Matthew: Living Ready for the Kingdom
Watch video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzZ6im3Xhp4
Program Transcript
Living Ready for the Kingdom
Anyone who has waited for someone they love knows the quiet tension of anticipation.
A light left on in the window. A table set in expectation. A watchful glance toward the road, wondering when the long-awaited arrival will finally come.
Waiting can be difficult, but it can also be meaningful. When we know someone important is coming, the waiting itself begins to shape how we live.
Jesus spoke often about this kind of readiness.
At the center of Jesus’ teaching is a simple yet profound command: to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. In these words, Jesus reveals the very heart of God’s kingdom.
Faithfulness is not measured by outward appearance or religious performance. It is seen in lives shaped by love.
And the one who calls us to this way of life is more than a teacher. Jesus reveals himself as the promised Son of David and the true Lord, the King whose kingdom is breaking into the world.
The kingdom begins with love for God and love for neighbor.
As his ministry drew toward its final days, Jesus spoke with clarity and urgency about the life of the kingdom. He challenged religious leaders whose outward appearances hid hearts that had grown distant from the compassion and justice of God.
True faith, he reminded his listeners, is not measured by appearances or titles. It is seen in humility, sincerity, and a life shaped by love.
The kingdom calls us to lives of integrity and compassion.
Jesus then turned his attention to the future. Through a series of stories, he described a time when the Son of Man would come again in glory. His words were not meant to create fear or speculation, but to awaken faithful living.
In one story, bridesmaids wait with lamps burning, prepared for the arrival of the bridegroom.
In another, servants are entrusted with resources and asked to use them wisely while their master is away.
These stories remind us that the kingdom is not something we passively wait for. It is something we actively participate in as we live with faithfulness, wisdom, and trust.
Faithfulness is formed in the ordinary moments of life.
Finally, Jesus paints a powerful picture of the coming kingdom where the true measure of faithfulness is revealed in acts of compassion.
Those who welcomed the stranger, fed the hungry, and cared for the vulnerable discover that in serving others, they were serving Christ himself.
The kingdom of God is not only about what we believe.
It is revealed in how we live, how we love, and how we reflect the heart of Christ in the world.
The kingdom becomes visible through love in action.
These teachings invite us to live with a sense of holy attentiveness. The future kingdom of God is certain, and its reality is already shaping the present.
So we live with hope.
We live with humility.
And we live with readiness.
The King is coming, and his kingdom is already at work among us.
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it:
‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:37-40
Jesus reminds us that life in the kingdom is rooted in love and expressed through faithful living. In the passage that follows, we hear the words that reveal the heart of God’s kingdom and the way Jesus calls his followers to live.
As we continue exploring the Gospel of Matthew, may we grow into lives shaped by the love of Christ. And as we await the fullness of his kingdom, may our lives reflect the humility, faithfulness, and compassion of the King we follow.
Program Transcript
Living Ready for the Kingdom
Anyone who has waited for someone they love knows the quiet tension of anticipation.
A light left on in the window. A table set in expectation. A watchful glance toward the road, wondering when the long-awaited arrival will finally come.
Waiting can be difficult, but it can also be meaningful. When we know someone important is coming, the waiting itself begins to shape how we live.
Jesus spoke often about this kind of readiness.
At the center of Jesus’ teaching is a simple yet profound command: to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. In these words, Jesus reveals the very heart of God’s kingdom.
Faithfulness is not measured by outward appearance or religious performance. It is seen in lives shaped by love.
And the one who calls us to this way of life is more than a teacher. Jesus reveals himself as the promised Son of David and the true Lord, the King whose kingdom is breaking into the world.
The kingdom begins with love for God and love for neighbor.
As his ministry drew toward its final days, Jesus spoke with clarity and urgency about the life of the kingdom. He challenged religious leaders whose outward appearances hid hearts that had grown distant from the compassion and justice of God.
True faith, he reminded his listeners, is not measured by appearances or titles. It is seen in humility, sincerity, and a life shaped by love.
The kingdom calls us to lives of integrity and compassion.
Jesus then turned his attention to the future. Through a series of stories, he described a time when the Son of Man would come again in glory. His words were not meant to create fear or speculation, but to awaken faithful living.
In one story, bridesmaids wait with lamps burning, prepared for the arrival of the bridegroom.
In another, servants are entrusted with resources and asked to use them wisely while their master is away.
These stories remind us that the kingdom is not something we passively wait for. It is something we actively participate in as we live with faithfulness, wisdom, and trust.
Faithfulness is formed in the ordinary moments of life.
Finally, Jesus paints a powerful picture of the coming kingdom where the true measure of faithfulness is revealed in acts of compassion.
Those who welcomed the stranger, fed the hungry, and cared for the vulnerable discover that in serving others, they were serving Christ himself.
The kingdom of God is not only about what we believe.
It is revealed in how we live, how we love, and how we reflect the heart of Christ in the world.
The kingdom becomes visible through love in action.
These teachings invite us to live with a sense of holy attentiveness. The future kingdom of God is certain, and its reality is already shaping the present.
So we live with hope.
We live with humility.
And we live with readiness.
The King is coming, and his kingdom is already at work among us.
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it:
‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:37-40
Jesus reminds us that life in the kingdom is rooted in love and expressed through faithful living. In the passage that follows, we hear the words that reveal the heart of God’s kingdom and the way Jesus calls his followers to live.
As we continue exploring the Gospel of Matthew, may we grow into lives shaped by the love of Christ. And as we await the fullness of his kingdom, may our lives reflect the humility, faithfulness, and compassion of the King we follow.
Psalm 90:1–6, 13–17 • Deuteronomy 34:1–12 • 1 Thessalonians 2:1–8 • Matthew 22:34–46
The theme for this Sunday is Jesus is God’s love in human form. The psalmist calls forth the lovingkindness and faithfulness of God. In comparison to the Creator’s eternal glory, humans are weak, faulty, and short lived. The psalmist asks the Lord to give his favor, to enable God’s people to rejoice rather than only grieve their afflictions. Deuteronomy tells the story of Moses’ final days. The Lord has a close, face-to-face relationship with Moses. Through Moses, God keeps his promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, bringing Israel to the promised land. But in the end, the Lord shows Moses the promised land from a distance. He allows Moses to die without ever setting foot in it. Moses is a great prophet, who does great deeds. But Joshua now leads Israel in his place. In the Gospel passage, the Pharisees approach Jesus. They ask him which was the greatest commandment in the Law. Jesus answers, quoting the Scriptures. He says it is to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind. He says the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. Then Jesus asks them who the Messiah is the son of. They say he is “the son of David.” Jesus shows them how David, in the Spirit, called Christ (the Messiah or Anointed One) Lord or Adonai. Then David said the Lord (YHWH) raised this Lord (Adonai) to his own right hand. In this way, Jesus challenges their beliefs about who the Messiah is: If David calls him “Lord”, how is he his “son”? In the New Testament passage, the apostle Paul shares his concern and love for the believers in Thessalonica. He reminds them of how he and his coworkers shared the gospel with them in sincerity and humility amid great opposition. He and his coworkers spoke and acted in order to please God, not man. They also lovingly shared their own lives.
Reminder: This introductory paragraph is intended to show how the four RCL selections for this week are connected and to assist the preacher prepare the sermon. It is not intended to be included in the sermon.
How to use this sermon resource.
Jesus Is God’s Love in Human Form
Matthew 22:34–46 ESV
Wherever we live, we have regulations and laws which limit, guide, or aid our actions and behavior. Often, we don’t even realize how many regulations and laws are applicable to us. We may simply run into them and find we have a problem.
An example of how many laws may be applicable to us simply because of where we live is the California Civil Code. It contains 3,710 unique sections each containing dozens of statutes. These address the rights and obligations of US citizens in the state of California. And that is just the state code. Each city and county has their own list of laws that regulate their citizens. [You may wish to use similar information related to your own location and context.]
Compared with 3,710 laws, the writings of Moses (the Bible books of Genesis through Deuteronomy) contain only 613 commands. There are 248 which are positive commands, stating what a person should do. And there are 365 commands which are negative, stating what a person should not do. It is obvious that one would need to be very attentive to ensure that every command was correctly kept.
In Jesus’ day, the scribes or legal experts debated about which of these Mosaic laws (laws of Moses) were the most important. Some of these laws were considered less important or lighter. Others were considered very important, with serious consequences.
There were scribes who believed the law about fringes on the garments was most important. Others were certain that failing to wash correctly was a crime worthy of death. At the heart of these debates was one question: How do we determine which Mosaic laws are most important?
In our passage for today, Jesus is asked this question by a lawyer or scribe. The lawyer isn’t genuinely interested in Jesus’ answer. Instead, he wants to trip Jesus up and get him to say something that will enable the authorities to arrest him. But Jesus has something else in mind that is more important. Let’s read today’s passage:
34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” 41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, 42 saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” 43 He said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, 44 “ ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet” ’? 45 If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” 46 And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions. Matthew 22:34–46 ESV
Notice how Jesus completely changes the direction of the conversation. Jesus doesn’t focus on specific laws or criteria for deciding which law is most important. Instead, Jesus summarizes of the Law and Prophets (the entire Old Testament). And he says this summarization is directly related to who he is. He is the full expression of God’s love. Jesus is God’s love in human form.
Misdirected Priorities
The law given to the ancient nation of Israel, the Mosaic law, was a description of what it looks like to live in a covenant love relationship with their God. This covenant relationship was established by God with Israel as he brought the people out of slavery in Egypt.
For the last couple of months, our sermons have centered on the nation of Isreal. God brought them across the Red Sea to Mount Sinai. There he invited them into a covenant relationship. He would protect and provide for them. They would respond with gratitude, worship, and faithful obedience. He invited them to make this covenant with him, which was affirmed by sacrifice.
God provided Israel with a means of living in covenant relationship with him as imperfect human beings. He gave them his law.
Three Sundays ago, we talked about God giving the Israelites the Ten Commandments, which are a core part of the Law of Moses. The Israelites had spent generations living as an enslaved community. They now have to learn how to live as God’s priestly nation. The Ten Commandments were given as a way for God to begin to create his kingdom community.
Part of this law was intended for civil order — this provided ways for them to live as a nation under God’s rule. Another part of this law had to do with how they worshiped God. Another dealt with how they handled their personal life. These laws described how they were to live in right relationship with God and each other.
Over time, God built his relationship with Israel. He cared for them as they wandered in the wilderness. He provided them bread from heaven (manna) and water from the rocks. He kept them safe and brought them across the Jordan River into the land he had promised them.
There, God enabled them to drive out the other ungodly nations, and they settled in the promised land. They built cities, planted farms, and eventually chose kings to rule over them in God’s place. One of the greatest kings of Israel was King David. He loved God, and God promised that David’s descendants would continue to reign over the nation.
Sadly, ancient Israel did not keep their part of their covenant with God. Their kings often led them astray. The Israelites often worshiped the gods of the other nations. They adopted patterns of behavior that reflected those of the nations around them including practices like child sacrifice. They did not treat one another with respect and kindness. They neglected the poor and needy. And they did not obey the laws they were given. They were unfaithful to God.
Ancient Israel and her sister nation, Judah, often experienced distance in their relationship with God. This was due to their disobedience. Invasion, oppression, famine, and sickness resulted as they did life on their own apart from God. Painful consequences came with not living in loving ways with God and with one another.
In the end, God allowed his people to be exiled from the land he had given them. The northern tribes, Israel, were taken over by Assyria and sent away into other lands. The southern tribes, Judah, were taken captive by the nation of Babylon.
Eventually, King Cyrus, a Persian king, allowed some of the Israelites to return and rebuild their temple. But eventually, the ancient people of Israel, also known as the Jews, lived under the oppressive rule of the Roman government.
Because of this history, the Jewish people of Jesus’ day longed for a Messiah (a rescuer sent by God) to save them from Roman oppression. Between the first century B.C, and the first century A.D. there were over a dozen would-be deliverers. They want their people to be restored to their former glory. In fact, they want their people to be given an even greater glory, where they will rule over all the nations. This is what the population believed was predicted in their scriptures (the Old Testament).
Sadly, the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day focused on the details of the Mosaic law and how it was to be kept or not kept. They believed keeping the law perfectly would hasten the restoration of this kingdom.
They missed the whole point of this law.
The whole point is love: life with God that overflows into love for one another. The leaders missed that center by treating the law as a system of ranked commands rather than as a gift pointing them toward God’s faithful love.
These Jewish leaders did not understand that they cannot love God and others by their own strength. They need a Savior who can bring them into the relationship with God they cannot create for themselves.
Jesus is God’s love in human form, and he is there to rescue them from evil, sin, and death. He is their Savior, but they do not recognize it.
God’s Law is Love
Jesus responds to the lawyer’s question. First, he says, we are to love the Lord with our whole being. Second, we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. He says that these two commands are what the Law and Prophets depend on.
He does this by quoting first Deuteronomy 6:5; “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Then he quotes Leviticus 19:18: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus, as the Word and the God of the Old Testament, inspired these verses and is the only one who can rightfully comment on them.
Jesus turns their attention to the purpose of the law. The law describes how we are to live in right relationship with God and with our neighbor and ourselves. We are to love God and love one another as we love ourselves.
“Who Am I?”
And then Jesus turns their attention to himself. He challenges their assumptions about who he is. He asks them a direct question: “What do you think about the Christ — whose son is he?”
These ancient Jews had long awaited “the Christ” or Messiah. The Messiah was “the Anointed One.” He was the one destined by God to rescue them from their Roman oppressors. He was to restore their Jewish nation to glory.
When these ancient Jews read the Scriptures, they saw a human king. This king was one of King David’s descendants. He would deliver them and reign over them forever in peace and prosperity. King David had been a powerful and prosperous king, who God said was a man after his own heart. This man, Jesus, though, does not look anything like King David — how can he possibly be the Messiah?
Jesus quotes from their scriptures. According to the Scriptures, the Anointed One was to be the son of David. But how could the son of David also be their Lord? And even more astonishing — their God called him Lord, which makes the Messiah God. How can a human descendant of David also be God? Jesus asks them a question they cannot answer. If they agree, they deny everything they believe in.
The problem is that their real Messiah, Jesus Christ, is standing right in front of them. They do not recognize him. They reject him as being a fraud and a devil.
They do not see that Jesus is God in human flesh, living out the truth of what it means to be human, purchasing for them an eternal glory while freeing them from sin, evil, and death.
These Jewish leaders only see that Jesus is a human. He is a human who doesn’t act or talk like they think he should. He doesn’t keep the Law the way they think he should.
They do not see who Jesus really is. They do not see that Jesus is the Son of God, who is living out the Law perfectly in his humanity. And he is forming within humanity an ability to live in right relationship with God and other people.
God’s Love Forged in Human Hearts
Jesus loves his heavenly Father in the Spirit and he loves every human being. And he will soon express that love for every human being by laying down his life. He will ultimately allow himself to be crucified, to die so that all may live forever. He will lay down his life so that every human being may be included in his own relationship with his heavenly Father in the Spirit.
Jesus is the full expression of God’s love. John writes about this when he says:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. John 3:16–17 ESV
The love of our heavenly Father is expressed to us in Jesus Christ. In Jesus, God enters the darkness of our inability to live in right relationship with him and one another. The Son of God takes on a truly human existence and lives as one of us.
Jesus is God’s love in human form. Filled with the Spirit, Jesus lives each moment in right relationship with God and humanity. Though sinless, he enters our suffering and dies the death of a slave and robber on the cross.
Jesus dies, is buried, rises from the grave, and ascends to the Father, carrying our humanity into God’s presence. Now our life is hidden with Christ in God, and the Spirit enables us to share in Jesus’ own love for the Father and for others.
A True Expression of God’s Love
The apostle John reminds us that it is impossible to hate people and love God at the same time (1 John 2:9, 11; 3:15; 4:20). When we hate people, we deny the God who came to us in Jesus, who laid down his life for us on the cross.
The apostle Paul says that “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8 ESV). Jesus is God’s love in human form. Jesus loved those who hated him — how can we hate anyone?
The good news is that God first loved us. In Jesus, God comes to us, meets us in our darkness, and brings us out into the light of his love. He gives us his Spirit so that Christ can live in us and through us, enabling us to love God and love others.
Living in Love
It is much richer and deeper than merely, “Jesus loved us; therefore, we should love others.” Jesus is creating a new kind of humanity, and the Church is meant to be a visible expression of that new humanity.
Jesus does not merely save isolated individuals. He gathers people into a new family. A congregation shaped by Jesus learns to see one another differently. We belong to him, and therefore we belong to one another.
By the Spirit, the Body of Christ, the Church becomes a visible expression of God’s love in the world. The Spirit draws us together into a community of faith, hope, and love. Jesus lives in and through his Church, drawing believers together so they may share his love with others.
In Jesus, we see that love means caring for the poor, the needy, the outcasts, the widows, the orphans, the sick, and the oppressed. To live as Jesus lives is to practice justice, mercy, humility, faithfulness, purity, and generosity — the way we were created to live as truly human beings.
When the Church lives this way, it becomes a sign of God’s kingdom. People who have never known Christ begin to see what his love looks like in flesh-and-blood relationships.
The Father is drawing the world to himself through the Son and in the power of the Spirit. He invites the Church to participate in that mission by embodying the love we have received.
Because of Jesus, we can love God and others as we were created to love. In Christ by the Spirit, we are made truly, fully human. And as his Body, the Church, we become a community of faith, hope, and love in a world that desperately needs it.
Thanks be to God: Jesus is God’s love in human form.
Go Deeper Study 1 John 1:1–10; 2:1–15, noting the difference between walking in darkness and walking in light.
Matthew Hester—Year A Proper 25
Listen to audio: https://cloud.gci.org/dl/GReverb/GR080-Hester-YearA-Proper25.mp3
Program Transcript
Matthew Hester—Year A Proper 25
Anthony: All right, we’re down to the home stretch. One more pericope to go. Okay. We’re going to switch over testaments to Matthew 22:34–46. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 25 in Ordinary Time, October 25. Matthew, we’d be grateful if you’d read it for us, please.
Matthew: Absolutely.
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them, an expert in the law, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” 41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: 42 “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” 43 He said to them, “How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying, 44 ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet”’? 45 “If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” 46 No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.
Matthew: That’s Jesus right there. Oh, man. He’s a gangster right there.
Anthony: He is the OG, for sure. So how, what does this text disclose about the God revealed in Jesus?
Matthew: Ah, yeah, this … this is fun stuff. So, what strikes me first here is Jesus is actually being asked to prioritize Scripture. That’s what they’re asking him to do.
So, the expert in the law asks him, “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?” And Jesus doesn’t actually respond by saying, “they’re all equally important. So just read the Bible literally, do everything it says.” That’s actually not what he does. He interprets; he prioritizes. He gives us a center.
And what he does here the center is love God with your entire being, love your neighbor as yourself, and then he makes this statement: “On these commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” Now I want to make sure we understand this here. Jesus is not actually establishing two new laws here, and we’ll unpack this here in a minute.
He’s being asked a direct question, and I believe what he’s doing is he’s summarizing the full intent of the law, and it all hinges on this. I’ve literally heard people say, “Yeah all those laws are not for us today.” And I say, “What is, what are the laws?” And they say, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.”
And I’ll pause and look at them in wonder, and I’m like, “Do you do that?” Like we recite that as if that is so much easier than just keeping those laws. And then if we’re all honest and we just sit for a moment, “Okay, God, today have I loved you with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength?”
And then we’ll look at that and say, “Yeah, I can keep that one.” I’m not going to answer for you, Anthony, but for me it’s like, “Nope, it’s not going to happen.”
Anthony: Yeah.
[00:58:26] establishing that now these are the laws, he’s answering a question, and then he shows us on these commandments is the entirety of the Law and the Prophets.
And so that tells me something very important about Scripture and God. What’s Jesus doing here? He’s actually giving us a hermeneutic. If we’re not careful, we miss it. This is the hermeneutic. Everything hangs on love. Everything. And so, we shouldn’t just be asking, “Is there a biblical text that says this?”
We also have to ask, “Does my interpretation of the text hang upon the love revealed in Jesus?” And for me, that’s huge. Because you can quote Scripture and you can still miss the God that Scripture is trying to reveal.
And the Pharisees themselves demonstrate that possibility. These are people who know the text extraordinarily well, yet Jesus continually challenges the way they’re interpreting this text.
And so, what does this disclose about God? It tells me that love is not peripheral to God’s character, that love is the interpretive center. And Jesus doesn’t merely teach us to love God and neighbor, he embodies what that love looks like, and then you actually have to move into a different book.
You have to move into John 13, and I believe that in John 13, Jesus shows us that there’s a singular law of the better covenant. The singular law is love one another as I have loved you. So that’s it. It’s not even … It’s not love God with everything you got. Good luck with that.
And then even love your neighbor as you love yourself. What happens on the days I don’t love myself? What happens on the days where I’m having a pity party? Does that give me the legal right to treat my neighbors like garbage? No.
But here, look at that. Love as I have loved you.
Oh, man. That’s, oh, that’s beautiful. That’s a gospel that demands embodiment right there.
And Jesus paves the way. He embodies what that love looks like. He loves the outsider. He touches the untouchable. He eats with sinners. He forgives enemies. He confronts oppressive systems. He lays down his life. He will lay down his life rather than taking the lives of those who are opposing him, which in itself we could have a whole episode on or more.
But I think the second half of that passage even takes it further because then he starts asking them, “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” And they answer correctly according to categories, right? But then Jesus pushes beyond the category. So, what I mean is, the Messiah can’t simply be contained inside of their existing expectations. Yes, Christ is David’s son, but he’s also David’s Lord.
Anthony: Yes.
Matthew: Yeah, your categories are right, but they’re incomplete. Let me bring the fullness of this revelation. And from that perspective of a New Testament, let’s say a fuller Christology, that’s enormous. So, the one teaching us how to interpret God is not simply another rabbi offering an interesting opinion.
No, he’s the image of the invisible God. He is the Word made flesh. He’s the radiance of God’s glory, the exact imprint of God’s being. And so, when Jesus tells me that everything hangs on love, then I’m going to pay attention because love himself is interpreting the Scripture for us. And I would say if there’s ever a moment …
I teach this in some of my scholastic studies. I’ve got a whole 10-week study on the Sermon on the Mount. I said, if there’s ever a time where Jesus begins to challenge your interpretation of Scripture, you have a decision to make in that moment. Will I side with Scripture or will I side with the Word?
And I would hope every time you would side with the Word before you would ever choose the Scripture against him. And so, Jesus is revealing all kind of things. There’s so much we could unpack. There’s this beautiful coherence of God, right? God’s holiness is loving. His justice is love. His judgment is love. His power is self-giving love.
John would eventually say and I’ve already said it, 1 John 4, it’s so breathtakingly simple, “God is love.”
And so, Jesus, he’s not even telling us what commandments God prefers. He’s actually revealing what God is like. What he’s like. And if I have to choose between commandments and who God is, you can keep the commands. I want to know him.
Anthony: Yeah. Amen and amen. And this is where I think the theological work of T.F. Torrance is really helpful when we think about the vicarious humanity of Jesus. Who has loved the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul?
It’s our Lord Jesus, and in him, this is what we’re doing, and that’s why when we don’t, it hurts. Because this is who we are now in Christ, in Christo. It is the reality. And yeah. So, we just, we lean on him. And yeah, I love what you said about how it takes an embodiment.
Then it works itself out in loving your neighbor. That we would love one another. That is the true commandment. So, if you were … Let’s just take it a little bit further. What else is here? What else … What … There’s a lot of meat on the bone. If you were preaching this passage to your faith community, what else would you want to proclaim?
Matthew: Ah, I would say everything hangs on love.
Everything hangs there. And you know what? I would emphasize that word “hangs” because that’s the language Jesus uses. So, if you remove the thing something hangs on, it falls. This is so loaded. If my theology doesn’t hang on love, then something’s gone wrong. It falls.
If my doctrine doesn’t produce love, then it has failed. If my interpretation of Scripture gives me permission to hate the person that Jesus commanded me to love then it’s going to fall. If my holiness makes me less compassionate, come on, if being right makes me cruel, then something has gone wrong, because Jesus didn’t say, “They’ll know that you are my disciples because you won all the theological arguments.”
No, he said they’re going to know us by our love. And, honestly, I would push it even further because I don’t think Jesus is giving us a religious assignment. He’s not like saying, “You people aren’t loving enough. Try harder.” Because again, that’s religion trying to echo that, towards that, and give us a goal to try to strive towards.
No, the gospel goes deeper than that. John says, “We love because He first loved us.” And so, Christian love isn’t something I manufacture to get God’s approval. It’s participation in a love that originates from God. So, before you ever loved God, God loved you. Before, before you even had a desire to pursue God, God was pursuing you.
Before you knew how to love anybody, you were already being held in the love of Father, Son, and Spirit. And that’s why I would preach this passage through participation. Jesus isn’t commanding us to imitate this external standard. Again, it’s so easy for it to become something like that.
“Oh love. Okay, how am I going to love more?” That’s not what is happening here. He’s inviting us to live from that divine life. He’s inviting us to live from that place of love. And then I would ask the uncomfortable question, “Okay, who’s my neighbor?” Because man, it’s easy to preach to love others until Jesus starts identifying who the others are, right?
I mean, ugh, again, I live here in the Deep South and you start talking about I’ve got to love people that vote differently than me? Yeah. What about people that believe differently? Yep. Worship differently? Well, how about this? Do I have to love people that don’t even believe in God? Yeah.
Do I love immigrants? What about people in jail? Yeah. I don’t see anywhere in this text where Jesus excludes anyone.
Can my neighbor be the LGBTQ community? Oh, pssh. Yeah. What if my neighbor they have theology that I find deeply problematic? Yeah. How about just your enemies in general? Yeah. Yeah, because if we’re not careful, we miss this, that Jesus continually destroys our attempts to shrink the definition of neighbor until love becomes manageable. And then we’ve circled all the way back to our beginning conversation about idolatry.
Because if I can try to only define my neighbor, only relate to my neighbor as with a type of love I can manage, then even the way I love has become a golden calf. And for me, that’s why Christian love is so radical, because I’ve discovered over all these years, and it took me long enough and I still am discovering it daily, make no mistake, love doesn’t mean agreement.
It doesn’t … It doesn’t mean the absence of boundaries. It doesn’t mean refusing to confront injustice. But it does mean that I never have permission to dehumanize any person standing in front of me because I know that every human being I encounter is someone Christ has entered humanity for.
And so, my proclamation would be, we can have impressive theology, we can build successful ministries, we can defend the biblical orthodoxy, sing the beautiful worship songs, understand the Hebrew and the Greek. We can have all of our arguments buttoned up about eschatology, atonement, ecclesiology, whatever, and then Jesus just tells us, “Okay, that’s all fine. Knock yourself out.” But what holds it all together and what it all must hang on is love.
Anthony: Amen.
Matthew: And then if that love disappears, then Christianity ― it may remain as a religious institution but it’s no longer that thing upon which Jesus said everything hangs.
And so, I stopped asking a long time ago, “Is my theology correct?” I don’t ask people that anymore. What I ask myself is this: Is it teaching me to love?
Anthony: Yeah.
Matthew: And if it’s teaching me to love, then I feel like at the very least I’m heading in the right direction because according to Jesus everything hangs there.
Anthony: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, if I find I’m not merciful, I’m not understanding God’s mercy. If I’m not gracious to my neighbor, I don’t understand his graciousness toward me.
And one of the things we talk about in our local church, Matthew, is you know it is easy to hide behind loving your neighbor, because everybody is my neighbor. But we talk about loving our literal neighbor and that brings in to bear all the things you just spoke about, people that when it comes down to it, I just don’t agree with, but I love them because Christ first loved me and loved them.
And I just love the fact that you’re leaning into participation. We can only do it because Christ has first done it for us, in this double movement of grace. We get to join him in it. Hallelujah. Praise God.
Matthew: Amen.
Anthony: Man, Matthew, and I say this tongue in cheek, if you ever learn to get excited about the Lord, you’ll go places.
So, thank you for the joy that exudes out of you when you talk about our Lord Jesus Christ … and the written word which points us to him. It’s a beautiful thing. You’re a beloved child of God, so thank you for your time.
And I want to thank the team that helps make this podcast possible. You know who you are. Michelle, Dids, and Elizabeth ― thank you.
And Matthew, as is our tradition here at Gospel Reverb, we like to end with a word of prayer, so would you pray for us, please?
Matthew: It would be my honor, and thank you again for inviting me on. It’s been a blast.
Father, thank you for making yourself known to us in Jesus Christ. Thank you for, ah, your presence that never leaves us, your mercy that’s richer than our failures, and your love that holds everything together. Holy Spirit, awaken us to where you are already moving, and give us the courage to participate. Teach us to see your image in our neighbor, to choose love over fear, to choose mercy over judgment, and communion over distance.
May the life of Jesus become visible in us, and may everything we say and do bear witness to the beautiful goodness of God. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.
Anthony: Amen.
Program Transcript
Matthew Hester—Year A Proper 25
Anthony: All right, we’re down to the home stretch. One more pericope to go. Okay. We’re going to switch over testaments to Matthew 22:34–46. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 25 in Ordinary Time, October 25. Matthew, we’d be grateful if you’d read it for us, please.
Matthew: Absolutely.
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them, an expert in the law, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” 41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: 42 “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” 43 He said to them, “How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying, 44 ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet”’? 45 “If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” 46 No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.
Matthew: That’s Jesus right there. Oh, man. He’s a gangster right there.
Anthony: He is the OG, for sure. So how, what does this text disclose about the God revealed in Jesus?
Matthew: Ah, yeah, this … this is fun stuff. So, what strikes me first here is Jesus is actually being asked to prioritize Scripture. That’s what they’re asking him to do.
So, the expert in the law asks him, “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?” And Jesus doesn’t actually respond by saying, “they’re all equally important. So just read the Bible literally, do everything it says.” That’s actually not what he does. He interprets; he prioritizes. He gives us a center.
And what he does here the center is love God with your entire being, love your neighbor as yourself, and then he makes this statement: “On these commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” Now I want to make sure we understand this here. Jesus is not actually establishing two new laws here, and we’ll unpack this here in a minute.
He’s being asked a direct question, and I believe what he’s doing is he’s summarizing the full intent of the law, and it all hinges on this. I’ve literally heard people say, “Yeah all those laws are not for us today.” And I say, “What is, what are the laws?” And they say, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.”
And I’ll pause and look at them in wonder, and I’m like, “Do you do that?” Like we recite that as if that is so much easier than just keeping those laws. And then if we’re all honest and we just sit for a moment, “Okay, God, today have I loved you with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength?”
And then we’ll look at that and say, “Yeah, I can keep that one.” I’m not going to answer for you, Anthony, but for me it’s like, “Nope, it’s not going to happen.”
Anthony: Yeah.
[00:58:26] establishing that now these are the laws, he’s answering a question, and then he shows us on these commandments is the entirety of the Law and the Prophets.
And so that tells me something very important about Scripture and God. What’s Jesus doing here? He’s actually giving us a hermeneutic. If we’re not careful, we miss it. This is the hermeneutic. Everything hangs on love. Everything. And so, we shouldn’t just be asking, “Is there a biblical text that says this?”
We also have to ask, “Does my interpretation of the text hang upon the love revealed in Jesus?” And for me, that’s huge. Because you can quote Scripture and you can still miss the God that Scripture is trying to reveal.
And the Pharisees themselves demonstrate that possibility. These are people who know the text extraordinarily well, yet Jesus continually challenges the way they’re interpreting this text.
And so, what does this disclose about God? It tells me that love is not peripheral to God’s character, that love is the interpretive center. And Jesus doesn’t merely teach us to love God and neighbor, he embodies what that love looks like, and then you actually have to move into a different book.
You have to move into John 13, and I believe that in John 13, Jesus shows us that there’s a singular law of the better covenant. The singular law is love one another as I have loved you. So that’s it. It’s not even … It’s not love God with everything you got. Good luck with that.
And then even love your neighbor as you love yourself. What happens on the days I don’t love myself? What happens on the days where I’m having a pity party? Does that give me the legal right to treat my neighbors like garbage? No.
But here, look at that. Love as I have loved you.
Oh, man. That’s, oh, that’s beautiful. That’s a gospel that demands embodiment right there.
And Jesus paves the way. He embodies what that love looks like. He loves the outsider. He touches the untouchable. He eats with sinners. He forgives enemies. He confronts oppressive systems. He lays down his life. He will lay down his life rather than taking the lives of those who are opposing him, which in itself we could have a whole episode on or more.
But I think the second half of that passage even takes it further because then he starts asking them, “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” And they answer correctly according to categories, right? But then Jesus pushes beyond the category. So, what I mean is, the Messiah can’t simply be contained inside of their existing expectations. Yes, Christ is David’s son, but he’s also David’s Lord.
Anthony: Yes.
Matthew: Yeah, your categories are right, but they’re incomplete. Let me bring the fullness of this revelation. And from that perspective of a New Testament, let’s say a fuller Christology, that’s enormous. So, the one teaching us how to interpret God is not simply another rabbi offering an interesting opinion.
No, he’s the image of the invisible God. He is the Word made flesh. He’s the radiance of God’s glory, the exact imprint of God’s being. And so, when Jesus tells me that everything hangs on love, then I’m going to pay attention because love himself is interpreting the Scripture for us. And I would say if there’s ever a moment …
I teach this in some of my scholastic studies. I’ve got a whole 10-week study on the Sermon on the Mount. I said, if there’s ever a time where Jesus begins to challenge your interpretation of Scripture, you have a decision to make in that moment. Will I side with Scripture or will I side with the Word?
And I would hope every time you would side with the Word before you would ever choose the Scripture against him. And so, Jesus is revealing all kind of things. There’s so much we could unpack. There’s this beautiful coherence of God, right? God’s holiness is loving. His justice is love. His judgment is love. His power is self-giving love.
John would eventually say and I’ve already said it, 1 John 4, it’s so breathtakingly simple, “God is love.”
And so, Jesus, he’s not even telling us what commandments God prefers. He’s actually revealing what God is like. What he’s like. And if I have to choose between commandments and who God is, you can keep the commands. I want to know him.
Anthony: Yeah. Amen and amen. And this is where I think the theological work of T.F. Torrance is really helpful when we think about the vicarious humanity of Jesus. Who has loved the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul?
It’s our Lord Jesus, and in him, this is what we’re doing, and that’s why when we don’t, it hurts. Because this is who we are now in Christ, in Christo. It is the reality. And yeah. So, we just, we lean on him. And yeah, I love what you said about how it takes an embodiment.
Then it works itself out in loving your neighbor. That we would love one another. That is the true commandment. So, if you were … Let’s just take it a little bit further. What else is here? What else … What … There’s a lot of meat on the bone. If you were preaching this passage to your faith community, what else would you want to proclaim?
Matthew: Ah, I would say everything hangs on love.
Everything hangs there. And you know what? I would emphasize that word “hangs” because that’s the language Jesus uses. So, if you remove the thing something hangs on, it falls. This is so loaded. If my theology doesn’t hang on love, then something’s gone wrong. It falls.
If my doctrine doesn’t produce love, then it has failed. If my interpretation of Scripture gives me permission to hate the person that Jesus commanded me to love then it’s going to fall. If my holiness makes me less compassionate, come on, if being right makes me cruel, then something has gone wrong, because Jesus didn’t say, “They’ll know that you are my disciples because you won all the theological arguments.”
No, he said they’re going to know us by our love. And, honestly, I would push it even further because I don’t think Jesus is giving us a religious assignment. He’s not like saying, “You people aren’t loving enough. Try harder.” Because again, that’s religion trying to echo that, towards that, and give us a goal to try to strive towards.
No, the gospel goes deeper than that. John says, “We love because He first loved us.” And so, Christian love isn’t something I manufacture to get God’s approval. It’s participation in a love that originates from God. So, before you ever loved God, God loved you. Before, before you even had a desire to pursue God, God was pursuing you.
Before you knew how to love anybody, you were already being held in the love of Father, Son, and Spirit. And that’s why I would preach this passage through participation. Jesus isn’t commanding us to imitate this external standard. Again, it’s so easy for it to become something like that.
“Oh love. Okay, how am I going to love more?” That’s not what is happening here. He’s inviting us to live from that divine life. He’s inviting us to live from that place of love. And then I would ask the uncomfortable question, “Okay, who’s my neighbor?” Because man, it’s easy to preach to love others until Jesus starts identifying who the others are, right?
I mean, ugh, again, I live here in the Deep South and you start talking about I’ve got to love people that vote differently than me? Yeah. What about people that believe differently? Yep. Worship differently? Well, how about this? Do I have to love people that don’t even believe in God? Yeah.
Do I love immigrants? What about people in jail? Yeah. I don’t see anywhere in this text where Jesus excludes anyone.
Can my neighbor be the LGBTQ community? Oh, pssh. Yeah. What if my neighbor they have theology that I find deeply problematic? Yeah. How about just your enemies in general? Yeah. Yeah, because if we’re not careful, we miss this, that Jesus continually destroys our attempts to shrink the definition of neighbor until love becomes manageable. And then we’ve circled all the way back to our beginning conversation about idolatry.
Because if I can try to only define my neighbor, only relate to my neighbor as with a type of love I can manage, then even the way I love has become a golden calf. And for me, that’s why Christian love is so radical, because I’ve discovered over all these years, and it took me long enough and I still am discovering it daily, make no mistake, love doesn’t mean agreement.
It doesn’t … It doesn’t mean the absence of boundaries. It doesn’t mean refusing to confront injustice. But it does mean that I never have permission to dehumanize any person standing in front of me because I know that every human being I encounter is someone Christ has entered humanity for.
And so, my proclamation would be, we can have impressive theology, we can build successful ministries, we can defend the biblical orthodoxy, sing the beautiful worship songs, understand the Hebrew and the Greek. We can have all of our arguments buttoned up about eschatology, atonement, ecclesiology, whatever, and then Jesus just tells us, “Okay, that’s all fine. Knock yourself out.” But what holds it all together and what it all must hang on is love.
Anthony: Amen.
Matthew: And then if that love disappears, then Christianity ― it may remain as a religious institution but it’s no longer that thing upon which Jesus said everything hangs.
And so, I stopped asking a long time ago, “Is my theology correct?” I don’t ask people that anymore. What I ask myself is this: Is it teaching me to love?
Anthony: Yeah.
Matthew: And if it’s teaching me to love, then I feel like at the very least I’m heading in the right direction because according to Jesus everything hangs there.
Anthony: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, if I find I’m not merciful, I’m not understanding God’s mercy. If I’m not gracious to my neighbor, I don’t understand his graciousness toward me.
And one of the things we talk about in our local church, Matthew, is you know it is easy to hide behind loving your neighbor, because everybody is my neighbor. But we talk about loving our literal neighbor and that brings in to bear all the things you just spoke about, people that when it comes down to it, I just don’t agree with, but I love them because Christ first loved me and loved them.
And I just love the fact that you’re leaning into participation. We can only do it because Christ has first done it for us, in this double movement of grace. We get to join him in it. Hallelujah. Praise God.
Matthew: Amen.
Anthony: Man, Matthew, and I say this tongue in cheek, if you ever learn to get excited about the Lord, you’ll go places.
So, thank you for the joy that exudes out of you when you talk about our Lord Jesus Christ … and the written word which points us to him. It’s a beautiful thing. You’re a beloved child of God, so thank you for your time.
And I want to thank the team that helps make this podcast possible. You know who you are. Michelle, Dids, and Elizabeth ― thank you.
And Matthew, as is our tradition here at Gospel Reverb, we like to end with a word of prayer, so would you pray for us, please?
Matthew: It would be my honor, and thank you again for inviting me on. It’s been a blast.
Father, thank you for making yourself known to us in Jesus Christ. Thank you for, ah, your presence that never leaves us, your mercy that’s richer than our failures, and your love that holds everything together. Holy Spirit, awaken us to where you are already moving, and give us the courage to participate. Teach us to see your image in our neighbor, to choose love over fear, to choose mercy over judgment, and communion over distance.
May the life of Jesus become visible in us, and may everything we say and do bear witness to the beautiful goodness of God. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.
Anthony: Amen.
Small Group Discussion Questions
- Why do you think people, like the religious leaders in Jesus’ day, can become more focused on rules than on love?
- The sermon says, “Jesus is God’s love in human form.” What do we learn about God’s character by looking at Jesus?
- Why was it difficult for the Pharisees and scribes to recognize Jesus as the Messiah? Are there ways we can fail to see who Jesus is today?
- We cannot love God and others by our own strength, but that Christ enables us to share in his love through the Spirit. How have you experienced God’s love helping you love others?
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