Matthew Hester—Year A Propers 22–25

Welcome to the Gospel Reverb podcast. Gospel Reverb is an audio gathering for preachers, teachers, and Bible thrill-seekers. Each month, our host, Anthony Mullins, will interview a new guest to gain insights and preaching nuggets mined from select passages of scripture in that month’s Revised Common Lectionary.

The podcast’s passion is to proclaim and boast in Jesus Christ, the one who reveals the heart of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And now, on to the episode.

Anthony: Hello, friends, and welcome to the latest episode of Gospel Reverb. Gospel Reverb is a podcast devoted to bringing you insights from scripture found in the Revised Common Lectionary and sharing commentary from a Christocentric and Trinitarian view.

I’m your host, Anthony Mullins, and it’s my delight to welcome our guest, Dr. Matthew Hester. Matthew has served in ordained ministry since the year 2000. He pastors Dominion Church International and serves on the faculty of Global Grace Seminary as a professor of theology. He’s the host of The Kingdom Is for Everyone television show, which can be found on the Grace Awakening Network. And Matthew resides with his wife, Megan, and their four children ― you’re a busy guy ― in the Greenville-Spartanburg metro area in South Carolina.

Matthew, thanks for being with us, and welcome to the pod. And since this is your first time with us, we’d love to know a little bit about you, your story, and especially what has you experiencing delight these days?

[00:01:39] Matthew: Anthony, thank you so much for having me on. It’s an honor. I don’t take this opportunity for granted, just to be able to have access to the hearts and minds of your listeners, and so I really do appreciate it.

Yeah, a little bit about my story. I grew up as a PK. I’m in that fraternity of pastor’s kids, and grew up in ministry. Actually, today I pastor the church that my parents founded back in 1985. And to give you an idea of the initial flavor, my dad grew up Southern Baptist, my mom grew up American heathen. And just kind of learning their way through it all and very quickly realized they had no roadmaps for where the Spirit was taking them, and very much became like a pioneering ministry. They were pioneering revelation and truth in this region for a long time, and of course that brings celebration on one side and some level of persecution on the other.

But yeah, grew up in that environment. And I say perhaps one of the most lived miracles that I experience daily is that with all that said and done, I still love the church. And I actually still love Jesus, because man, growing up in it all, oh, you are exposed to the good, the bad, the indifferent, and everything in between, and you realize that nobody knows how to eat their own like the church, unfortunately.

But we’re getting better at it and I say that with optimism and faith. We certainly are getting better at it. But yeah, so been pastoring now for the last 11 years. But then also as you mentioned there in the intro, I have a television show, also a podcast by the same name, The Kingdom Is For Everyone. We just are brushing up against our 200th episode. Your listeners have some catching up to do if they want to jump into that.

I’ve authored eight books at this point, so really have a heart to resource the body of Christ. And perhaps the proverbial line in the sand was my newest book, The Rorschach God, and that’s where we challenge all these images of God that don’t look like Jesus, especially even images that we found in Scripture. That’s why I think this opportunity on The Gospel Reverb is so unique, because we’re going to lean into that a good bit.

What’s bringing me delight these days? Honestly, I … So, I have an online school as well. It’s called Present Truth Academy. And so, twice a year we do a 10-week study track. We do one in the spring; we do one in the fall.

So, I’m gearing up here in the month of September. We’re going to be releasing a brand-new study called The Beautiful Christ, and it’s a 10-week study on mystical Christology. And so that’s … Man, that jazzes me. I love to see people have an encounter with God in a way that they never were expecting, and then they discover it’s actually who God had always been ― free from their denominational experiences, their own disappointments and failures, or even their own projections. And actually getting to have a little taste that, you know what? God is better than you ever thought. And then once you think he’s just that good, you realize, no, he’s even better than that.

So he’s always even better … challenging our framework for goodness. That wakes me up in the morning. I promise you that. That’s where the joy is, for sure.

[00:05:09] Anthony: Yeah. Karl Barth said we cannot put any sort of cap on God’s loving kindness, right? And so, when we think we’ve reached the end of his goodness, no, there’s always more.

And so, I’m curious, you talked about the 200 episodes of the podcast and the television show, resourcing the Church that you still love, thanks be to God. Tell us about that. The Kingdom Is For Everyone. What is it about? Why did you start it? And what are your hopeful outcomes for those people that tune in?

[00:05:39] Matthew: Yeah. This would probably come as no surprise to anyone listening that’s in ministry. We got stuff to say. And so for me, initially, I wish it sounded more spiritual. I just needed an outlet to continue to share this good news that has so captivated and transformed my heart.

And then you always have friends along the way. They’re like, “Hey, you need to go ahead and just start doing this. Just discipline yourself. The world needs it. The Body of Christ needs it.” And so, it was really kind of born out of that. But then it’s really become its own thing in a way.

So, The Kingdom Is For Everyone. I grew up and had a lot of kingdom influence by way of revelation. And so, one of the paramount verses in that, Matthew 6:33, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and then all the things are added to you.” But then rarely would I actually hear the follow-up question, “What is the kingdom?”

And then you got to go to Romans 14:17, “The kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” And to me that’s, wow, that… Okay, so it actually sounds like the kingdom is fun. It sounds like that it’s an indwelling kingdom. And then another follow-up question that I rarely heard people ask, “Okay, so it’s righteousness, peace, and joy, but where is it?”

“It’s in the Holy Ghost.” Where is Holy Ghost?” I’m glad you asked because within the divine dance, Holy Spirit is in all things and through all things and is all in all. So Holy Spirit’s in you. And so that’s really is the whole drive behind the show and the podcast, is we just go after everything that is righteousness, peace, and joy.

And we do that through … Sometimes I just share my heart. We do series. I may share a selection from a message that I ministered somewhere. We have conversations also. And so, it’s a mixed format type of a platform. But, yeah, it’s really part of what’s in my heart, and there’s been a great response to it, so we’re very thankful for that.

[00:07:43] Anthony: I’m so encouraged to hear you talking about the kingdom as something that’s joyful, that is fun, because too often we just, we’ve projected onto God our own misgivings about who he is and that he’s this divine taskmaster. But there’s, there is joy and there is delight in the triune relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit.

And I’m curious, as you resource the church, you mention eight different books that you’ve written. If you could recommend one book to the church that you think, this is going to be the one that hits the mark that you’ve written, which one would it be and why?

[00:08:19] Matthew: Oh, it has to be The Rorschach God. And for me it just served as a line in the sand. Because there was a lot of risk. Because I get it. When you’re beginning to go back and not only just challenge perhaps some truths maybe learned in church, that’s one thing, but when we start going back and challenging narratives, and then literally going back to the beginning, going back to Genesis and reclaiming the projections that we’ve placed on our always good Father.

And because a lot of it ― and I get into this in my book ― is because, in some odd way, we have elevated the Scriptures into the level of deity. And so, I say kind of tongue in cheek, the Bible became the fourth man of the Trinity. And that was never the intention of the breathing of God onto the text, and I know it wasn’t the intention of the apostles or the early church, that the Bible at its richest points us to the mystical Christ.

For John 1 is the Genesis. That is the true Genesis. In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. That predates the creation story. And there’s a lot of pushback, because when people have put the Bible in a place that it was never meant to be in, then when you challenge that, they feel like you’re a heretic. “What are you doing?”

And what I’m doing is honestly I’m trying to join into some of the thoughts that even Jesus echoed in his own earthly ministry. He tells the Pharisees at one point, and I’m paraphrasing to an extent, “But you search the scriptures because you think they contain eternal life, but they point to me and you don’t receive me.” And so, it is perfectly possible, absolutely possible, to be a master of Scripture and to never actually have an encounter with Jesus. And if that doesn’t stop you in your tracks, I don’t know what does. And so, that is the labor behind The Rorschach God. I want to offer as clear a picture as I have of Jesus in this moment, and of course, knowing that picture will become more clear each and every day. So yeah, pound for pound, that’s what I would recommend.

And then also we developed a whole suite of resources around that book. So, there’s a study guide. There’s a 10-session video masterclass where I open up the principles in each chapter. We did a audio book for it. So really, kind of whatever format floats your boat, it is available, for sure.

[00:11:01] Anthony: Okay. Sounds good. Go get it, folks. And like you said, the holy Scripture is not the fourth person of the Trinity, but it is useful to point us to the living Word, who is Jesus, and we want to make much here today.

So let’s get to the text. Our first passage of the month is Exodus 20:1–4, 7–9, 12–20. I’ll be reading from the New Revised Standard Version, the updated edition. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 22 in Ordinary Time, October 4.

Then God spoke all these words, ² “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; ³ you shall have no other gods before me. ⁴ “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. … ⁷ “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. ⁸ “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. ⁹ Six days you shall labor and do all your work. “Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you. … ¹³ “You shall not murder. ¹⁴ “You shall not commit adultery. ¹⁵ “You shall not steal. ¹⁶ “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. ¹⁷ “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, male or female slave, ox, donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” ¹⁸ When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance ¹⁹ and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” ²⁰ Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid, for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you so that you do not sin.”

So, Matthew, before giving any of his words, the commandments, God identifies himself, the indicative of grace here, as the one who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

I’m curious. The Scripture’s always reshaping our imagination about Jesus. How does this introduction shape our apprehension of God and the commandments, and what does it reveal about God’s relationship with Israel?

[00:13:33] Matthew: Yeah. That’s a great question. Honestly, I think that opening line just right there at the start of the reading: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt,” for me that is what sets the tone for what’s being communicated.

Because God doesn’t begin with, “Obey these commands and then I’m going to deliver you.” No, he says, ” I am the Lord your God. I’ve already brought you out.” And I think of it this way: liberation comes before legislation, right? Grace precedes the command.

And of course in the experience, Israel, they don’t keep The Commandments in order to become the people God rescued. They’re given these commandments because they’ve already been rescued.

And I think that distinction is huge because religion has often reversed the order, right? We can easily turn to the biblical story and we can say it this way, “Behave correctly, believe correctly, perform correctly and perhaps God will accept you.”

But Exodus begins somewhere entirely different. God hears the cry of an oppressed people, and he enters their suffering, and he delivers them from Pharaoh, brings them through the sea, and only then what he’s actually doing here is he’s teaching them how to live like free people.

You don’t even know how to live. You’ve lived in bondage for so long and so I’m trying to show you some ways to live freely. And so, I actually don’t primarily hear or even navigate the 10 Commandments as like this arbitrary list of like divine demands.

I receive them as like ethics of a liberated community, and I think that even helps us approach the topic just a little … it lets it breathe. So, you think about it. You’ve been delivered from an empire that’s built on exploitation, built on violence. It’s built on hierarchy, slavery.

But listen, guys, I honestly, I think what’s happening here is God is saying, “Don’t recreate Egypt among yourselves.”

Because usually what we do is we default to what brings us comfort. If you think about it, when Israel is up against the Red Sea they complain very quickly and it’s so interesting. What’s their initial complaint? At least back in Egypt we had beef stew. That’s my paraphrase. In the King James, it says the flesh. We had the flesh pots of Egypt. So, if nothing will speak to you, your stomach will. That’s for sure. And so, you think about how they were treated.

Pharaoh treated human beings as commodities. So, then, look: so don’t steal. There, there’s so much here that we could unpack. Egypt, it was sustained and expanded by violence. So, you know what, guys? Don’t murder. Empire ― it survives through deception, accusation. You know what? So don’t bear false witness.

You can see it’s really an antithesis is what’s going on here. It’s an antithesis of what you came out of. Pharaoh’s economy, it’s built on endless acquisition. So, you know what? Don’t covet. Don’t covet what belongs to your neighbor.

And then probably most radically for me, is that Pharaoh demanded endless production. But Yahweh says, “You’re going to have to rest. This is going to be so important.”

Anthony: That’s right. Oh, wow.

[00:17:01] Matthew: Sabbath actually becomes this embodied declaration that your worth is not determined by how many bricks you produce. That is beautiful to me.

And I think God isn’t simply saying, “Here are the rules required to keep me happy.” What he’s doing is actually forming a people who’ve been delivered from one way of being human, and now they’re learning another way to be freed humans.

And ultimately, I would say as a Christian, I think Jesus brings that whole trajectory into its fullest clarity. He doesn’t just intensify legal codes. You ever notice that in his ministry? No. He reveals the life toward which the law was pointing. Love God, love your neighbor, love your enemy, forgive, serve reconcile, refuse retaliation.

And so, the relationship ― it begins not with Israel’s performance but with God’s initiative. I brought you out. So, the whole start of their relationship was, “I’m your deliverer. I’m not your taskmaster.” And so, for me that’s beautiful.

[00:18:07] Anthony: It is beautiful. And we see in Jesus he’s always reshaping imagination. “You’ve been told this, but I say to you,”

As he reshapes the way that we think, and that’s … I’m going to hang on to what you said: liberation before legislation. That’s beautiful. I may steal that one and not give you credit. I hope that’s okay. But, …

Matthew: You have permission.

Anthony: All right. So, the people’s response to this God was fear and awe. Yeah. Why do you think the narrative includes this reaction immediately after these words are given, and what might that reaction teach us today?

[00:18:45] Matthew: Yeah. First I want to say this. I want to give Israel here a little bit of grace because I’ve tried to put myself in whatever capacity that I can in their position. So ,you look at these hundreds of years of slavery. The way that they relate to a master is, it’s suffering. It’s unreasonable. It is… It’s just terrible.

And so, now they’re being told to trust someone else and I think we’d be foolish to just imagine, “Oh, yeah, I’d completely trust. I’d fully trust.” Yeah, I wonder, again this has been generationally experienced at this point.

And that distance language to me is actually not surprising. It’s unfortunate, but it’s not surprising. So, you think about the manifestation there. There’s the thunder, the lightning, smoke, trumpet blasts, the trembling earth.

And their conclusion is, “Hey Moses, you talk. You go talk to God for us. We don’t want God speaking directly to us because we’re afraid that we’re going to die.” And so, right there, their fear produces distance.

It’s not literal distance. It’s the same kind of distance that I think Paul is picking up on in the New Testament when he says that we were enemies of God in our own minds because of our wicked behavior.

So, the fear component is a master at producing perceived distance, and so that really becomes kind of one of the, I would say, one of the recurring tensions in the whole Biblical story. Humanity continually perceives God through fear. And so they approach God through distance, through mediation, boundaries, sacrifice. It evolves into priesthood, temple curtains, categories of clean and unclean.

But this is still fascinating, and if we’re not careful, we miss it because we’ll just read right over it. Moses immediately says, “Don’t be afraid.” He’s telling them, “Don’t be afraid.” And it’s almost a paradox in the text because they are. They’re experiencing something terrifying. But Moses says, “Don’t be terrified.”

I think that’s important because Scripture records humanity’s developing encounter with an understanding of God. And as Christians, we don’t stop at Sinai to determine what God is ultimately. What do we do? We keep reading until the arrival of Jesus, because Jesus brings that perfect clarity that was hidden, that was still that veiled perspective in these moments.

Even Moses wasn’t seeing God clearly. He was still seeing, he was still seeing God as it was through a veil. And so, you think about Hebrews, Hebrews even brings us a beautiful contrast and I know we’re jumping way into the different part of the overall text, but Hebrews brings this contrast, and it even tells us, “You have not come to the mountain of terror, darkness, gloom, tempest. You haven’t come to Sinai. You’ve come to Mount Zion.” and then it’s pretty astonishing. Hebrews says, “We’ve come to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.” So, the distinction is Sinai and Moses ― that’s not it. No. You’re at Mount Zion, and Jesus is the mediator of this new covenant.

And so, I’m not … I wouldn’t say we dismiss Sinai, but we also don’t embrace it as like the final lens through how we understand God. Jesus is the lens. And so, at Sinai, the people stand at a distance; but in Jesus, God closes that distance. The word becomes flesh. You can’t get any closer than that.

And once we’re exposed to the beauty of Christ, all of that apprehension begins to melt away. And with that, the vain imaginations, the things we built even psychologically. What do I mean by that? Like we preach Jesus, but our imagination of God is, there’s still thunder and smoke and distance, and we’re afraid of getting too close. We’re convinced that God is perpetually disappointed, easily angered, waiting for us to cross the line. But Jesus reveals a God so different than we ever imagined, and it’s who God had always been.

Yeah. And I just love that thought, “You don’t have to stand at a distance anymore.” and I hope that we can hear that today.

[00:23:14] Anthony: Absolutely. Love moves toward the other, doesn’t it?

Jesus, the Father, the Son and the Father in face-to-face relationship, everything hinges on that and the communion of the Spirit. God moved toward us. The Word became flesh. There’s no need to be afraid. He has revealed Himself most vividly in the person of Jesus, and I like to think of it we fix our gaze on Jesus, and it’s okay to stare because the more you stare the more you fall in love with this God who loved us first.

Matthew: Yes. Amen and amen.

Anthony: All right, let’s transition to the next text of the month. It’s Exodus 32:1–14. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 23 in Ordinary Time, October 11. Matthew, would you read it for us, please?

[00:24:04] Matthew: Absolutely.

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” ² Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters and bring them to me.” ³ So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears and brought them to Aaron. ⁴ He took these from them, formed them in a mold, and cast an image of a calf, and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” ⁵ When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it, and Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the LORD.” ⁶ They rose early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being, and the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to revel. ⁷ The LORD said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; ⁸ they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” ⁹ The LORD said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. ¹⁰ Now let me alone so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, and of you I will make a great nation.” ¹¹ But Moses implored the LORD his God and said, “O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? ¹² Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. ¹³ Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’” ¹⁴ And the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

[00:26:38] Anthony: So, while Moses is on the mountain receiving God’s covenant instruction, the people grew impatient and asked Aaron to make gods for them. Why are they, and why are we, the modern people, drawn to idolatry? It’s alive and well. Is there a contemporary sacred cow of idolatry that has you concerned?

[00:26:46] Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. I want to start before I unpack this a little bit. I’m convinced that the only true idolatry is self-idolatry.

Anthony: Tell me more …

Matthew: Because it’s all… Even this desire to fashion this image, it was born out of a human desire to worship something. And so, if we can’t perceive something to worship, we’re going to create something to worship, and usually it reflects our own misgivings, our own frustrations, our own demands. And for me when I behold an idol in any form, I just see it as it’s itself. It’s a manifestation of something that we’re wrestling with, whether it be a certain people group, a certain nationality, whatever it may be, a certain religious proclivity. That’s what I see.

But I think idolatry actually becomes much more interesting when we stop imagining it as primitive people being foolish enough to worship statues, because that’s usually how we set it up. But idolatry is what happens when we take something finite, when we take something manageable, we take something controllable, and then we ask it to give us what God can only give.

Anthony: Come on.

Matthew: And so, notice what triggers the golden calf. It’s uncertainty, it’s impatience. If the people did not have that in their hearts, the idol wouldn’t be there. But it’s uncertainty, it’s impatience. So, Exodus 32 begins with, “When the people saw that Moses delayed.” So, they lost their sense of control.

Moses is gone. In their minds, God feels inaccessible. The future is uncertain, and so, they essentially say, “Give us something we can see. Give us something we can manage. Give us something that we can point to and say, ‘That’s our God.’” and for me, that’s why idolatry remains incredibly contemporary.

Because we don’t … Today we don’t usually melt our jewelry to make golden calves anymore. We’ll go to trade it in at the pawnshop. Give me some cash for that.

But what do we do? We create systems.

We’ll create ideologies, institutions, personalities, doctrines, political identities, religious structures, and then we assign intimacy to those things.

So, this actually … I might step on some toes here for a minute.

Anthony: Go for it.

Matthew: One contemporary sacred cow that concerns me deeply, is our ability to make an idol out of certainty. And that’s …

Anthony: Come on.

Matthew: … has been one of the biggest things that I believe, especially in the Western church framework, that we are going to have to challenge and unravel. It’s not so much a problem in the Eastern tradition of the faith, but in the Western framework, it is very difficult. And it … because I’m talking about religious certainty. So, we can become so convinced that our understanding of God is God, that we lose the humility to even recognize the difference.

Anthony: Wow.

Matthew: What you believe about God may not be God. And you’ve got to allow God to challenge it. And so, the irony for me of the golden calf is that Israel isn’t actually necessarily saying, “Let’s abandon God and become atheist.” For me that’d be a little more clear-cut.

Aaron actually declares a festival to Yahweh. If you go back and look at it, he declared, “Okay, this will be a festival day to Yahweh.” So, they’re attempting to make this invisible God tangible. That’s what they’re trying to do. It’s not … we think idolatry, false gods. I don’t think that’s what was in their hearts. In their hearts it was, we can’t approach it, we can’t see it, but we can at least see this. So we want to see if there can be a connection between the unseeable and the unknowable, and now we can see and behold something that’s knowable.

They’re trying to manage something on their terms. And I think Christians do the exact same thing. I know I’ve been guilty of the exact same thing. You can even turn your theology into a golden calf.

Anthony: Sure you can.

Matthew: We certainly have seen what it’s done to turn the Bible into a golden calf. We can use the Scripture to … we can weaponize it against people we don’t like, people we don’t agree with. We can turn political power into a golden calf. There’s so many things: church growth, platforms, celebrity leaders, nationalism. Your denomination is the only right one.

And before we know it, we’re surrounded by golden calves, doing all these things in the name of God. But we’re actually trying to worship a God that we fashioned in an image that allows us to relate to him on our terms.

And so, actually, I don’t even think the question is, do I have idols? I think it’s more of what have I made ultimate that Jesus might actually challenge? How many things in your life have you said, “This is a non-negotiable,” and in that moment you’ve actually disinvited Jesus from the ability to challenge that paradigm.

And a lot of it, sadly, brother, it’s in the name of God, but it looks nothing like the nature of God. So yeah, yeah, that gets pretty intense. Maybe we’ll back off of that a little bit, but …

Anthony: No. I really do like this conversation because I just think there is, there can be a sin of certitude that you just, you’re so certain about what you believe, and you hold so tightly to that.

But I’m finding, brother, as I get older, I’m releasing my grip on that stuff more and more. I feel like at the age of 55 I know a little less now than I did before.

Matthew: Yes.

Anthony: And just trusting, because relationship, there’s no certainty in any relationship. It’s always about learning the other, growing in love, growing up into Christ, knowing that he’s a certain one, but my belief about him, my understanding … that’s why I really lean on what Barth says about: we just apprehend God. None of us are experts when it comes to God. We’re learning. We’re growing and growing in love. And so, I really appreciate what you said there.

Verses 7–14 ― the Scripture tells us that God announces judgment. Yet Moses intercedes on behalf of the people. And it seems to be that he’s appealing to God’s character and his covenant. The Lord was merciful because the Lord is merciful. That’s who he is. It reveals the heart of the blessed Trinity. So, I just wanted to give you an opportunity to riff on the richness of God’s mercy. Tell us about it, preacher.

Matthew: Yes. Honestly, that’s what I love about this passage. It’s, mercy is not Moses trying to talk an unwilling God into becoming a better God.

Anthony: That’s right.

[00:34:00] Matthew: And for me, that is an incredibly important distinction to make. Because if we read it superficially, it can sound like God is furious, ready to annihilate everybody, and it actually looks like Moses is the compassionate one who’s trying to calm God down.

But when we read this story through the fullest revelation, so through a Christological lens, and then we discover Jesus tells us something about his Father, God is not less merciful than Moses. Jesus literally says it that way. God is not less merciful than Moses.

Moses’ intercession is itself participating in something that originates in the heart of God.

See, this becomes even clearer as that story unfolds. God repeatedly describes himself as merciful and gracious, slow to anger abounding in steadfast love. And then the prophets return to that confession over and over again, and then Jesus arrives and embodies that confession. And so, Jesus doesn’t come to convince an angry Father to love humanity. Jesus comes because the Father loves humanity.

John, probably the first verse most of us ever heard, “For God so loved the world that he gave.” And not just loved your favorites. No, he loved the world that he gave.

And so, the incarnation begins in love. The cross reveals love. The resurrection vindicates love. And then the gospel announces that nothing, not even sin and death, get the final word over God’s creation. I mean …

You can definitely preach yourself happy. Paul says it beautifully in Ephesians 2, “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us.”

Man, I love those words, rich in mercy. Not occasionally merciful. He’s not reluctant about it. He’s not merciful after someone says the right prayer. No, it just says rich in mercy. So, mercy isn’t something you extract from God through your performance.

[00:35:40] It actually flows from who God eternally is, and that is where Trinity becomes so beautiful to me. The Father is not the angry member of the Trinity.

And this is actually what we do. A lot of times we’ll go to the Trinity and we try to compartmentalize it, and we’ll say, “Okay the Father’s the angry side. Jesus is the nice one. Holy Spirit is trying to negotiate between them.”

Literally that’s what a lot of us have believed. But Father, Son, and Spirit eternally exist in that communion of self-giving love, and salvation flows from that communion. And oh, I love this, the Son doesn’t rescue us from the Father. The Father, through the Son in the Spirit, rescues us from everything destroying us.

And that’s why Paul can pen beautifully 2 Corinthians 5, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them.” That is the gospel.

And you know what? I think Moses, even if he even … I don’t even think he had any awareness of it really, consciously any awareness, but he’s getting these glimpses into that type of intercession, that type of movement. Because he’s standing in the breach and he’s saying, “Remember your covenant. Remember your promise. Remember who you are.”

But ultimately Jesus doesn’t merely stand there between humanity and God. Jesus reveals that God has always been for humanity. That is such good news. Nothing in the landscape of human history has had to change God’s heart to be for us.

He had to change our hearts, because we didn’t know how to receive him as a father.

[00:37:22]Anthony: Yeah. And isn’t it liberating to know that we don’t have to condition God to be good because he is good?

There’s no bound on his mercy. And as Romans 11:32 tells us, he was merciful to all. He didn’t pick and choose. Israel was just his beloved people to show us that all tribes and nations would be included in this good news of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I don’t have to condition God to be good, and I love what you said, that Moses is just participating in something he probably doesn’t even, he’s not even aware of in this moment, right?

[00:37:56] Matthew: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, but that doesn’t stop God ― which I love. And I think about how often, how many times have I been swept up in the momentum, the inertia of the divine dance. And then you’re able to look back and say, “Man, God you knew what you were doing. And I’m glad you did, because I certainly didn’t know what was going on. But thank you for allowing me to participate.”

It’s just beautiful to think about. And just again, just the whole mercy component. You know our sin doesn’t exhaust his mercy.

Our violence doesn’t exhaust it. In this moment our idolatry doesn’t exhaust his mercy. Failure doesn’t even exhaust it.

Because we realize mercy isn’t merely something God does. Mercy … I penned it this way and I’m going to have to give myself a pat on the back for this, and you can steal this too if you want to. But this is what I was, as I was pondering this thought, this is what came up in my heart was, mercy is what love looks like when love encounters misery.

So, you have the God who is love: 1 John 4, right? God is love. Love is not something that God decides to do. If God can decide to love, he can also decide to withhold. 1 John 4 says that God is love, so you can’t have an authentic encounter with God if you don’t have an authentic encounter with love.

And the vice versa is true. You can’t have an authentic encounter with love if you don’t have an authentic encounter with God. So, I say, love is the God stuff. So, in this moment, what does a God rich in mercy look like? It looks like embodied love having a head-on, face-to-face encounter with misery, and we call it mercy.

Anthony: Thank you.

Matthew: That is such, such an amazing thought.

[00:39:53] Anthony: Amazing that he meets us where we’re at. And with his ongoing, unfailing, persistent love, which existed before in a part of our decision to even trust in it.

I mean, isn’t that amazing? He wasn’t waiting for us to believe it. It is who he is. Wow. Hallelujah. Praise God.

All right, let’s transition to our next text. Exodus chapter 33:12–23. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 24 in Ordinary Time, October 18.

Moses said to the LORD, “See, you have said to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ ¹³ Now if I have found favor in your sight, please show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider, too, that this nation is your people.” ¹⁴ He said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” ¹⁵ And he said to him, “If your presence will not go, do not bring us up from here. ¹⁶ For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth.” ¹⁷ The LORD said to Moses, “I will also do this thing that you have asked, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” ¹⁸ Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” ¹⁹ And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The LORD,’ and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. ²⁰ But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live.” ²¹ And the LORD continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, ²² and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; ²³ then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”

There’s a lot going on here. A lot to talk about. So, Moses insists that Israel cannot move forward unless God’s presence goes with them. Now, we believe, don’t we, Matthew, that God is omnipresent. So, we believe God is always present to us, always going with us, but I wonder, is there something that we can learn about Moses’ intention of not moving before God moves, and how might that intention inform the way we understand our participation in God’s mission to the world?

[00:42:47] Matthew: Oh, yeah. I think it’s helpful for us to distinguish between God’s presence and our conscious participation in that presence.

Anthony: Tell me more.

Matthew: Yeah, as you mentioned in, as you mentioned in the question yes, God is truly omnipresent. We, we agree. So, Moses isn’t trying to convince an absent God to become present. It’s impossible.

Psalm 139 will eventually say, “Where can I even go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” Paul is going to say later in Acts 17, “In him we live and move and have our being.” So, there is no outside of the presence of God. So, there’s nowhere Israel could go where God’s not.

But what I believe is being revealed here is something deeper, because Moses doesn’t just want to arrive at the destination. He wants their movement to arise from communion. And that’s something I’ve really been leaning into as of late: the distinction between union and communion. Union is what God establishes, communion is how we participate.

And I think that’s such an important distinction, because sometimes, I’ve done it myself, we talk about waiting for God to move. And again, it’s actually funny, just to use a little bit of logic, as though God is inactive, as though we’re waiting for him to finally do something. But I wonder if the deeper invitation is actually learning to discern the movement of God that is already occurring …

Anthony: There you go.

[00:44:21] Matthew: … and then participate in it. Again, that’s the communion of participation. So, that’s how I understand mission. Like mission isn’t primarily our great idea that we ask God to bless. No, mission begins in God. And so, the theological word, missio Dei, it captures this beautifully: the mission of God.

The Father sends the Son, the Father and the Son send the Spirit, the Church finds itself swept into that divine movement toward creation. So, we’re not actually bringing God somewhere God isn’t, we’re awakening to what God is already doing there. And for me, that completely changes evangelism and ministry for me.

When I encounter another person, I don’t arrive carrying Jesus into a godless space. That’s what we’ve often imagined. I know I have before. No, Christ is already holding that person’s existence together. Like they … The very fact that they’re standing in front of you means they’re being upheld by the power of his word. He is in all things and through all things, including them. That’s what Colossians says anyway.

And so, my question becomes less how can I get God into this situation, and it’s more like, “Father, what are you already doing here and how can I participate?” And I think that’s a very different posture because it requires listening, it requires discernment, humility, patience. It means, sometimes, refusing to manufacture movement simply because we’re uncomfortable being still. And man, that is such a huge indictment against so much of the Western Church, and I would even say from the charismatic Pentecostal framework. And I can talk about them, they’re my mother tongue, okay? They’re my people.

We’re always in this, let’s just try to … Let’s be still, but I’m not sure I can be still for long because we got to get God on the move. Sometimes you’ll find God moves the most in those moments of what we perceive as stillness.

And so I think Moses essentially is saying here, “I would rather remain in the wilderness with your presence than to arrive in the Promised Land without consciously participating with it.” And for me, that’s profound, because the destination is actually not the point. If you think about it, that getting from Egypt and crossing the Jordan, if we’re not careful, we think crossing the Jordan’s the point.

The point that God is trying to mold within a freed society of people is this: communion.

Anthony: Yeah.

[00:46:48] Matthew: Okay? Let’s navigate this one day at a time, one moment at a time, one meal at a time, one encounter at a time together. And then Jesus embodies it. This is who his Father’s always been, and he says, “The Son can do nothing on His own, but only what He sees the Father doing.”

What is that? It’s actually not divine mimicry. No. It’s participation. That’s what Jesus is saying.

We do this all together, guys. So, Jesus is not inventing ministry. He’s not anxious about it, trying to get his itinerary filled. His life is flowing from that communion with the Father through the Spirit, and that’s the same invitation offered to us.

So, perhaps, maybe it’s more like this. “Don’t move without God’s presence” doesn’t mean God might get left behind. That’s not what we’re saying.

What it means is, don’t become so obsessed with going somewhere for God …

Anthony: That’s right.

[00:47:49] Matthew. … that you forget how to move with God. That’d be the takeaway for me.

[00:47:50] Anthony: That’s such a good word. And it does, it changes the way that you show up in every room, every space. For me, the question is, what are you up to, Lord? In this space, right here in this hospital room, at this birthday party, at this sporting event, in this house of worship ― what are you up to here? Give us eyes to see, Lord, what it is you’re doing. We want to do it with you.

Matthew: Yeah, I would love to participate.

Anthony: Yes.

Matthew: Yeah.

[00:48:18] Anthony: And this is one of the ways Moses wanted to participate. He wanted to see God’s glory. And God responds by revealing his goodness while shielding Moses from what he couldn’t handle the fullness of his presence. So, what does this interaction teach us about the knowability and the mystery of God, and how does God’s self-revelation unveil the intimacy of knowing God with divine transcendence?

Matthew: Yeah, such great questions. You’re already leaning into it here already. Moses asked or says, “Show me your glory,” and God responds, “I’ll make my goodness pass before you.”

Look at that. Moses asked for glory, God reveals goodness. And I think that is significant. Because we imagine divine glory often in these terms of overwhelming power, its brightness, majesty, probably a lot of what the people were scared of, right? The thunder, the transcendence. Those images certainly, they’re there in Scripture. We’re not ignoring them.

But here, when God interprets his own glory and it’s huge, he begins talking about goodness, graciousness, mercy. And again, you follow that trajectory all through Scripture, then you arrive at Jesus, and then John says, “The Word became flesh, lived among us, and we have seen His glory.”

Where? In Jesus. And that is so astonishing to me because the glory Moses could only glimpse, Christians confess has taken on a human face. I’m so glad that Moses’ encounter here was not the end of the story on glory because you look at the answer. God says, “No one can see my face and live.” But then Jesus says, “Whoever seen me has seen the Father.”

So, someone missed it here. Somebody missed it. All of a sudden, Jesus is like, “Wait a second, you guys believe that no one can see Him. I’m telling you, if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father. Behold, here I am.” Here he is. Hebrews calls Jesus the radiance of God’s glory.

[00:50:27] The exact imprint of God’s being. And so we can make a claim like this with this tension here. God is mysterious, but that doesn’t mean God is unknowable. And I think a lot of times we try to categorize those two words together.

Mystery … Listen, there are things about my wife, I’ve been married to my wife, we’re coming up on 25 years. There are still things about her that are mysterious to me.

And that’s part of the beauty of our relationship. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know her. My goodness.

And part of that mystery is the beauty of relationship. And mystery doesn’t mean God is hiding behind Jesus. Maybe, perhaps, he’s actually something completely different.

Jesus reveals God precisely while never exhausting God. I love that thought. And that should be important to us, because sometimes we use divine mystery as a theological escape hatch. And we’ll say things like, “God’s ways aren’t our ways,” right? And then we’ll attribute something horrific to God that looks nothing like Jesus.

So usually that’s what we do. We can’t explain it, so his ways are higher than our ways. But Christian mystery for me ― it can’t mean contradiction. It can mean a lot of things, but it can’t mean contradiction in its truest form. Because this is what I mean ― I may never comprehend God exhaustively, absolutely, but I can know God’s character truly …

Anthony: That’s right.

[00:51:57] Matthew: … because God has made himself known in Christ. So, what does that mean? Jesus, he didn’t reveal a percentage rate of God. It’s not 30%’s good, 70%’s dangerous, and good luck, guys. Again, Paul tells us in him, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. All the fullness. And so, God’s transcendence doesn’t mean that somewhere behind Jesus there’s another god. It means that God is perfectly revealed in Jesus.

But it also does mean it’s infinitely deeper, greater, more beautiful than I could ever exhaust. So, mystery doesn’t mean that I don’t know who God is. And I think that’s just, it’s an important distinction to make.

Anthony: Oh, that’s so good.

Matthew: Yeah.

[00:52:42] Anthony: Yeah, Eugene Peterson says it like this, “Mystery is not the absence of meaning. It’s the presence of more meaning than we can comprehend.” It’s the depths of exploration in this relationship with God. We know his nature and character in the personal work of Jesus. Eternal life is knowing that, right? Knowing God and his Son, and it’s just plumbing the depths of that goodness, is it not?

[00:53:09]Matthew: Yes. Yeah. And I like to even say it this way and exactly what you said, beautifully stated. I say it this way, mystery doesn’t even create distance. Growing up, I don’t know why I would allow myself to think that way. “Oh, I don’t know something about God, so I must not know him.” No. When we begin to realize mystery doesn’t create distance, it actually invites wonder.

Anthony: Huh, there we go.

[00:53:33] Matthew: And that’s such a huge component of our relational journey is that wonder, and it’s so needed. It is so needed in this day and age. And so, as we have a more clear picture, a more clear representation of who Jesus is, the mystery doesn’t actually disappear. It just becomes more beautiful.

And so, again, back to the start of the question, Moses says, “Show me your glory.” God said, “I’ll show you my goodness.” and ultimately, I think that’s why we can make claims like this, “Hey, God’s goodness has passed before us in human flesh.” So, in the day of Moses it didn’t quite look like what we behold today. In our day, we’ve actually beheld the goodness of God, and his name is Jesus.

Anthony: Amen.

Matthew: And he didn’t just pass before one of us, he passed before all of us.

[00:54:21] Anthony: Hallelujah. Praise God. Oh, this is so good. Such a great conversation of this … I love this idea of mystery. Listen, Matthew, we have so much information, don’t we? We’re inundated with information.

And in that I think that we think we know something, and we lose, we can lose sight of just the awe and wonder of who God is. This is not about information. It is about a relationship, and just like you said with your own spouse there’s this ongoing learning about the beauty of who she is. Imagine the depths of that with God.

This is what we’re leaning into, in the awe and wonder of who he is.

All right, we’re down to the home stretch. One more pericope to go. Okay. We’re going to switch over testaments to Matthew 22:34–46. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 25 in Ordinary Time, October 25. Matthew, we’d be grateful if you’d read it for us, please.

[00:55:32] Matthew: Absolutely.

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, ³⁵ and one of them, an expert in the law, asked him a question to test him. ³⁶ “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” ³⁷ 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 greatest and first commandment. ³⁹ And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” ⁴¹ Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: ⁴² “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” ⁴³ He said to them, “How is it then that David by 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 David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” ⁴⁶ No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

Matthew: That’s Jesus right there. Oh, man. He’s a gangster right there.

[00:56:40] Anthony: He is the OG, for sure. So how, what does this text disclose about the God revealed in Jesus?

[00:56:47] Matthew: Ah, yeah, this … this is fun stuff. So, what strikes me first here is Jesus is actually being asked to prioritize Scripture. That’s what they’re asking him to do.

So, the expert in the law asks him, “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?” And Jesus doesn’t actually respond by saying, “they’re all equally important. So just read the Bible literally, do everything it says.” That’s actually not what he does. He interprets; he prioritizes. He gives us a center.

And what he does here the center is love God with your entire being, love your neighbor as yourself, and then he makes this statement: “On these commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” Now I want to make sure we understand this here. Jesus is not actually establishing two new laws here, and we’ll unpack this here in a minute.

He’s being asked a direct question, and I believe what he’s doing is he’s summarizing the full intent of the law, and it all hinges on this. I’ve literally heard people say, “Yeah all those laws are not for us today.” And I say, “What is, what are the laws?” And they say, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.”

And I’ll pause and look at them in wonder, and I’m like, “Do you do that?” Like we recite that as if that is so much easier than just keeping those laws. And then if we’re all honest and we just sit for a moment, “Okay, God, today have I loved you with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength?”

And then we’ll look at that and say, “Yeah, I can keep that one.” I’m not going to answer for you, Anthony, but for me it’s like, “Nope, it’s not going to happen.”

Anthony: Yeah.

[00:58:26] Matthew: It’s amazing how I think now suddenly I’m qualified. So, he’s not actually establishing that now these are the laws, he’s answering a question, and then he shows us on these commandments is the entirety of the Law and the Prophets.

And so that tells me something very important about Scripture and God. What’s Jesus doing here? He’s actually giving us a hermeneutic. If we’re not careful, we miss it. This is the hermeneutic. Everything hangs on love. Everything. And so, we shouldn’t just be asking, “Is there a biblical text that says this?”

We also have to ask, “Does my interpretation of the text hang upon the love revealed in Jesus?” And for me, that’s huge. Because you can quote Scripture and you can still miss the God that Scripture is trying to reveal.

And the Pharisees themselves demonstrate that possibility. These are people who know the text extraordinarily well, yet Jesus continually challenges the way they’re interpreting this text.

And so, what does this disclose about God? It tells me that love is not peripheral to God’s character, that love is the interpretive center. And Jesus doesn’t merely teach us to love God and neighbor, he embodies what that love looks like, and then you actually have to move into a different book.

You have to move into John 13, and I believe that in John 13, Jesus shows us that there’s a singular law of the better covenant. The singular law is love one another as I have loved you. So that’s it. It’s not even … It’s not love God with everything you got. Good luck with that.

And then even love your neighbor as you love yourself. What happens on the days I don’t love myself? What happens on the days where I’m having a pity party? Does that give me the legal right to treat my neighbors like garbage? No.

But here, look at that. Love as I have loved you.

Oh, man. That’s, oh, that’s beautiful. That’s a gospel that demands embodiment right there.

And Jesus paves the way. He embodies what that love looks like. He loves the outsider. He touches the untouchable. He eats with sinners. He forgives enemies. He confronts oppressive systems. He lays down his life. He will lay down his life rather than taking the lives of those who are opposing him, which in itself we could have a whole episode on or more.

But I think the second half of that passage even takes it further because then he starts asking them, “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” And they answer correctly according to categories, right? But then Jesus pushes beyond the category. So, what I mean is, the Messiah can’t simply be contained inside of their existing expectations. Yes, Christ is David’s son, but he’s also David’s Lord.

Anthony: Yes.

[01:01:15] Matthew: Yeah, your categories are right, but they’re incomplete. Let me bring the fullness of this revelation. And from that perspective of a New Testament, let’s say a fuller Christology, that’s enormous. So, the one teaching us how to interpret God is not simply another rabbi offering an interesting opinion.

No, he’s the image of the invisible God. He is the Word made flesh. He’s the radiance of God’s glory, the exact imprint of God’s being. And so, when Jesus tells me that everything hangs on love, then I’m going to pay attention because love himself is interpreting the Scripture for us. And I would say if there’s ever a moment …

I teach this in some of my scholastic studies. I’ve got a whole 10-week study on the Sermon on the Mount. I said, if there’s ever a time where Jesus begins to challenge your interpretation of Scripture, you have a decision to make in that moment. Will I side with Scripture or will I side with the Word?

[01:02:17] And I would hope every time you would side with the Word before you would ever choose the Scripture against him. And so, Jesus is revealing all kind of things. There’s so much we could unpack. There’s this beautiful coherence of God, right? God’s holiness is loving. His justice is love. His judgment is love. His power is self-giving love.

John would eventually say and I’ve already said it, 1 John 4, it’s so breathtakingly simple, “God is love.”

And so, Jesus, he’s not even telling us what commandments God prefers. He’s actually revealing what God is like. What he’s like. And if I have to choose between commandments and who God is, you can keep the commands. I want to know him.

[01:02:56] Anthony: Yeah. Amen and amen. And this is where I think the theological work of T.F. Torrance is really helpful when we think about the vicarious humanity of Jesus. Who has loved the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul?

It’s our Lord Jesus, and in him, this is what we’re doing, and that’s why when we don’t, it hurts. Because this is who we are now in Christ, in Christo. It is the reality. And yeah. So, we just, we lean on him. And yeah, I love what you said about how it takes an embodiment.

Then it works itself out in loving your neighbor. That we would love one another. That is the true commandment. So, if you were … Let’s just take it a little bit further. What else is here? What else … What … There’s a lot of meat on the bone. If you were preaching this passage to your faith community, what else would you want to proclaim?

[01:03:55] Matthew: Ah, I would say everything hangs on love.

Everything hangs there. And you know what? I would emphasize that word “hangs” because that’s the language Jesus uses. So, if you remove the thing something hangs on, it falls. This is so loaded. If my theology doesn’t hang on love, then something’s gone wrong. It falls.

If my doctrine doesn’t produce love, then it has failed. If my interpretation of Scripture gives me permission to hate the person that Jesus commanded me to love then it’s going to fall. If my holiness makes me less compassionate, come on, if being right makes me cruel, then something has gone wrong, because Jesus didn’t say, “They’ll know that you are my disciples because you won all the theological arguments.”

No, he said they’re going to know us by our love. And, honestly, I would push it even further because I don’t think Jesus is giving us a religious assignment. He’s not like saying, “You people aren’t loving enough. Try harder.” Because again, that’s religion trying to echo that, towards that, and give us a goal to try to strive towards.

No, the gospel goes deeper than that. John says, “We love because He first loved us.” And so, Christian love isn’t something I manufacture to get God’s approval. It’s participation in a love that originates from God. So, before you ever loved God, God loved you. Before, before you even had a desire to pursue God, God was pursuing you.

Before you knew how to love anybody, you were already being held in the love of Father, Son, and Spirit. And that’s why I would preach this passage through participation. Jesus isn’t commanding us to imitate this external standard. Again, it’s so easy for it to become something like that.

“Oh love. Okay, how am I going to love more?” That’s not what is happening here. He’s inviting us to live from that divine life. He’s inviting us to live from that place of love. And then I would ask the uncomfortable question, “Okay, who’s my neighbor?” Because man, it’s easy to preach to love others until Jesus starts identifying who the others are, right?

I mean, ugh, again, I live here in the Deep South and you start talking about I’ve got to love people that vote differently than me? Yeah. What about people that believe differently? Yep. Worship differently? Well, how about this? Do I have to love people that don’t even believe in God? Yeah.

Do I love immigrants? What about people in jail? Yeah. I don’t see anywhere in this text where Jesus excludes anyone.

Can my neighbor be the LGBTQ community? Oh, pssh. Yeah. What if my neighbor they have theology that I find deeply problematic? Yeah. How about just your enemies in general? Yeah. Yeah, because if we’re not careful, we miss this, that Jesus continually destroys our attempts to shrink the definition of neighbor until love becomes manageable. And then we’ve circled all the way back to our beginning conversation about idolatry.

Because if I can try to only define my neighbor, only relate to my neighbor as with a type of love I can manage, then even the way I love has become a golden calf. And for me, that’s why Christian love is so radical, because I’ve discovered over all these years, and it took me long enough and I still am discovering it daily, make no mistake, love doesn’t mean agreement.

It doesn’t … It doesn’t mean the absence of boundaries. It doesn’t mean refusing to confront injustice. But it does mean that I never have permission to dehumanize any person standing in front of me because I know that every human being I encounter is someone Christ has entered humanity for.

And so, my proclamation would be, we can have impressive theology, we can build successful ministries, we can defend the biblical orthodoxy, sing the beautiful worship songs, understand the Hebrew and the Greek. We can have all of our arguments buttoned up about eschatology, atonement, ecclesiology, whatever, and then Jesus just tells us, “Okay, that’s all fine. Knock yourself out.” But what holds it all together and what it all must hang on is love.

Anthony: Amen.

[01:08:43]Matthew: And then if that love disappears, then Christianity ― it may remain as a religious institution but it’s no longer that thing upon which Jesus said everything hangs.

And so, I stopped asking a long time ago, “Is my theology correct?” I don’t ask people that anymore. What I ask myself is this: Is it teaching me to love?

Anthony: Yeah.

[01:09:07] Matthew: And if it’s teaching me to love, then I feel like at the very least I’m heading in the right direction because according to Jesus everything hangs there.

[01:09:15] Anthony: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, if I find I’m not merciful, I’m not understanding God’s mercy. If I’m not gracious to my neighbor, I don’t understand his graciousness toward me.

And one of the things we talk about in our local church, Matthew, is you know it is easy to hide behind loving your neighbor, because everybody is my neighbor. But we talk about loving our literal neighbor and that brings in to bear all the things you just spoke about, people that when it comes down to it, I just don’t agree with, but I love them because Christ first loved me and loved them.

And I just love the fact that you’re leaning into participation. We can only do it because Christ has first done it for us, in this double movement of grace. We get to join him in it. Hallelujah. Praise God.

Matthew: Amen.

Anthony: Man, Matthew, and I say this tongue in cheek, if you ever learn to get excited about the Lord, you’ll go places.

So, thank you for the joy that exudes out of you when you talk about our Lord Jesus Christ … and the written word which points us to him. It’s a beautiful thing. You’re a beloved child of God, so thank you for your time.

And I want to thank the team that helps make this podcast possible. You know who you are. Michelle, Dids, and Elizabeth ― thank you.

And Matthew, as is our tradition here at Gospel Reverb, we like to end with a word of prayer, so would you pray for us, please?

[01:10:38] Matthew: It would be my honor, and thank you again for inviting me on. It’s been a blast.

Father, thank you for making yourself known to us in Jesus Christ. Thank you for, ah, your presence that never leaves us, your mercy that’s richer than our failures, and your love that holds everything together. Holy Spirit, awaken us to where you are already moving, and give us the courage to participate. Teach us to see your image in our neighbor, to choose love over fear, to choose mercy over judgment, and communion over distance.

May the life of Jesus become visible in us, and may everything we say and do bear witness to the beautiful goodness of God. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.

Anthony: Amen.

Thank you for being a guest of Gospel Reverb. If you like what you heard, give us a high rating and review us on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast content. Share this episode with a friend. It really does help us get the word out as we are just getting started. Join us next month for a new show and insights from the RCL. Until then, peace be with you.