Matthew 22:34–40; Matthew 9:13; Matthew 5:23–24; Matthew 10:40–42
How can you tell whether you genuinely love God? Pastor Juliet Lyons unpacks the greatest commandment in Matthew 22 and shows that loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind is proven by how you love the people close to you. She explains why God prizes mercy over sacrifice, why isolation leaves us open to the enemy's attacks on how we see God, ourselves, and others, and why staying planted in messy community shapes us to look like Jesus.
Key takeaways
- Your actions and your calendar reveal your real values, and God's values are revealed in His word: love Him and love one another.
- Loving your neighbor is not a lesser command but the outward expression and proof of loving God; the two cannot be separated.
- God desires mercy over sacrifice, so the value of your worship, giving, and serving is measured by the mercy and compassion embedded in it.
- Isolation is the enemy's doorway: alone, you become susceptible to resenting God, resenting yourself, and resenting the people around you.
- Community is tiring and messy, but every great thing is achieved by tired people who stay; staying planted is how God knocks off pride, arrogance, and insecurity.
Message notes
Your actions reveal your values
Pastor Juliet Lyons opens by asking who can say hand on heart that they love the Lord. Everyone has values, and those values direct our actions. If you want to know what you really value, look at your calendar. A VIP ticket to a sports game would thrill her husband but not her, because sports are not a value she holds. In the same way, God has values, and His actions flow from them. To know God's heart is to know His word, and everything in it points to one thing.
The greatest commandment
Reading Matthew 22:34–40, Pastor Juliet sets the scene: Jesus has silenced the Sadducees, and now a Pharisee tests Him, a Greek word meaning to tempt or entice to sin. Jesus answers that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and that the second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself. The Greek word for like it means to resemble or be the same as. God places a very high bar on loving one another, and there is no excuse. Matthew 10:40–42 confirms it: whoever welcomes one of Jesus' disciples welcomes Him.
Love that stays private is not love
Many Christians say they love God but do not act like it. It is easy to think we love God because He blesses us, but Pastor Juliet is blunt: "God loves you. You don't love God." Love for God must have an outward expression, just as a marriage without expressed love would not be love at all. How we pour out love on family, friends, and fellow disciples is the highest way we show God we love Him. It is possible to sing, give, and serve with no love at all, as 1 Corinthians 13 warns. If you love Him, service and worship overflow naturally.
Mercy, not sacrifice
In Matthew 9:13 Jesus says, "I desire mercy and not sacrifice," and go and learn what this means is a rebuke. God asks for mercy and compassion not toward the deserving but toward the hard-nosed and sinful. Matthew 5:23–24 adds that if your brother has something against you, leave your gift at the altar and be reconciled first, because relationship triumphs over sacrifice. The value of our worship is directly related to how much mercy and compassion are embedded in it.
Getting to know God's heart
Years of shared experiences mean Max can now order food for her without asking. Do we walk into God's house inquisitive about what He loves, or only with a list of requests? Young people call emotionally withdrawing while pretending everything is fine Banksying, and she says people are Banksying God all over the church. God's heart is simple: if you love Me, love everyone I love. The word neighbor means those in close proximity, the church community, and Jesus spoke these words in the last week before the cross.
The trap of isolation
The times we most need community are often the times we most want to run from it. The church has never been perfectly united, but God keeps calling us to unity as the bride He is returning for. When we isolate, the enemy attacks what we think about God, ourselves, and the people around us. Resenting God means His priorities stop being ours and we lose remorse for sin; resenting ourselves means forgetting our identity and making fatal decisions; resenting others turns us into wounded, self-focused victims with claws and walls up like Fort Knox. Isolated and thinking we are strong, we are actually easy targets.
Stay planted, even when tired
At eighteen Pastor Juliet walked into a church broken, joined a Team and a Group, and was offended constantly, bristling even when someone called her Jules. It took deciding to stay through offense and tiredness for God to remove her arrogance, pride, and insecurity. Being around Christians is tiring, but every great achievement is done by tired people, and if Jesus had walked away from the cross because He was weary, we would have no hope. Her closing challenge is not to let the enemy use messy things to pull you from God's community, and not to resent God, yourself, or others. She prays for the weary who keep getting hurt and for those whose walls are up because of trauma, asking God to surround them with people who, little by little, shape them into who He has called them to be.
