Beeson Podcast, Episode #605
Dr. Ken Matthews
June 7, 2022

>>Announcer: 


Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your hosts, Doug Sweeney and Kristen Padilla. 



>>Doug Sweeney:

Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I’m your host, Doug Sweeney. As I announced last week, my co-host, Kristen Padilla, and I are taking a break from interviews this summer so that we can plan and prepare for next year. In the place of interviews, over the next eight weeks we want to play for you sermons that were preached in Hodges Chapel this last academic year. We are so grateful to sit under excellent preaching and teaching each week when school is in session. And we want to share some of these sermons with you. If you are looking for a break in your busy day to be edified from scripture, we pray that this summer series will provide such an opportunity of spiritual nourishment. 

This summer, a few of us at Beeson will be on the road traveling to different annual meetings and conference and we would love to meet and see you, if you’ll be at one or more of these as well. You can find us at the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California, June 12-15; The Evangelical Fellowship of the Anglican Communion, from June 15-17; the PCA (Presbyterian Church of America) General Assembly from June 21-24; and the EK Bailey Preaching Conference from July 11-13. 

One other announcement. Tickets are already on sale for our Beauty of God Conference: Preaching Worship & The Arts. Guests included Matt Papa, Debra Dean Murphy, Kevin Twit, Tyshawn Gardner, Cliff Duren, John Witvliet, and others. Find more information and purchase tickets at www.BeesonDivinity.com/events.

The sermon we’re playing for you today is one given by our own beloved Dr. Ken Matthews, who retires at the end of this month after 33 years of teaching. His sermon called, “The Law of Love,” is based on Deuteronomy 6:4-9, and was given this past Fall 2021 for our chapel series called, “Tokens of the Providence of God in Times of Trouble.” Dr. Mathews are many of us know is a renown Old Testament scholar. His book, “The Paleo Hebrew Leviticus Scroll,” co-authored with David Knowles Freedman was the first full study of the Leviticus Dead Sea Scroll. He’s the author of Genesis 1-11:26 and Genesis 11:27-50:26 in the New American Commentary Series, as well as associate general editor of that series. 

He’s the author of “Leviticus: Holy God, Holy People” in the Preaching the Word series, “Joshua” in the Teach the Text Commentary series, and the “Post Racial Church,” co-authored with Beeson faculty member, Dr. Sydney Park. Dr. Mathews translated Leviticus for the New Living Translation of the Bible and is the associate editor of the Old Testament for the New Evangelical Biblical Commentary Series, published by Lexom Press. 

So, with these things in mind, we all know Dr. Mathews is very well prepared to lead us in this sermon he is preaching for us today. Let’s go now to Hodges Chapel and listen to him preach on the law of love. 


>>Readers:


If you will turn in your bibles we have a reading from Deuteronomy 6:4-9 [ESV]

4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.[a] 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

The New Testament reading is from Romans 8:1-4.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

The Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.



>>Dr. Mathews:


I have attended many chapel services across the years. And many conferences. It is a treasure to remember and also to be formed to be growing in the Lord in the knowledge and in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. What a beautiful setting as we’ve reflected through the years on the glory and the holiness of God and the beauty of our Lord. 

Today we’re going to be talking about the law of love. Now, there are some who will think that law and love, well, they’re contradictory. They don’t have anything to do with one another. They kind of feel like it the way Bobby Fuller and his Fuller Four sang of it in 1966. Here are the words, “I’m breaking rocks in the hot sun. I fought the law and the law won. I fought the law and the law won.” The law is restrictive. It’s unforgiving. It’s unrelenting. It’s oppressive. It’s crushing. How can we have law and love in the same room?

The Apostle Paul helps us in this. He tells us in Galatians 3 that the law is not contrary to God’s promises. God forbid. For the law and the promises fit together in great harmony. Then there are those who take the position that, “Well, what we need to do to fit these two together is we just simply have to trim the law.” It’s sort of like doing a jigsaw puzzle. And you come down to the last few pieces and none of them fit. So, you take out your scissors and you trim the pieces and they fit perfectly. And so the thought may well be that we just have to take out some of those ugly things that are said in the law.

But both the Apostle Paul and the Apostle James tell us that you can’t do so. ‘Cause everybody who lives under the law is under the whole law. And James tells us that whoever keeps the entire law, even if they fail at one point, is a failure of the whole law. 

Well, there’s a better way to see it all and that is the law and love are friendly companions. For an example, listen to the Psalmist who says, “The delight of the man is in the law of the Lord. And on his law he meditates day and night.” And then another place, “I delight to do your will, oh my God, your law is within my heart.” And then listen to the Apostle Paul, “For I delight in the law of God in my inner being.” The law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. 

Now, before we begin to get into the passage, we are told by the Rabbi’s there are 613 commandments in the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The Pentateuch, we say. Or for the Jewish tradition, Torah. That’s a lot of ground to cover during this hour. But I am compelled in terms of the spirit of the law to give you a long introduction, a lengthy exposition, and of course a conclusion that is forevermore. And I say all that just to remind us that our passage for the day, the ideas of law and love, are far deeper than we have time to reflect upon. 

And so in order to bring to the table what must be in our minds when we read this great law calling us to love, I want to remind us that the law is anchored in God’s promises. We speak of it as covenant and probably the best way to understand covenant is simply as a relationship. So, God in his kind mercies chose to give to the ancestors of Israel promises of blessing, promises of prosperity, promises of his own love and care. 

And so we find in Deuteronomy 7 and also in chapter 10 that God out of his love chose the ancestors and it was because of that then that their legacy or their descendants were to also receive the promises. And God chose them to work through a law. Now the law did not redeem. It was at Passover that the people of God became indeed his people. And it was in the giving of the law at Mount Sinai that God gave the law as a means of, in a temporary way, to maintain that relationship. To guarantee and assure that he would be their God and they would be his people.

So that the law is grounded, it’s based, it’s embraced within God’s love. Some may think that the law is a straight jacket, but actually the law is better understood as a bulletproof vest given by God to protect his people. To ensure that he would be their God providing for them in a hostile way in a hostile environment. 

This is because, as you know, the bulletproof vest – what’s the purpose of it? It’s to protect what is most dear to us and that’s our lives. (laughs) That’s our heart. Even so, God gave the law to protect so that they might be his treasured people to protect them to provide for them. It was a means, as I indicated earlier, by which God in his great holiness made it possible through worship and provision of sacrifice for this relationship between God, this covenant, is realized through his elective love.

And so there may be some who are saying, “Well, God in the law, well, he’s a holy God. What about those places where it speaks of his wrath against sinners?” This is how the Lord defines himself. He speaks of himself as abounding in love. And does not leave the guilty unpunished. And what he is speaking of there is justice. And how God does abound in love, but also justice. These are two perfect companions – holding hand in hand. Because love without holiness, without justice, well, that’s just sloppy sentimentality.

And where there is love and holiness without love it’s really nothing. Even unholy. God becomes an impersonal and mechanical God. We have no hope if there’s only holiness without love. We live under its condemnation. 

Well, the Psalmist came to this in his thinking and attempted to explain this in Psalm 62. One thing God has spoken, two things have I heard. That you, O God, are strong and that you, O Lord, are loving. 

So, that sets the table and let’s look then at our passage more closely. We might ask a simple question as to why is this considered the greatest commandment? Jesus, as you know, identified this as the greatest commandment. It’s the greatest commandment because it’s the core of the law. This is the revelation that God has spoken through Moses, through his people. To diminish, to denigrate Moses or the law is really to slander God. Because this too is his authoritative word that speaks to his people. And we find in a very succinct way what is the heart of the law? In it we will find the heart of God. 

So, the second law that is identified by Jesus is to love your neighbor as yourself. Why is that the second greatest law? It’s because it is a means by which God loves through his people. It is the natural expression of the way in which God simply is. Because God within himself, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit – there, there is an abiding love. The Father who loves, the Son who receives that love, he’s the beloved, and then the Holy Spirit that brings together this love within the triune holy society of God.

And God is of such that he’s not satisfied simply within himself to love. It is a natural spring of his love toward others. And when God gives us that love, then we in turn are called upon to have a love for others. It’s a natural expression of God’s own love. When it says, “the Lord our God,” our God is so rich when we remember what was said earlier about the covenant because this was the identifying mark of the people of Israel. He is forever remembered as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He chose to so reveal himself and identify himself with this people out of his elective love. 

Identity is an issue today that has made its way into popular culture as well as within the church. In the middle ages your identity was pretty much determined by what your father did. If you had a father who was a farmer, you were a farmer. And then when we leap forward to more recent times, your identity was often determined for you by your community and what you would do for the community. And your honor would be as a consequence of your obligations and responsibility to your community. But what of today?

One of the interesting things about the last several decades is how now people are creating on the basis of their feelings largely what their identity is. Whatever you feel yourself to be, you’re free to create. Well, there’s a better way. I think that what you will find the better way to be. An identity as a member of the household of faith. And this we have in our Lord Jesus Christ. As he has made us his own in his family and he has created us anew. And the mark, the standard, like in ancient Israel, is our covenant relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. 

When it speaks of oneness what immediately leaps to mind is the monotheism, the one God versus the many. And while that is true I think that we have more to be said here. The oneness of God speaks to the coherence of God, the symmetry of God, the beauty of God, the holiness of God. He’s not capricious. He’s not undecided. He’s not confused. He doesn’t make it up as he goes along. And in many ways the oneness of God is what makes it possible. For us to be one in the spirit that the people of God, whether Jew or Gentile, are under one God. 

For as Paul says, there is one God. And similarly we know that God’s goodness is expressed through his oneness, his wholeness, all of his perfections. One God, but yet we are called upon to love the Lord. Now, how is that possibly achieved? Well, the language of the New Testament helps us, but it’s not altogether new. When you read the Book of Deuteronomy we find the expression that the people were stiff of neck. Stiff necked. God even speaks of how he knows the character of the people of God. There are people who are prone toward rebellion. And they were a people who demonstrated time and time again. And out of God’s own longsuffering he made it possible for them to become also new persons. New people. But he did so in anticipating the way in which God has chosen to work through these times. And that is through the circumcision of the heart. 

Jeremiah said it very well. When God is to write upon our hearts the commandments of the Lord. Where it begins, as it says here, in this great commandment is that we must choose to worship the Lord – that’s what it means to “he loved the Lord” – and it begins with the inner person, the heart. The inner being. And then it moves beyond to that of the whole person. The soul. We’re soulish entities. We have the inner person and the outer person. The body. In our wholeness, the soul. And then to do so with might. 

You know, sometimes I think we get this reversed. Sometimes we think that the way in which to achieve the righteousness of God and our relationship with God is through giving might first and through a performance of might and strength and devotion we try and we try and we try and we try harder. The good things. But that will not bring us to God. He has to re-make us. He begins from the inside out. He’s got to make covenant keepers. And he does so by the coming, the giving of the Holy Spirit.

Remember what the Apostle Paul says in Romans 5 – that the spirit is the one who sheds the love of God in our hearts. It was God who must circumcise the heart. Just as Jeremiah says it was God who must write the ten commandments on our hearts. It’s the Spirit of God who invades us through our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ that will transform us from the inside out. Not from the outside in. And so when we receive the Lord Jesus Christ then that renovation, then that new creature emerges. 

And then lastly I want to mention that the law is a matter of lifestyle. This is what we find when it has to do with teaching as it says here. To teach our children and this is a lifestyle, it’s not in a formal setting, it becomes such a part of our lives that it matters not whether we are inside or outside or the beginning of the day or the end of the day. We exhibit it in the way in which we live. How is that true for us today? 

Well, the Apostle Paul says as much. As we saw in Romans 8:4. When he’s talking about how the law’s requirement for righteousness is accomplished for us and in us when it comes to walking not according to the natural flesh, the sinful nature, but according to the Spirit. This righteousness is a matter of living out this right relationship with God. And how can we do that? We can only do that through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. 

I want to conclude with an illustration of the woman at the well in John 4. You’ll remember that the disciples have left for a bit and Jesus was at the well of Jacob. And the Samaritan woman came to draw water. And Jesus engaged her. Asking for water. And then he explained to her that he had a water, a living water, a water that would quench her thirst forevermore. And you remember the disciples returned and appeared and what did they see?

They saw a Samaritan woman, they saw a gender, a woman. And they saw a woman with a background. But what did Jesus see? He saw a thirsty woman. He saw her heart. And he called upon her to drink of his waters, one that would come from like a spring or a fountain that would be bubbling up and it would give a life forevermore. 

Where do we stand when it comes to experiencing and to giving the love of God so richly bestowed upon us? It is through receiving our Lord Jesus Christ by faith and acknowledging the presence of the Holy Spirit who through the love of God, the mercies and kindness of God, in his beauty he draws us into the family of love. And he says forevermore. 



>>Kristen Padilla:


You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast. Our theme music is written and performed by Advent Birmingham of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello. Our co-hosts are Doug Sweeney and, myself, Kristen Padilla. Please subscribe to the Beeson podcast at www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast or on iTunes.