Deut 6:4+5, "Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! "And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 
    	This morning we begin to deal with the most powerful and wonderful and amazing and life-altering statement in the whole of scripture. It is the basis of everything that we know about God and about our relationship with Him. It is the most foundational reality and wondrous declaration of truth that was ever uttered by human lips. "Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! "And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
	We will not be looking at this in a comprehensive manner, since it will take all of eternity to fully explore this glorious reality. However, we will deal briefly with the first verse this week and then follow up with the second verse next week, Lord willing, in order to continue forward in our reading of this Book of Deuteronomy. We do so knowing that we will not even slightly be able to do justice to the magnitude of the wealth of the knowledge of God herein detailed in this passage. 
We could spend the rest of our time on earth just scratching the surface of what is encapsulated by this verse. All of eternity will not be sufficient to describe the fullness of what God so declared of Himself. God’s majesty is proclaimed to humankind throughout all the ages of those who are reading these mystical and astounding and extraordinary and startling and miraculous words of the Lord God Almighty to such as you and me.
	 This glorious statement consists of the following magnificent and majestic and awesome certainties. First is that there is only One God, One True Living Lord God Almighty. There is not a god of the sun, another of the moon, a god of the harvest, and a god of the ocean, etc. There is Only One God. Yahweh, Jehovah, The Lord God Almighty. He is Omniscient. He is Omnipresent. He is Omnipotent. There is no other!
	Second, not only is He the true and living God, but He is our personal God Who delights in relationship. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, the nation of Israel, and through His Only Begotten Son, He is the God of all those who believe upon Him for eternal life. As well, He is the Holy and Righteous God Who will faithfully render judgment upon those who refuse to believe in Him and will be forced to acknowledge Him as the Only Lord and God at that time. He is the God Who created us for a living connection with Himself in His Only Begotten Son. He is Our God, yesterday, today, and forevermore!
	Let us look at these two actualities in a little more detail. The primary and overriding one is that He is the Only God. No matter how many deities man may worship of his imagination, there is only One Living Lord God Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth.
	This was reinforced with the Lord’s people over and over again, as was detailed earlier in this book. As an example, consider Deut 4:35, when all the wonders that God had done were recounted for the people in order to reinforce this truth. 
Deut 4:35, "To you it was shown that you might know that the Lord, He is God; there is no other besides Him. 
      	In the declaration of all the glorious work of God to the Children of Israel, Moses was giving them the proof that there was no other true god among all the tribes and nations of mankind. Only Jehovah could so show Himself to the people whom He had chosen unto Himself from among all the sons of men. The detailed provision of His power and His mercy through Abraham down to the present generation of the Tribes of Israel more than evidenced the manifestation of His singleness of Being the True God of all Creation.
	The Prophet Nehemiah again reinforced this in Neh 9:5b+6, as he described how the Levites were to declare the glory of the One True and Living Lord God Almighty. In this passage, they proclaim all that God has created and how all of creation acknowledges Him.
Neh 9:5b+6, "Arise, bless the Lord your God forever and ever! O may Thy glorious name be blessed And exalted above all blessing and praise! "Thou alone art the Lord. Thou hast made the heavens, The heaven of heavens with all their host, The earth and all that is on it, The seas and all that is in them. Thou dost give life to all of them And the heavenly host bows down before Thee. 
      	The next Prophet for us to consider in this light is the Prophet Isaiah as he frequently announced, reinforced, admonished, and proclaimed the all-encompassing and overruling truth of the preeminence and the sovereignty and the awesomeness of the One True and Living God as He interacted with His Chosen people. This reality needs to be the very core of our lives and the purpose with which our lives are conducted on this earth.
	Listen to the focus that the Lord set before His people through the prophet as in Isa 43:10-13. Isa 43:10-13, "You are My witnesses," declares the Lord, "And My servant whom I have chosen, In order that you may know and believe Me, And understand that I am He. Before Me there was no God formed, And there will be none after Me. "I, even I, am the Lord; And there is no savior besides Me. "It is I who have declared and saved and proclaimed, And there was no strange god among you; So you are My witnesses," declares the Lord, "And I am God. "Even from eternity I am He; And there is none who can deliver out of My hand; I act and who can reverse it?" 
	Just as Moses told the people in this morning’s passage, Hear, O Israel! So the Lord set it before His nation that they could know and understand this truth, this reality. He was not hiding from them the magnificence of the fact that He wanted them to know Him. Hear, O Israel! …In order that you may know and believe Me, And understand that I am He… 
God wants His people to know the truth. There is no other god to serve or to worship who is the Living, Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and Omniscient, Creator of All that is created! He, Alone, is God!
	This fact in itself is such a marvelous and miraculous reality. Think about it! Selah as the psalmist caused his readers to stop and consider with great and deliberate and searching hearts and minds. Selah! God, the Lord God, The Only Living God wants us to know Him in such a marvelous and personal manner. He makes Himself known to us through the works that He does for us. He opens His heart of love to us in so many tremendous and awe-inspiring ways. He cares for us and He makes the every provision for us so that we would want to know and to love Him. Selah!
	The Prophet Isaiah continues to give voice to the heart of God in Isa 44:6-8 in the deliberate declaration of Who He is and all that He does for His people. Isa 44:6-8, "Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel And his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: 'I am the first and I am the last, And there is no God besides Me. 'And who is like Me? Let him proclaim and declare it; Yes, let him recount it to Me in order, From the time that I established the ancient nation. And let them declare to them the things that are coming And the events that are going to take place. 'Do not tremble and do not be afraid; Have I not long since announced it to you and declared it? And you are My witnesses. Is there any God besides Me, Or is there any other Rock? I know of none.'" 
    	Again, in Isa 45:5-7, the Lord makes this same declaration in order to emphasize for full effect with His people the reality of why they were even created. God wants men to know Him and we should know Him through all the works that He does in order to establish the foundational truth of His manifest presence and essence. 
Isa 45:5-7, "I am the Lord, and there is no other; Besides Me there is no God. I will gird you, though you have not known Me; That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun That there is no one besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other, The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these. 
    	The next prophet through whom the Lord spoke in declaring the fact of there only being one true living Lord God was Jeremiah. Please turn to Jeremiah 10:10-13, and let us read together the reinforcement of the veracity and certainty that there is only the Lord God Almighty, Yahweh, to Whom all of creation owes its allegiance and its existence. 
	Jer 10:10-13, But the Lord is the true God; He is the living God and the everlasting King. At His wrath the earth quakes, And the nations cannot endure His indignation. Thus you shall say to them, "The gods that did not make the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens." It is He who made the earth by His power, Who established the world by His wisdom; And by His understanding He has stretched out the heavens. When He utters His voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, And He causes the clouds to ascend from the end of the earth; He makes lightning for the rain, And brings out the wind from His storehouses. 
	This is such a wondrous and amazing description of Our Lord God Almighty in terms of how He has designed and created all those elements that are necessary to keep life going on this planet. The whole spectrum of the created universe should just cause awe to envelop and to infuse our hearts and minds at the fact that He so regards His created beings, with all the deliberate and manifested expressions of His Sovereign grace and mercy and power.
	This then brings us in to the New Testament with the very same consideration of our morning’s passage expounded upon by the very Son of God, Himself, Our Lord and Savior. This is detailed in Mark 12:28-31. 
Mark 12:28-31, And one of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, "What commandment is the foremost of all?" 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.' There is no other commandment greater than these." 
	Again Our Lord calls to mind the fact that we are to know and to pay attention to the truth that there is only One God and that He is a most personal God. There is no other! This is the essence of the greatness of this commandment. Without knowing and recognizing this certainty, nothing else that we think or do has any basis in truth or reality. It is only as our entire universal truth is centered in the One Who has created everything and upholds it by the power of His Being, that we can live our lives unto the fullness of His design for them.
	Jesus reinforced this for us in what we call His High Priestly Prayer. This is recorded in the 17th Chapter of the Gospel of John, specifically verses 1-3. 
John 17:1-3, These things Jesus spoke; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify Thy Son, that the Son may glorify Thee, even as Thou gavest Him authority over all mankind, that to all whom Thou hast given Him, He may give eternal life. "And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. 
    	"And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. It is as we know the only true God that we can ever hope to have any life, manifest, everlasting, and eternal life. 
We may think that this is all a most basic and simple thing to look at, but it is the all-encompassing depth of why Jesus Christ had to come to this earth and to die such an ignoble and pain filled death on the cross. He is the true witness, in His life and death and most especially in His resurrection, of exactly Who God is and what He has done for His creation. 
	This age is so filled with all its false deities and idols and useless and lifeless gods of human imagination and deceit. There is such a relentless and calculated and malicious effort to minimize and to distract and to hide the truth of the One True and Living God by Whom all has its being. Jesus showed the truth to all who would choose to see. If we see Him as the Only Begotten Son of God, sent from the heart of The Heavenly Father, to bring all those who believe upon Him into the very family of God, the Only Living, Loving, True God, then we have eternal life in His immediate presence. We will know Him and we will love Him.
	The Apostle Paul highlighted this throughout his letters such as in his first letter to the Church at Corinth, Chapter 8, verses 4-6. 1 Cor 8:4-6, Therefore concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world, and that there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him. 
    	This world creates manifold gods and idols unto itself, but the truth is that there is only One God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and all those whom He has chosen unto Himself. He sent His Only Begotten Son to show all His chosen ones the truth through Him, through Jesus. In the reality of Christ, the entire message of why we are even in existence is answered and defined as life everlasting. 
	And finally, in 1 Tim 2:5+6, the validity of there being only One True God and only one mediator between Our God and man is again highlighted. 1 Tim 2:5+6, For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony borne at the proper time. 
	Next time, Lord willing, we will deal with the fact that the One True Living Lord God Almighty is a personal God Who desires to have a relationship with His creation. He did not just create mankind and then leave the scene, as some teach. He is here with us, working in us, seeking to make our lives the fulfillment of all that He has planned and purposed for us in Jesus Christ. So be it!
"Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! "And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Amen!

This morning’s benediction is Isa 43:25. "I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake; And I will not remember your sins. Amen.