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Thursday, October 14, 2010

Greatest Commandment Revolts (Lev 17-20)

What did Jesus actually say in the New Testament that differs from the Old Testament's Greatest Commandment? Let's first look at what the Old Testament says about the Greatest Commandment:

-Deuteronomy 6:5, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might."

-Leviticus 19:18, "You shall not take vegeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord."

-Job 31:13-15, "If I have rejected the cause of my manservant or my maidservant, when they brought a complaint against me what then shall I do when God rises up? When He makes inquiry, what shall I answer Him? Did not He who made me in the womb make him? And did not one fashion us in the womb?"

Those Greatest Commandment were in Old Testament. Jesus came not to repeat those Greatest Commandment, but he came to revolt Jews' way of thinking when he said, "Love thy enemy". It's easy for the Jews to think that "love thy neighbor as thyself" refer only to those that act like one of His people, but they don't need to love those who don't act according to His people like Gentiles.

Jesus didn't simply revolt Jews' way of thinking, he also sent us out to the Gentiles through the Greatest Commission that didn't exist in the Old Testament. Or did it? There's an article that argues that God also sent Jonah to a mission trip to Ninevah, the Lord say to Jonah, "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you." (Jonah 3:2) Even God took His time to chase after Jonah to make him go to Nineveh. Then how much does Jonah's mission trip meant to God? That much!

IJFM challenges us to think that Israel, representing a royal priesthood, serve as a priest, but to whom does Israel serve? They were to act as priests to all the nations in the whole world (http://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/13_1_PDFs/01_Kaiser.pdf). Let us re-read the whole Bible and see ourselves as Israel to see how Israel went through different seasons of life like birth pangs, just like us!

We got to shine like Israel shined (Ps 67) so that the whole world may fear Him. "And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." Matt 14:14

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