{"id":7157,"date":"2015-12-01T00:05:41","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T08:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=7157"},"modified":"2015-11-30T19:15:55","modified_gmt":"2015-12-01T03:15:55","slug":"whats-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2015\/12\/01\/whats-important\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s Important"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees with his reply, they met together to question him again. One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap him with this question: \u201cTeacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jesus replied, \u201c \u2018You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.\u2019 This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: \u2018Love your neighbor as yourself.\u2019 The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, surrounded by the Pharisees, Jesus asked them a question: \u201cWhat do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?\u201d<\/p>\n

They replied, \u201cHe is the son of David.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jesus responded, \u201cThen why does David, speaking under the inspiration of the Spirit, call the Messiah \u2018my Lord\u2019? For David said,<\/p>\n

\u2018The LORD said to my Lord,
\nSit in the place of honor at my right hand
\nuntil I humble your enemies beneath your feet.\u2019<\/p>\n

Since David called the Messiah \u2018my Lord,\u2019 how can the Messiah be his son?\u201d<\/p>\n

No one could answer him. And after that, no one dared to ask him any more questions. (Matthew 22:34-46)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\tJesus kept hitting home runs against everything that the religious establishment threw at him. The Sadducees had taken their best pitcher and Jesus belted it out of the field. So now it was the turn of the Pharisees, who of course would fare no better. <\/p>\n

\tWhen they asked Jesus about the greatest commandment, their expectation was that no matter which one he picked, they\u2019d be able show how some other law was better and thereby make Jesus look foolish.<\/p>\n

\tOnce again, Jesus\u2019 answer short-circuited their expectations. And before they could react, Jesus turned the tables and asked them about the issue that motivated all their attacks upon him: who they thought the Messiah was. <\/p>\n

\tJesus showed them that they had no clue about the Messiah, since they had no answer for a rather obvious paradox in the Bible about him. How could he be both a descendent of David and God himself? They had never considered the incarnation: God becoming human. At that moment, they should have realized that they might be wrong about Jesus, since they didn\u2019t know as much about the Messiah as they imagined. <\/p>\n

\tWe don\u2019t always know as much as we think we do. Be ready to open your mind and adapt yourself to what the Bible says, rather than insisting upon what you think you already know.<\/p>\n

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When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees with his reply, they met together to question him again. One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap him with this question: \u201cTeacher, which is the most … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7157"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7157"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7159,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7157\/revisions\/7159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}