Spring City Fellowship
251116Sunday
Sunday November 16, 2025 10:15AM Service

      • Psalm 150:3NIV2011

  • My Jesus I Love Thee (I Love You Jesus)
  • Come Let Us Bow Down
  • Almighty
  • Mighty Name Of Jesus
  • Earth And Heaven Roar
  • For Your Name Is Holy
  • Earth And Heaven Roar (chorus)
  • Our Theme for 2025 is “Live Like Jesus”
    It comes out of a simple desire to follow Jesus - and to learn better what that means.
    We are spending the entire year in the Gospel of Matthew.
    We have covered just about everything that Matthew tells us about the renewed life and living like Jesus including defining devotion and the reward for service in the Kingdom of God.
    Last week I asked the question, who is part of this Kingdom of God that Jesus is proclaiming?
    First of all, we need to understand that the church is not the same as the kingdom.
    The Kingdom of God is everyone who recognizes, participates with and aligns with God’s authority.
    Ideally that should include those who call themselves Christian.
    But Jesus challenged the Jews of his day not to assume that their labels of who’s in and who’s out are accurate.
    There are people on the inside who are just faking it.
    And there are people on the outside who think they don’t belong -but they have internalized the gospel and are doing it.
    The Kingdom of God is bigger than any church, denomination or organization.
    The rule of God encompasses the whole world - but only some people recognize it and are partnering with God to help restore it.
    Our study of Matthew moving toward a climax.
    Jesus is revealing, not only who He is, but what He wants from those who would join Him in his mission.
    He wants us to think and act differently than the rest of the world.
    He wants us to have a different purpose and a different focus.
    What you chose to focus on changes your perspective.
    Every photographer knows that it is very important how you frame a picture. That is, what you make your focal point and what you include as background. You want people who look at your photograph to see what you see in a way that tells the story that you want to tell.
    Matthew does the same thing with his gospel.
    There is a reason why we began with the beatitudes from Jesus’ sermon on the mount.
    Jesus redefined the way we think about life and about God and that shapes the way His followers live the renewed life.
    We are now culminating our study on the renewed life and again, the gospel writer want too remind us about what is ultimate.
    What is most important and what should we be focused on?
    What is the greatest commandment?
    You know it - it’s love - love God and love others!
    But what happens if we make this the focal point of everything that we do?
    How does it reframe, reshape and redefine our entire lives?
    As we read through these passages lets try to see them through the lens of love as the greatest commandment.

    Redefine greatness.

    Living like Jesus means everything we think we know about what it means to live a good life gets tuned upside down as we learn to live the renewed life.
    Lets start with what it even means to be the greatest.
    Remember this statement?
    Matthew 20:25–26 CSB
    25 Jesus called them over and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions act as tyrants over them. 26 It must not be like that among you. On the contrary, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,
    Jesus is about to get more specific about what this means.
    One of my favorite movies of all times is “The Princess Bride.” There are so many quotable lines in this parody of a fairy tale. Like when Vincini notices that they are being followed by the black pirate and he keeps shouting, “Inconceivable!” What he means is “That’s impossible” but its obviously not impossible and it is conceivable because he is observing the ship getting closer and knows exactly what it means.
    At which time Indigo says, “You keep using that word, I don’t think it means what you think it means.”
    When someone asks, what is the greatest commandment.
    In Greek the word is Mega - what is the mega-commandment?
    What is the biggest, the loudest the most amazing commandment of all?
    I would presume that its also the hardest commandment to keep.
    But also the most important one to keep.
    I haven’t even read the passage yet, but you already know it.
    Because I already said it -love God and love others.
    We are used to hearing it - but put yourself in the place of Jesus disciples hearing it for the first time.
    Matthew 22:34–40 ESV
    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.”
    Would you have suspected that love was the answer?
    What about “thou shalt no kill?” - surely that’s a winner!
    Or the one about coveting - that must be the hardest one right?
    No its love - get that right and everything else falls into place.
    The idea of love being primary - literally the greatest - challenges our most basic concept of what it means to be great.

    Greatness is caring, not control.

    We tend to equate power with control.
    As if the test of power was domination.
    As if in order to be great, you have to get to the top and stay on top.
    That means keeping everybody and everything that’s below you right where you want them.
    Is that really power?
    Isn’t it harder to lift other people up?
    Doesn’t it take more power to support the weight of others than to put them down?
    Which is harder- telling other people what to do or listening and understanding?
    You want to know what is really hard - actually caring?
    It’s easier not to care - when you care it stays with you?
    And you know what is even harder than that - caring and yet choosing not to interfere!?
    How many time do we try to help people, not because they need our help, but because we want to feel better that we did something.
    The urge to control comes naturally - try caring without controlling - now that is hard!
    How do you think it is for God?
    People say that if God is love, why doesn’t He do something about all the pain and suffering in the world.
    The truth is He has done something..
    John 3:16 NLT
    16 “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
    What is amazing is that God has entrusted His message to us - to people.
    And He doesn’t violate our freewill - even to help us.
    That is not only loving and respectful - but it must be incredible difficult to show that kind of restraint.
    Its called “tough love” not only for the one receiving it, but tough for the one showing it.
    Love is not just soft or wishy-washy - it’s truly great in every sense of the word.
    And we need to adjust our understanding of greatness to include love.

    Greatness is security, not superiority.

    Matthew 22:41–45 ESV
    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?”
    This passage is a bit difficult to understand.
    You have to assume, as the Jews of Jesus’ day did, that family order is a hierarchy.
    In other words, a child is subordinate to the parent - not just as a child, but for the rest of their life.
    Many Eastern cultures today still venerate their ancestors who , even though they are dead, are still considered to be greater that their living descendants.
    That’s just how things work in a hierarchy.
    Remember last week, the Sadducees try to trap Jesus with a question that presumed a woman was the property of her husband.
    Jesus turned it around on them because their premise was wrong.
    Now Jesus asks a question based on a similar wrong premise.
    And He doing it to see if they will be flexible enough to challenge their presupposition or admit that they are wrong.
    How can Messiah be both the son of David (as a subordinate child) and also be his superior as David addresses Messiah as Lord.
    Psalm 110:1–2 ESV
    1 The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” 2 The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies!
    This is clearly a Messianic Psalm - it speaks of God conquering His enemies.
    The Messiah is the Son of David (we mentioned this when talking about the blind men at the end of chapter 20.)
    But how can Messiah be both son of David and also his Lord.
    Keep in mind that the very idea that women are not property or that families are not an eternal hierarchy is “inconceivable” to them.
    And this time that word means exactly what you think it means.
    They literally could not imagine any other way of thinking.
    You want to know what else was “inconceivable”?
    That God would condescend to become a human.
    And not just a human, but a poor carpenter from Nazareth.
    That he would be born as a baby to humble parents.
    That he wouldn't impose himself on his people, but that he would invite them to follow him.
    Have you ever thought about it that when you are really powerful, you don’t have anything to prove.
    If your are really secure, you don’t have to be superior.
    Hierarchies are for people who don’t know their place.
    Insecure people put other people down to lift themselves up.
    Secure people don’t need a title because they have a relationship.
    They know who they are without anyone having to tell them.
    Think about that when you think about what it means to love God and to love others.
    If you are truly great, you don’t need to prove it.

    Redefine priorities.

    The next chapter is addressed to the Scribes and the Pharisees - the Jewish elite of Jesus’ day.
    These are the people who would have been considered great by every conventional measurement - but not by Jesus.
    They had 613 commandments and they were focused on trying to follow every one of them.
    By trying to do everything, they accomplish nothing.
    Jesus is trying to point out to them where their focus is off.
    They need some reframing.
    Perhaps some humbling - call it “tough love.”
    Their priorities are all messed up.
    Jesus is going to call them out with some common sense correction.
    Matthew 23:1–7 ESV
    1 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, 3 so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. 4 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. 5 They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, 6 and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues 7 and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others.
    These guys in the long robes are really no better than anyone else.
    It’s like Jesus can see right through them - and so can anyone else.
    It’s like the children’s parable by H.C. Andersen - “The Emperor’s New Clothes” In it an Emperor is swindled by some guys who offer to make for him a set of clothes that are simply a greatest thing anyone has ever seen (or not seen, as you know if you remember the story). They pumped him up by telling him and everyone else that only the wisest person could see their exquisite beauty. Well everyone, especially the Emperor wanted to be known as wise. So they all pretended to see these amazing new clothes.
    It took a child with no pretense and no reputation to loose to call out the truth that no none was willing to admit. The Emperor is naked and you all should be embarrassed!
    Jesus des a similar thing to the Pharisees.
    He’s not being mean - He’s just telling it like it is and everyone knows it.

    Your reputation is not as important as glorifying God.

    Matthew 23:8–15 ESV
    8 But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. 9 And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. 10 Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. 11 The greatest among you shall be your servant. 12 Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. 13 “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. 15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.
    You Pharisees with the long robes are really naked!
    You want everyone to give you big titles because you are insecure.
    You use your power and position to make sure that no one ever takes it away from you.
    When you do the right things, its with the wrong motives.
    You don’t really care about people, you just want people to think that you care.
    It’s all just an act - your just a phony as a three dollar bill.
    So what do we do with this passage?
    Is Jesus just talking to the religious elite of his time, or to us as well?
    Do you think we ever do things just to get noticed?
    Ok, maybe not just to get notice, but we do like to be noticed!
    Have you ever done a good deed so you wouldn’t feel guilty?
    Is that really for them, or was it for you?
    We say that the purpose of our lives is to glorify God?
    But is it every to glorify ourselves, just a little bit?
    It’s ok, you can be honest - I think that’s the point.
    We need to admit to ourselves that we have a sinful human nature.
    Even our best intentions aren’t alway what we intend.
    And we are not always at our best.
    That’s why it is good news that living like Jesus isn’t first and foremost about what we do - its about Him and what He has done.

    What you do for God is not as important as who you are in Christ.

    Matthew 23:16–28 ESV
    16 “Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ 17 You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? 18 And you say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.’ 19 You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? 20 So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. 21 And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it. 22 And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it. 23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. 24 You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel! 25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. 27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. 28 So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
    When you live by the letter of the law, there will always be a loophole.
    The more you try to do everything right, the more details you will inadvertently miss.
    You can’t see the forest for all the trees.
    The harder you try not to do something the more likely you are to do the very thing you don’t want to do.
    At least with the law of love you are moving toward something instead of trying to avoid everything else.
    You know what the goal is.
    Love God and love others.
    But even love can become a kind of work - a chore.
    Like “oh, well, I guess I have to love you.”
    That’s not really love, is it.
    You can’t make it up if its not there.
    That’s why its not about what you do for God - because you can never do enough.
    Your righteousness comes from who you are and who you are becoming in Christ.
    Ephesians 2:4–6 CSB
    4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, 5 made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace! 6 He also raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus,
    You see even the love that we have and for others comes from God.
    God loved you first!
    Jesus died for you before you did anything to deserve it.
    The commandment to love is not about earning our way to heaven.
    The Bible says that is some sense you are already there.
    What you do for God comes from that place of being in Christ.
    Even the ability to love God and others.
    We don’t love to be loved - we love because we are loved.
    It flows from your connection to God who is love.
    1 John 4:10 TPT
    10 This is love: He loved us long before we loved him. It was his love, not ours. He proved it by sending his Son to be the pleasing sacrificial offering to take away our sins.
    The Scribes and Pharisees got it wrong - they are treating loving God as if it is a competition.
    Like who can love God more
    Or really, the question is who can earn God’s love more.
    You can’t earn love - if you could, then it isn’t love.
    When you have to earn love - that’s manipulation.
    Many of us grew up thinking that was love, but it isn’t.
    In fact, the New Testament writers in talking about love needed to use a different word for love - Agape.
    Unconditional love - its a term that you don’t find very often outside the New Testament.
    It was used in translating the Greek Septuagint of the Old Testament and the New Testament writers latched on to it as a word that might describe the unique love that God has for us.
    And it describes the love that we have from God for each other.
    It’s not a competition, its a commandment and one that we can only keep if we allow God to keep us.

    Rewrite your narrative.

    Do you know what a narrative is?
    A narrative is when you think you know how the story is supposed to go.
    We tend to me more tuned into things that fit with our narrative.
    And we often miss things that don’t fit with the story that we have in our heads.
    Jesus takes the Scribes and Pharisees to school when it comes to their knowledge of the Old Testament.
    They know the Bible really well, but they are leaving parts out that don’t fit their narrative.
    In their version of the story, they are the good guys, the heroes who always loved God and did what was right.
    Yeah, I don’t remember reading that either...
    But that is how narrative works - we remember only what we want to.
    Until Jesus shows up...
    Matthew 23:29–33 ESV
    29 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, 30 saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ 31 Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. 33 You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?
    Ouch, that had to hurt!
    You honor the prophets as if you were the hero in the story, you leave out the part where you murdered the prophets because you didn’t like what they had to say.
    We always like to be the hero in our own story - hey we just want people to like us!
    Rather than rewriting history, why not just admit the truth but with the caveat that you story isn’t over...

    Your story is still being written.

    Matthew 23:34–36 ESV
    34 Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, 35 so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. 36 Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.
    Jesu not only gives them a history lesson, but He also notes that history tends to repeat itself.
    It was not only in the past - the same things are happening all around us.
    You don’t have to look far to find injustice.
    We celebrate good looking people with fine reputations - it’s easy to believe the best about people we like.
    Or people we want to be like.
    It’s harder to love people whose lives are messy.
    Or whose messy lives have made our own lives more difficult.
    That’s where we really need a love that comes from God.
    Sometimes we might wish they were not part of our story.
    But what if our story is not really about us?
    That is to say that the focus is not on us.
    What if the story that is being written is about God and not about us.
    What is History is really His story?
    You can tell the truth about what happened when the focus of the narrative is on God’s love and not on your performance.
    That kind of narrative thinking frees us to not have to repeat the mistakes of the past because God is the one writing our story.
    Isaiah 42:9 AMP
    9 Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them.
    Yes, God is writing new chapters into our lives.
    You don’t have to be afraid to tell about the hard times, or the times where you missed it because that is not how the story ends.
    Jesus is the hero in your story, not you.
    You don’t have to look great.
    Telling it like it is just make Jesus that much greater.
    Jesus loves you and your story demonstrates his love.

    Your story is a love story.

    Matthew 23:37–39 ESV
    37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 38 See, your house is left to you desolate. 39 For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’ ”
    Notice how Jesus ends this discourse -
    We see the heart of God - broken for the lost.
    We see Jesus loving those who do not yet love Him.
    And we see Him foreshadowing a glorious ending to the story.
    Jesus went back to heaven to let the story unfold.
    He didn’t say, I’ll be back when you get it right.
    He said, when I come back you are going to know who I am.
    Why is He so sure?
    Because He knows the power of love.
    God’s love in us is like a seed that grows.
    1 John 4:7–8 ESV
    7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
    It multiplies and bears fruit.
    It’s a love that comes from God and points people to God.
    Its a love that helps us all to know God better.
    Its real, even more so when its hard.
    And its a love that bears witness to the truth - to a different perspective.
    it helps us to see God and ourselves is a way that we never would have if it were not for love.

    Questions for reflection:

    How is it better to have two commandments than to have 613 of them? Is it easier to focus on what to do rather than what not to do? Isn’t it freeing to know that God gives us His love? Take time to meditate and really focus on God’s love.
    When Jesus corrected the religious elite was he also speaking to you? Have you ever made your faith more complicated than it need s to be? Have you ever made it about you? Try beginning your prayers by focusing on God and see how that changes everything.
    When you tell your story, do you tend to leave out the messy parts? Or are you in complete denial? How would you tell your story as a redemption story with Jesus as the hero? What chapters is God still writing?

      • Matthew 20:25–26NIV2011

      • Matthew 22:34–40NIV2011

      • John 3:16NIV2011

      • Matthew 22:41–45NIV2011

      • Psalm 110:1–2NIV2011

      • Matthew 23:1–7NIV2011

      • Matthew 23:8–15NIV2011

      • Matthew 23:16–28NIV2011

      • Ephesians 2:4–6NIV2011

      • 1 John 4:10NIV2011

      • Matthew 23:29–33NIV2011

      • Matthew 23:34–36NIV2011

      • Isaiah 42:9NIV2011

      • Matthew 23:37–39NIV2011

      • 1 John 4:7–8NIV2011

  • Because Of Jesus
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