The Greatest Commandment

Wow! That's how you feel, right? That is just beautiful. It just brings tears to your eyes. Thank you. And hello to everybody. Happy Sabbath! And hello to everybody on the webcast, as Mr. Meece mentioned. You know, if I asked you, what is the greatest commandment? You know, I'm thinking most of you would say, yeah, I know what that is. That's to love God. And you'd be right. That's the greatest commandment. But what if I told you there was an element to that that maybe we're not always adding in there, and maybe we're not thinking about. There's an element that's actually an important element that Jesus actually taught when he would ask the question, what is the greatest commandment? You know, the Apostle Paul told his assistant Timothy that at the end times, there would be conditions in society that would be really difficult. He called them perilous times in one translation that we're familiar with. And the first thing that he mentioned to his assistant was that people would be lovers of themselves. That was the first thing he mentioned. We're not going to turn there, but that's in 2 Timothy 3. You can go look at that. But that was the first thing that he described about perilous times at the end. We, in modern times, have a term for that. Lovers of themselves, we use the term narcissism. That's kind of what the term comes out now. If you think about loving God, the greatest commandment is to love God. Kind of the opposite of that would be loving yourself. It's interesting that that ends up being juxtaposed as the first thing that we've mentioned in perilous times, because it would really be the antithesis of what God is looking for in society. He is looking for us to love Him with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our might. And yet, Paul says, actually, what's going to happen is people are going to be lovers of themselves. And so today, I want to talk about this great commandment of loving God, because I don't think we are immune to the societal influences around us. If Paul says that in the end times, people are going to be lovers of themselves, that can mean us too. We can be influenced by that. We can be in that boiling pot of water, being slowly cooked, being more and more interested and concerned about ourselves as being concerned about what God thinks about and what He's interested in. And so today, I want to talk about that greatest commandment. What did Jesus actually say, which I think we'll find interesting? And in this study, we're going to discuss what is commonly referred to in Jewish circles as the Shema in Deuteronomy 6. Shema meaning a Hebrew word for here. And that's going to necessitate that we do some analysis around that to understand what that passage really means. And so this sermon is going to be a little bit more on the lines of what is called apologetics. If you're familiar with that term, apologetics is something that describes a defense of a doctrine. In this case, we're going to talk about the defense of why we observe God's law, why we keep the Sabbath, why we observe the Holy Days, why we don't put sausage on our pizza when we go get it, and so forth. So there's a little bit of apologetics in here. There's a little bit of a stir to action. As we go through the apologetics, it can get a little bit technical, but I ask you to stay with me. There's a reason we need to go through this because it's the greatest commandment, right? So shouldn't we spend a little bit of time to understand the greatest commandment that Jesus said that we should consider? So let's turn over to Matthew 22 and verse 34. This exchange where Jesus shares with us what is that greatest commandment is mentioned in three of the Gospels. The one that we typically go to is Matthew 22, verse 34.

It says, when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And then one of them, a lawyer, this is not your defense attorney type, right? This is an expert in the law, an expert in the law of God, asked him a question, testing him and saying, Teacher, what is the great commandment in the law? And Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

And so, if I asked you what is the greatest commandment, hopefully this is what you would think of, to love God. But when we do a harmony of the Gospels, that is, when we think about what each of the Gospels says, each Gospel records the events a little bit differently because each person writing heard different things. Some picked up on some things, some picked up on others. And so, when we do a harmony of the Gospels, what we do is we put all the Gospels together and we get a more complete picture of those exchanges. So, let's go over to Mark 12 and let's read a parallel account of this exchange. And let's see what Mark picked up from this exchange. It might be a little bit, might add a little bit to our understanding.

Now, while you're turning there, I'll mention that when Jesus was asked this question, what is the greatest commandment, He just didn't sort of make this up on the fly, right? He didn't say, I'm going to drop something completely new on you here and tell you something. He actually quoted from Deuteronomy 6 and in verse 5. So, He went right back to Deuteronomy 6 verse 5 and He quoted it pretty much verbatim, right out of the law. And so, that wouldn't be surprising, and the scribe wasn't surprised either. But if you go over to Mark 12 and now in verse 28 and we read the parallel account, we'll see here that Jesus actually quoted Deuteronomy 6 verse 4 and verse 5. Matthew only picks up on verse 5, but Mark picks up on verse 4. So, let's read the parallel account.

What is the first commandment of all? Jesus answered Him, The first of all the commandments is, and now He's going to quote from Deuteronomy 6 verse 4, Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And now He's going to quote Deuteronomy 6 verse 5, And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. This is the first commandment. Or the most important, or the greatest of the commandments. So this is interesting, isn't it? We have now, if we put these two together, if you go over to Luke, Luke does not go through verse 4 like Mark does. So if you put them all together, what we understand is, when He was asked what the greatest commandment is, He did not start with love God. What He started with was the Lord, hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. He started with this, and then He went into loving God. And so I think we need to put this into our minds when we think about what the greatest commandment is, because this is what the instruction from our Lord, the Christ, the anointed one, is. It starts here in Deuteronomy 6 verse 4. So let's go back to Deuteronomy, because, as I said, Jesus did not just make this up. He quoted from the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 6 verses 4 and 5. And it's very interesting because what He quoted is one of the most famous passages within Judaism.

In fact, this is just one of the most interesting passages, really, in the first five books of the law. They've actually found passages here engraved on a gold sheet about 300 years after this exchange took place, and they found that in Austria, if you can believe that. So you had Jews in Europe having this engraved, and actually this was put into the tomb or coffin of a small child, and it was part of the burial rites. And so this was something that is deeply ingrained within Judaism, and it's important for us to understand it and what it means. It is called the Shema Israel, and the word Shema, as I said, is the word for here. And so it's called that because it begins with here, O Israel, or Shema Israel. And if we understand what verses 4 and 5 mean, I think we have a better understanding of what this greatest commandment is and then what that means for us. Now, interestingly enough, there are about six different interpretations. There's probably more, but sort of in mainstream scholarship, there's about six interpretations of what Deuteronomy 6 verse 4 means. Why is it so complicated, you might ask? Well, part of the problem is this is one of these phrases where there's not a lot of other places in the Bible where this phraseology, this grammatical form is used, so you can't kind of go to other places and pick that up. And there's also some implied verbs. That is, there's some verbs that are just missing. So if you read it in English, it says here, and here is actually a verb. It's, you know, listen. It's telling you to listen. Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. That is, is not in the Hebrew. That's an implied verb in the Hebrew. So there's verbs missing. There's a grammatical form that isn't quite normal. And so scholars really struggle over what the actual meaning of this is. Now, I'm not going to go through all six of those, but I'm going to focus on three of the most common, because they do have a bearing on people's views on the nature of God, and also the importance of observing the commandments, which we're going to focus on today. In Protestant circles, when people say the law is done away, or the Old Covenant is done away, or passing, a lot of times they will go back to things that say, well, we don't need to observe the commandments. And yet this is, as we'll see in a moment, an important verse that way. So in Hebrew, it actually reads, Shema Israel, those are the two words in the beginning, verse 4. And then the Jews would say Adonai, but the actual Hebrew here is Yahweh.

We've learned about Yahweh and what that word means, is the proper name for God. Shema Israel, Yahweh, Elanu, which is another form of God, Yahweh, again, and then Echad. So it's a very short set of Hebrew words. And again, the Jews don't typically pronounce Yahweh, they'll say Adonai.

So the first interpretation of this verse is summarized by saying, here Israel, Yahweh are God, Yahweh is one. And the first interpretation of this verse is that this is the definitive statement on Judaism and the monotheistic beliefs of Judaism. That is, that there is only one God, and there is no other. There is one God.

Jesus Christ cannot be God because there is only one God. And that's what this says. It says, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. He is a singularity, a single entity or being. And that is from this word, Echad, at the end in Hebrew, which is translated in English as one. And so Unitarians will use this verse to point that there is only one God and that Jesus Christ could not be God.

We don't agree with this interpretation in the United Church of God as it contradicts, as I've shared before, other scriptures. It contradicts the scripture in Psalm 110, verse 1, which we've read before. I won't turn there. It says, the Lord said to my Lord, sit on my right hand. Well, you have these two beings, these two Yahwehs that we've talked about. There's also a passage that we haven't read together in Daniel 7, verse 13, which you can note, where it talks about the ancient of days and it talks about the Son of Man who comes before the ancient of days. And that's a pretty powerful verse because Jesus identified himself as the Son of Man. And so if the Son of Man comes to the ancient of days who is seated in this giant throne room, and all the host of heaven is seated before the ancient of days, well, now you have kind of two beings here. So we would not agree with it for that reason.

There's also some discussion that this verse was really only interpreted as being monotheistic after the time of Jesus, as a way for the Jews to distinguish themselves from Christianity. And so there's a lot of debate about whether or not this monotheistic interpretation was really even an interpretation at the time it was written. So that would be the first interpretation. The second interpretation is that the word for one here is not the typical word for one. There's another Hebrew word for one that is called Yahid. And the writer here, Moses, did not use the word Yahid, which is the typical word for one.

He used the word Akkad, which represents, according to one interpretation, a unity. It represents a unity versus a singularity. And I'm going to quote here from 613 commandments.com. This is a site that goes into a lot of depth on the various elements of the first five books of Moses. It says, the Hebrew word translated as one, Akkad, means a unity. It generally does not mean a singularity. And again, this is their interpretation. There are six interpretations I'm giving you. I'm giving you one.

A singularity means that there is only one of something. For example, the painting, the Mona Lisa by Da Vinci. There is only one true copy, and if you've been to the Louvre, you've seen it. Or one true painting. But there are many copies. But there is only one. It's a singularity. A unity, on the other hand, and again I'm quoting, a unity means a group of things. For example, a single baseball team is made up of many players, managers, trainers, etc. A cluster of grapes is a single object made up of many grapes.

So that is what's called a unity. You might note in Genesis 11, verse 6, God says that when they were building the tower of Babel, indeed the people are one. And that word in Hebrew, one, is the word, Akkad. It's the same word that's listed here. So Hebrew uses this word, Akkad, to describe a unity. That is, there were many people, but they were of one mind.

They were of one spirit. So there is a unity that they had. You might also notice Genesis 2, verse 24. Genesis 2, verse 24 says that a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined with his wife, and they shall become one flesh. That word, one, is Akkad.

So you have husband and wife, and they are one person in God's eyes. They are a unity, even though there are two people in that relationship. And so we would certainly agree with this interpretation in the United Church of God, as would most Trinitarians. And this is how mainstream Christianity interprets this verse. They would look at this verse and say, this is a unity, which gives place for three beings, if you're a Trinitarian, or two Yaves, as we've described.

Now, there is another interpretation of Akkad, a third interpretation that I'm going to go through in Hebrew. And this word, one, that we use, and this can be translated as only or alone. God is God alone, or God is the only God. And so under this interpretation, we are to recognize only Yave as God. There are no other gods besides Yave. The God of Israel is the only God that is the true God. And that is the third interpretation that I would share. The Moffat translation renders it this way. Rotherhams emphasized the Geneva Bible of 1599. The New Living Translation, the Jewish Publication Society Bible, all translate this verse as, Here Israel, Yave our God, Yave alone.

And you've noticed something in that interpretation. There's no second verb. You don't have to imply a verb there. It's just one verb, which is here. Listen. Pay attention. For those who might have Fred Coulter's translation, who is a person with the Church of God background, his translation does not translate it as, Here Israel, Yave our God, Yave alone. But what he does translate is, Yave, Yave. And if you look in his appendix, in his Bible, he will subscribe to the same interpretation that what is being described is that there is only Yave to be worshipped.

It is not a discussion of the nature of God. It's not a discussion of a Trinitarian or a Unitarian philosophy. It just ties back to the first commandment, which is that you shall worship only God. You shall have no other gods before you. So let's understand this in context, because this becomes important.

If we think about Jesus quoting this and saying that we should worship only God, or we should worship God alone, let's start in chapter 6 and verse 1 and understand the context of this greatest commandment. It says in verse 1, Now this is the commandment, and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you, that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess.

So in chapter 5, Moses has just rewritten the Ten Commandments. He has gone through the Ten Commandments a second time, and now in chapter 6, we have kind of a summation of that and a transition where he says you need to obey all these commandments. Verse 2, That you may fear the Lord your God, to keep all his statutes, and his commandments, which I command you, you and your son and your grandson, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged.

Pay attention and keep these laws and statutes which I am giving you, is what he's saying. And in verse 3, Therefore, hear, O Israel, and this is interesting because it's a similar construction, hear, O Israel, and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord your God, as the Lord God of your fathers, has promised you a land flowing with milk and honey.

And now, if you follow this third interpretation again, you see, hear, O Israel, the Lord is Yahweh alone. He is the only God to listen to. He is the only one who can give you these commandments. And you shall love him, verse 5, You shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And so, verse 5, which a lot of us would go to, and what Jesus quotes, or is recorded as, the only thing he said in Matthew, is coming right on the heels of a retelling of the commandments, an emphasis on what we would say is law keeping. And he continues in verse 6, And these words which I command you today, again, this is the retelling of the Ten Commandments and his statutes, You shall teach them, these words I can't name today, be in your heart, and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit down in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. And so, if you are a religious Jew, you will recite this in the morning and the evening. You will recite this as you go to sleep and as you rise up in the morning. This is part of being connected to God and his ways. In verse 8, You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes, and you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. And so there are sects of Jews that take portions of the Ten Commandments and they put them into leather straps, and you've probably seen this, and they wrap their arms in these straps, and then they tie a strap around their forehead, and there's a little box that's right between their eyes there, and they have the commandments right there. And they will say their prayers wearing these leather straps and wearing these frontlets between their eyes as a way of honoring this. I don't have time to go into this as to why we don't do this, but there's some very clear cases where this same phraseology is used, and there's no indication that there was any intention of wrapping cords around your arms, so we don't do that. But the intention here is that we have God's commands constantly before us, and as the analogy of working with our arms, and everything we do, what we set our hands to do, we are thinking about God's commandments. We're thinking about what He taught us. We're thinking about how we live by His ways. And that's what He's describing to us. And so when Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6, verses 4 and 5 in Mark, what He's really getting to is that God alone is the one to listen to. God alone is the one to hear. God alone is the one that we love with all our heart and our soul, and we will never put anything else before God and His ways, which is again a juxtaposition to what Paul talked about with Timothy, where men would be lovers of themselves, which is the opposite of that. And so it is a direct connection back there. And it's also, if we think about verse 4, when it says, Yahweh alone, there is a prophecy in Zechariah 14 that uses a similar set of language to describe the fact that God is just not the God of Israel. God is the God of all peoples. And there are no other gods. All these gods the Egyptians had, or the nations in Canaan had. These were not true gods. These were just things that people had created. And so there's, if you go over to Zechariah 14, verse 9, you'll see this, that Zechariah picks up on this, this theme of the Shema, as he is writing about a time in the future when Jesus Christ will return.

And we are very familiar with the different prophecies of Zechariah 14. Of course, the most famous one is when it talks about the Feast of Tabernacles being re-instituted among all nations, and all nations keeping the Feast of Tabernacles, which we observe today as God's firstfruits.

In Zechariah 14, verse 9, it says, This is a similar type of construction, and it's harkening back to Deuteronomy 4, where God alone, the only God that is God, will be the God of all nations, not just the God of Israel. He is the God of all nations.

And Paul picks up on this theme, as we'll see here in a moment as we go through. But let's go back to Mark, and let's finish the story in Mark of this great command, and how we can think about this for us as we think about our faith, what we believe.

And so Jesus has now quoted Deuteronomy 4, verse 5. You know how context for that? You understand the context of law-keeping, of commandments, of how we're supposed to have those in the forefront of our mind. And in verse 31, he says, We're not going to focus on the second part. We're focusing on the first here, so we're going to go on to verse 32.

Now, the exchange here is interesting because the scribe actually quotes Deuteronomy 4, verse 35. So they're having an exchange of what is in the first five books of Moses. And again, they didn't have the printing press in the same way.

So this is basically two teachers of the law, as it were, in their view. Obviously, we have the Messiah, the anointed one, Jesus, who was the law-giver, as we understand. But the scribe is now quoting back to him Deuteronomy 4, verse 35, that says there that Which again goes back to the same sort of notion that there are no other gods to be worshipped. God alone is the god to be worshipped.

And verse 33, So again, he's basically just sort of reciting back, agreeing, Okay, yeah, there is no other god but God, the god of Israel, And to love him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, And with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, Is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. So even the scribe got it, that this is what God was looking for from us.

He wasn't looking for a lot of sacrifices and these types of things. Those were things that pointed to something greater. And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, So Jesus recognized that this man understood what he was saying. He said to him, You are not far from the kingdom of God. And after that, no one dared question him. He was not far from the kingdom of God. If we can grasp what is being said here, If we can bring this into our lives, We too will not be far from the kingdom of God.

That's the implication. That's the implication for all the readers. To understand the background and context of Deuteronomy 6, verse 4 and 5, As this scribe did because he quoted from a few verses before. To understand this is to be close to the kingdom of God. And so I think the Apostle John understood this. I think the Apostle Paul understood this. And now we're getting into some of the apologetics. Let's go over to 1 John 5, verse 3. 1 John 5 and verse 3. 1 John 5, verse 3 says, For this is the love of God, That we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. So John understood this. If we want to love God, and that's what the greatest commandment is, We have to first acknowledge there is only one God, there are no other gods besides God.

And we understand from that context that to love God is to keep his commandments. Because that was the context of how that great commandment was given. It was given in the context that you have to keep all these things I have told you today, and this is how you worship and love God alone. Let's go over to 1 Corinthians 7 and see how Paul picks up on this, because now it becomes a little more relevant, I think, for us. Here, because Paul uses, in a couple places, this same quotation.

1 Corinthians 7, verse 17, it says, But as God has distributed to each one, as the Lord has called each one, so let him walk. Now we might think, okay, well, what exactly does this mean? Let him walk. Like, I was called as an accountant, or you were called as a fireman, or I was called and I was... What does this mean?

Well, he's going to clarify, because he says, And so I ordained in all the churches. So this is kind of a... This is like a pronouncement that was made that went to all the churches. So what is he talking about? Verse 18, Was anyone called while circumcised? Okay, so who was called while they're circumcised? The Jews, right? Okay, so if you were called into this way of life from a Jewish background, what does he say?

Let him not become uncircumcised. No, that's fine. You don't, you know, you were called into this as a Jew. I'm not asking you to not be a Jew anymore. And what does it say here? Was anyone called while uncircumcised? Well, those would be the people who were non-Jews. Those would be the Greeks, right? Those would be the nations around. And what does he say to them? He says, let him not be circumcised. You don't have to become a Jew to be a Christian, right? You don't have to quit being a Jew to be a Christian. These are backgrounds that you come in.

He says, circumcision is nothing. That is, becoming a Jew, this is a way of describing becoming Jewish or proselytizing and going through all the rituals that they had to go through to become a Jew. And that used to be the path to reconciliation with God. You had to go through those things. He says, circumcision is nothing. And uncircumcision is nothing.

What matters but keeping the commandments of God is what matters. That's what distinguishes a Christian. That's what distinguishes a Christian. It's not where you came from, what your background was, whether you were circumcised or uncircumcised, all that kind of what you... That's not what matters. What matters is keeping the commandments of God. That's a very powerful statement. That's a very powerful statement in modern mainstream Christianity that says, well, you know, you have nine commandments because really, you know, the Sabbath is not really necessary for us today. And if it's not repeated in the New Testament, we really don't have to observe it and these types of things. And so he's actually saying that's how we understand it. And Romans 3 really puts the final touches on this. You go over to Romans 3 verse 21. Because what happens when we start lawkeeping? When we start lawkeeping unto itself, then I start saying, well, you know, I've been in the church 30 years, you know, I've been to 30 feasts, I've kept all of them, I didn't miss a day. You start bragging, right? Well, you know, you've only been in the church a few years. Not sure you can really understand this yet. Right? I mean, that's what happens. People start, you know, like, oh, I'm better because I'm really good at it. When I get those crackers, I don't even eat them because, you know, they might have lard in them. I don't know. Right? We start drawing these distinctions based. And you know what that's called? That's called legalism. Right? That's when we start earning our salvation that way. And Paul is very clear about this in Romans 3, where he makes this very clear distinction. Romans 3 verse 21, he says, Now the righteousness of God, apart from the law, is revealed. Wow. Imagine if you were Jewish hearing this, and you kept all of these things all your life. Right? You sacrificed, you did all these things. And now Paul comes along and he says, righteousness of God, apart from the law, is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets. He's going to blow your mind. He's going to tell you, whoa, wait a minute, what are we talking about? He says, Even the righteousness of God, which is through faith in Jesus Christ, to all, and on all, who believe, for there is no difference.

So now what Paul says is, and he's writing to Romans, remember, he's writing to people who, a lot of them didn't have Jewish backgrounds. And he's saying, hey, you don't have to have a Jewish background. In fact, the NIV actually translates verse 22 as making a reference to both Jew and Gentile. So when he says, to all and on all, that is often understood as to the Jews and on the Gentiles. And there is no difference. And why is there no difference? Verse 23. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. And so Paul comes along and says, you don't have to keep the law to be saved. Wait a minute. No, hold on. No, he says, you are not righteous because of your lawkeeping. It's an important distinction between those two sentences. Jesus made it very clear the greatest commandment is to worship God alone and to love him with all your heart, which means keeping his commandments. Right? John made that clear. Paul made that clear. That's the thing that matters. But now Paul is making this distinction that that is not how we are saved. That is not how we are redeemed. He says, verse 25, This is really something for an audience that is so used to having a God's law. And they say, well, but I'm keeping God's law so that I'll be reconciled to God, so that I'll be justified before God. And Paul says, nope, that's not how that works. That's not how it works. Christ's sacrifice is what justifies us, what declares us righteous. And then he gets in verse 7, he says, where is boasting then? Right? Because people would say, well, I am a, you know, and he said of himself, I am a, I'm a Hebrew of the Hebrews. And I've done these things and I've done these other things. He says, where's their boasting? He says, it is excluded. That means we don't get to boast. We don't get to say how great we are, how long we've been in the church, how much we've understood, understand. We don't get to boast by this. He says, by what law? What are you going to boast? Of works? No. By the law of faith. That's what we boast in. Therefore, we conclude, verse 28, that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. Declared righteous. We are declared righteous, not by our deeds, but by Christ's sacrifice. And now we get to this Shema. Now we're back. He's going to say something very interesting here. Almost a prophecy of talking about Zachariah 14.

Or is he the God of the Jews only? In other words, is the only way to be saved to be a Jew? Or is he not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also. Since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. There is one God. This was the prophecy of Zachariah.

There would be one God. There's no other God that we worship besides this God of Israel.

And now here, though, we get this is often verse 30 is where a lot of mainstream Protestants will stop. But 31 is very interesting. And that's where we land.

Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not. We don't void the law through faith. We don't quit observing the law because we have been declared righteous through the same way.

We don't know what's right from wrong without the law. We need the law. The law we establish. But we understand the role of the law. The role of the law is our response to this wonderful grace that we have been given. Paul established the law. You have it right here in your Bibles. He established the law. And he used the same sort of language of Zachariah 14 that goes back to Deuteronomy 6, verse 4 and 5.

He understood, like John understood, that there is God alone that we worship. And he is the God of all peoples. And we are to love him with all our heart and our soul and all our mind. And that is the reference to the Shema. That is God's love language. That we keep his commandments and that we are not a burden to us. So what does this mean in the few minutes that I have left here? What does this mean for us in a world of narcissism and selfishness? Well, first, I just have a couple points. First, when our needs conflict with God's law, God's law wins.

When our needs conflict with God's law, God's law wins. This is loving God and not ourselves. Our love towards God is outward. It's away from self. A lot of times we have needs. Like, you know, I'm feeling really down right now or I feel uncomfortable or I feel anxious or I'm feeling a little depressed. And I've got needs. And so I'm just not up to going to church today. Okay, well, if you do that and you don't come to church, guess what you just did? You put your needs ahead of God's law. God's law says you shall have a holy convocation. It's in Leviticus 23. That's why we're here. God's law says you shall not forsake the assembling of yourselves together, as the custom of some is. Oh, yeah, but I'm feeling down. Well, if you go with your feelings, then you're going with your own needs and you're making yourself the God. You're going towards that loving of yourself. Christ's example. What was Christ's example? He gave his life for his friends. Talk about somebody who took... His own need would have been to keep his life. That's my need. My need is that I stay alive. That's the fundamental human need. And Christ gave his life to meet our needs. That's the example that he gave. If our love for God is about trying to meet some personal need, if we're here... I kind of need to come to church because my life is this way and this is what I'm getting from church. That's not loving God. Now, that may be a fine motivation to sort of come in to God's church. But once we're here, we're here to understand what God wants for us and what his interests and desires are, not what our needs are. The second thing I would share here is that we may come as we are. You've heard that expression? Come as you are? We may come as we are, but we don't leave as we were. We may come as we are, but we don't leave as we were. We come to God's church from many backgrounds. There are all sorts of backgrounds in this room. Each of us has our cross to bear. Every single one of us has a cross to bear. That's why it's in the Scripture. There is a family issue. There is a mental issue. There is a personal issue that has come up in our lives. Maybe you're somebody's cross to bear.

Everybody has their cross to bear. We come into church recognizing that we have pain. We recognize that we have pain. That's part of why we can understand that Christ died for us, because we do have pain. We want to give that pain to him. We want to let go of that pain and that stress and be able to cope with those things. God can relieve that burden, but that requires us to change. If we're just coming in here and we're just living our pain, and it's just pain, and I just... After a while, it's like, I need my pain. Don't take my pain away. I need it. It's part of who I am. Don't take my pain away. Don't mess with my life. I'm here to take care of my needs. We're getting back to that narcissism. We're getting back to that narcissism. We have to change. It's called repentance. We have to examine ourselves against the perfect law of liberty. You've probably heard that in James. Look ourselves in the mirror. Ask who we are. Look at who we are. You know, that's kind of scary. And then make some changes. And then make some changes. And that's called repentance. It's called the road to eternal life. That's called conversion. So we have to change. And if you can't name one or two things over the last year that you have changed in your life, right? And we're not talking like, I don't eat breakfast cereal anymore because it's got too much sugar. That's a good thing, by the way. I'm working on that myself. That's a good thing, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about, no, am I irritable with so-and-so? Have I really let my pride get in the way of how I interact with people? If you can't name some of those things, then we're not changing. And thirdly, we examine every thought and we bring it into subjection to God. We examine every thought.

You know, in past decades we used to use the term recapture true values. How many have heard of that phrase? Some. Yeah. Some. It's interesting how times go by. If 20 years ago I'd ask that, I'm sure everybody raised their hand, right? Recapture true values, right? Now, neither is...this is, if you think about this...neither is there some major area of past perfection, right? So some people want to look to the past. Oh, if we could only be like we were 20 years ago, or 30 years ago, or 50 years ago, or 90 years ago, or whatever it is, right? If we could only go back to the 50s, things would be so good, you know? So there's some people that kind of have that attitude. And there's other people who have the attitude of, wow, man, the world is messed up. The only way out is what's in the future. That's where all truth and goodness exists, right? And there are these two roads, and they're both traps. They're just both traps. And so we can kind of get into our minds of, well, I have to think this way because this was a bad way. We need to bring all those thoughts into captivity and into subjection to Jesus Christ. You know, Aristotle, writing about Socrates' trial, and this was more than 2,000 years ago, says, The unexamined life is not worth living. And I think that's an interesting comment coming from a classically pagan philosopher of Aristotle.

The question is, and I have for you here as we end this, have you, have I, critically examined our thoughts against God's law? And are we willing to let go of what we stubbornly cling to despite the pain, despite what we've gone through? Are we ready to let it go? Because if we're going to love God and God alone with all our heart and all our mind and all our soul, that means nothing inside of us is as important as that. Nothing. Nothing inside. And this means asking God, what am I blind to? What am I blind to? Because if you can see it, that's a good start. If you can see it, you can actually make some progress on it, and that's good. But it's what we can't see. It's what we can't see that often gets us. Because the blind spot, if you know when you're driving, that's where the accident happens. Oh, he was in my blind spot. Right? Accident. It's when the damage happens. There are so many lessons that spring from the greatest commandment, and I just wanted to share a couple of them here. The greatest commandment that God alone is the one we listen to. God alone is the one we listen to, and it is He who we love with our whole heart. Not ourselves. Not our feelings. Not our needs. Not our fears. Not our pains. We don't listen to those. We listen to God alone. God alone, and we love Him with our whole heart. Every time we deviate from this, we bring pain back into our lives, and we make our lives a little bit more complicated. Like that scribe, let's get closer to the kingdom of heaven. Let's get closer to the kingdom of God, and let's rededicate ourselves to loving God by obeying His commandments. Not that we may boast about it, but that we may be found doing when our Lord returns.