Bulletins - New Life Church of the Nazarene Boswell

Praise Him! Praise Him!
- - Deuteronomy 34:1–12NKJV
Make Me a Blessing
- - 1 Thessalonians 2:1–8NKJV
I Love You Lord
Matthew 22:34–46 NKJV
34 But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” 37 Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” 41 While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, 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 then does David in the Spirit call Him ‘Lord,’ saying: 44 ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool” ’? 45 If David then calls Him ‘Lord,’ how is He his Son?” 46 And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare question Him anymore.
Love Above All
Last Sunday, we considered a question Jesus asked when His enemies tried to trap Him: “Whose image do you bear?” They handed Him a Roman coin, and Jesus asked whose image and inscription were on it. When they answered, “Caesar’s,” Jesus told them to give to Caesar what belonged to Caesar and to God what belonged to God.
But we discovered that Jesus was talking about something far greater than taxes and money. The coin bore Caesar’s image, but you and I bear the image of God. And because we bear His image, our lives belong to Him. Not just our Sunday mornings. Not just our prayers, our offerings, or the parts of our lives we are comfortable surrendering. All of us belongs to God.
But that raises another question. If my life belongs to God, what should that life look like? What does God want from someone who belongs to Him? Is it obedience? Certainly. Is it faithfulness? Absolutely. Is it worship, prayer, and service? Of course. But beneath all those things is something that gives meaning to everything else: love.
We talk about love quite a bit in the church. We sing about God's love. We preach about loving one another. We remind people that God loves them. And I suspect that if I asked everyone here this morning whether Christians ought to love God and love their neighbors, every hand would go up. That's an easy question.
But let me ask a harder one. What happens when loving God means surrendering something we really don't want to give up? What happens when loving our neighbor means showing patience to someone who has tested every ounce of patience we possess? What happens when loving someone means forgiving an offense, serving without recognition, or showing kindness to someone who hasn't been particularly kind to us?
Suddenly, love becomes more than a pleasant word. It becomes a challenge to the way we live. Perhaps that's because we have become accustomed to thinking about love primarily as something we feel. We love people who make us happy. We love things that bring us pleasure. We love those who agree with us, appreciate us, and treat us well. But the love Jesus describes in today's passage reaches much deeper than our feelings. It involves the direction of our hearts, the priorities of our lives, and the way we treat people even when doing so is difficult.
It is possible to be very religious and still miss what matters most to God. We can know the Scriptures, attend worship faithfully, defend our beliefs, and do many good things, yet still struggle to love God wholeheartedly or treat others with genuine compassion. That was part of the problem Jesus was confronting in the religious leaders of His day.
By the time we reach Matthew 22, Jesus has entered Jerusalem, and the tension between Him and the religious authorities is growing. One group after another has approached Him with questions designed to discredit Him. The Pharisees questioned Him about paying taxes to Caesar. The Sadducees challenged Him about the resurrection. And now the Pharisees return with another question.
A lawyer—an expert in the Law of Moses—asks Jesus which commandment is the greatest. It might sound like a sincere theological discussion. After all, the Law contained hundreds of commandments, and Jewish teachers often debated which were most important. But Matthew tells us this question was intended to test Jesus. They wanted to draw Him into a controversy.
Instead, Jesus gives an answer that goes straight to the heart of what God has always desired from His people. Love God with everything you are. Love your neighbor as yourself. And then, before the conversation ends, Jesus turns the tables and asks a question of His own—a question about the identity of the Messiah.
Because understanding what God commands is important, but understanding who Jesus is changes everything. Jesus isn't simply giving us another religious standard to struggle toward. He is revealing the kind of life that becomes possible when we belong to Him and allow His grace to transform us.
So this morning, as we continue our series, The Coming King, I want us to consider one central truth: To belong to the King is to love what He loves, because true love begins with recognizing who He is. And we'll begin where Jesus begins—with the greatest commandment of all.
Love God Completely (Matthew 22:34–38)
The lawyer asked Jesus, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” (Matthew 22:36, NKJV). Jewish teachers had long discussed the commandments of Moses—traditionally counted as 613—and debated which carried the greatest weight.
Jesus didn't hesitate. He answered by quoting words every faithful Jewish person would have recognized: “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37, NKJV). These words come from Deuteronomy 6, from the passage known as the Shema, a central confession of Israel's faith. God's people had heard them for generations. But Jesus brought them back to the center of the conversation. Then He declared, “This is the first and great commandment” (verse 38).
Of all the commandments Jesus could have chosen, He identified love for God as the greatest. Worship, Scripture, and faithful practices matter, but beneath them all must be a heart that loves God.
Notice the word all: all your heart, all your soul, all your mind. Jesus is not dividing us into three compartments; He is calling for our whole selves—desires, decisions, thoughts, and priorities—to come under God’s loving lordship.
Can we love God sincerely and still hold something back? We may trust Him for salvation but not with our finances, ask for His guidance but resist when it conflicts with our plans, or sing about surrender while clinging to an attitude He wants to change.
Jesus calls us to wholehearted love. Yet we can turn even this command into a checklist: Am I praying enough? Reading enough? Serving enough? Before long, love becomes another burden to carry.
But love is not produced by a longer list. “We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19, NKJV). Before we reached toward God, His grace was reaching toward us.
God does not command wholehearted love and leave us to manufacture it. By the Holy Spirit, He reshapes our desires and teaches us to love what He loves. Holiness is more than avoiding wrong behavior; it is a heart transformed by grace.
John Wesley described Christian perfection as perfection in love—not freedom from mistakes, weakness, or limited knowledge, but a heart wholly surrendered to God. Through sanctifying grace, wholehearted devotion is not merely an unreachable ideal. It is God’s work within us.
What does this look like on Monday? It shapes how we speak to family, handle disappointment, spend money, and make choices when nobody is watching. Even ordinary work and care for others can become expressions of devotion.
So ask not only, “Do I love God?” but, “Where am I still holding back?” The King who calls for our whole hearts offers the grace to transform them. And His love cannot remain confined to our private relationship with Him.
That's why Jesus doesn't stop with the first commandment. The lawyer asked for the greatest commandment—singular. But Jesus gives him two. In God's Kingdom, love for God and love for our neighbor cannot be pulled apart. If the first commandment reveals where our love begins, the second reveals where that love must go.
Love Your Neighbor as Yourself (Matthew 22:39–40)
Jesus continues: “And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 22:39, NKJV). Love for God and love for neighbor belong together. One is the foundation; the other makes that love visible.
“On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (verse 40). Jesus is not dismissing the other commandments. He is showing that love gives faithful obedience its proper purpose.
It's one thing to say we love God. It's another to demonstrate that love in how we treat people. After all, loving God can sometimes seem easier than loving our neighbors. God is patient, merciful, and faithful. Our neighbors? Well, they're human. And so are we. They disappoint us. They misunderstand us. Sometimes they say things that hurt us. Occasionally, they're the people sitting beside us in church!
But Jesus doesn't say, “Love your neighbor when they're easy to love,” or “when they agree with you.” He simply says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Who is my neighbor? In another conversation, recorded in Luke 10, a lawyer asks that question, and Jesus responds with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Our neighbor isn't limited to someone who lives nearby, shares our beliefs, or belongs to our circle of friends. Our neighbor is the person whose need places an opportunity for love before us.
Our neighbor might be a relative, coworker, stranger, or even someone who has treated us poorly. We love not because affection has been earned, but because that person matters to God.
Remember last Sunday: every person bears God’s image—including the person we find difficult. We cannot honor that image in ourselves and disregard it in others.
Now, let's be clear. Loving our neighbor doesn't mean approving of everything our neighbor does. It doesn't mean pretending sin isn't sin or that harmful behavior doesn't matter. And it certainly doesn't mean allowing someone to continually mistreat us without appropriate boundaries. Biblical love is not the absence of truth or wisdom. Sometimes love requires a difficult conversation, correction, or saying no. But even then, our purpose should not be to humiliate, punish, or prove ourselves superior. Our desire should be the other person's good.
Christian love is more than being nice. Niceness may avoid conflict; love seeks another person’s good, even when that requires courage and difficult honesty.
What about “as yourself”? We naturally notice our own hunger, pain, discouragement, and need for patience. Jesus calls us to extend that same thoughtful concern to another person.
At home, what if we answered a difficult family member with the patience we would hope to receive? At church, what if encouragement mattered more than our preferences? In our community, what if people recognized Christ’s compassion in the way we treated them?
Jesus said, “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35, NKJV). He didn't say the world would recognize His disciples by the size of their congregations, the beauty of their buildings, or the number of programs they offered. He said they would recognize them by their love.
Wesleyan holiness has never been only private. The grace that purifies our hearts also changes our relationships. Our words and actions should increasingly reveal the love of Christ.
That does not come from a naturally agreeable personality. The Holy Spirit forms patience, compassion, and forgiveness within us. Where we fall short, we can ask God to continue His work.
Is there someone you have avoided, judged too quickly, or neglected to encourage? What might Christlike love ask you to do this week?
John writes, “My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18, NKJV). Love must become visible.
The lawyer asked Jesus about the greatest commandment, and Jesus answered. We might expect the conversation to end there. But Jesus isn't finished. Knowing what God commands is not the same as knowing the God who commands it. So He turns the conversation in an unexpected direction—not toward another religious rule, but toward the Messiah Himself.
The Greatest King (Matthew 22:41–46)
Up to this point, Jesus has been answering questions. The religious leaders have approached Him again and again, trying to find something they can use against Him. But something changes in verse 41. Matthew tells us, “While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them.” For a change, Jesus is the One asking the questions.
“What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?” (Matthew 22:42, NKJV). They answer immediately: “The Son of David.” And they weren't wrong. God had promised that the Messiah would come from David's family line. The prophets spoke of a coming King who would reign with righteousness and justice. Their answer was what a knowledgeable teacher of Scripture would have given. But it was incomplete.
Jesus continued by quoting Psalm 110: “The LORD said to my Lord, ‘Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool’” (Matthew 22:44, NKJV). He drew their attention to something remarkable. David speaks of someone whom he calls Lord, yet this person is also understood to be David's descendant. So Jesus asks, “If David then calls Him ‘Lord,’ how is He his Son?” (verse 45).
In the culture of Jesus' day, ancestors were ordinarily regarded with greater honor than their descendants. For David, Israel's great king, to call one of his descendants Lord suggested that this coming King possessed authority greater than David's own. Jesus wasn't denying that the Messiah would be David's descendant. He was revealing that the Messiah was far greater than the religious leaders understood. The promised King would not simply be another ruler sitting on David's throne. He would be David's Lord.
Matthew tells us that no one was able to answer Jesus. Verse 46 says, “Nor from that day on did anyone dare question Him anymore.” The leaders had spent their time trying to expose what they believed Jesus didn't know. But now Jesus had exposed something they didn't understand. They knew the Scriptures, the promises, and the expected answers, but they failed to recognize the One standing before them.
There's a warning here for us. It is possible to know a great deal about God without truly surrendering our lives to Him. We can become familiar with the language of faith, know Bible stories, understand church doctrine, and defend what we believe. Those things matter. But knowing the right answers is not the same as knowing Jesus as Lord.
And that brings us back to the greatest commandment. How can we love God completely if we have not truly recognized who Jesus is? Jesus is not merely another religious teacher offering good advice. He is not simply a moral example for us to admire. He is the promised Messiah, David's Son and David's Lord, the eternal Son of God who entered our world to redeem us from sin. He is the King whose authority extends over every part of our lives.
His command to love is not simply a suggestion for making the world a nicer place. It is a call to live under His lordship. Yet here's what makes the Christian message so remarkable: the King who commands us to love is the very King who first loved us.
Jesus doesn't stand at a distance, demanding something He has never demonstrated. He came into a world that rejected Him. He showed compassion to the overlooked, mercy to sinners, and patience toward those who misunderstood Him. He washed His disciples' feet. Ultimately, He gave His life upon the cross. The One who calls us to love God completely demonstrated perfect obedience to the Father. The One who calls us to love our neighbors gave Himself for people who could never earn His love.
Through His death and resurrection, Jesus has opened the way for us to be reconciled to God and transformed by His grace. When we speak of loving God with all our heart, we aren't describing a beautiful ideal that no one can experience. God's grace does more than forgive past sins. Through the Holy Spirit, God works within us to purify our motives, redirect our desires, and free us from divided loyalties. That's the heart of entire sanctification: our hearts fully surrendered to God so that His love becomes the governing principle of our lives.
We cannot separate the commandments of Jesus from the person of Jesus. If we try to practice Christian love without surrendering to Christ, we reduce Christianity to moral expectations: be kind, be patient, be generous, try harder, do better. Those are good qualities, but Christianity is more than becoming a nicer person. It is a life transformed through a living relationship with Jesus Christ.
That's why the question Jesus asked matters so much: “What do you think about the Christ?” It's a question every one of us must answer, not simply with our words but with our lives. Is Jesus someone whose teachings we admire? Someone we turn to when life becomes difficult? Someone we acknowledge on Sunday mornings but ignore throughout the week? Or is He truly our Lord?
When Jesus becomes Lord, our priorities, relationships, and understanding of success change. We no longer ask only, “What do I want?” We begin asking, “Lord, what would please You?” We no longer ask only, “What does this person deserve?” We ask, “How can I reflect the love and grace of Christ toward this person?” Holiness isn't primarily about how religious we appear. It's about how completely our hearts belong to Jesus.
The Pharisees were so concerned with testing Jesus that they failed to recognize the King standing before them. The question for us is not simply whether we understand the greatest commandment, but whether we have surrendered ourselves to the greatest King. Is the love of Jesus becoming the ruling power of my life?
Conclusion — When Love Reigns
When we began this morning, we considered a question growing out of last Sunday's message. If we bear God's image and our lives belong to Him, what should those lives look like? Jesus has given us the answer: love God completely and love your neighbor as yourself.
But He didn't end the conversation with commandments. He ended it with a question about the Messiah. The religious leaders wanted to know which commandment mattered most. Jesus wanted them to recognize the One standing before them. The greatest commandment and the greatest King belong together.
Here is what I hope we'll carry home: God doesn't simply want us to do more loving things. He wants to make us people whose hearts are governed by His love. We can perform acts of kindness while holding bitterness in our hearts. We can serve while quietly resenting what is asked of us. We can do right things for wrong reasons. Jesus calls us beyond outward appearances to wholehearted love.
And the wonderful promise of the gospel is that He doesn't leave us to accomplish that through our own strength. The Savior who gave Himself for our sins gives us His Holy Spirit to transform our hearts. His grace not only brings forgiveness; it makes us holy.
Perhaps this morning the Holy Spirit is drawing your attention to something. Maybe your relationship with God has become more about routine than love. Maybe there's an area of your life you've been reluctant to surrender. Or perhaps there's someone you've struggled to love—someone who disappointed you or offended you—and you know the attitude you've carried doesn't reflect the heart of Christ.
The answer isn't simply to promise you'll try harder this week. Bring that part of your life before Jesus and invite Him to do what only His grace can accomplish: change your heart, renew your love, and give you courage to respond with truth and compassion.
The world doesn't need a church that merely talks about love. It needs a church where the love of Jesus can be seen: in the way we welcome people, care for the hurting, handle disagreements, forgive, serve, and reach beyond these walls to our neighbors. That's how the Kingdom becomes visible through God's people—not because we're perfect, but because we belong to a Savior who is transforming us by His grace.
The King who is coming again is the same King who desires to reign in our hearts today. He doesn't want a small corner of our lives. He wants our whole hearts. And He is worthy of them.
So let me leave you with one final question: If someone looked at the way you live, the way you speak, and the way you treat others, would they recognize the love of Jesus reigning in your heart? Not merely that you believe in Him, but that you belong to Him. Love God completely. Love your neighbor genuinely. And let Jesus Christ reign over it all.
- - Matthew 22:34–46NKJV

Deuteronomy 34:1–12NKJV

1 Thessalonians 2:1–8NKJV

Love Above All

Love God Completely (Matthew 22:34–38)

Love Your Neighbor as Yourself (Matthew 22:39–40)

The Greatest King (Matthew 22:41–46)

Conclusion — When Love Reigns

Matthew 22:34–46NKJV