Welcome to the Daily Blade.

The Word of God is described as the sword of the spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil.

Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight.

Let's sharpen up.

All right, welcome back to the Daily Blade. This week, we are going to take a look at evaluating

ourselves. It is the new year, happy new year. I know we're a couple weeks into it,

but hey, it's still the new year. Oftentimes you'll hear this phrase, new year, new you.

And that's fine. I'm actually, in Christ Jesus, you are a new creation. So the real

question is, are you living that way? And while I'm not a big New Year's resolution guy, I do think

this is a good time of year to evaluate your life based on what Jesus said was most important.

In the gospel, the lawyer comes up to Jesus and says, all right, Jesus,

of all the commandments in the whole Bible, and there were 613 to choose from, what is the most

important commandment? And then Jesus is going to quote Deuteronomy chapter 6. It's called the Shema.

And then he also quotes Leviticus 19 and says, love your neighbor, as yourself, and kind of tax that on. But I want to go back to what Jesus says, the most important commandment in all the Bible is. Deuteronomy chapter 6. It's called the Shema because the first word of it is here. And the Hebrew word for here is Shema. And it doesn't just mean like, listen. Like, do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth? It was like when my daddy used to tell me, listen to me, boy, that means heed and hear. You're going to hear what I say, and then you're going to do something about it. So here it is. Here, oh, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Now, here's what you have to understand. That word one here in Hebrew is echad. It doesn't just mean

number one. It means one in essence. It's like not just God is number one on your list, but God is the

page on which you would write your list. And so he says, here it is. Hero Israel, the Lord our God,

the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord of your God with all your heart,

with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on

your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children 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. So here's what

the Shama is saying,

is that when you see God for who he really is, the one true God, then the normative right

...