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We all desire a code for living. But pursuing our own rules often leaves us frustrated and empty. Join me, Pastor Richard, as we discover how the most important thing is the only way to truly transform your life and find freedom in Christ.

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Today's gospel reading is taken from Book of Mark, chapter 12, verses 28 to 34. And together we say, Glory to Christ our Savior. Mark chapter 12, verses 28 to 34. The Greatest Commandment. One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked them, Of all the commandments, which is the most important? The most important one, answered Jesus, is this. The second is this Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these. Well said, teacher, the man replied, You are right in saying that God is one, and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, You are not far from the kingdom of God. And from then on, no one dared ask him any more questions. This is the gospel of Christ.

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I find that humanity, including you and I, uh, were constantly asking a few key questions. What should I do? What really matters? How should I live? These three questions we see are asked again and again. And we see them being grappled with in moral philosophies, in self-help books, in political ideologies, in religious systems, and even in personal resolutions. People may deny the existence of God, but they cannot avoid these very important questions. And this is because people, you and I, we desire structure. We desire some law. We don't actually want to live in a lawless society. We desire a code for living. We desire a code for living. Paul in Romans chapter 2, verses 14 to 15, he explains that even the Gentiles who hadn't received that written Mosaic law of the Old Testament, they still showed the work of the law upon their consciences. It says, For when the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they don't have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them. People innately desire a code for living, but we want to write it for ourselves rather than being subject to someone else's code for living. Isn't that true? We want to be both somehow acceptable in God's sight and yet still be able to live life on our own terms. And we see this all back where it began for our history. In the book of Genesis. Adam and Eve, they are in this beautiful, amazing paradise of a garden. It was this handcrafted place for them. And God had given them a way to live. But Satan tempted them and they desired their own code for living. They wanted to decide for themselves what was right and wrong. And so they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and in pursuing their own way, they rebelled and sinned and fell from the grace of God. Now, today, um, I think there's just as an example, there's a few different codes for living that we can identify. One is stoicism, and perhaps you've heard of stoicism before. And in stoicism, you you kind of focus on what are the things that you can change, and you let go of the things that you cannot. You practice self-control, you value clear thinking, you accept hard times with a calm mind, and you avoid emotion, avoiding both great joy and sadness, avoiding emotion. Stoicism is meant to be almost like a rock in the stream. Whatever comes, you just let it move past you. You don't be swayed by anything. Another kind of code for living is the golden rule. Treat others the way you want them to treat you. Show kindness and empathy to everyone and anyone and avoid hurting other people. Okay? This is a very simple code for living. Humanism, uh, all right, we need to rely on reason and science instead of superstition. Care for human rights and equality, make the world better for all people right now. Live a meaningful life through your work. Eastern meditation has a code for living. Stay focused on the present moment, practice non-harm towards all living things, let go of greed and anger. Even the Singapore Armed Forces has a code of conduct. Honor the nation, protect citizens, show loyalty, be exemplary, be devoted to your duty, and guard the assets of the nation. And uh there's this order of the Cistercians of the strict observance. These are known as trappists, and their code for living is a vow of fidelity to a monastic life. A vow of silence and solitude, a vow to engage in manual labor, and they're committed to embrace poverty and simplicity. Now I want you to just consider for a moment. I just listed off some different codes for living. What code for living did you observe in your parents growing up? It doesn't have to be one of these ones on the screen. What code of living did you observe your parents living by when you were growing up? Each of these codes for living that we have on the screen for us, they they have there's some value in each one of them. Each one has some things that are perhaps admirable, but they all fall short of God's law for us. The code of living that He's given to us. They're incomplete and they don't acknowledge our position in relation to our God. And that's true even for the Trappists. Um, you know, when I was doing my theological studies in the States, a part of our class, we went on a field trip to visit an abbey right in rural New York State. And the first shock I received when we made that visit was I discovered that all of the monks were effectively under a vow of silence. No speaking. Not just for a day in the week, no speaking at all. And the only exception granted was this one monk who would deal with outsiders like us when we came to visit. Apart from that, no speaking. No speaking. I was also taken aback when I learned that they gathered not once a day for prayer, not twice, not seven times in the day they would gather together for scripture reading and for silent uh meditative prayer. And it began with this the first order is called vigil at 4 a.m. Your day started at 4 a.m. there. And it ended with compline just before uh retiring at the end of the day. And I quickly realized a few things from this visit. Number one, compared to these people, I had no idea what the word contemplation even means. Can you imagine every day? No one speaking, you're just meditating day in and day out on the things of God, meditating on the scripture. And you know, when they weren't uh reading scripture or meditating in silent prayer, they worked very hard actually, and they produced these very healthy seeded breads, and they were sold in all the local supermarkets. So they worked hard in addition to their seven times a day of gathering. And I felt like, you know, there was a lot I could learn from them, but there was also something missing I felt. Do you know what that was? Something was missing there. What was missing? Well, to answer that, we need to re-look at today's passage. And so if you have your Bible with you, you can uh just keep it open. We're in Mark chapter 12, verses 28 to 34. And Jesus, after so many adversarial encounters with the Pharisees, uh, you know, this time he's approached by a very sincere religious scholar. I'm gonna name him Sam. All right, we'll just name him Sam, that'll make everything go smooth today. Sam had just heard Jesus give a very clever answer to this other uh, you know, this other religious group called the Sadducees. They had kind of challenged him, they're trying to trick him into saying something that would displease people. The Sadducees were a very wealthy and well-connected religious group, and they held uh quite a measure of political power at the time, and they did not believe in the resurrection. And so they were trying to trick Jesus. Jesus gave a very good answer to them. Uh, that's not for today. And so, anyway, we come to Sam, all right? Sam, our religious scholar, and Sam asked Jesus a very important and insightful question. He asked, what commandment is most important? It wasn't a trivial question because the Jews had kind of codified 613 commandments. 613 of them. 248 of them were positive things that you should do, and 365 of them were negative. Do not, do not, do that's a do not for every day of the year, right? 365 of them. How could even a religious scholar keep up with so many commandments? What about when there seems to be some conflict? Which should be higher priority, which were lesser priority? Sam was looking for a code for living, and Jesus gave him one. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself, which was part of our collective purity this morning, wasn't it? We must love God fully. And this is part of the daily confession that the Jews made at that time every morning and every evening, and devout Jews continue to do that even today. And so this was called the Shema, which literally means to hear. Shema is to hear. And this is from Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 4 to 5, where it's written, hear, Shemema, O Israel, the Lord 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. The greatest commandment, according to Jesus, is to listen to God and to love him holistically. We're not going to go and narrow down into heart, soul, mind, strength today. Love God holistically. Love Him with our whole being. Not say one thing, do another. Love God with our whole being. Love Him holistically. Jesus places love for God before every other duty. Before reading your Bible, before attending our worship service this morning, before giving to the poor and needy, love for God comes before all other duties. We have to love him in our entirety, our desires and our thoughts, our motives, our willpower, our energy and our skills and our abilities. We need to love him on Saturdays and Sundays and on Mondays and Tuesdays and all through the week. Our love for God should be reflected in every area of our life. And this most greatest commandment, it's complemented by the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. It's not a new commandment. This came even from Leviticus. Leviticus chapter 19, verse 18, it says, You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. Loving your neighbor, it is an optional advanced Christianity. It's a necessary complement to loving God holistically. Because if we love God, we'll love what He loves and hate what He hates. God loves humanity. Underneath what sometimes seems like quite a layer of mud and moral filth that seems to cover so many people. Under this is God's creation. A creation that when he was done creating, he declared good. And each one of humanity is made in the image of God. God loves us so much that he sent Jesus to die for us, that we could be washed clean, that what's broken inside of us could be fixed, so that we can worship him and love him. Right? But this is not this is not the whole thing. It doesn't just say to love your neighbor, it says to love your neighbor as yourself. This isn't an excuse to be selfish, but it informs us how we are to love our neighbor. Just as we you know we've experienced the love of God for ourselves, we should be showing that same love to others. Just as God truly cares for our needs, so we need to consider the needs of our neighbors to be valid. These are real needs, these are important needs. We love others because God first loved us. Now, I don't know how many of us here this morning can kind of identify with Sam, the religious scholar, struggling with so many do's and do-nots at times. Do not cheat, do not lie, do not lust, do not swear, do attend worship service every week, do tithe, do give to the poor, do memorize scripture, do pray, do, do, do this. There's a lot of things, right? If you're having trouble keeping up with all of the do and do nots, if you feel perhaps you're at times blindly obeying but feeling a bit empty on the inside, then Jesus' response to Sam is the response for us, the answer for us as well. Focus on loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself. Come back to these foundational things, because these are the greatest commandments. If we do this right, all the other things are going to fall into place. All right, but here's the thing we're gonna look at our passage one more time, and just the last few verses. So if you're following along, we're at verse 32 in Mark chapter 12. And the scribes said to him, You are right, teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. And to love him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, You are not far from the kingdom of God. Recognizing the greatest commandment to love God and to love your neighbor as yourselves, it brings you close to the kingdom of God. Jesus said, You are not far from the kingdom of God. But it didn't, it didn't actually bring him into the kingdom of God. Did you notice that? The law shows us how to live, but even when we distill all the law into this great commandment, it's still too much for us to live out. I think no one here can claim that every day I have faithfully loved God throughout the day. No one here, let's be honest, has said that we have loved our neighbor day after day after day. We can't say it. So, what's the point of a law that we can't live up to? What is the most important thing? The law doesn't rescue us from our sinfulness, the law reveals our need for a savior. The law reveals our need for Jesus Christ. And only in Jesus are we able to say no to sin and yes to God. And if you remember nothing else this morning, I want you to remember this. The most important thing is to surrender to Jesus. The most important thing is to surrender to Jesus. It's in Jesus that we find wholeness, it's in Jesus we find healing. It's in Jesus we find purpose. It's in Jesus we find our identity, it's in Jesus we find a sense of value, it's in Jesus that we find the strength and wisdom to worship God, it's in Jesus that we find the compassion to love our neighbor. Jesus is our all in all. The most important thing is to surrender to Jesus. In the 1970s, Faisto Kivanger was the bishop and then later the archbishop of Uganda during the terrible days of Edi Amin. I don't know if you're familiar with that name. This Edi Amin, who he claimed to be Lord of all beasts of the earth and fishes of the sea. And he brought about the torture and execution of thousands of people, many of whom belonged to the Anglican church that Bishop Kivenger led. Before Edi Amin was driven from power, Bishop Kivenger was asked a question, and this this question this was recorded for us. What would you do if you found yourself with a loaded gun in the presence of Edi? Amin. And the bishop answered, I would hand the gun to President Amin and say, I think this is your weapon. It is not mine. Mine is love. Bishop Kivinger's words remind us that Christians must love God and love our neighbor. Religious activity cannot substitute for love. And we can't maintain such a love on our own. It's only in Jesus that we can find our freedom, freedom to love as we should love. And we're to love vertically to God, horizontally to others. And yes, inwardly we are meant to love ourselves in the way that God has loved us. And we are to do it in that order. And when we do so, we agree with God. We agree with what God has said. But for many of us, we've we've somehow put that order, we've reversed it. We love first ourselves, then maybe our neighbor, some, and lastly God. And I think this morning, uh, you know, there may be two types of people here. There's those of us who have yet to truly experience the love of God, and there's those of us who have yet to show that love to others. Christ is the answer to both these groups. Christ is the answer. God the Son came to earth and took on human flesh, and he lived a perfect life, pleasing to God, and he didn't sin even once. He lived a perfect life. And he was put to death, which is the penalty for sin, even though he was blameless. He took the death penalty for us. And it's through Christ that we see the love of God in a tangible way. It was a very sacrificial love. It was a love that was fully in obedience to God. It was a love that was expressed to others. And it's through Christ that we receive our cleansing from sin. It's through Christ that we find the freedom to do what pleases God. And it's in the love of God through Christ Jesus that we're able to love others. Christ is to be our all and all. My friends, my brothers and sisters in the faith, we need to continue coming back and asking the Lord to be our all in all, to help us to love God as we should, to not get that order flipped around, but to put our love for God first, to love our neighbor. All right, let's. I sometimes have a struggle loving my neighbor. We have one neighbor, a physical neighbor down the corridor where the door is always open and the child is always screaming, and we don't need to go into specifics, but this is probably a neighbor not so easy to love. In my humanity, I just want to say they should do what's right. They should take care of their business. They should at least shut their door when they're going through things. But that would be my writing my own code for living, wouldn't it? What does God expect of me? Love God, love my neighbor. Not just the neighbors that are easy to love, not just the people who are very easy to get along with. And perhaps some of you, even right now, you're feeling just a little a little nudge of conviction from the Holy Spirit. There's someone that you also know, you struggle to love them. I want to ask you to join me now. We're just gonna close this with prayer. And if you have someone in mind, I want you just to silently ask the Lord for his love to love that person. Have a blessed day.