Sermon on Mark 12:28-34

Love God alone

Introduction: On Dixie Road here on post where it runs in front of Smith Gym there are 5 lanes. The 5th lane is a center lane for turning. I found out that in the State of Georgia it is illegal to use that center lane to merge into traffic. If you haven’t heard there is an election coming up, it is sort of on Tuesday, or rather ends on Tuesday. The big discussion is about US Congress. But what does Congress really do? They pass laws. But, have you every considered how many laws there are in United States? On just the Federal Government side of things there are almost 5,000 different federal crimes. And that’s not counting regulatory or the tax code violations that don’t amount to a ‘crime’. Congress on average considers 5,000 bills a year and passes somewhere around 500 of those. Creating dozens if not hundreds of new crimes every year. That 500 number is misleading because some of the laws passed are hundreds if not thousands of pages long. Just one bill turned in to a law could be the length of the entire bible. Some recent pieces of legislation on things like, immigration, health care or budgets are 10 times the length of the bible. And that’s just on the Federal Government side, what about the States. That takes us back to Georgia consider these little know GA traffic laws: .....

The Bible has 613 laws that the Rabbis and scholars of Jesus’s day identified. That’s about what Congress does in one year. In our Gospel passage today, Jesus reduces those 600 laws down into two, Love God and Love your neighbor. But he also gives us the foundation there is only one God. The point this morning is:

Proposition: Since there is only one God, We must love him alone

What: kind of love- whole life love all your heart, soul, mind,

What does this look like- Ruth gives up who she is, changes her identity, joins the Covenant community

What does this mean: love is trust and devotion to God

Who: love him alone - he is one and there is no other besides him

The shema that Jesus quotes from tells us that there are no other Gods and is a clear statement of the monotheism. But it really means more than that, the Hebrew is a bit stronger than the English translation. To paraphrase ‘

but really means more than that, that

but he then connects God to the object of our affections and devotion

The point of the shema is that God is over all

What does this mean: love God and place our hope in him give up love for other things

how: love what God loves - love your neighbor as you love ourselves. If we don’t know or believe God’s love, it’s anywhere from silly to cynical to love like God loves. Jesus and the OT prophets imbed a logical order in the charge to love our neighbor. We can’t really love our neighbor with out first believing and trusting in God’s love for us and then loving God in return. And because of those two conditions then loving the things God loves and loving like God loves.

Conclusion: There is one God who is over all things. It is he who mades us and not we ourselves. Trust and believe that he loves you and has freed you from death and hell through the sacrifice of his son. Then love that God devote yourself too him and love the people he loves.