If Only We Would Shema

Thank you very much, Paul. It's always nice to be able to have the Shemets out with us. Our relationship, Susan's mind go back a long way with the Shemets in college, and then later on in the Pasadena congregations. And our children grew up together in the East PM congregation, etc., etc. And we're still friends. And so that's the nicest part, and we're still in this way of life, which is a great rejoicing.

I want to bring you a message today that I hope will prepare all of us for the New Testament Passover that is headed our way. I know that we, hopefully as Christians, are living this way of life every day, and in that one sense are in an existence of preparation as to how we can best serve and understand and glorify God by our daily actions, and not just some prescribed couple of weeks before a festival or a holy day. But coming up to this time does create a focus and allows us to speak on some things. And I thought the message that I'm going to bring to you would speak both to the Old Testament and to the New Testament.

Sometimes people make the mistake of thinking that there are actually two different books, almost two different Bibles, and speaking about two different gods. That's not how we believe in the Church of God. We look at Scripture being one book between two covers. It is man that divides it between an Old Testament and a New Testament.

But of course there are two covenants. There's the Old Covenant and there is the New Covenant. But at the same time, they are given by the same God for very, very specific reasons. So I hope that this message is going to help all of us, in a sense, move forward and consider our renewal of our commitment under the New Covenant. Because the bottom line of what we want to speak about today, if we want to focus here for a moment, is simply I want to, by Scripture, encourage and instill in us our allegiance to God Almighty. That's the purpose of this message, to cement that in our hearts, in our minds, in our souls, in a very unique way, and to Him alone. And this allegiance to God Almighty is something that is ageless. It's something that He wanted for Adam and Eve. It's something that He wanted for the nation of Israel. And it's something that He wants for each and every one of us as the Israel of God today, as referred to by the Apostle Paul in Galatians 6 and verse 16. So if you want to jot down a title, this is going to be the title of this message so that you can stay with me.

And it is simply this, you shall love the Lord. Yes, indeed, you shall love the Lord alone. I'd like to begin by turning to the book of Matthew. Come with me if we could, and let's open up the Bible. That's why we're here today in Matthew 22.

And notice these well-known words uttered by Jesus Christ, but then we're going to build upon it by going to another account. But let's start here in Matthew 22, and we'll pick up the thought in verse 34. Kind of humorous as we begin this, it says, But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees. You have to understand there was a rivalry between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. So they had heard in one sense, to use the vernacular, that He had blown out the Sadducees.

So now the Pharisees gathered. And then one of them, and it was a Pharisee who was a lawyer, and the other scripture that we're going to go to, the compliment scripture, it speaks of Him as being not only a Pharisee and a lawyer, but a scribe. And He asked him a question, testing Him and saying. Now, very, very important to understand what this means and what it does not mean.

Sometimes we, I think, have put our 21st century culture into this. When it says that He spoke to them and gave them a question, testing them, it's almost as if there was a controversy. It was like He was trying to catch them, trying to get a gotcha moment to kind of put Jesus off balance or equilibrium. But that wasn't the Jewish way of being. Jews love to talk about the Scriptures.

They like to wrestle with the Word. They like to talk about it. And notice what it says. It said, Teacher, which is the greatest commandment of 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 of your mind. This is the first and the Great Commandment, and the second is like unto it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, and on these two commandments, hang all the law and the prophets. If we look at this carefully, if we are students of the Word, we'll see two big words crop out. Let's take a look here for a moment.

Two very important words is, number one, your. Your is very important. God is making a demand statement here that we have got to give Him something because He is our God. In turn and in faithful responsiveness, we give Him something back. It's about your. It's very personal. It's something that we do. The second key word that if I were circling this would be the word all. God does not want half a Christian.

He wants all of us. Being half a Christian is like being half pregnant. Have you ever met anybody half pregnant? No. You either are or you are not. This is the encouragement that we give God everything that we have. Now, when you look at this verse, it sounds very good.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all of your soul. How wonderful! Because what the lawyer, the scribe, was trying to find out is boiling down the law. Now, when we see this statement about the law, so often you and I in our Western mind, or even in our Church of God mind, we tend to think of the law being either the Ten Commandments or simply what the Pentateuch is. The Pentateuch being Pentah, being the first five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. But to a Jew, that is expanded. A Jew looks at the law being all of inspired Hebrew scripture.

He would look at the law as being everything from Genesis to Malachi. So this man is saying, Rabbi, teacher, I respect you. Boil this down. What is the essence of God's revelation and God's message? What is its very heart? This is what Jesus Christ came up with. Now, it sounds wonderful, doesn't it?

It is wonderful because it's in scripture that we're to give God all of our heart, our mind, and all of our soul. We are to love Him. But now we're going to go to the book of Mark because that's the compliment scripture. Join me if you would in Mark 12 because it becomes more defining than just simply loving God. There's a lot of things that we love.

We love this, we love that, we love this, and we can love this with all of our whatever. We can love this with all of our whatever. But it is in Mark that Mark captures the full essence of what Jesus Christ was trying to get across.

In Mark 12, and we pick up the thought here if we could in verse 34. In verse 34 it says, Now when Jesus saw... Oh, excuse me. Let's go back up to verse 28. Mark 12, 28. Then one of the scribes came, same guy, and having heard them reason together, perceiving that he had answered them well, asked them, What is the first commandment of all? Now he said, Well, Mr. Weber, it just sounds like the same story. Why are we going through this again?

This is why we need to read the entire Bible and let it build. Notice what Jesus said. Jesus answered and said, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength. This is the first commandment. And again it says, and this is the second like and done to it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, and there is no other commandment greater than these.

So here Jesus ties in. Then for the second commandment, you may want to jot this down. He ties in Leviticus 19-18. So he's pulling from the Pentateuch. Now when you look at this then, let's consider a few things here. What Jesus is doing is he is quoting here, if you'll look at it in verse 29, he is quoting what the Jews called the Shema, the central tenet of the Jewish faith.

Here, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. Why did he do this? There are some questions that we want to ponder. We're going to answer three questions for the remainder of this message. Number one question. You might want to jot it down. Number one, how deep-seated does this identifying essence of God's will dwell in your heart?

You're going to throw it out again. The Shema. Here, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord your God is one. Now even as I say that, you say, wait a minute, but we're not a Jewish practicing church. I'm not Jewish. I'm not at a synagogue. Okay, I got that. You're not. I'm not. We're not at synagogue. We are in a New Covenant church.

But let's understand this. The Shema is also in the New Testament. They are the spoken words of Jesus to His disciples for all time. They're in a holy canon. And they point us to the New Testament Passover. So how deep does this reside in us? Because this is what came up out of Christ to be able to share with His community.

Number two, from where did Christ draw this? Where did He draw this saying, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one. And point number three, what then does that mean to us? What does it mean, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one? I'd like to share a book with you to begin to answer the first question, powerful story, to encourage you to consider how embedded in your heart is this understanding of what God is about.

It's a story that takes place after World War II. I think most of us are familiar with the Holocaust that occurred during World War II, where millions of people died, millions. Out of that, six million Jews died on what we do call the Final Solution.

Many people around Europe tried to hide their fellow countrymen, whether in Holland or Denmark or France, in Germany, wherever it might be. They tried to rescue their countrymen, who were, yes, of a different ethnic group, but they were their countrymen, and they knew what the Nazi regime was going to do.

They took many, many children, were taken away from their parents or aunts and their uncles, and whisked away and put into cover. They were put into monasteries, they were put into convents, they were put into schools, they were put into basements. You all know the story of Anne Frank. I've had the opportunity to visit her place there that was in Amsterdam. So this was occurring. Now the war is over.

Many of the elders of Judaism in Europe understood that there were many of these children that were all over the place, all over the continent, so they began to search for them. Because after all, there were so many Jews left. After World War II, you might say that every Jew counted, and especially the children. So they began to go to schools and monasteries and convents.

And this gentleman's name is Rabbi Ileazer Silver. And his story is talked about in a fantastic book that I'd highly recommend called Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus. Walking in the Dust by Rabbi Jesus, by Lois Tiverberg. And here, Mr. Silver began to go from place to place, and finally he came to a monastery, and he knocked on the door, and he asked, you know, are there any Jewish children here that we might be able to redeem and take back and place into their families? And the person that answered the door said, no, no, I'm sorry, there aren't any Jewish children here. None at all. We have a lot of children, but they're all Christian. They have German names. They have German names like Schwartz and Kaufman and Schneider. And yes, indeed, those are German names, but they can also be German Jewish names. And so Mr. Silver, using some Jewish wisdom, said, would you mind if I just walk around for a few minutes? You mind if I just kind of browse? I'd like to see the children. I'd like to look upon them and see all the wonderful people that you have in your monastery. So Mr. Silver began to do that, and he got into the dorms, and he began to walk down the hallways. And he began to hum, and he began to sing. And he began to sing, Shema Israel Adonai Elohinu Adonai Ahah. And he kept on singing that, and pretty soon he looked down, and he saw the little faces light up. And they began to sing along with their tiny voices.

They began to sing Shema Israel Adonai Elohinu Adonai Ahahd. What is powerful in all of this is those little children, even though, are you with me? Removed from what they were familiar with, now in a foreign environment. So deep inside of them were these memories and embedded of this truth that no matter where they were, it rose to the surface, and they began to hum along, and they began to mouth those words. Their identity was intact, embedded deep in them. It's an incredible story, and that's exactly what Jesus Christ did when he was asked, What is it all about, and what is the greatest commandment of all? And what was inside of him? Because, you see, he had been a Jewish child. He had probably learned this at the knee of Joseph. He probably had heard Joseph and Mary offer up their morning prayers, as is so Jewish, and offering up the Shema, and hearing in Nazareth, along with other families, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.

Now, what this is all about, it's called the Shema. And Jews normally do this, along with other verses, but this is the main part of the Shema. Out of Deuteronomy 6 and verse 4, join me if you would over there. Now, the reason why I'm doing this, friends, is I want to again show you how we tie in the Old Testament with the New Testament, and how we can tie in the Old Covenant with the New Covenant. Two different Covenants, but one expands from the other. Different sacrifice. One is a little lamb. The other is, indeed, the Son of God. But as we go to Deuteronomy, let's pick up the thought here and see what it says. And we're going to look at it word by word. Deuteronomy 6, verse 4, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. The words there, number one, Hear, Hear, that is the word Shema. Now, I want you to stay with me because that is going to be incredibly important. Because what Hear might mean to us in our Occidental mind is not the same as in the Oriental mind, or the mind of Jesus' time, Shema, the Lord, Adonai. Our God, Elohinu, Adonai, the Lord, Ha-haad. Now, that is very important. I'm going to share something with you. When you look at Deuteronomy 6, verse 4, there's something that we need to understand here before we can proceed with the message. And that is simply this. Many people utilize Deuteronomy 6, verse 4, as a matter of theology.

Deuteronomy 6, verse 4, is not about theology. It is not about figuring out the compounds that may determine or make up the Godhead. Many a theologian, many a friend that you might know, has made that common error and gotten fixated on that. That is not what this scripture is about. There are other scriptures in the Bible that will give you a visage of what the Godhead is about. But this scripture is not about that. In fact, it's kind of interesting that you have to remember that in Hebrew, there are no verbs. And so what you really have here is, if you want to boil it down, just say it's just simply Yahweh 1.

There is no is. You know how some people in the past who tried to divide is? There is no is. There is no there there. It is just simply saying this. God, 1. The thought there is simply this. God alone. God alone. God unique. And what is unique? This is the saving God. This is the Savior God. This is the God that brought their fathers and mothers out of Egypt. And it is to Him that they are to give their soul allegiance and none other. No other gods. No other distractions. It is to this God and this God alone. It's interesting when you go through the Tanakh, which is Hebrew scripture. When you go through the New Living Translation. When you go through the New Revised Standard. They all use this phraseology. God alone. And another way of looking at it would simply be this. If you want to jot it down. You are unique. God unique. He stands by Himself. There is indeed no other. Now, that is very interesting. And we need to understand again why was Deuteronomy written? Are you with me? Deuteronomy was written for a very specific purpose. Israel had been wandering for 40 years. They had been rescued from Egypt by God's grace and His divine intervention. They had been rescued from Egypt. And then they were in circles for 40 years. Now they are about to enter the land of promise. They are going from being a pilgrim people. They are now going to become a stationary nation. And there is a danger in that. The danger is that they could look back and go back to Egypt. I think Stephen says something about that, doesn't he? That later on, because they looked back to Egypt, their heart had not left Egypt. The slave was taken out of Egypt, but Egypt was not taken out of the slave. And not only that, but now they were entering what we might call little Egypt. Because they were going to be moving into the land of Canaan.

There was milk and there was honey, but there is also extant idolatry. Have you ever said, and I'm sure we've mentioned this, sometimes it's almost like it's in the air? There's something in the air? There's something in the water? Well, that's how it was in Canaan, because in Canaan idolatry was pervasive. It was everywhere.

So often we think of idolatry being 90-foot statues, or the reclining Buddha over in Sri Lanka or Thailand, wherever that reclining Buddha is, that 90-foot, 100-foot long, or something tall, 50 or 60 feet tall. Sometimes you see these old Bible movies out of the 1960s, Dagon or whatever, and they go, wow! No, it was everywhere. It was pervasive. And very much unlike that, they carried idols everywhere. They had idols in their pockets, they had idols in their satchels. They even had, in a sense, idolatry for earrings. I didn't say earrings or idolatry, just don't take me there. But what they did back then was simply this. Oh, I noticed all the earrings just, no, just teasing. But what they would do, the earrings would be used as charms. To bring in the spirits of the heavens or to seek some God's blessings. So it was just all over the place. And this is what Israel was entering. And God knew that in this foreign environment, if they were not focused, that they could slip. They could either go back to Egypt or they could become just like the rest of the people. And so this is why the importance of the Shema. Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God. The Lord your God is one. He is the Savior. He is the one that brought you out of Egypt. As a matter of fact, let's go to Exodus 6 for a moment and see what underlies the Shema. And this was even as God was taking Israel out of Egypt when you look at Exodus 6 and verse 6.

6-6, Therefore say to the children of Israel, I am. And that is, as we know, that's the name of God. I am. When Moses said, by the way, you that's in the burning bush, when I say, and I'm going to go back there, I'm going to say, oh, by the way, Pharaoh, would you please let my people go?

Who am I supposed to say sent me? You know, especially when I'm meeting the mightiest man on earth, who's telling me all of this? And he said, I am that I am. Tell them I am that I am. So you see that right here. I am the Lord. I will bring you out from under the burdens of Egypt, and I will rescue you from their bondage, and we will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments.

Then notice verse 7, I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. And then you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. What God was defining here is a stand-alone, at that time, and unique situation. It is one of the great rhythms of the Scriptures.

I am your God, and you will be my people. And there will be an exclusivity between me and thee, that we will be bound, that there will be this allegiance. I will be your God, and you will be my people. And so that is what they were left with. And especially as they went into Canaan, to recognizing that here was a target-rich environment of idolatry.

We'll talk about that a little bit more, because we're not in Canaan anymore, but that target-rich environment is still all around us. He recognized God, Moses, that it would be easy to go back to Egypt. The whole force of antiquity was to move towards the great river valleys of antiquity, whether it be in Mesopotamia, the Indus over in India, or it would be over in the Nile. That humanity was being drawn to these valleys.

I'd like to share a story with you. It's a story. It's called the Tale of Sinyue. S-I-N-U-H-E. Tale of Sinyue. Sinyue was an Egyptian courtier around 2000 BC, so this is some hundreds of years before the Exodus. Sinyue decided to leave Egypt, to leave home, the very repository of human intelligentsia. All that was the culture and the wealth of that part of the world. He decided to go out on his own. It was almost like he was going to be a Lawrence of Arabia. He was going to go out and live with the Canaanites and live with the Bedouins in Canaan.

What occurred was that towards the end of his life, Sinyue got lonely. He missed Egypt. Just a little bit like Dorothy. No Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Remember the story? What's the motto of The Wizard of Oz? There's no place like home. There's no place like home. So, at the end of his life, having this life of reckless abandon and wonderment and wilderness traveling and meeting people and being the explorer, he had to go back to Egypt because Egypt was that.

Finally, he went back. This story of Sinyue had tremendous impact on the Egyptian psyche, just as much as in our country. When you think of the tales, mythology, legends about George Washington, or Honest Abe, it becomes a part of our American. It becomes a part of our culture. It becomes a part of how we're thinking. That was the thinking of Egypt at that time. Can you imagine when Moses came up against Pharaoh and said, Pharaoh, let my people go.

What would be Pharaoh's natural reaction? Where? And why? Why would you leave all that is? Didn't you ever hear of the tale of Sinyue? And he'd know that he'd grown up in the Egyptian royal family. He knew the story. There's nothing out there. And you're wanting to take these people out there and abandon me. And nonetheless, he said, let me go. God had some work to do, and he began to work on ancient Egypt. You know, it's amazing during this time, even as we come up to the New Testament Passover, which is on the eve of what is commonly called a Jewish Passover, is to recognize that if you look at this time frame, this is when the plagues were occurring that we read about in Exodus.

These were the plagues that were occurring, and God wasn't up there. You know, he didn't have a heavenly daisy and go, hmm, pluck, pluck. Hmm, I wonder what I might be able to do in Egypt. No. He had a deliberate manner of decimating the power of Egypt.

And he was going after their gods one by one. All ten. That's what the plagues were about. The plagues were about going against the gods and the goddesses of Egypt. Let's just think about that for a moment. No. 1. What was the first plague? The first plague was on the river Nile, the Nile that turned to blood. This river that seemed to not even have any source. It moved from the very belly of this gigantic continent.

It seemed to have no beginning. It just flowed. Egypt was the gift of the Nile. Where the water of the Nile touched, there was life where it did not touch, just like Southern California. Last time I noticed. Green and brown. Fertility and desert. Life and death. And this was the river goddess, Hoppe. And the first thing that happened was that God pulled the plug on the Nile and turned it into red. To show that He was in control of the most important thing to Egyptians. Then he came to the second plague.

The second plague was frogs that came up out of the Nile. And you would too, if what you lived in was turning into blood. And those frogs began to multiply and multiply and multiply. Wherever you went, there were frogs. You opened up the refrigerator, there were frogs. If there was a refrigerator in Egypt. If you went to get away from the frogs and say, I will escape to the restroom.

Guess what? Frogs were coming out of, you know what? And you know where? Frogs everywhere. Frogs, frogs. I said, well, I'll go up to the top there. I'll get up on the top of the roof. Guess what? There were frogs. See, the Egyptians worshiped the frogs. They were about fertility. Frogs multiply. And in fact, there was a goddess called Hakat. Now, Hakat was interested because Hakat had a human body, but she had a frog head. And now, you've got to understand that that would be a face that only a mother would love.

To be able to see that frog. Little, little scary. Little scary. Little green. And anyway, God began to work with that and began to deal with that. Then the gnats and the flies came up. The third and the fourth plague came up out of the earth. And as we know that the earth was worshipped by the Egyptians, but God had power over that and controlled that.

And then the fifth plague was the plague on the cattle, which was very pointed because the Egyptians worshipped the apis, that's A-P-I-S, the apis bull, as a source of strength and of fertility, the bull. And yet God was going to show that He was almighty, that He was powerful, that He would fight His people's battles for them and bring down the gods of Egypt.

And all those cattle died. Then came the plague of boils. Most interesting. Why did God visit ancient Egypt and boils? Have you ever thought about that? The Egyptians, of all the people of antiquity, placed tremendous importance on the human body, on how they looked. Especially in comparison to others that, in a sense, they considered outcasts, the Semitic people, the shepherds, those that they considered dirty, that the Egyptians had this thing of cleanliness and manufacturing their body, preserving themselves, looking forever young.

And yet there was something missing inside of them. There was an ugliness that was deep. And God was teaching them that with those boils, with those boils, that beauty is only skin deep, but ugliness runs all the way to the bone. And I recognize that God dealt with that. And that here they would turn to Isis, in that sense, as a goddess of medicine and of peace, that by now they really wanted to have peace. But God decimated them again and again, toppling their gods and showing Egypt the most mighty power of that time. That that which they had concentrated on, put their energy into, had put everything into their life into, was for naught.

Then came the hail. Then came the hail from the heavens that decimated their crops. It's interesting that it just came and God showed that He was over the powers of heaven. And then came the locust. Then came the locust. And ate up everything that was before them. And that Osiris was the God of the underworld, was the one that was responsible for the harvest.

And yet He let that go. God triumphed. And then came the darkness, the sun. How many of you saw that eclipse scenario the other day in the news? How many of you saw the eclipse?

You must have been up in the Baltics if you did. Okay. So anyway. But then He took on the sun god, Ra. Everything went dark. That's what sin does. It darkens everything eventually. But last but not least, God finally attacked the god-king.

The firstborn, the firstborn of Egypt to show that He was over Pharaoh, that He was over any human being that called Himself God. And every firstborn of Egypt died. Have you ever thought what that must have been like in Egypt, the point? How many of you are firstborns here? Could you raise your hand?

Interesting. Would you please rise for a second? Just stand up.

How many of you are firstborns?

You're dead. Keep on standing. We're not done. Not done.

Those that have not stood but have firstborn parents, please rise. Those of you that have children, obviously, one is a firstborn, would you please rise if you have not risen yet?

And is there any wonder—hello—is there any wonder—I'm trying to make alive the Scriptures in Egypt, that on that night when God, our God, passed over Israel and passed through a nation, is there any sense that we now have the wailing that went up because everybody in Egypt was affected?

You can please be sat. That was 3,000 years ago, and you don't have to worry about it.

Kids, don't worry. You're not going anywhere. But I think a picture is worth a thousand words. That'll make this message shorter. But to recognize that, with all of that, then, Isaiah 40.

Join me if you would in Isaiah 40. Notice what it says here.

Let's pick up the thought in verse 17. Isaiah 40. Verse 17.

All nations before him are as nothing, and they are counted by him less than nothing and worthless.

To whom, then, will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare him to?

We always have that comparison test set before us. Whether we were in the times of the Old Covenant or we that are under the New Covenant, because every day we make a choice as to whom we will liken our God to.

You see, as we come up to the New Testament Passover, and many of you will be in this room and other rooms in our area, and the body of Christ will be meeting in different places around the world, that that's basically what we're saying as we come up and partake of that bread and that wine, which represents the symbols of our Savior's sacrifice.

There is no comparison. There is no Pepsi challenge here.

We are saying, as we imbibe with that bread and of that wine, the Lord is my Shepherd.

I shall not want. It's enough. It's sufficient. Alone. It is.

God the Father has bequeathed to us through His Son. This is the sacrifice. This is enough.

I don't have to go in and look elsewhere, even though that will be very tempting every day, every moment of every day of our life, because we can get distracted with the idols that demand our time, that take away from our devotion to God.

Moses had to make that comparison himself. It says in the book of Hebrews, speaking of Moses, that when he came of age, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer the affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasure of sin, because he esteemed the reproaches of Christ's greater riches than the treasures in Egypt.

We have that same challenge today under the New Covenant. That is that our allegiance and our loyalty is to God the Father who has called us.

He's given us a calling. That calling comes from him through Christ and says, I want you to be a part of a covenant people. I want to be your God and you will be my people.

I will be your champion, your hero, your deliverer, but in turn, you will have to be my people.

Join me if you would in Exodus 20. Let's take a peek here. Most of you know that this is where the Ten Commandments are located.

But again, let's notice these commandments of old. And then recognize that those very same commandments have a unique spot in the heart of a New Covenant Christian. Notice what it says. We're going to read it in long form, which is how the Ten Commandments should be read and read and taught to our children.

God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage. Nobody else can claim that. I am a jealous God.

I am the one. God has no problem telling his people that. I am the one. It was not even Moses. How often do we hear the story about Moses bringing Israel out of Egypt?

But that's not the whole story. It's God that took Israel out of Egypt. You shall have no other gods before me. An exclusive relationship. Now, why is this so important?

Back in ancient Egypt, they had gods for every reason, for every season. They never ran out of gods or goddesses. We know what the Greeks did. If you didn't have one, you made one.

Just in case you had the altar to the unknown gods. Just in case you missed one.

That was the world of polytheism. When you got a new god, you didn't take this idol. This is the sun god. It's got light. You didn't take this idol and whisk it away. You just put another one down.

Then you put another one down. You just kept on adding. Sometimes, like what people do on certain days of the year, where they just keep on adding ornaments year in and year out to the same place.

God said, you shall have no other gods. You have to clear the deck. You have to clear the mantle. I want all of your heart, all of your mind, all of your soul. I want all of you. All of you. Nothing less.

Then he said, and you shall not make unto you any graven images. You're not going to try to carve me out. You're not going to try to imagine what I look like. And you're not going to fit me into a box of your making.

How have we, perhaps, when we come up to the New Testament Passover, think about that for a moment. How much during this past year have we tried to make God over into our image rather than allowing ourselves to be made over into God's image?

There is the conundrum. There is the difficulty with our relationship with God. So often we're trying to craft Him, mold Him, stuff Him into a box of our making rather than remaining free and able and willing and open to be molded by Him.

That's a challenge, isn't it? It's a challenge to worship something that's uncreated. But that's what God is. And that's what the Word is. And that is what the Word who became Jesus the Christ of Nazareth is. Uncreated.

And that's where our allegiance is and to no other.

The Third Commandment says, and you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. God stamped His name on ancient Israel and said, I will be your God and you will be my people.

All of those things are still extant today, brethren. They really are. All of those apply to us that are under the New Covenant.

But you know it's kind of interesting when you think about it. Join me if you would in Hebrews 10. In Hebrews 10, there's a difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. It's a fascinating difference. In Hebrews 10. In the Old Testament, it's kind of interesting. Think about this for a moment. When God crafted the stones that He gave Moses, and He did it twice as we know, is that He put them in stone.

It's interesting that He put them in stone, but that way they couldn't be erased and they couldn't blow away. And then He said, He put them in the Ark of the Covenant, and wherever the cloud goes, the Ark will follow, and then the people will follow the Ark. The Ark will be in front of the people. Think about that. Wherever God's messenger was, wherever God was, then the law followed, and then the people followed the law. That's a very good way of looking at it. God, His love, His grace can be defined by law. And then those that are willing to accept that follow. And that's what God did. But now we recognize something even deeper here in Hebrews 10, where it says in verse 10, By that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all. And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices which can never take away our sins. But this man, speaking of Jesus, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.

And from that time, waiting till his enemies are made his footstool, for by one offering he perfected forever those who are being sanctified. But the Holy Spirit also witnesses to us, for after he had said before, This is the covenant that I will make with them after these days, says the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them.

God's law is no longer in stone. It is to be written in our hearts. It's to be written in our hearts. It's to be embedded.

But it can only remain embedded if we maintain that allegiance to our God. The same allegiance that the people of old cried out and prayed out. The same allegiance that Jesus has given the New Testament, New Covenant Church in Holy Canon. Shammah, Israel, Adonai, Eleniehu, Adonai, Ha-Haar. Soul allegiance, soul devotion. And that is one of the greatest challenges that you and I have today, brethren, in the 21st century, is to keep our hearts and our minds and our activity and our being directed towards God.

Can we talk? Because we recognize the world that is around us. More than ever, pulling at us, pulling our attention, distracting us, getting us off base.

I don't have it with me right now. It's in the car, but I pulled out my little handy half-brain phone this morning. And to recognize, let's pretend this is the half-brain phone. This is my famous little half-brain phone because I don't have a smartphone. I only have a half-brain phone. I have an antique. Pretty soon it's going to be expensive. It's going to be valuable.

But anyway, you know how it is with people. Anymore, you get these things and you're just holding it. Just holding it. Just praying. Not to God, but to the phone that somebody's going to call them. I'm just waiting. I know somebody out there knows I exist. I am. What is it? What did Descartes say? I think. So therefore I am. I am here and I'm waiting.

Mirror, mirror on the wall. Where's that phone call? Come, come, come. You know, when I travel off and back to Ohio, I'll go through airports and I'll be walking down. I'll be seeing people. And they're just, you know, there's this act of worship. There's total devotion. They're looking at this phone. And not only that, but sometimes I'll see couples. When Susan and I dated, when we were young, we sat down at a table and we'd have a cherry Coke.

That's all I could afford back then, my date. We'd have a cherry Coke or we'd have something, some apple pie or whatever. And we'd sit and we would talk. We would get to know one another. Today, sometimes I go down and there'll be a man here and there'll be a woman over here and they're at a table. And they're both, you know, they're doing this. It looks like something religious. They're kind of going like this, you know? I don't know if the sign of the cross or what, you know, like this. They'll go like this. And the other one over here is going like this. And I think, wow, you know, this is kind of interesting. And, you know, sometimes I found that they're not talking to one another, but they're actually texting one another. They're not talking, they're texting the person across the table from them.

Now, I like a cell phone as much as anybody, especially when I have a flat tire. And there are reasons. But, brethren, we have more coming at us on those phones today than if we're in the museum at Alexandria.

You think about that. Throw in the Serapis Museum, the Serapis Library, in Alexandria. We have more on that smartphone than was laid out in Alexandria or Constantinople or Rome.

We, in a sense, can become the source of our own power.

We have things that are pulling at us every day, the world that is around us, the mercantile world, the things that distract us, the things that get us off kilter, things that have gotten us off kilter this year as we come up to the New Testament Passover.

We're in this world. This is where God wants us. He doesn't want us to be hermits.

God's people, whether it is real or old or the Israel of the day, was never called to be living up at the North Pole.

He called his people to be lights in a dark world. He put Israel right in the vortex of antiquity. He put them right in the Levant. He put them at the way of the sea.

He put Egypt on the southwest and he put Babylon over in the east and he says, you will be a light unto the nations.

But the only way they could do that is to keep their focus, to keep that allegiance to God and to recognize that.

In ancient Israel, when somebody said Shema, the word there, literally the word here, or to reckon or to hearken, we have to understand what was being spoken here, that in the mind of the Israelite or in the mind of the Jew of Jesus' day, to hear something was not just something auditory. It was something that you took in and you did. To hear was to obey. To hear was to hearken, to listen, to stop, to respond.

It was a given that that's what you were supposed to do.

We've been hearing the Word of God this afternoon. We've been called to hearken to it. We've been called to stop, to listen, to consider the ways of God.

And that's what we ought to do.

What does it say in the book here, where it says that in Romans 10, 15, join me if you would there for a moment.

Romans 10. Very famous verse, Romans 10.

You'll notice verse 16.

But they have not all obeyed the Gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our report?

People were hearing, but they weren't listening. They weren't hearkening. They weren't stopping. So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.

But I say, have they not heard? Yes, indeed. Their sound has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

But I say, did Israel not know?

See, when we consider the words of Jesus, he is saying, heharken.

Remember, our allegiance is to none other than God above. So very, very important.

Now, when you think about it, when you think about it, we talk sometimes about faith that can move mountains.

The proverbial moving of the mountain.

But it's very interesting, out of the same book that I quoted about the story about Mr. Silver, it's very interesting that the word shema, or hear, or to hearken, had a certain logic in the Hebrew language that I'd like to share with you.

It said, if you heard someone, it was like this, if you remember someone, you will act on their behalf.

If you hear someone, you will obey their words.

If you know someone, you will have a close relationship with them.

Going on to quote, Hebrew conveys that the longest 12 inches that your faith has to move.

Not to move mountains, but the longest that your faith has to move is between your head to your heart.

Between your head to your heart, 12 inches, is all the further that your faith has to move, and the rest is history.

Then that translates into your arms, your legs, your mouth, your tongue, as to who is your God.

It's very, very important. Very, very important.

The bottom line is simply this. As we come up to the New Testament Passover, and I wish we could be with all of you in one place.

We're going to have many, many places to partake of the bread and the wine of that evening.

I just kind of wanted to plant this into your heart tonight, or today, for you to really think about where you stand with God.

Where you stand with God. I know sometimes people will say, call, and I'm sure some of the elders have had this before, Mr. Sharp, Mr. Clark, others.

Somebody will call and say, I can't take the Passover. I just can't take the Passover. I'm not worthy.

No, none of us are worthy to partake of the New Testament Passover.

It's kind of like when I was talking with Charlie here the other day, talking about baptism.

Sometimes people feel that to be baptized, you have to be perfect.

So they keep on working on themselves before they get baptized.

But if you keep on working on yourself, then what are you going to do?

Are you going to appear before God spotless and clean, all on your own, by your works?

Then where is His grace involved?

You don't work yourself up to baptism. You accept that you're a sinner.

You accept that the sacrifice is for you.

And you accept the reality that you need God's Holy Spirit for the rest of the journey.

One thing I want to remind all of you, just like ancient Egypt, God took ancient Egypt when they were at their least.

They had nothing to show for it. They had nowhere to go.

They had nowhere to go, but up. There was no up.

And God chose them.

Sometimes in our human psyche we'll feel that if I do this, if I do that, if I do this, like for a mate or like for a parent that never seemed to accept it.

If I keep on doing this, somehow God will finally love me.

God will love me now.

If I give Him this whole list, no, no, no, no.

God loved us. When He called us.

When He gave His Son before the foundation of the world, God already loved us.

He loved us at our least.

He loved us when we were at our human worst and we were apart from Him.

And He offered salvation.

He offered a path back to Eden.

He gave us a name. He gave us a God. He said, and He gave us an identity, you can be My people.

If only you will Shema. If only you will hear.

So as we come up to the New Testament Passover, let's remember that we come before God because He loves us.

And He loves us so very much that He gave us not a man like Moses, but He gave us that greater Moses.

He gave us that second Moses. He didn't give us a reluctant Savior.

Remember how Moses said, God, I think you got the wrong guy here.

I'm not really good at speaking. I'm kind of, you know, the words kind of mumble and tumble all over. Can you send somebody else? You see, Moses was a reluctant Savior.

He was a reluctant deliverer. Get somebody else.

It's the opposite when we come to the New Testament Passover.

When we recognize that on that evening, Jesus said that with eagerness and with desire, I have desired to take part of this evening with you, my friends and my disciples.

As wonderful and as fantastic as Moses was, he was a man.

The evening of the New Testament Passover, we partake of more than the Son of Man. We partake of the Son of God and His symbols that renew that covenant.

As we do, just simply remember, remember the story of the scribe that came to Jesus.

And he said, Master, Rabbi, what is the greatest commandment? Jesus came back, just like Mr. Silver, just like the little children humming and singing the tune. Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord your God alone. And as we think of that, and as we partake of that bread, and as we partake of that wine, let us remember, fixate in our hearts and our minds that we give to God all of our heart, all of our mind, all of our soul, as we renew that covenant, and to consider the words of Psalms 23 and verse 1.

The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want.

But the Father has given us, through the sacrifice of His ultimate Lamb, and Jesus Christ is sufficient. It is enough. Alone.

The greatest gift that God ever gave humanity.