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Cheat Code · Rewind

Rock Point Church

63 min

Pastor Tim Beal · May 28, 2018 · 5 min read · 63 min listen

The big idea

We can't love people who are hard to love through willpower or good intentions — the only way to love the unlovable is to spend real time with Jesus until His love for us overflows into love for others.

In this message

The big idea
Point 1 of 7The command isn't confusing, but doing it is nearly impossible
Point 2 of 7Jesus gives a new command: love others the way He has loved us

Point 3 of 7A religious expert tries to limit who counts as his neighbor
Point 4 of 7The Good Samaritan story flips the question from 'who is my neighbor' to 'who acted like one'
Point 5 of 7Go and do isn't enough by itself — that's where most sermons stop, but the story keeps going
Point 6 of 7Mary sitting at Jesus's feet, not Martha's busyness, is what Jesus commends
Point 7 of 7We are the beaten man on the road, and Jesus is the Samaritan who rescued us
Take it into your week
Transcript

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Scripture in this message

John 13
John 13:34
John 13:35
Luke 10
Luke 10:25
Luke 10:26

Rewind AI drafted the Big Idea and some point headings shown here from the sermon transcript. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Pastor Tim Beal · May 28, 2018 · 63 min watch · 3 min read

Cheat Code

In this message

Big Idea
Key points
Application

Scripture in this message

John 13
John 13:34
John 13:35
Luke 10
Luke 10:25
Luke 10:26

Big Idea Key points Application

Big Idea

We can't love people who are hard to love through willpower or good intentions — the only way to love the unlovable is to spend real time with Jesus until His love for us overflows into love for others.

Jesus commands us to love each other the way He has loved us, but that command is easy to say and hard to do when people are genuinely difficult to love. The story of the Good Samaritan shows what that love looks like, and the story of Mary and Martha right after it reveals the secret: loving the unlovable only happens naturally when we've spent real time sitting at Jesus's feet.

Key points

1
1The command isn't confusing, but doing it is nearly impossible
Pastor Tim shares a raw personal story of trying and failing to show Jesus's love to an angry homeless man who cussed him out and kicked him in the shin at a coffee shop. He admits the problem was never understanding the command to love — it was actually doing it in the moment.
2
2Jesus gives a new command: love others the way He has loved us
Pastor Tim walks through John 13:34-35, where Jesus tells His disciples this is a new commandment not just to love each other, but to love each other the way He loved them. The reason it matters is that our love for one another is what proves to the world we're His disciples — more powerful than theology, good works, or catchy sayings.
3
3A religious expert tries to limit who counts as his neighbor
In Luke 10:25-29, an expert in religious law asks Jesus how to inherit eternal life, correctly recites the command to love God and neighbor, but then asks 'who is my neighbor?' looking for a loophole to justify not loving everyone. Pastor Tim notes this man is a lot like us — we want exceptions for people who are hard to love.
4
4The Good Samaritan story flips the question from 'who is my neighbor' to 'who acted like one'
Pastor Tim retells the parable in Luke 10:30-37 in vivid detail — the beaten Jewish man, the priest and temple assistant who pass by, and the despised Samaritan who stops and cares for him. Jesus's follow-up question forces the religious expert to admit, without even saying the word 'Samaritan,' that the outsider was the true neighbor, and Jesus tells him to go and do the same.
5
5Go and do isn't enough by itself — that's where most sermons stop, but the story keeps going
Pastor Tim points out that 'go and do the same' sounds great on paper but leaves people asking 'how?' He argues the real answer comes in the very next story, about Mary and Martha, which he calls the cheat code.
6
6Mary sitting at Jesus's feet, not Martha's busyness, is what Jesus commends
In Luke 10:38-42, Martha is distracted preparing a big dinner and complains that Mary is just sitting listening to Jesus, but Jesus tells Martha that Mary has chosen the one thing that matters. Pastor Tim highlights the seeming contradiction — go and do, then just sit and listen — and resolves it: loving the unlovable is only possible for people who have spent time at Jesus's feet.
7
7We are the beaten man on the road, and Jesus is the Samaritan who rescued us
Pastor Tim retells the parable's characters personally: sin beat us and left us naked and ashamed, religion and law (the priest and temple worker) couldn't fix us, but Jesus, like the despised Samaritan, came, bandaged our wounds, and paid for our care. Understanding how much Jesus loves us, gained only by spending time with Him, is what produces love for others — not guilt or obligation.

Application

Pastor Tim's challenge is a social experiment: find ten minutes a day this week to spend at the feet of Jesus and watch loving people who are hard to love become possible.

Find ten minutes a day for Jesus
Look at your busy week and carve out just ten minutes daily to spend with Jesus in Scripture and prayer, treating it as a social experiment to see what changes.
Try the SOAP method
Pick a passage like Luke 10:30-42, and work through Scripture, Observation, Application, and Prayer, writing down what stands out and how it applies to your life this week.
Use tools that help you actually read it
Download the free YouVersion app to have Scripture read to you, or if you prefer paper, start in the New Testament and read to let it speak to you rather than just to finish it.
Go back and try again with the person you failed to love
Pastor Tim commits to returning to the coffee shop to find the homeless man he cussed at and failed to love well, and to keep trying until he shows him Jesus better.
Get into a small group or class
Take advantage of the church's small groups and classes for every age and stage so you're learning who Jesus is together with others, not just on Sundays.

Take it into your week

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Scripture in this message

From the transcript
“Grab your Bibles. Let's go. Jump with me to to John. In in John 13, Jesus has a moment where he wants to to give this to his friends”
From the transcript
“It starts in verse 34. Jesus says this to his friends. He says, so now I'm giving you a new commandment. Love each other”
From the transcript
“there's a reason to it, and it's the next verse. It's 35. He says, love people the way love each other, the way that I have loved you, for your love for one another will prove to the world that you're my disciples”
From the transcript
“It's found in Luke 10. It starts in verse 25, and hopefully this helps because if we can figure out how to do this, I'm telling you, it changes everything”
From the transcript
“It starts in verse 25, and hopefully this helps because if we can figure out how to do this, I'm telling you, it changes everything. Luke ten twenty five starts with this”
From the transcript
“But Jesus is smooth. Like, he's he's so good. Verse 26. Jesus replied, what does the law of Moses say? How do you read it”
From the transcript
“And so the guy goes in, man. Verse 27. The man answers, well, you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself”
From the transcript
“And so, again, Jesus does what Jesus does best, and he goes into story mode. And and it's so good. It starts in verse 30”
From the transcript
“So Jesus keeps on with the story. 31. By chance, a priest came along. And just then, the priest probably, like like, pressed their robes up a little bit, kind of popped their chest out because the priest comes in to save the day”
From the transcript
“then Jesus goes on because there's another verse, verse 32. It says, a temple assistant, or your Bible may say a Levite. A temple assistant”
From the transcript
“But then verse 33. Then a despised Samaritan came along. And just then, you need to understand this”
From the transcript
“And then Jesus says this in 30 in verse 36. Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits”
From the transcript
“The only answer he has left is the Samaritan, and that's kinda where he goes in '37, but he can't even say the word Samaritan. Check it out. He says, the man replied, the one who showed him mercy. And then Jesus just says, yep. Now go and do the same”
From the transcript
“It's right there. It's it starts in verse 38. It says, as Jesus and his disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a certain village where a woman named Martha was welcome welcomed them into their home”
From the transcript
“Martha welcomed him to her home. Verse 39. Her sister Mary sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he taught. But Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing”
From the transcript
“But look at his response in 41. But the Lord said to her, my dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details. There's only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her”
From the transcript
“So, like, for this, you would take Luke 10, say 30 through 30 through 42, and you would read that passage of scripture, but you wouldn't read it to get from beginning to end”

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

Sign in to track your progress through this devotional.

Day 1

A religious expert walks up to Jesus with a test question: 'What must I do to inherit eternal life?' Jesus turns it back on him — 'What does the law say?' — and the man answers correctly: love God with everything you have, and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus says, 'Do this and you will live.' It sounds simple. It is not. Because the man already knew the right answer, and he still wasn't living it. That gap between knowing and doing is one of the most honest places in Scripture. Most of us who have spent any time around church can recite the right answers too. We know we should love people. We know we shouldn't pick and choose. But knowing the rule and being shaped by love are two very different things. Pastor Tim pointed out that this expert wasn't asking a bad question — he was asking the wrong question. He wanted boundaries. He wanted a list he could check off and feel satisfied. Jesus wasn't interested in giving him that. He wanted to expose the deeper issue: not what the man knew, but who the man was becoming. This week is an invitation to sit with that same honest question — not just 'What am I supposed to do?' but 'Who am I actually becoming?'

For reflection

Where in your life do you know the right answer but sense a gap between that knowledge and how you actually treat people?

Pray

Pray for honesty about the gap between what you know and how you live.

Day 2

A man is beaten, robbed, and left half-dead on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. Then two people who should have helped — a priest and a temple assistant — saw him and crossed to the other side. That detail is worth sitting with for a moment. They did not walk past without noticing. They saw him. They made a choice. Pastor Tim didn't spend time condemning those two men, and neither should we. The text doesn't explain their reasons, and Jesus doesn't either. Maybe they were afraid. Maybe they were in a hurry. Maybe they told themselves someone else would stop. Any of those reasons feel familiar, don't they? The honest question Jesus is pressing toward is not 'Were those men terrible people?' but 'Have you ever been one of them?' Not out of cruelty, but out of busyness, self-protection, or the quiet assumption that this particular need isn't really yours to meet. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho isn't ancient history. It's the commute, the neighborhood, the checkout line, the person at work who everyone quietly avoids. Jesus is asking us to notice — really notice — who is lying on our road.

For reflection

Think of a recent moment when you saw a need and kept moving. What was going through your mind?

Pray

Pray for eyes that notice the people others pass by.

Day 3

Here is where Jesus does something that would have stunned everyone listening. The hero of the story is a Samaritan. Jews and Samaritans had centuries of bad history between them. To the crowd hearing this parable, a 'good Samaritan' was almost a contradiction in terms. And yet he is the one who stops. He bandages the wounds, pours in oil and wine, loads the man onto his own animal, takes him to an inn, and covers the bill — including anything extra that might be owed. He doesn't ask whether the wounded man deserves it. He doesn't ask who he is or where he's from. He just acts. Pastor Tim made the connection that the Samaritan is a picture of Jesus Himself — the one despised and rejected, the one no one expected to be the answer, and yet the only one who fully paid the cost for someone left for dead. That changes how we read this story. Jesus is not just holding up a moral example and saying 'try harder.' He is saying, 'This is what I did for you.' The love He is calling us to give is a love we have already received. We are the wounded man on the road. That is where the story begins.

For reflection

How does seeing yourself as the wounded man — not just the potential helper — change the way this parable lands on you?

Pray

Pray for a fresh sense of the reckless, costly love Jesus has already shown you.

Day 4

The night before He was crucified, Jesus gathered His closest friends and gave them what He called a new commandment: love one another the way He had loved them. Then He added something that can feel like pressure but is actually an extraordinary gift — He said the world will know you belong to Me by this love. Not by your correct theology. Not by your church attendance. Not by how well you argue for your faith. By love. Pastor Tim anchored the whole sermon in this verse because it reframes the neighbor question entirely. This is not about following a rule or earning approval. Jesus is describing a kind of love that is recognizable — visible enough that people outside the community notice it and trace it back to Him. The standard He sets is His own love for us: sacrificial, boundary-crossing, not dependent on whether the other person is worthy. That is a high bar, and if we are honest, we cannot clear it on our own. But Jesus is not asking us to manufacture this love from scratch. He is asking us to receive His love so fully that it has somewhere to go. The overflow is what the world sees.

For reflection

If someone who didn't know you were a Christian watched how you treated people this week, what would they conclude?

Pray

Pray that your love for people would be visible enough to point back to Jesus.

Day 5

Right after the parable of the Good Samaritan, Luke places a quiet scene in a home in Bethany. Mary sits at Jesus' feet, listening. Martha is working hard and growing frustrated. When Martha asks Jesus to tell Mary to help, He gently redirects her: 'Martha, Martha — you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is worth being concerned about. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken from her.' It would be easy to read this as Jesus dismissing the value of hard work. That's not what He's saying. He's pointing to something about order — about which thing feeds the other. Mary is not being lazy. She is doing the most important thing available to her in that moment: sitting with Jesus, learning from Him, being shaped by His presence. Pastor Tim was direct about this connection. The reason we walk past the wounded person on the road — or help out of obligation rather than genuine love — is often that we have been too busy doing things for Jesus to spend time with Him. The sustainable source of neighbor-love is not willpower. It is the practice of sitting at His feet.

For reflection

What is one thing in your daily routine that tends to crowd out unhurried time with Jesus?

Pray

Pray for the desire — and the discipline — to choose the one thing that is worth being concerned about.

Day 6

At the end of the parable, Jesus asks the religious expert a question he cannot argue with: 'Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who was attacked?' The expert cannot bring himself to say 'the Samaritan' — so he says, 'The one who showed him mercy.' And Jesus says, simply, 'Go and do the same.' Pastor Tim noted the importance of that flip. The expert started by asking 'Who is my neighbor?' — a question designed to draw a boundary, to figure out who makes the list. Jesus answers with a completely different question: 'Which one was a neighbor?' The neighbor is not the category of people you owe love to. The neighbor is the one who shows up and acts. That reorientation is the whole point. It stops being a question about other people's qualifications and starts being a question about your own posture. 'Go and do the same' is not a vague spiritual instruction. It is concrete: find the person in front of you who is hurting, and move toward them rather than away. You don't need to have everything figured out first. You just need to take the next step — even a small one.

For reflection

Who is in front of you right now — in your neighborhood, workplace, or family — who needs someone to move toward them?

Pray

Pray for the courage to take one concrete step toward someone in need this week.

Day 7

Looking back across this week, the arc of Luke 10 is really a single, integrated invitation. The religious expert wanted a rule. Jesus gave him a story, and then a person — Mary — who modeled the only sustainable way to live the story out. The priest and the temple assistant represent what happens when religious knowledge stays disconnected from transformed hearts. The Samaritan represents what it looks like when love overcomes every reason not to act. Mary represents where that love actually comes from: time spent at the feet of Jesus, being shaped by His Word, letting His presence change you from the inside out. Pastor Tim's practical challenge was straightforward: ten minutes a day, a passage from the New Testament, and the SOAP method — Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer. Not to finish a reading plan. Not to perform. But to let Jesus speak. The promise underneath that challenge is real: you will not love people better by trying harder. You will love people better as you spend more time with the One who loved you first, at great cost, before you deserved it. That love is not a burden you carry. It is something that flows from a life increasingly shaped by His.

For reflection

Looking back at this week, where did you sense Jesus inviting you to move toward someone — and what would it look like to follow through?

Pray

Pray for a daily rhythm of sitting at Jesus' feet and for the love that naturally follows from it.

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

Think about the last time someone helped you when you really needed it — maybe a stranger, maybe someone you wouldn't have expected. This message invites us to look at what it actually means to be that person for someone else.

Discussion questions

1
In Luke 10:25–29, the religious expert asks Jesus 'Who is my neighbor?' — but Jesus answers with a story and then turns the question around, asking who *was* a neighbor. What changes when the question flips that direction?
2
The priest and the temple assistant in the parable both see the wounded man and pass by. What do you think the story suggests about why someone might cross to the other side of the road — even a religious person with good intentions?
3
Pastor Tim pointed out that the Samaritan — a figure despised by the crowd listening to Jesus — is the one who stops, bandages wounds, and covers every cost. What might Jesus be saying about the kind of love He is describing by making that particular person the hero of the story?
4
In the story of Mary and Martha that follows immediately in Luke 10, Jesus tells Martha that Mary has chosen 'the one thing worth being concerned about.' How does placing that story right after the Good Samaritan shape the way we understand where love like the Samaritan's actually comes from?
5
Pastor Tim challenged us to try ten minutes a day in a New Testament passage using the SOAP method — not to get through it, but to let it speak. What would it look like for a group like ours to actually support each other in building that kind of habit this week?
6
John 13:34–35 says the way people will recognize Jesus' followers is by how they love one another. How might the kind of love described across Luke 10 — reckless, crossing boundaries, covering the cost — actually become visible in the ordinary rhythms of our lives and community?

Pray together

Ask Jesus to shape us into the kind of people who notice, stop, and love — and to give us the habit of sitting at His feet so that love has somewhere to come from.

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Go deeper

Where these passages are preached

John 13 Luke 10

Explore related topics

Compassion Discipleship Loving the Unlovable Spending Time with Jesus The Good Samaritan

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