Teaching Text

MATTHEW 22:34-40

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Sermon Recap

This Sunday, Pastor Tim Brown continued our FOLLOW series by asking what it actually means to love God. His starting point was personal. As a new believer, Pastor Tim made a list of Jesus’ commands and rated himself on how well he was obeying them. The problem wasn't his desire to obey; it was that he hadn't yet learned how obedience and love belong together. Jesus' answer to the question of the greatest commandment—love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself—gets beneath the checklist and into the posture of the heart.

Pastor Tim then spent time considering what this kind of love looks like. Drawing from the Shema in Deuteronomy 6 and the work of Gerry Breshears, he described loving God as loyalty and commitment, even when it costs us; trusting Him when His ways don't make sense; and continuing to believe in His goodness when life falls apart. He compared our relationship with God to the stages of a long marriage—there may be an early season marked by strong feelings, followed by disillusionment when reality becomes more complicated. But if we remain, something deeper can grow. The goal is not to keep ourselves perpetually in the honeymoon stage with God, but to become so rooted in His character that we are at home with Him.

That kind of love is formed in the hidden places. Pastor Tim described the inner life as the place where faith is either strengthened or quietly eroded, like a sinkhole forming beneath an apparently stable surface.

He also spoke honestly about seasons when God's goodness is difficult to understand, sharing about the death of a close friend after years of praying for his healing. Faith, he suggested, matures not by pretending that everything is okay, but by learning to bring our pain and disappointment toward God rather than away from Him.

Finally, Jesus' command to love our neighbor became very literal. Drawing from the Good Samaritan and the idea of our "three rings" of relationship, Pastor Tim challenged us to pay attention to the people we didn't choose—the person across the hall, the barista, the person at the gym, the neighbor we pass every day. In a city where it's easy to build strong inner circles while remaining largely disconnected from the people around us, loving God may look surprisingly ordinary: learning to love the person who is right in front of us. Pastor Tim closed by returning to Jesus, who remained loyal to the Father, trusted Him through the cross, and loved His enemies to the very end. To follow Jesus is to learn that kind of love from Him and then carry it into the lives around us.