October 2026
The Invitation - Matthew 22: 1-14
10/11/26
The title of my message this week is “Do not put the Lord to the test.” You may recognize that very familiar passage but it is not from today’s Matthew passage. Do not put the Lord your God to the test is Jesus’ response to Satan’s 3rd temptation after he had finished his time in the wilderness. Now, the Pharisees, Sadducees, and teachers of the law would not have known about this, but if they had, they may not have been asking all the questions, they may not have been putting Jesus to all the tests that have been recorded in the 20th - 22nd chapters of Matthew. They are really, in a way, just like Satan, trying to tempt Jesus, test Jesus, trick Jesus, into giving them what they want!
Yes, they had been at it for a while. In Matthew’s telling of the story, which would have occurred on Tuesday of the week Jesus entered into Jerusalem, Jesus has been involved in a long series of questioning with the Sadducees, lawyers, chief priests, elders, scribes, Pharisees, and all their disciples. In the last couple of tests, the Pharisees ask about paying taxes to Caesar, hoping to get Jesus in trouble with the Roman IRS in case Jesus comes out and says something treasonous. They strike out with that question, and so next the Sadducees, who don’t even believe in a resurrection, come up with a clever question about marriage in heaven. Jesus neatly sidesteps this trap as well.
In each confrontation, he proves himself more careful, more clever, and more inspired than any of His adversaries. When Jesus questions them about the Messiah and his relationship to David, they are stumped and finally silenced.
Or were they? Before finally being silenced, a legal expert from among the Pharisees asks Jesus one last question in order to test him, “Which commandment in the law is greatest?” If Jesus answers wisely, it will be a confirmation of his teaching authority. It seems that after a long day of verbal battle, even the Pharisees have begun to lose steam and wonder whether their efforts at questioning this “Jesus guy” had been worthwhile. It’s an innocent-looking question but really it is a stealthy attempt to make Jesus look to be out of step theologically.. If Jesus picked out any of the Bible’s commandments and elevated it to the status of #1, that would imply that he was treating every other commandment as second-class. Just like if you are a parent of five children and one of them asks you who your favorite kid is, a wise parent always says, “I love you all the same.” No good parent wants any child to feel like he or she plays second fiddle to the other siblings.
So it is the same here: if they can trick Jesus into picking a favorite commandment, he’ll be guilty of downplaying the other commandments. But since every commandment represents the very word of God, picking and choosing among them would be heretical.
But Jesus, well He knows what’s going on here and His answer to their final question, well it is classic! Now, He could have chosen the easy way out and responded, “Every Word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord is great. Each commandment is great.” That would have been an effective way out of this, a theological version of the “I love you all the same” answer the wise parent would give to the question of which child is the parent’s favorite. But instead Jesus begins to quote a Bible verse, and at first the Pharisees might have thought they had him. But, they didn’t. Because Jesus says that love of God is the greatest of all commandments.
Loving God is the first thing, and of course, the most important thing. After all, if you don’t love God, you won’t be much inclined to keep any of the commandments. If, however, you do love God, then the rest follows naturally. And just to make the point, Jesus throws in the second commandment about neighbor - love. Between these two loves, Jesus manages to catch every single commandment you could ever name. Every commandment in the book has something to do with either God or neighbor.
So, what more can be said after this? Silenced, the Pharisees finally tucked their tails and withdrew from the fight. And on the next day, they hatch the devious plan that will remove this trouble-making prophet and permanently silence him.
Now, perhaps the key problem in interpreting this double commandment for us today is that we lose sight of the biblical meaning of love. Our culture has equated love with intense emotion. To love is, of course, a stronger response than to like. And, both are measures of a passive response to something outside us.
Take for example chocolate: we like it, we cannot help ourselves. We love a movie: it entertains or moves us. We love a boyfriend or girlfriend: they make us happy. We love a spouse: they complete us.
But, biblical love is not passive and it is not strictly emotional. In the Old Testament, there are references to many kinds of love, but the love referred to here by Jesus is the love of Deuteronomy 6:5, what Jesus quoted in his response to the lawyers question - Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. It is the love of Yahweh. This love is far from passive. It is the active response of the faithful person to the love of God.
God’s love for us is also active. God chooses or elects to love us, His chosen people. To love God with all one’s heart, and soul, and mind, is to choose to respond to God even as God chooses to love us. Feelings and passions should not enter into the equation.
In the New Testament, the principle word used for love is agape. Like philia, or brotherly love, it is a passionless love. Eros is the word for passion or desire. Eros and philia are used sparingly in the New Testament. Agape, however, in the gospels, has some connection to emotion, where God cares for God’s creatures and creation.
But, chiefly, agape refers to what can be called loving-kindness. It is not passive emotion, but active mercy. It is marked by patience and generosity, again, both acts generated by the one who loves. In short, agape love is loving as a choice, not as a feeling.
If we can replace in our minds the cultural clichés about love with a more biblical understanding of love, then we can begin to make our way with understanding what Jesus is telling us in this passage.
To love God with all our heart, mind, and soul seems nearly impossible when we think of love as an emotion. How does one conjure up feelings for something as remote, mysterious, and disembodied as the concept of God? We cannot look into God’s eyes, wrap our arms around the Spirit, or even see the face of Jesus.
If we could, that might evoke in us a profound feeling of love. We might fall in love with Jesus’ beauty and grace if we could know him as Mary and as Martha did. But, we are commanded to love an intangible God. It is likely that many of us will admit that we fail in feeling a deep, abiding affection for a God who is often distant and unknown. Nonetheless, to love God is our duty as Christians.
Likewise, loving our neighbor can be difficult. If love is merely our passive response to the person next to us, we are likely to be more often repulsed than moved to love. How can one legitimately look into the face of an enemy and feel unqualified love? It is nearly impossible.
But, biblical love is not passive. It is not something that occurs to us without our control or without our will. Biblical love, agape love, is something we do. It is loving-kindness, it is a merciful action that is both generous and continuous. Herein is the good news for Christian people. To love a neighbor as oneself is to act toward the other as one would act toward those close to you. We treat the stranger as well as we treat those that we love emotionally.
When the action to each is equal, the love to each is equal. This is counter to what we expect, but it is in keeping with what the commandment requires. This means that, to those with whom we are intimate, to those we do not know, to those who may be dirty or repugnant, and even to those who harm us, we can act according to the law of love. We can be merciful and gracious. To love the neighbor as ourselves is to make a conscious choice and act upon it.
And what about love of God? Again, as God chose Israel and elected to forgive her at every offense, so we can choose God and to serve Him in every way. We can love with our heart: through generosity to God’s people. We can love with our soul: by worshiping God and praying for our neighbors and ourselves. And we can love with our minds: studying God’s Word and letting it correct us, enlighten us, and sending us out in loving action to the world.
See how these commandments are connected, “the greatest commandment” - You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and the “second, - 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” which is like it? When we love God’s people, we are always, and at the same time, loving God.
They are inseparable. Surprisingly, sometimes our emotions follow suit and we actually feel a love of others, or a love of God. But the emotion is not commanded. Only the action of love is commanded. Even when it is hard, even when we don’t really want to, in Christ, with the constant help and guidance of the Holy Spirit, this we can do!
I want us to think about how we, here at little ol’ Sweetwater, continue to show our love for our neighbors. During the three years now that we have been doing our community meals, both here and at FPC Newton, we have given out well over 3,000 meals to those in our community. That’s a lot, isn’t it!
Just like we do with other projects - our Ashure Ministries food collection, our Meals on Wheels pet food collection; We continue to show that actionable love that Jesus was talking about when He answered the question of what are the greatest commandments - Love God, with all your heart, soul and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself! Thank you for all you continue to do to show your love of God and neighbor! Alleluia, Amen!
Yes, they had been at it for a while. In Matthew’s telling of the story, which would have occurred on Tuesday of the week Jesus entered into Jerusalem, Jesus has been involved in a long series of questioning with the Sadducees, lawyers, chief priests, elders, scribes, Pharisees, and all their disciples. In the last couple of tests, the Pharisees ask about paying taxes to Caesar, hoping to get Jesus in trouble with the Roman IRS in case Jesus comes out and says something treasonous. They strike out with that question, and so next the Sadducees, who don’t even believe in a resurrection, come up with a clever question about marriage in heaven. Jesus neatly sidesteps this trap as well.
In each confrontation, he proves himself more careful, more clever, and more inspired than any of His adversaries. When Jesus questions them about the Messiah and his relationship to David, they are stumped and finally silenced.
Or were they? Before finally being silenced, a legal expert from among the Pharisees asks Jesus one last question in order to test him, “Which commandment in the law is greatest?” If Jesus answers wisely, it will be a confirmation of his teaching authority. It seems that after a long day of verbal battle, even the Pharisees have begun to lose steam and wonder whether their efforts at questioning this “Jesus guy” had been worthwhile. It’s an innocent-looking question but really it is a stealthy attempt to make Jesus look to be out of step theologically.. If Jesus picked out any of the Bible’s commandments and elevated it to the status of #1, that would imply that he was treating every other commandment as second-class. Just like if you are a parent of five children and one of them asks you who your favorite kid is, a wise parent always says, “I love you all the same.” No good parent wants any child to feel like he or she plays second fiddle to the other siblings.
So it is the same here: if they can trick Jesus into picking a favorite commandment, he’ll be guilty of downplaying the other commandments. But since every commandment represents the very word of God, picking and choosing among them would be heretical.
But Jesus, well He knows what’s going on here and His answer to their final question, well it is classic! Now, He could have chosen the easy way out and responded, “Every Word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord is great. Each commandment is great.” That would have been an effective way out of this, a theological version of the “I love you all the same” answer the wise parent would give to the question of which child is the parent’s favorite. But instead Jesus begins to quote a Bible verse, and at first the Pharisees might have thought they had him. But, they didn’t. Because Jesus says that love of God is the greatest of all commandments.
Loving God is the first thing, and of course, the most important thing. After all, if you don’t love God, you won’t be much inclined to keep any of the commandments. If, however, you do love God, then the rest follows naturally. And just to make the point, Jesus throws in the second commandment about neighbor - love. Between these two loves, Jesus manages to catch every single commandment you could ever name. Every commandment in the book has something to do with either God or neighbor.
So, what more can be said after this? Silenced, the Pharisees finally tucked their tails and withdrew from the fight. And on the next day, they hatch the devious plan that will remove this trouble-making prophet and permanently silence him.
Now, perhaps the key problem in interpreting this double commandment for us today is that we lose sight of the biblical meaning of love. Our culture has equated love with intense emotion. To love is, of course, a stronger response than to like. And, both are measures of a passive response to something outside us.
Take for example chocolate: we like it, we cannot help ourselves. We love a movie: it entertains or moves us. We love a boyfriend or girlfriend: they make us happy. We love a spouse: they complete us.
But, biblical love is not passive and it is not strictly emotional. In the Old Testament, there are references to many kinds of love, but the love referred to here by Jesus is the love of Deuteronomy 6:5, what Jesus quoted in his response to the lawyers question - Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. It is the love of Yahweh. This love is far from passive. It is the active response of the faithful person to the love of God.
God’s love for us is also active. God chooses or elects to love us, His chosen people. To love God with all one’s heart, and soul, and mind, is to choose to respond to God even as God chooses to love us. Feelings and passions should not enter into the equation.
In the New Testament, the principle word used for love is agape. Like philia, or brotherly love, it is a passionless love. Eros is the word for passion or desire. Eros and philia are used sparingly in the New Testament. Agape, however, in the gospels, has some connection to emotion, where God cares for God’s creatures and creation.
But, chiefly, agape refers to what can be called loving-kindness. It is not passive emotion, but active mercy. It is marked by patience and generosity, again, both acts generated by the one who loves. In short, agape love is loving as a choice, not as a feeling.
If we can replace in our minds the cultural clichés about love with a more biblical understanding of love, then we can begin to make our way with understanding what Jesus is telling us in this passage.
To love God with all our heart, mind, and soul seems nearly impossible when we think of love as an emotion. How does one conjure up feelings for something as remote, mysterious, and disembodied as the concept of God? We cannot look into God’s eyes, wrap our arms around the Spirit, or even see the face of Jesus.
If we could, that might evoke in us a profound feeling of love. We might fall in love with Jesus’ beauty and grace if we could know him as Mary and as Martha did. But, we are commanded to love an intangible God. It is likely that many of us will admit that we fail in feeling a deep, abiding affection for a God who is often distant and unknown. Nonetheless, to love God is our duty as Christians.
Likewise, loving our neighbor can be difficult. If love is merely our passive response to the person next to us, we are likely to be more often repulsed than moved to love. How can one legitimately look into the face of an enemy and feel unqualified love? It is nearly impossible.
But, biblical love is not passive. It is not something that occurs to us without our control or without our will. Biblical love, agape love, is something we do. It is loving-kindness, it is a merciful action that is both generous and continuous. Herein is the good news for Christian people. To love a neighbor as oneself is to act toward the other as one would act toward those close to you. We treat the stranger as well as we treat those that we love emotionally.
When the action to each is equal, the love to each is equal. This is counter to what we expect, but it is in keeping with what the commandment requires. This means that, to those with whom we are intimate, to those we do not know, to those who may be dirty or repugnant, and even to those who harm us, we can act according to the law of love. We can be merciful and gracious. To love the neighbor as ourselves is to make a conscious choice and act upon it.
And what about love of God? Again, as God chose Israel and elected to forgive her at every offense, so we can choose God and to serve Him in every way. We can love with our heart: through generosity to God’s people. We can love with our soul: by worshiping God and praying for our neighbors and ourselves. And we can love with our minds: studying God’s Word and letting it correct us, enlighten us, and sending us out in loving action to the world.
See how these commandments are connected, “the greatest commandment” - You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and the “second, - 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” which is like it? When we love God’s people, we are always, and at the same time, loving God.
They are inseparable. Surprisingly, sometimes our emotions follow suit and we actually feel a love of others, or a love of God. But the emotion is not commanded. Only the action of love is commanded. Even when it is hard, even when we don’t really want to, in Christ, with the constant help and guidance of the Holy Spirit, this we can do!
I want us to think about how we, here at little ol’ Sweetwater, continue to show our love for our neighbors. During the three years now that we have been doing our community meals, both here and at FPC Newton, we have given out well over 3,000 meals to those in our community. That’s a lot, isn’t it!
Just like we do with other projects - our Ashure Ministries food collection, our Meals on Wheels pet food collection; We continue to show that actionable love that Jesus was talking about when He answered the question of what are the greatest commandments - Love God, with all your heart, soul and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself! Thank you for all you continue to do to show your love of God and neighbor! Alleluia, Amen!