandments

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Steven Lee
Pastor for Preaching & Vision

0:19Well, good morning and welcome. Glad you're here this morning as we look at God's word. For those that are new among us or visitors, we're really glad you're here. My name is Stephen, I'm one of the pastors here. We love God's word, and we want to come under it this morning. So would you join me as we pray and ask him for eyes to see. Father in heaven, we need your help this morning. So come now in the power of your spirit and give us eyes to see and hearts that would come alive, that would be enlivened by what we see in your word so that we would love you more. Do this for your glory and for your namesake. We pray in Jesus' name.

1:05Amen. How many of you can remember and think back to maybe your elementary or middle school or high school years when you first said the words "I love you" in a romantic sense to someone your age, not a family member? How many of you can think back that far? Some of you have to do a little more thinking than others. I was in junior high. I thought this girl was cute. She was at my church, and it was that first case of what we call puppy love, fleeting but strong infatuation, and I said those words. And as I look back on those days, what do you think I think? "Boy, that was dumb." That was not love. The next week, I wanted nothing to do with her, and yet I said those words. And so this morning, when we come to a passage that's all about love, and we know that love can have this wide range of use, wide range of meanings, and even definitions. And in our passage this morning, Jesus doesn't define love for us, but he tells us that the greatest commandments require true biblical love. And true biblical love probably is very different than what we might have said to someone else in junior high. Now, last week, we saw Jesus teach on the nature of God and the resurrection and his response to their riddle to try to trap him.

2:43And now the Pharisees come back, and they want a little bit more. They want to engage Jesus in more debate, more dialogue. And Jesus uses this opportunity to teach one of the most foundational realities in all of the Christian life. We would maybe call it the heart of Christian spiritual ethics. How are we to relate to God, the vertical dimension of our lives, and then how are we to relate to others, the horizontal dimension of life? Now, we've seen through chapter 22 these various debates that have covered really foundational things. How do Christians relate to their governing authorities? What are we to think about the life to come and the resurrection?

3:32And now we come to how are we to relate to the Mosaic Law, the Old Testament. And the issue with the Pharisees remains the same. If you remember all the way back in Matthew 12:14, what were the Pharisees conspiring to do? To kill Jesus. They want to destroy him. Their murderous hatred of Jesus only has intensified. And sadly, the Pharisees only care about one thing, their own appearance. Hypocrites is what Jesus calls them. And so this third confrontation, we see that Jesus once again confounds his inquisitors, but he kind of reveals his divine wisdom and kind of sums up the essence of the Christian life. And the main thrust of our passage this morning is very simple, but it's going to take a lifetime of practice.

4:28We must love God with our whole beings and then overflow in love to others. We must love God with all that we are, every single aspect, every atom of our bodies and of our minds, every thought, every element of who we are, and we are to overflow in love for others. At one level, very simple, and at another level, almost paralyzing to think about. How do we put something like this into practice? And Jesus gives us two commandments to show us that they're inseparable. You can't have the first without the other or the other without the first. They're a package deal. So we're going to look at this passage in three points.

5:18First, there's the testing of the teacher, 34 to 36. Then we get the twofold truth, 37 to 40. And then we want to see this truth in action as we seek to apply it to our own lives. So first, we come now to the testing of the teacher. Look with me at verses 34 to 36. If you're new among us, let me encourage you to open your Bibles there. We like to keep God's word before us. I'm going to read 34 to 36. "But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 'Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?'" So Pharisees, aware that Jesus has once again confounded the Sadducees, redouble their efforts. They want to engage in a little bit more theological sword fighting, if you will. And the phrase, "gathered together," has echoes of Psalm 2:2, where the kings and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord.

6:26They're huddling up in order to figure out how to trap Jesus once again. And Matthew tells us that what they ended up deciding on is let's get this lawyer to question Jesus. This would've been a teacher of the law, an expert in the Old Testament scriptures and how they apply to everyday life. It would be like if someone had a JD, a law degree, and an MDiv, a theology degree, and kind of put them together in order to engage Jesus. So they bring their best and brightest to challenge, to have this face-off. So we get this expert in the Hebrew scriptures, and then we get the Hebrew Messiah, Jesus himself. And the first punch is thrown in the question, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" Or you could say, "What is the commandment in the law that is the greatest?" Now, he's not saying which laws are to be obeyed or which ones can be ignored. He's saying, "In your opinion, Jesus, which command is at the very heart of them all?" Because Jews held that all the commandments were equally valid. We had to obey every single one.

7:39But there's a distinguishing of maybe weightier laws or lighter laws. Look with me at Matthew 23:23. It's just in the next chapter. Matthew 23:23, look what Jesus says about the scribes and Pharisees. He says, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites." Why? "For you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faithfulness." In other words, you should have done the former, and you should have done the latter. There are weightier matters and, by inference, lesser matters. It's a little bit like the laws that we have on the books today.

8:22Driving the speed limit is less weighty than committing murder. But when you get pulled over by the police officer and he says, "Dude, you were going 90 in a 70," you say, "Well, at least I didn't commit murder." He's not going to take that, right? Manslaughter is weightier than a parking ticket, and yet they're all laws, and they can all be enforced. This question was this hotly debated topic among the rabbis. Later rabbinic teaching would sort of summarize the Old Testament laws in the Pentateuch as 613 commands. They kind of broke them all down, 248 positive ones and 365 prohibitive ones. And they had these debates, which one is most important?

9:12Which one's more important than the others? And I've done a little bit of research. This was hotly debated. There was this wide range of views. One rabbi is quoted as saying this, in terms of being asked which is the most important law. He says, "Great is circumcision, for it outweighs all the other religious duties that are in the Torah." You go there. Circumcision is the most important law. Or Rabbi Hillel, this is before Jesus. He was challenged to summarize the law. And what did he say? He said, "What is hateful to you, do not do to anyone else. This is the whole law. All the rest is commentary.

9:54Go and learn it." So it's the negative version of the golden rule. Or there's other rabbinic discussion that says, some rabbis pointed to Micah 6:8, "Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God." Or Amos 5:4, "Seek me and live." Habakkuk 2:4, "The righteous shall live by his faith." Or Proverbs 3:6, "In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths." I share all those various views to give us a sense that this was debated. It wasn't a settled question. In the oral tradition of the Pharisees, which was later recorded in a work called the Mishnah, love is only mentioned once as they try to explain all of the law.

10:45So, this is a debated question. It would be like today, what's the best diet? How should I eat? Doctors have some ideas, and we might have some ideas. Some of you might say low carb or Mediterranean or vegetarian or high protein or keto or the meat eaters diet, or intermittent fasting, or some of the teenagers might say nerd clusters and energy drinks. There's no consensus, except for probably not that last one. It's a highly debated issue, and that's the nature of the question that the lawyers are engaging Jesus. Now, this leads to the twofold truth from Jesus. So look with me at 37 to 40. Here's Jesus' reply.

11:31"And Jesus said to the lawyer, '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.'" So I'm going to answer five questions here in this second section. What does it mean to love God with one's heart, soul, and mind? Second question, what does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself? Third question, what does this assume about our love for ourselves? Question number four, what does it mean that the law and prophets depend on these two commands? And then the fifth question, what is the relationship between love for God and love for neighbor? So first, let's go back to the first question.

12:31What does it mean to love God with one's heart, soul, and mind? You may know that Jesus quotes or is citing a very familiar Old Testament text, Deuteronomy 6:4 and 5, which is called the Shema. Shema just means hear, which is the first word in Deuteronomy 6:4. And it says this, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." And then it says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." Others have summarized this verse as the oral creed of Judaism. If you go and read on, Jews were to recite it every morning and evening. It hung on the doorposts of their homes.

13:22It was worn on their forearm and on their head in these little leather boxes called phylacteries. If you look on in Matthew 23 verse 5, Jesus even speaks about these phylacteries, that they like them to be large and their fringes long. So the love that Jesus calls for is not merely emotion, the way that we hear the word love, but it connotes this wholehearted devotion, heart and soul and mind. With every single dimension of your being, that is how you are to love God. Now, there's some variation between Deuteronomy and then Mark and Luke and Matthew's Gospel in terms of the words that they record.

14:05Some use heart and soul, and some use might and mind and strength. And I think the main point is that it's trying to say we're to love God with every single aspect of our life, with all of our faculties. Heart and soul suggest our convictions and our commitments and our affections. Our mind calls for our intellect and our plans and our goals. Our strength and might call for our actions, our bodies, our will. The picture here is that you can't just say, "Well, I will serve God on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday," or, "Just when I feel like it," or, "Just in these moments when I go to church, and maybe first few days of the week." It's all of your life. It's like wedding vows.

14:55When a husband makes his commitment to a wife or a wife makes a commitment to her husband and they read those vows, they don't say, "I'll love you insofar as you're pretty, insofar as you provide for our family." What do you say? You say, "For better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, for as long as we both shall live." These are lifelong, wholehearted, total devotion and commitments. So, love God with all that you are. This is a little bit like Jesus' command back in chapter 22 verse 21, where he says, "Render to God the things that are God's." And what's that? Everything. We're to give God everything.

15:43We express this love through obedience and faithfulness. Jesus teaches in John 14:15, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." So this is the first commandment, meaning that it's first in priority. It's the most important, and everything else flows from it. Now, second question, what does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself? Well, Jesus again quotes the Old Testament here, Leviticus 19:18, which says, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus has actually quoted this two other times already in Matthew's Gospel, and it's the most cited Old Testament text in Matthew's Gospel by Jesus himself.

16:32And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus even teaches not only love your neighbor, but love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you. Now, the first command would've fulfilled what many call the first table or the first half of the Ten Commandments. It's our vertical relationship with God. And now this second command fulfills the second half or the second table of the Ten Commandments, how we relate to one another. And in the Old Testament context, Leviticus 19:18, it had this sense of honesty and not oppressing and abstaining from slander and forgiving rather than taking revenge, and yet this was the primary problem with the Pharisees.

17:18They could point to how strict they were in following God's law. We check all the boxes, Jesus. We cross all of our T's, dot all of our I's. When Jesus has that interaction with that rich young man, he lists some of the Ten Commandments, and he says, "I've kept all of those from my youth." Yet Jesus calls out in the next chapter that the Pharisees do not do what Jesus wants them to do. He says they preach, but they don't practice. They burden others and only care about themselves. Not only are they shut out of the kingdom, but they don't let other people enter in themselves. And so Jesus could have stopped at that first command, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength." Think on that.

18:11That'll take you a whole lifetime to think on and understand, and it'll take you a lifetime to do. But Jesus doesn't do that. He gives the second one, and I think he does that intentionally The reason he gives the second one is it shows that their claim to do the first is revealed by their failure to do the second. You don't love God the way that you say you do because you don't love others. Their failure to practice love for neighbor reveals their empty words in their so-called love for God.

18:47Question number three, what does this assume about our love for ourselves? It assumes that we naturally love ourselves. Ephesians five says this, "No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it." In other words, we instinctively know how to care about ourselves. We wake up in the morning, we look in the mirror, and you're like, "I need to comb my hair before I go out so I don't look so ridiculous." Or, "I need to brush my teeth," or wash my face, or whiten my teeth, or whatever it is. We know how to naturally take care of ourselves. When you cut a slice of pie, there's only one slice left, you split it with your spouse.

19:32You naturally know how to take the bigger one. You might give them the bigger one, but I sometimes take the bigger one. Or no one has to teach you that, right? It assumes the golden rule from Matthew 7:12, "Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them." So how do we love others? As we would like to be loved. Now, first, the problem is not that we don't love ourselves enough. There's an emphasis in our world today about self-love and self-care, and I think it's just a very sophisticated way of talking about being selfish. Most of us don't need to devote more time in thinking and caring about ourselves.

20:19The scriptures don't command you ever love yourself more. Rather, I think we need to be aware largely of being self-serving this morning. But I do think there are some who genuinely have this struggle with low self-worth and this distorted view of themselves. You're constantly beating yourself up. You struggle to identify anything positive about yourself. And the solution for that is not what the world says, which is just love yourself more, but the solution is to lift your eyes and to see what the scriptures and what Jesus himself says about those who are in Christ. Amen. God says about you that you are His children.

21:06If you are in Christ, you are holy and beloved, loved by God, that He has lavished His love upon you in Christ Jesus. You're so worthy and worthwhile because Jesus himself has shed his own blood so that you would be in God's family. That while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And so for those who are struggling with self-worth or low self-esteem, the issue is not to keep gazing at your own navel and trying to muster up more esteem, but rather lift your eyes to see what is true about you in the scriptures. Jesus himself died for us, and he's purchased us by his precious blood. Question number four, what does it mean that the law and prophets depend on these two commands? The word depend means to hang, like a door hangs on its hinges. And the law and prophets are shorthand for all of the scriptures, the Old Testament in this context. And so these two commands fulfill and illuminate the entire Old Testament and the Christian faith.

22:22And so we could say, if we want to obey all that God commands, we can begin with these two commandments. Now, notice the original question. Which is the great commandment in the law? If we were to boil down the entire first five books of the Bible into one singular commandment, Jesus, which would you pick? And the Pharisees are probably thinking obedience, adherence to the rules. And they're thinking, "We've done that. We're doing pretty good. We're righteous before God." And yet Jesus went on to reveal that they fall short. They love the praise of man, and ultimately, they're idolatrous, and they have no true devotion to God. And in fact, not only that, they have rejected God's Son, the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

23:23And so Jesus reveals they shouldn't boil it down into one singular command, but rather two, because when we are truly transformed by the love of God in Christ Jesus, it can't help but overflow into our lives so that we love others. It's the right response in having seen God's love for us. So Jesus is not trying to say muster up more love for God and for others. But when we truly see who we are in light of God's holiness and glory, as sinners, wretched, who can't do anything that would ultimately honor Him because we lack faith, and then we see the love of God poured out in Christ Jesus, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He lays down his life for us.

24:14We can rightly respond in love for Him that transforms and overflows. Question number five, what is the relationship between love for God and love for neighbor? I think Jesus intentionally puts these two realities together to show that they are inseparable. One cannot say they love God but refuse to love others. Hear the words of 1 John 4:20 and 21, "If anyone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen." And he goes on, "This commandment we have from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother."

25:08These are hard and convicting and sobering words. Is there someone, a fellow brother or sister in Christ, whom you have a longstanding feud, brokenness, maybe deep-rooted hatred? You need to reconcile that and see the logic. The first cannot stand alone. In other words, we cannot compartmentalize our love for God. Some of us are really good at compartmentalizing. Once I leave work, I stop thinking about work. I'm just with the family or something else is going on over here. I can just shut that off and turn my attention to something else. Others of us can't do any of that. And yet what Jesus is saying, you can't compartmentalize your relationship with the Lord.

25:59It needs to transform every single aspect of your life. It can't just be on Sunday, but it needs to be in your internet history as well. It can't just be with hands raised and songs sung, but it needs to be in your relationships with your family and your coworkers and your neighbor. It needs to be in every single aspect of our life. Jesus says in John 13:35, "By this all people will know that you are my disciples," how? "That you have love for one another." It's like when you get a flood in your house and say the second-story bathroom overflows, and the water goes where? It goes everywhere. It goes wherever it wants. It just overflows into every single crevice of your house. If there's any space, it'll make it there.

26:59And in the same way, if we truly understand this rightly, if we have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, if we have seen that God is the one who has given us every single thing good that we experience, our life and breath and all of us, then it must trickle down and overflow into every single crevice of our lives Now, there might be an objection. You might think, well, non-Christians love people. They don't have the love of God. And at one level, I could say, yeah, that's true. There's common grace so that those who don't know the love of God can genuinely love their spouse, love their children, love others, and yet what Jesus is speaking about here is a different type of love.

27:52This is an infinite, eternal, sacrificial love that has someone's eternal good in view. And that is only possible when we're first transformed by God's love. It's not just any love, it's not just human love, person to person, but this is God's love that's been poured out into our hearts. And so one cannot claim to love God without first loving God. 1 John 4:7-8 says, "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. And anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love." So the love that Jesus has in view here is more than just, I'm going to be nice to my neighbor and bring them cookies once a year and maybe invite him over for coffee around Christmas. This is an otherworldly, infinite, I want your eternal good sort of love at work that forgives and bears with one another, that is long-suffering and that sacrifices.

28:59And this true love, biblical love, is born of God and is transformed first and foremost because we have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. So now we come to our third part, truth in action. What does this mean for us this morning? What does this mean for us? Very simply, I could say, love God, love your neighbor. And yet, I don't know if you're like me, just hearing those things just gives me utter and complete paralysis. I do not know where to begin because I can improve in every single area of my life. And so let me just call out three things. The first is for some of us, is to surrender first to the love of God in Christ.

29:49Surrender to the love of God in Christ. There are some here this morning who have never experienced, tasted, and seen the love of God. And the love of God is revealed most chiefly in the cross of Christ. We love because God first loved us. And so we're so busy trying to do the right thing, follow the letter of the law, and yet we realize that our hearts are deficient and defective. And so this invitation this morning is not to muster up more obedience, to try harder, do better, but rather to receive the love of God in Christ Jesus, to see that God has loved you with an everlasting love, and he's revealed that in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

30:48We are to be transformed by this love. And when we're on the receiving end of God's love, we will then in turn respond rightly to God's love. It's a little bit like, pick your favorite place. Standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, at the base of the Tetons, overlooking an over-water bungalow in Bora Bora, whatever your favorite place. Sunset in Hawaii. And what do you do in that moment? You just bask in the bigness and the beauty of that moment. You're just overwhelmed and overcome by how amazing and glorious it is. When I used to live in San Diego in college, I used to run out into the waves in the Pacific Ocean just to feel their power against me as they would kind of batter me and push me back, and I would try to just stand without moving, and then it would just push me off my feet again and again, and it was just this visual picture of God is that big and strong.

31:54His power is such that these waves take stones that have jagged edges and over thousands of years or hundreds of years, turn them perfectly smooth, and if I stood here, I would get the wind knocked out of me if I stood here long enough, except that it was too cold and I got to get back in. If we could see the extent of God's love, like waves that crash over us, like the amazement of standing at the most beautiful sunset or the top of a mountain, that is unlike any other view that we've ever experienced, we would respond in rightful praise. We can't help but lift our hands in that moment and say, "This is so beautiful."

32:39And then we ruin that moment by trying to take a picture to capture it. But the point still stands that we just want to respond and bask in this bigness, and that's what some of us need to do this morning, bask in the love of God. It's not for you to muster up trying to love Him, but just rest knowing that God has loved you with an everlasting love in Christ Jesus, if you will repent and believe and confess that Jesus is Lord. Second application, beware of counterfeit love. Beware of counterfeit love. Sadly, people distort this phrase, love thy neighbor, and even weaponize it today against biblical truth. It's probably the most weaponized phrase that we have in our culture today. If you drive around your neighborhood and you see someone with a nice rainbow sign that says, "Love thy neighbor," do you think, wow, they're seeking to apply Matthew 22:39. That's great. I should go introduce myself.

33:43I admit I do not. It's not what I think. There's lots of counterfeit ideas floating about of how to be loving or how to love. And so let me just highlight a few. Some elevate love over truth. Love means never saying anything difficult, never disagreeing, never talking about right or wrong, and never talking about the imminent judgment of God. Even churches will steer clear of sin and of hell, and yet this is not true love. We see this in parenting. You don't love your child well if you give them a credit card, unlimited nerd clusters, and then a mini bike and say, "Go as fast as you want, wherever you want." That's not love.

34:31In 1 Samuel 2, Eli the priest fails to restrain and love his sons, and ultimately, they offer up strange fire, and their judgment leads to their destruction. And today, this is rampant in our world. We see people tell teens to change their genders through chemical castration and surgery, and they call it love, and yet it causes them irreversible damage. In contrast, 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter, it says, "Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing." But what? It rejoices with the truth. Love rejoices with the truth. Real love loves the truth, causes the truth to bear in relationships and in the lives of others.

35:28Or love often means acceptance or affirmation or tolerance. And yet Proverbs 27:6 says, "Faithful are the wounds of a friend, profuse are the kisses of an enemy." Are we true and faithful friends to others? Can we identify when others have distorted love, weaponized love in our world and in our culture and say, "Well, why don't you just be more loving?" Hebrews 12:6 says, "The Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives." A doctor is not being loving if he tells you nothing's wrong, just go home, when you're dying. That's medical malpractice. And in the same way, we are to speak the truth in love.

36:25Or some believe, in the words of The Beatles, all you need is love. We just need more of it. More love. Doesn't matter what kind of love, just love and not war. Love wins in the end. Love can kind of transcend our polarization and divisions, and we just need to love ourselves, and love is love, and love conquers all. And yet love is not warm feelings and good vibes. God is love, and he teaches us whom to love, how to love, and how to order our loves. That's what this text is all about. Jesus is teaching us what it means to love God, what does it look like, and to love others, and how those are the fulfillment of the law.

37:10So real love is inseparable from truth. Guardrails keep it on track. Love untethered to truth becomes something other than love. And then the third application, love God and love your neighbor. Love God and love your neighbor. And at one level, it's just nearly impossible to give a concrete application of these two commands. And yet, if I told you, for those of you who are married, "Love your spouse more," you would know what to do. For those of you who aren't married, if I said, hypothetically, if you had a spouse, "Love your spouse more," you would know what to do. You'd probably say, "Well, I need to talk to them a little bit more.

38:00I need to trust them. I need to spend time with them. I need to think about how to get them to smile or to laugh." Or you think about all the sweet moments you had in the past, and you look forward to the future memories that you can make together. You spend your time and your money and your energy on them, and you tell others about them, and you think about how much they love you and how much you love them. And that's the invitation this morning. In loving God is just to delight yourself in the Lord. Psalm 37:4, "Delight yourself in the Lord." Find your joy and pleasure and happiness in God. George Mueller used to say, "My first duty every single morning was to make my soul happy in the Lord." That's what we're called to this morning.

38:52And then to love your neighbor as yourself. We can be deceived, like the story of the Good Samaritan, in thinking that we're so busy worshiping God and doing things for God that we lose sight of the people that God has placed directly in our paths. And so let's have eyes to see those that the Lord has put in front of us. And the glorious good news of this passage is that we don't do this in our own strength. Romans 5:5 tells us that God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. So that right now, every single believer has the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit inside of them, dwelling within them, giving rise to our love for God and for others. And so the glory of salvation is that we have been brought into the eternal, infinite love of the Father for the Son, and the Son for the Father, and the Father and Son for the Spirit, and we've been brought into that triune love.

40:05And so it's not a heavy command, because you have been filled with the Spirit to love God and to love others. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we ask that we would therefore abide in the love of God this morning. Pray that we would not be paralyzed with thinking about how to do these things, but that we would delight ourselves in you, see the love of God poured out in Christ Jesus, and then respond in obedience in all the ways that you call us to come alongside others and to make much of you for your glory and for our everlasting joy. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Sermon Text

Matthew 22:34-40

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