Resolved: To Pursue Life's Highest Priority! - Part 1

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Yesterday, we, of course, celebrated the first day of the New Year 2011. We all have our own traditions of how we do that. Some people like to eat disgusting food items that are tradition. Other people like to watch football and do various things, stay up late perhaps on New Year's Eve to welcome in the New Year. There's one tradition that's fairly common and that is making New Year's resolutions. I read an article this week that said about a third of Americans, so about a third of the people in this room, have an annual tradition of making New Year's resolutions. Perhaps you're one of that thirty-three percent or so. Of those who make such resolutions, twenty-five percent, the data says, keep their resolutions less than a full week. That's not very good. Only about fifty percent of those who make these resolutions are still on track six months later.

Here are the most common New Year's resolutions. See if you have any of these on your little list. Number one – spend more time with family and friends. I guess that means less time at work. Two – exercise. Three – lose weight. And then there are some vices that frankly would be better if you just never started, you wouldn't have to worry about quitting them – quitting smoking, quitting drinking, get out of debt, enjoy life more, learn something new, help others and, rounding out the list, number ten – get organized. I take it that's a few of your resolutions. Or are you laughing because you're, you've given up on that?

Certainly, there is value to taking time to evaluate our lives and to sort of correct our course. But sadly, when we do that often as human beings, our resolutions tend to be on relatively unimportant issues. You listen to that list, to the top ten resolutions that Americans have made over the last twenty-four hours or will make in the coming week, and not one issue of eternity really is on that list.

So, what is the truly important? As we set out to correct our course for the New Year; as we set out to determine what really matters, what is truly important? What should be our highest priority? Well, our Lord tells us. It was on Tuesday of the Passion Week, the last week of His life before His crucifixion and resurrection. Two groups of the Jewish leaders came to Christ on Tuesday probably of that week – the Pharisees and the Sadducees both came. He was there on the temple mount. They came with questions, questions intended to trick Jesus into contradicting God's Word. They were hoping that that would undermine His credibility. And if His violation of the Scripture was great enough, flagrant enough, it could even bring about His imprisonment or even His death. Jesus responds to their trick questions, and in each case, He silences His critics, and they march away without a single accusation that will stand against Him.

But one of the questions has to do with this issue of what's really important, what really matters in life. Look at Mark 12. We'll get to Mark 12 in a few months in our study of Mark's gospel, but look at Mark 12:28.

One of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that Jesus had answered the other group well, asked Him this: "What commandment is the foremost of all (or is the first of all)?" [What is the first commandment in importance?] Jesus answered, "The foremost is, 'HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD; AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.' The second is this, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' [Now watch what He says at the end of verse 31.] There is no other commandment greater than these."

The Pharisees had designated some of the Old Testament commands as weighty, others as light. They want Jesus' opinion on which is the weightiest, and in response, Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy 6. And when He finished quoting, He says, "There's no commandment greater. This is the first in importance." Matthew adds, "Jesus said, 'On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.'" In other words, they summarize the entire Old Testament.

So, Jesus tells us two very important things about Deuteronomy 6. He tells us that that passage that He quoted was and remains the most important command in all of Scripture – our highest priority. And secondly, He tells us that it was and remains a summary statement of man's entire moral duty to God. You want to know what you owe God? It's contained in that one commandment.

What could be better as we begin a new year to sort of fix our course, correct our course than to take ourselves deep into the one command that Jesus said was the most important thing in all of life. So, this morning and next Sunday, I want us to turn back to Deuteronomy 6, and I want us to examine in detail the passage that our Lord identifies as the very highest priority in life.

Now the book of Deuteronomy is the record written by Moses of a series of farewell speeches that he delivered to the children of Israel. They were encamped on the east side of the Jordan River toward the desert in the plains of Moab. They were just east of the city of Jericho just north of the Dead Sea. He gives them these speeches - probably the events of Deuteronomy occurred around January/February of the year 1405 B.C. We know that because there are some various ways we can figure dates in the Old Testament based on the chronology that's given to us. We know the exodus was at 1445 or 46, right in that timeframe. So, we know about how long then this occurred after because Moses tells us. So, January/February 1405 B.C., he gives these speeches. In the weeks that follow, Moses commits these magnificent speeches to writing and then shortly thereafter he dies. This was his last will and testament if you will.

The purpose of Deuteronomy is spelled out in the fifth verse of the first chapter. It was to provide a new generation with a detailed exposition of the law that God had given to His people at Sinai. These were younger than twenty, some of them. Others had been born in the wilderness. And they weren't schooled in all that was learned at Sinai. And so, Moses is going to exposit this for them. He's going to implant in these people the essence of what it means to believe in the God of Israel and to obey His will.

Now with that background, I want you to look at Deuteronomy 6 and at the passage our Lord quotes from. Deuteronomy 6, let me begin reading in verse 1.

"Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the judgments which the LORD your God has commanded me to teach you, that you might do them in the land where you are going over to possess it, so that you and your son and your grandson might fear the LORD your God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged. O Israel, you should listen and be careful to do it, that it may be well with you and that you may multiply greatly, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.

Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."

Beginning in verse 4 and running down through verse 9, we have part of what the Jewish people call the Shema. "Shema" is simply the first Hebrew word of verse 4, translated "hear". In Hebrew, that's "shema" – hear. Deuteronomy 6:4 - 9 along with two other passages - Deuteronomy 11 and a section from Numbers 15 - so here, Deuteronomy 11, Numbers 15, together those verses make up the Shema. It's still recited twice a day by Orthodox Jews - when he rises in the morning and before he goes to bed at night because in this passage Moses carefully unfolds every person's fundamental duty to God. It is to be devoted to God with your entire being. Clearly, the theme of the passage comes in verse 5. It's to love God. And as we've learned from our Lord already this morning, loving God is both the greatest command in all of Scripture, and it is the summary command of our entire responsibility to God.

So, what exactly does it mean to love God? If this is the greatest commandment; if this is the thing that Jesus said is the most important priority in all of life, what does it mean? What does it mean to love God? Well, in Deuteronomy 6, Moses calls Israel and us to hear and to understand and to obey the greatest command God ever gave. As he explains what God told him on Mount Sinai, he provides us with five key insights into loving God, five key insights into loving God. I want to rehearse those with you as we walk our way through this text. This is the greatest command. This is what God requires of you and you and you and everyone under the sound of my voice this morning. This is your greatest duty to the God who sustains your life and before whom you will someday give an account. It's to love Him. So, let's learn what it means.

Well, the first insight about loving God is its preeminent claim, its preeminent claim. It is absolutely preeminent in the claims this command makes on us. There is no duty, no responsibility that we should take more seriously or pursue more passionately than this. It is central. Every other duty we are commanded to accomplish flows out from this.

To grasp the gravity of this command, of these words, we really have to understand the context in which they're said. I'm not going to have the opportunity to take you verse by verse through chapter 5, but let me just kind of walk you through it in general. In Deuteronomy 5, the previous chapter, Moses describes what had occurred roughly forty years earlier. Put yourself there with the children of Israel for a moment. They had been freed by God from Egypt, you remember, with the, the plagues and God had brought them out as He says, "with a mighty arm" and He had brought them out into the wilderness. After a three-month trip from Egypt, some two million Israelites find themselves at the foot of a rugged mountain called Sinai. It's in the desert, hardly a tree to be seen if you go to that area today. It is barren and rugged. This mountain juts up out of the landscape. That's where they were.

The first two days were spent in physical and spiritual preparation. All was quiet, nothing unusual. But the morning of the third day begins with an awe-inspiring display by the God of the universe. If you were to read this chapter, it would be described like this. On top of that rugged mountain that morning when they awoke, there was a thick, dark cloud that rested on that mountain. And it was like a thunderstorm; it was filled with thunder and lightning. And there was coming out of that cloud the sound of an increasingly loud trumpet. Smoke rose up out of that storm like from a volcano – thick, billowing smoke as from a huge furnace. And an earthquake shook the entire mountain.

At this point, with all of that happening, Moses begins to ascend the mountain. And he gets partway up, and God stops him and says, "No, I want you to go back down. Even though you've already warned the people not to come up here, I want you to go back down and tell them again, 'Don't cross the boundary line because if they do, it'll cost them their life.'"

So, Moses goes back down and reascends. And he is now standing between that incredible scene on the top of Sinai and the two million people of Israel below. And the sound of the trumpet and the thunder and the lightning is growing louder and louder and louder until it's almost deafening.

And then suddenly, the trumpet stops blowing, and there's silence. And out of the silence, those people literally hear the voice of God. One by one, God with His own voice proclaimed to them the Ten Commandments. Look at Deuteronomy 5:4, "The LORD spoke to you face to face at the mountain from the midst of the fire." Down in verse 22, "These words the LORD spoke to all your assembly at the mountain from the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick gloom, with a great voice, and He added no more. [In other words, God gave them the ten words or the Ten Commandments, they heard His own voice. And then He said nothing else to them.] "He wrote these ten words on two tablets of stone and gave them to me." [these are the Ten Commandments]."

When the voice stops (chapter 5 says), the people are terrified, and they ask Moses to be their intermediary. They say, "Look, Moses. We don't want to hear God anymore. That was too terrifying of an experience. We want you to go up; let God tell you what we need to hear and then you come back and tell us." And God agrees to this. Notice verse 31 of chapter 5: So, He says, verse 30, He says,

"… say to them, 'Return to your tents' [go back to your tents. Verse 31]. 'But as for you [Moses, God says], stand here by Me, that I may speak to you all the command [literally, it's singular in the Hebrew text, that I may speak to you the commandment] and the statutes and the judgments which you shall teach them, that they may observe them in the land which I shall give them to possess."

Now in chapter 6, Moses comes back to real time almost forty years after the events of chapter 5. He's rehearsed them for these, this new generation. All the men who were older than twenty when they left Egypt are dead except for three – Moses, Joshua and Caleb. Hundreds of thousands of bodies lie buried in the barren wilderness. A new generation of Israelites is now encamped across the Jordan River from Jericho on the plains of Moab. Moses, the leader whom they've depended on for those forty years, is about to die. Joshua will soon take over. And then they will go confront the walled armies and, or walled cities I should say and armies of the brutal Canaanites. Moses is explaining to them the nature of their relationship to God as they enter this new phase of their existence.

Look at verse 1 now of chapter 6. That's the context. "Now this is the commandment…." The commandment, what's he talking about? Go back to verse 31 of chapter 5, "… stand here [God says], that I may speak to you the commandment (singular in the Hebrew text)." And now in verse 1 of chapter 6, here is the commandment. Apparently, this was the first instruction that Moses received from God during his two forty-day stays on Sinai.

Notice in verse 1 "… the statutes and the judgments which the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you …" is encapsulated together with commas. Statutes and judgments – those words are technical terms. They're technical terms for specific case law - not general law principles, but specific case law. Grammatically, they are appositives. In other words, they come after the noun "commandment" and further develop it, further explain it. Let me put it to you this way. Here's what Moses is saying, "There is a commandment (singular) that the LORD your God commanded me to teach you. And that commandment is explained and defined by statutes and judgments." So, all of that case law really just explains and develops and defines "the commandment".

I could define it or translate it like this: "Now this is the commandment God commanded me to teach you, and it is a commandment that is amplified and explained by specific statutes and judgments." So what is "the commandment"? Well, the first command in this passage comes in verse 5, "You shall love the LORD your God." God wanted me to teach you this. First and foremost, this is "the commandment": "You shall love the LORD your God."

And by the way, there are other passages in Deuteronomy where Moses uses "the commandment" (singular) to refer to the command to love God. Let me just give you one example. Look over in chapter 11. Chapter 11:22, "For if you are careful [Moses writes] to keep all this commandment [singular] which I am commanding you to do [and here it is], to love the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and hold fast to Him." Over and over again in Deuteronomy, "the commandment" is the commandment to love God.

So, then we could put it this way: "the commandment" is the entire Mosaic Law reduced to a single principle - the fundamental duty to love God. And as Moses introduces it, notice he punctuates it in verse 4 with this phrase: "Hear, O Israel!" That phrase "hear, O Israel" occurs only in Deuteronomy. It occurs five times in this book, and each time it's to introduce something crucial, a major discourse. Moses also uses it to introduce the Ten Commandments back in chapter 5. When Moses used these words "hear, O Israel", what followed was of supreme, preeminent importance – "hear".

By the way, the real force of that Hebrew word "'hear" doesn't mean just to listen. It doesn't mean like you're doing this morning, kind of to sit and let the, let the sound waves pass over your eardrums. It means to really listen so that you do it because to hear God without obeying God is not really to hear God at all. So, he's saying, "Hear this and do it." This command then is unique. This commandment (singular) has a preeminent claim on our lives. It is, according to our LORD, the first and greatest commandment. It is a summary of everything else God commands us to do.

Let me ask you this morning as we begin this New Year - is loving God the preeminent issue in your life? Think about that for a moment. Can you really, honestly, before God as you sit here this morning say loving God is the most important thing in my existence? It is to God. Is loving God the hub around which all of your life revolves? Now there are a number of ways you can get to the answer to that question.

You can ask yourself, "How do you spend your time? How do you spend your resources? Where does your mind go when it doesn't have to be occupied with something else? Where do you spend your energy? What draws out of you the greatest affection? Do you love God supremely?" The first insight that Moses gives us about loving God is its preeminent claim on our lives. Nothing is more important than this. Every other responsibility, every other activity must bow before this greatest obligation to love God supremely.

Moses provides us with a second insight here about loving God - not only its preeminent claim, but secondly its personal confession. If you're going to love God, you have to make a personal confession. Look at verse 4, "Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!" Now notice verse 4 begins with a command, "Hear, O Israel!", hear and obey. Verse 5 lays out the great commandment – "… love the LORD your God." Verses 6 - 9 contain specific commands that show what a proper response to loving God looks like. But notice the second half of verse 4 isn't a command. In a passage filled with commands, the second half of verse 4 is not. It is a declarative statement because it is a confession, a confession that you and I must make about God if we're going to love Him. It is a confession we must make. To love God, you must first know who He is and affirm who He is. So, this confession then is about the true God's identity, about His nature, about His activity.

Notice this confession, this personal confession we have to make is, first of all, a confession about God's identity. Notice in verse 4 the word "LORD" in all caps appears two times. That is God's personal name. Did you know God has a personal name by which He told us to call Him? This is God's personal name by which He, He told His Old Testament people Israel to, to know Him, and we know Him as well. Theologians call it the Tetragrammaton – "tetra" meaning 4, "grammaton" meaning letters – four Hebrew letters.

If you were to look at the Hebrew Bible and you were to see God's personal name that's "LORD" all caps in our Bible, it would be four Hebrew letters – "YHWH", "YHWH". Now we don't know exactly how it was pronounced because the Hebrew Bible wasn't written with vowels; it's consonants only. But we believe the best pronunciation is something like Yahweh, Yahweh. It's Anglicized, you may have seen it Anglicized as Jehovah when you were growing up and in older Bibles, but it's Yahweh.

Now in most English translations, it's translated by the word "LORD" in all caps. Look at verse 4. You see how the word "LORD" is in all capitals? Whenever you see that in your English Bible, that is the word for God's personal name. It's Yahweh. It is by far the most frequent designation for God in the Old Testament - frankly, in all the Bible. It occurs about six thousand times. It is the third person form of the Hebrew verb "to be", the verb for "being". It means "He is", "He is". Yahweh means "He is". You remember in Exodus 3 when Moses says to God, "Who do I tell Pharaoh and my people that, that is sending me? What's your name?" God says, "Tell them 'I am' has sent you." When God says His name, it's "I am". When we say His name, it's "He is"– Yahweh. Yahweh means "He is".

What does that mean? What does that refer to? Why would God call Himself or tell us to call Him "He is"? It refers to God's self-existence. He is simply the One who is. He is responsible for all existence. He's responsible for your existence, and He's responsible for His own existence. There is nothing on which God depends except Himself. You and I depend on God for everything. He gives, He keeps our hearts beating. He gives us air to breathe. He gives us food to eat. He keeps us healthy. Those microbes that are crawling all over our bodies right now don't kill us. It's because God intervenes. We need God for everything, but He needs nothing from no one. He is utterly independent. He simply is.

Geerhardus Vos, the great German theologian, writes, "The name Yahweh gives expression to the self-determination, the independence of God, that which we are accustomed to call His sovereignty." In other words, He needs nobody and nothing and He is completely in control of everything. That's "He is". He simply is. And nothing ever intrudes into His self-determination, His independence.

Listen, if you want to love God, you must first acknowledge Him to be the One who has revealed Himself in Scriptures as Yahweh, the One who is. So, verse 4 is a confession about God's identity.

It's also a confession about God's gracious choice. Notice again verse 4, "the Lord Yahweh, our God." "Yahweh our God", that expression, occurs almost four hundred times in the Old Testament. Two hundred and thirty of them are here in Deuteronomy. Why would we, creatures of the dust, call God our God, Yahweh our God? What hubris, what arrogance. Why would we do that? We do that because the very first person to use this phrase was God Himself. In Exodus 3:18, He tells Moses, "Refer to Me as Yahweh our God. When you go to talk to the people of Israel, when you go to talk to Pharaoh, refer to Me as Yahweh our God." I love that. God says, "Call Me this – Yahweh our God."

Now the significance of this expression is defined over in chapter 7 of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 7:6,

"… you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD [Yahweh] your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession [notice He has chosen you to be a people for His own possession] out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. [Yahweh] … did not set His love on you or choose you [because of who you were] because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples." [In other words, God didn't look at something intrinsic about you and say, "Okay, I'm going to choose him." Instead, He chose you (verse 8)] "… because He loved you and He kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers [in other words, His choice was completely determined by Himself], [Yahweh] … brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt."

You know what this expression means? God had chosen them. Therefore, they could say "our God". Israel's election was solely grounded in God's love and His faithfulness to the promises that He'd made. They had absolutely nothing to do with it - no merit of their own, no intrinsic goodness in Israel. So, when an Israelite said "Yahweh our God", they were admitting that their only hope was in the gracious choice of God. In the same way, if you and I want to confess that Yahweh is our God, we must admit our own sinfulness, our own unworthiness, that we have no claims on Him. And we acknowledge that the only reason we could ever call Him our God is because of His grace and His sovereign choice.

So, verse 4 is a confession. It's a confession about God's identity. He is Yahweh. It's a confession about His gracious choice. He is our God simply because He set His love upon us.

There's another part of this confession that we must make. It is a confession about God's uniqueness. Notice again verse 4, "The LORD is one!" This is a clear defense of monotheism – "mono" meaning one, "theism" meaning God. We worship one God. The LORD is one. This stresses the utter uniqueness of God. In other words, He is the only being in the universe to whom the true attributes of deity belong. He is not merely the first among many gods as Baal was for the Canaanites or as Re was in Egypt or as Marduk was in Babylon. He is the one and only God, and therefore He is completely sovereign. He is the only one. There is one God and Yahweh is His name. This verse then is the great Old Testament declaration of monotheism.

And by the way, understand that monotheism does not contradict the biblical doctrine of the Trinity; instead, it complements it. The Hebrew word for "one" here speaks of unity. But listen to how it's used in Genesis 2:24. You remember when God makes a woman for the man, brings them together? "The two [He said] shall become one flesh." There are hints of the Trinity in the Old Testament, but the truth becomes clear in the New Testament. What could be clearer than what Jesus says in John 10:30 when He says, "I and the Father are one."

Can I just take a side note here and say that to fail to acknowledge God's equally divine Son is to deny the one true God? Jesus said in John 8:42, "If God were your Father [if the one true God were really your Father], you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and have come from God (He sent me)." In Mark 9:7 in the transfiguration, you remember there was another cloud covering the mountain. And the voice of God speaks out of that cloud and says, "This is My Son, the One I love, listen to Him!" So, if you're going to love God, you have to respond to His equally divine Son.

This concept though that the true God is utterly unique, that He's the only one, is completely throughout the Scripture. Listen to Deuteronomy 4:39, "Know therefore today, and take it to your heart, that Yahweh, He is God in heaven above and on the earth below; there is no other." Deuteronomy 32:39, God says, "See now that I, I am He, And there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, And there is no one who can deliver from My hand." Isaiah 45:5 – "I am Yahweh, there is no other; besides Me there is no God."

You come to the New Testament, you see this same theme. First Corinthians 8:4: "… we know [Paul says] that there is no such thing as an idol in the world [that is, there's no such thing as the reality of another god behind that idol], … there is no God but one." First Timothy 2:5 – "… there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." In James 2:19, James writes, "You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder." Even the demons who reject the one true God acknowledge that there is only one Supreme Being. Only foolish man says otherwise.

Now there are some ramifications that are pretty huge from this confession that we have to make, the confession that the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. First of all, it's a serious warning about being careful in our thinking about God. Christians can get kind of sloppy in how they think about God. There are Christians who think of the Trinity literally as tritheism – that is, as three gods. There's God the Father who's God. And there's a separate being, Jesus the Son who's God. And then there's the Holy Spirit who's yet another God. Listen, we don't worship three gods. We worship one God eternally existing in three persons.

There's modalism. It's an ancient heresy that sees one God and one person. So, in other words, you got one God just kind of acting like the Father. And other times, He puts on the hat of the Son and acts like the Son. And other times, He puts on the hat of the Holy Spirit and acts like the Holy Spirit. That's called modalism. Here in Dallas, there's a large church down in Dallas pastored by T.D. Jakes. T.D. Jakes embraces that ancient heresy called modalism. It's called Oneness Pentecostalism. We better think rightly about God. Don't get sloppy in your thinking about God. We worship one God eternally existing in three persons.

There's also a serious warning here to avoid pluralism or syncretism – combining the one true God with other gods. You see, this passage in its Old Testament context is an attack on pagan idolatry. And Near Eastern idolatry was always polytheistic – that is, many gods. And so, the people around Israel said, "Hey, fine. You can worship Yahweh. That's great. We'll worship Him too. We'll just put another god on the shelf." But this confession denies any other god. The LORD is one.

Moreover, this declaration does not allow for some higher power, some force, divine force, some amalgamation of all the world's deities – a deity who can be at the same time Jesus Christ or Brahman or Allah. This passage does demand monotheism, but not a nameless, faceless god. It is the one true God whose name is Yahweh, and He eternally exists in three persons whom Jesus our Lord taught us to call Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You say, "Why does this matter?"

Listen. Unfortunately, there is a push in modern evangelicalism today. Pick up Christianity Today. Pick up any other publication where they're talking about the Christian faith, and you will see a renewed push in evangelicalism today to allow for the possibility that Mormons and Hindus and Jehovah's Witnesses and Buddhists and anybody else might be in heaven if they're sincere. After all, the argument goes, they're simply worshiping the true God under another name. Listen to what God says about that in Isaiah 42:8 – "I am Yahweh, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, nor My praise to graven images."

There's a third practical ramification of this confession that we must make and that is a demand of our undivided allegiance. Notice "Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one!" By using the word "our", Moses makes it very personal. God's people are to apply this truth to themselves. It's to be true of each individual. Yahweh is the only true God, and He is my God alone.

Now perhaps you're sitting here saying, "Why is Tom spending so much time on this? After all, all of us sitting here this morning are monotheists. All of us believe in the one true God eternally existing in three persons. So, what possible ramifications could this have for me?" Listen, you don't have to fall down in front of stone images to violate this confession of the uniqueness of God.

Scripture identifies many things that can divide our allegiance. For example, maybe you're here this morning as a believer and your allegiance has been divided by what our Lord describes in Matthew 6:24. He says, "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth." You gotta choose. You can't be worshiping at the feet of wealth and pursuing that with all of your energy and, and aspiration and have an undivided allegiance to the true God. Jesus says, "You gotta choose. You better choose today who's going to be God."

John the apostle describes some other things that can become gods, idols in our lives. In 1 John 2:15, he says "… don't love the world…." He's not talking about the earth. He's not talking about the trees and the grass. He goes on to explain what he means. Don't love the world. And he says by the world, I mean this – "… the lust of your flesh, the lust of your eyes and the pride of life…." You know what he's saying? He's saying, "Don't make a god out of satisfying your body's appetites - living for sex or drugs or alcohol or just pleasure." He says, "Don't love the lust of the eyes. Don't live for what you can get, for the things your eyes see and want and desire. You better not live for things."

And then he says, "the boastful pride of life." Don't live for the exultation of yourself and your reputation. Don't make a god out of yourself, out of people thinking, "Wow. Look at him. Look at how great he is, how great she is. Look at what they've done. Look at what they've accomplished." There are people who live their lives worshiping at their own feet. Listen. You better choose. Who's it going to be that's going to be your god? Is it going to be lust? Is it going to be stuff? Is it going to be pride, your own pride, feeding your own ego? Or is it going to be the one true God who is worthy of all of our worship, who's worthy of our devotion?

Tozer writes, "What we love is not a small matter to be lightly shrugged off; rather, it is of present, critical and everlasting importance what you love. What you love is prophetic of our future. It tells us what we shall be and so predicts accurately our eternal destiny. We are becoming what we love." In the end, you and I as believers are to allow nothing to diminish our allegiance to the one true God who has revealed Himself as Yahweh and Jesus taught us to call Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

I love the way Robert Reymond puts it in his Systematic Theology. Here's the confession we have to make. He says,

I intend by the word God this one living and true Creator God of Holy Scripture. It is the existence of this God alone that I confess. With reference to the claimed existence of any other god as the true God, I am not simply agnostic, I am a convinced atheist. I deny that any other gods exist save as idolatrous creations in the minds of sinful men who have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator - who is forever blessed. Amen. [What a powerful confession.] The Lord Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one!

It is the all-powerful one true God whose name is Yahweh, who has revealed Himself in Scripture that demands that we love Him and confess Him with an undivided allegiance.

As we begin this New Year, I just want to ask yourself these questions. Is loving God the highest priority of my life? And if it's not, what am I serving? What am I worshiping? What really is my god? Is loving God central in my thinking? Is it preeminent in the daily decisions I make? Do you make decisions each day based on your love for God? Do I freely confess Yahweh, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to be the one and only true God? Do I acknowledge that my only claim on Him is His free, electing grace? Have I demonstrated my allegiance to Him by listening to and believing in His Son?

And even if I have believed – if you're sitting here this morning, you say, "I am a Christian", ask yourself these questions. Have I allowed wealth to displace my allegiance to God? Have I allowed the pursuit of my personal pleasure, of sex or drugs or alcohol or some other personal pleasure, to eclipse the worship of the one true God in my life? Have I allowed the pursuit of possessions and stuff, the desire for things I don't have, to suddenly eclipse my allegiance to God? Have I allowed the pursuit of making a name for myself, of being respected, of being thought of as successful – have I allowed that to become my god instead of the God who sustains my life moment by moment?

G. Campbell Morgan writes, "Let men take five minutes to shut out everything except the great fact that they stand alone with God." Let me, let me just challenge you. Just take five minutes this afternoon, five minutes, and think about this reality. God made you, sustains your life and someday will take your life and you will stand before Him. G. Campbell Morgan writes,

Five minutes – some are terribly afraid to spend even as much time as that with their own thoughts. If they will, if they dare, let them ask, "What is my god? To what is my life devoted?" If the answer indicates anything that puts God into the background, then in the name of heaven and of their own safety, let them break down every idol and let the God who will be, who is, who was be their God.

Why is this love and allegiance to the one true God so important? Because throughout Scripture, God makes it very simple. There are only two groups. From God's perspective this morning, sitting in this room, seated in this room there are only two groups of people. There are those who love God and there are those who hate Him. You see, we make things so complex. In God's mind, it's a lot more simple than that. Everywhere you look, He says there are those who love Me, and there are those who hate Me. That's it. There's no in-between. There's no neutrality. There's no "well, I haven't decided yet", "well, I'm waiting awhile." No, you either love Me, God says, or you hate me. That's it.

Look here in Deuteronomy at 7:9,

"Know therefore that Yahweh your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and [His, that lovingkindness is a, is a word which means steadfast love] His … [steadfast love] to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments." [There's the first group - those who love Him and keep His commandments. Is that you? If not, you fall in the next group.] Verse 10, "but [He] repays those who hate Him to their faces, to destroy them; He will not delay with him who hates Him, He will repay Him to his face. Therefore, you shall keep the commandment [the commandment to love God] and the statutes and the judgments which I am commanding you today, to do them."

Listen. There are only two options. You love God or you hate Him. God our Creator, our Sustainer, deserves and demands that we love Him with all of our hearts. Next week Lord willing, we'll discover what that means.

Let's pray together.

Father, thank You for the clarity with which Your Word confronts us. Lord, it's uncomfortable, but we know it's for our good. We know You intend only our spiritual good. Lord, help us to honestly evaluate our hearts. Lord, help us to see if we love You. Lord, we do love You, but we want so much to love You more. We want to demonstrate our love for You in practical ways. Help us as we walk through this text to see what love for You really looks like and by the power of Your Spirit to love You. May You be the chief priority in our lives.

Father, I pray for the person here this morning (there may be more than one) who has to honestly admit that they don't love You, that You are not their chief pursuit in life. In fact, they're not pursuing You at all. Lord, may this be the day when they acknowledge You as the true God and their dependence on You for everything. And may they cry out for You to change them, to rescue them from what they have made themselves and what they have become through the power of Your Son in His death and His resurrection.

We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.