THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT - All Your Heart // One Church Podcast, 10th November 2025

We are one church. We love God, love people, love

His mission, and love His church.

Welcome to the One Church podcast.

Well. Many years ago as a a teacher, I

used to be a primary school teacher.

Some of you might know that before I came to lead one church

or to lead the church here with David.

And I used to do a lot of assemblies because a lot of the

teachers in the schools that I worked in, they didn't really

love doing assemblies, particularly for the whole

school. And I loved it.

And so it was a great opportunity as well to share

Jesus with the children. And I remember 1 Christmas

writing a song. I used to people used to think I

was really good, you know, the children thought because I used

to teach 5 year olds. So they thought I was great at

everything. You know, you're really good at

drawing, you're really good at playing guitar and so on.

I wasn't very good really, but I wrote this song, played it with

my guitar and all the school were in and the teachers were

sat down the side and really the lyrics, I felt very, very

strongly. And the lyrics went something

like, is there room in your heart this Christmas for Jesus?

Because it was all about Mary and Joseph trying to find a

space to have Jesus. Is there room in your heart for

him? And that is a really good

question. Is there room in your heart for

Jesus, or is it full of actually lots of other things we might be

saying to God? And I've heard many people say,

Lord, we want more of you, we want more of you, we want more

of you. But what about saying to God,

Lord, have more of me, Lord, have more of me, have more of

me, have more of my heart. Now today is simple and it's

challenging. This is always how Jesus

teaches. Have you noticed that in the

Gospels how Jesus always teaches in a way that is both simple but

also so deep and so deeply challenging to us?

And last Sunday, wow, what a precious holy moment.

And for quite a few of us who are maybe new to faith or new to

1 church, that might have been the first time we were part of a

Vision Sunday, part of a A1 church vision offering.

To me, it always seems like an altar.

It seems like we come and we bring not just our finances, in

fact, in fact, that's not the main thing.

The main thing is we bring ourselves again, we bring our

hearts. The Bible talks a lot about

altars as a place of sacrifice, a place of worship, a place of

dedication, a place where we come and we bring all we are.

It used to be animals that were sacrificed on an altar before

God, if you read the Old Testament.

Nowadays, because of what Jesus has done his once for all

substitutionary death on the cross, we no longer need to

sacrifice animals, praise the Lord.

That would be very messy, wouldn't it?

In here we were going to do that, but now we bring ourselves

to the altar because we bring everything we are unreservedly.

I'd like to say that the altar is for both the best parts of us

and the worst parts of us. We don't have to be fully sorted

in order to come and lay our lives before God, because He's

interested in US bringing the good and the not yet mended, the

bits of us that are healed up and all our mess as well.

It's a place where we just lay down all of us, and we receive

all of Him because that is what is required.

Wholehearted devotion. It's like King David in the Old

Testament where he said the people were bringing their

offerings to build the temple for God.

And he said this, he said in one Chronicles 29, Who will

consecrate to themselves to the Lord today?

It sort of fits with David's words last week about devoting

ourselves. And this is the whole theme of

today because today marks the beginning of a new teaching

series in the life of one church.

And I wonder, do you want to know how to please God?

Yeah. Do you want to know what's the

one thing that Jesus said we need to remember the greatest

commandment according to Jesus himself?

Well, let's just find out. As it says in Mark 12, this one

of the teachers of the law came and asked Jesus, of all the

commandments, which is the most important?

The most important one answered, Jesus, is this.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is 1 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. Love your neighbour as yourself.

There is no commandment greater than these.

So Jesus says. To love the Lord your God with

all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love your

neighbour as yourself is #1 priority for every single

person. There were 613 commandments in

those days in the Jewish law. Over half of those were

negative. So they were the You shalt not,

you know, you shall not do this, you should not do that, You

should not do that. But Jesus gets straight to the

point, as we've said, simple, challenging.

And he says it's all about two movements of your heart.

It's about the movement upwards, the vertical movement to love

God with all your heart. And he said it's about the

horizontal movement to love your neighbour as yourself.

And they both go together. You know, at one church we

always say we love God and we love people.

They're really intertwined and over the next few weeks we're

going to explore just what it means to love God with all your

soul. To think about our practises,

our rhythms of devotion, living a life that will centre around

Jesus. To love God with all our mind,

our thinking. To love God with all our

strength, our actions, our energy, our lives lived out in

the world where God has put us and to love our neighbour as

ourself. So sounds a pretty challenging

series coming towards Christmas. And that is great because we're

going to be stirred up. But today we're coming to the

very fundamental, the start of it all, to love you, the Lord

your God with all your heart. The Jewish audience listening to

Jesus would immediately recognise the Shama from

Deuteronomy 6, verse 5. They would quote it every single

Deuteronomy 6:5

day. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our

God, the Lord is 1 Love the Lord your God with all your heart,

with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your

strength. The Hebrew word heart is Lev.

It has various Bible meanings. It means the physical organ of

the heart, which in those days they probably wouldn't

understand so much as we do now about the heart being an organ

that pumps blood around the body and brings life to everything.

But they did understand it was very important.

They had no word for the brain in Hebrew, so all thinking was

also seen to take place in the heart.

The Bible talks about knowing in your heart, about wisdom being

in your heart. And Hebrew thinking also was

that emotion has it's seat in the heart.

The heart is where you feel pain.

In fact the phrase broken hearted is actually from the

Hebrew also. Fear was seen to be in your

heart, distress, even depression, and then on the

other side also joy. A good heart and Hebrew thinking

also says that your heart is where you make choices.

This is very important because our choices come out of the

desires that are in our very innermost being, in our heart.

So the heart was a very all-encompassing sort of phrase.

To love God with all your heart means everything inside us laid

before God. He's the one we desire.

He's the one who forms our ambitions, our decisions.

He's the focus of our thoughts, of our actions, of everything.

He is all. So let's just briefly look at

this verse again. Love the Lord.

He is Lord. Why are we to love him with all

our heart? Because He is All in all, one

God and Father of all, who is over all and in all and through

all. Ephesians 4.

He is the one true living God, and He is the Lord.

But that's not all. He's not just a distant dictator

up somewhere telling us what to do.

He is personal. In the Bible it talks about

that. He's always the God who comes

down. He's always the God who reaches

down to us and it says love the Lord your God.

He's not just God, He is my God. He is our God.

He is our ABBA. Jesus talked about his Father in

heaven as his ABBA, his daddy. And in Jesus we can have that

relationship with our living God.

He is our God. Will I give my all for his All

in all. And we're to love him with all

our heart, with all your heart, Jesus says he said in the Sermon

on the Mount. Blessed are the pure in heart,

for they will see God. What does pure mean?

Well, single, focused, wholehearted, set apart,

consecrated, devoted. Think of those sort of words.

It means just completely given over to him.

David in the Psalms cries out, creating me a pure heart, Oh

God, and renewable, steadfast spirit within me.

I wonder, is that your cry today?

If we get our hearts right, if we love him with all our heart,

if our hearts are full of all the right things, what comes out

of us will be right, will be pure.

Now each week in this series that we're doing before

Christmas, we're going to also look as part of our messages at

a person in the Bible who exemplifies something of what

that particular way to love God looks like.

So today we're just thinking briefly about James.

James, who was the brother of Jesus, ought to be more

accurate, the half brother. They were both the son of Mary,

but James's father was Joseph, and Jesus father, of course, was

God. In terms of his heart for Jesus,

James did not start very well. In fact, he seemed to reject

Jesus mission throughout his ministry on the earth.

And if you remember, if you've read the gospels, you'll know he

was probably with the family group, with the mother and the

brothers who came at one point when Jesus is in the full flow

of his ministry and they come to try and take him away because

they say he's going crazy. They say, oh you're mad, you're

out of your mind. But after Jesus death and

resurrection, we find that something has happened to James.

We see him praying with the disciples, waiting for the Holy

Spirit to come. We see him a few years later

leading the church in Jerusalem. Read about that in the book of

Acts, showing great wisdom, discernment.

And in the Bible there is a book called James, and it's actually

by this James. He wrote it, and it starts with

the words James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus

Christ. So something has changed in

James. Something has changed his heart.

What has changed him? Well, read what Apostle Paul

says in One Corinthians 15. He's explaining really all about

Jesus is saying, I'm going to tell you what's really

important. Jesus died for our sins.

He was buried. He was raised on the third day

according to the Scriptures. Then he appeared to Peter and

then the 12:00 and after that he appeared to more than 500 of the

brothers and sisters. And then it says he appeared to

James. Then he appeared to James.

Just a little sentence, but it seems like Jesus was kind enough

to give James a personal visit when he'd risen from the dead.

He appeared to James personally and it changed him.

James heart changed in an encounter with the risen Jesus.

Now he saw Jesus entirely differently, not just as his

brother, but as his Lord. And you know, our hearts can be

changed today in an encounter with the risen Jesus.

He's here in this room by the power of his Holy Spirit.

You may think he's far from you, but he's absolutely so close to

you and he's here to encounter you today.

And you're you can go out of here and your heart can be

changed. James went on to become a man of

whole hearted devotion and great influence because when our

hearts are loving Jesus, loving God with the whole of them, our

life works. Do you know that our life all

works? And he taught a lot about the

heart. His, his words often sound,

people say, like Jesus, words he'd obviously imbibed so much

that Jesus had said he sounds like Jesus.

And often people talk about the book of James as being one that

talks about, well, faith without works is dead.

It's important that you outwork your faith.

And yes, it's about that, but it's about something deeper than

that as well. It's not just a book about

action, but about the source of the action.

Where does what we do come from? It comes out of the heart.

This is 1 passage from the book of James.

This is the sort of thing that James said, Who is wise and

understanding among you? Let them show it by their good

life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.

But if you harbour bitter envy and selfish ambition in your

hearts, there it is in your hearts.

Do not boast about it or deny the truth.

Such wisdom does not come down from heaven, but is earthly and

spiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and

selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil

practise. But the wisdom that comes from

heaven is first of all pure, then peace, loving, considerate,

submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and

sincere peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of

righteousness. And this passage just reflects

what all the Bible says and what Jesus said.

The source of our life is our heart.

Proverb says above all else, guard your heart for it.

From it flows the wellspring of life.

Everything else flows out of where your heart is, if you

like. This is a tale in this passage

of two hearts. 1 heart full of self.

One heart full of wisdom and understanding that comes from

being full of Jesus. The heart full of self.

It says if you harbour bitter envy and selfish ambition in

your hearts, in other words, if you're full of self, focused on

me, looking at others to compare to envy not to love, what comes

from that heart? It says well what comes out of

it is disorder and every evil practise.

One heart full of wisdom and understanding.

What comes from that heart? The wisdom that comes from

heaven is pure, peace, loving, considerate, submissive, full of

mercy, good fruit, impartial and sincere.

Wow, what a beautiful list. Which of those two hearts would

you rather have? This is heavenly wisdom if you

like Jesus very self filling our heart and what comes out when

he's on the throne of our heart is good fruit.

So what's the state of our heart?

What you might want to ask, what's the state of my heart?

What tale does my heart tell? Just look at the fruit.

Ask yourself, is my heart me focused?

Is it open to being tossed around, swayed here and there

and everywhere unsettled? Is it open to things that are

wrong? Is it living for the here and

now? Or is my heart filled with

Jesus? Focused on God, focused on His

plans, His purposes, His life, focused on others?

Living not just for this life, but living and investing for

eternity. Which heart do you desire?

It starts with the heart, and out of that flows all the things

we'll talk about the next few weeks.

All my soul, my true worship, my life anchored in devotion,

emotions coming in line with what God says, His word.

Good decisions, good rhythms, good practises, a beautiful

peace filled life. What about all my mind?

Minds that believe the truth, that look at questions head on,

that are not afraid of what comes, that live free from fear,

free from condemnation, that think good things, that are

faith filled and Jesus filled and where strongholds are

broken. Hearts that are full of

strength. All my strength.

Our energy, our work for Him, wherever that takes place, our

time, the very focus of our lives.

And then out to loving our neighbour.

The heart is where it starts though, because the heart is the

wellspring of life. Jesus is after our hearts first.

Jesus himself said, as we know, I've just, I've just read it.

Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.

And he knew that because he lived it, an undivided pure

heart. He didn't just quote the verse,

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.

He lived it. He lived it out every moment.

And you know, when we see someone living out what they

say, we believe them, don't we? We believe it and we want to do

it. He showed a life of complete

devotion. His Heavenly Father filled his

heart, filled his practises, filled his thoughts, his

actions. So he even went to that awful

cross for you and for me. Let's just look at our own heart

today. Search me, oh God says the

Psalms, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious

thoughts. If we're in him, we're in new

creation. Praise the Lord.

The old has gone, it says, and the new has come.

And you know, the Christian life is full of the suddenlies and

the gradual. There's a sudden change when we

first come to Jesus, and there's this gradual being transformed

into his image and being filled with Him more and more.

And that's true for our heart. Our heart is made new when we

first come to know Jesus, and our heart goes on being changed.

And if we're living right and we're focused on Him, then it

will go on being changed and enlarged and filled with Him

more and more. So just ask yourself today, is

my heart full of Jesus? Is there room for Him in my

heart? Is He on the throne of my heart?

We've sung a lot of songs today about Him being Lord, Him being

on the throne, seated on the throne.

Is it seated on the throne of my heart, or is something else on

that throne or something else like creeping onto the throne

and squeezing him out? And we need to get rid of it or

we need to lessen something. What needs to change?

You know, there's this cry through the Bible.

Make my heart undivided. Teach me your way, it says in

Psalm 86. Then I may rely on your

faithfulness. Give me an undivided heart that

I may fear your name. And God gives an amazing

promise, is a promise to the Israelites in the Old Testament

and now in Christ. It's a promise to you and me.

He says in Ezekiel, I will give them an undivided heart and put

a new spirit within them. I will remove from them their

heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.

Do you feel like your heart's like a stone today?

Well, he can come through his Holy Spirit.

He can soften our hearts today. We just have to be willing.

Do I want this heart undivided? I don't know.

Do you remember seaside rock? I don't know if anybody

remember, I don't mean rocks at the seaside, but that sort of

rock. It was like a suite.

I grew up in Whitley Bay, Tyne and Weir and Weir and Weir, the

lads and they, they used to sell that rock on the sea front and

it was like really great for your teeth.

I'm sure dentists love it because you could suck on it for

hours and it's literally just sugar.

But there was a pink outside and there was a white inside, and

then there was writing all the way through.

And wherever you broke that rock open, you might want to share it

with your friends. It would still say in the

middle, well, in my case, Whitley Bay.

But is your heart like a stick of rock?

Wherever it's broken, wherever it's broken open, does it say

Jesus inside? Is that what shows?

Is Jesus through it all? Is he your focus?

Is he how we make decisions on our career?

Do we put him first? Who I marry or what?

Vote marry? My priorities in life?

How I spend time? How I spend the money he gives

me? Are there some things that maybe

if I want him to be my All in all, I won't do as much?

Are there some things I won't do at all anymore?

I'm trying not to be too specific about this because I

believe the Holy Spirit will speak to each one of us as He

chooses to speak to us. Are there some things that I'll

get rid of? There's some things that will

simply just lose their hold on me if I become filled more and

more with the love of Jesus because I love him first.

And you know, there's a bit more than that because to love him

with all my heart is extravagant.

It's over the top. Yes, He is Lord.

And we can say today here 01 church, the Lord is God.

Yes, the Lord is Lord is the Lord.

He's the Lord your God. So we bow and worship him.

He's all powerful and he's all loving and we can know him in

Jesus. He's now my ABBA.

He's all powerful and loving. And this is no cold decision in

that case, because he loves me. He loves me and I love him.

I wonder if you've ever been in love?

I'm still in love with a man called David, but I love David

from when he first walked into the classroom where I was

teaching young children and taught to me about coming to my

church because he'd just become a Christian.

And, you know, my whole life turned upside down.

I was so unsettled even by that first meeting that I forgot to

do my dinner duty. I was supposed to be going to do

like duty in the hall while the children had their lunch and I

forgot to go. And you know, that's what is

this a picture of our relationship with Jesus.

If you like, you know, if it doesn't affect us, then we need

to, we need to be asking him to fill us again with his love.

Because I found it so unsettling, beautiful, amazing,

life changing to be in love. And David gave me gifts and

Jesus gives us gifts. David gave me a bowl of fruit.

That was the first gift he gave me.

I think he thought flowers would be a bit too obvious and a bit

like, over the top because we've not known each other very long.

So he gave me a bowl of fruit. Very touching.

I thought of it every time I I ate one of those apples.

He gave me a teddy. He gave me a teapot.

Unusual gifts, yeah. But I was really more bothered

about him, about spending time with him every moment I could.

In fact, sometimes I'd sneak off from work at lunchtime and just

go and see him, just for 1/4 of an hour because I didn't want to

stay away from him for too long. And after a while, he gave me a

ring. It got more serious about making

promises, committing to a lifetime together.

And you know, I know not every one of us has had this

experience of being in love or we have a painful memory, maybe

from that I've known broken relationships or loneliness.

But I'm just using this as a picture of our relationship, the

relationship we can all have with Jesus.

Because when it came to the wedding and the arrangements

were not my focus, I did care a bit about the clothes and the

food, but not that much really. It was more about the groom.

It was more about him. It was more about the the, the

worship of it. And I know we put a lot into the

service, but also I was excited to give up my name.

I was Miss Hepple, Susan Hepple. In fact, the children in my

class used to often get that wrong.

So parents evenings the parents would come and say oh hello,

Missus Heckle. It's like, no, that's not my

name or Missus Mopple. I got called all sorts.

Missus Kettle, that was another one.

So I was quite glad actually to become Missus Hind.

It was a lot more like convenient, apart from the fact

that David's mum worked in the next door classroom to me.

So it was like Missus Hind and Missus Hind, which is very

confusing because I knew her before I knew David.

So I had to be Mrs Hepelheim for a while.

But what I'm saying is I was excited to give up my name for

his name. Are you excited to give up your

name for the name of Jesus? Are you in love?

Because human love is limited, but we're all made for a

bridegroom and his name is Jesus.

So are we in love with him? You know, are we churned up?

Are we changed? Ask him to do it again.

Ask him to fill your heart with his love.

Today in the diary of Adrian Plus he talks about being in his

church. And this very serious, very like

condemnatory preacher came to the church and he basically like

thumped on the pulpit and said, you miserable sinners, you ever

heard a preacher like that? You worms, you are so sinful,

you know, and what if Jesus came into this room right now?

He can see where you were last night.

He can see what you were doing. He can see into your hearts.

He can see all the evil, miserable things that you do.

He can see all your thoughts. And Adrian Placid in his diary

says, well, I tried to be really repentant and I tried to be

really sad about my sin. But actually I got a bit carried

away just thinking about the whole thought of Jesus coming

into the room. Are you in love with him?

You know, what sort of bride are we becoming as individuals and

as a church? Will we be laid down?

Make room for more of him, Bring our all and lay it on the altar,

and then we will change. And the altar is also the

operating table. So if we're willing to come and

lay on this altar, we're also saying we're willing to trust

the surgeon who has a knife. And in the kindest possible way,

we'll cut into our heart and we'll open up our motives, open

up the things, take away the things that need to go.

And he'll do everything to make us whole, to make us bigger, if

you like, inside, to be able to hold more of him, more

wholehearted. And in the Old Testament, often

when people brought an offering to the altar, it's it will say

that the there was worship and then it will say the fire fell

and consumed the burnt offering. And, you know, if we're willing

to come and lay on the altar, the fire will come and we will

be consumed by him. So I wonder if you hear his

voice today. I wonder if you can hear his

knock at the door. This is what Revelation says.

Those whom I love, I repent. I rebuke, sorry and discipline.

So be earnest and repent. Here I am.

This is what Jesus says today. I stand at the door and knock.

If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in

and eat with that person and they with me.

And there's a picture there by William Holman Hunt.

There's weeds around the door that need to be pushed away.

And there is no handle on the outside because the handle is on

the inside. Because when Jesus knocks at our

the door of our heart, it's us that have to open it.

It's us that have to say, come in.

You know, if you're here today and you've never really

experienced this love, you don't know what it means to actually

follow Jesus, to war with Jesus, as many in this room are found

to be the greatest joy ever and to know eternal life, to know

that we're going to go to be with him when we die, then

there's no reason why you can't find him today because he's done

it all. He's done everything needed, and

there's some here. And once you walked with him and

you knew this love and your Love's grown cold.

In fact, the context of those verses is around the church in

Laodicea where Jesus says you've become lukewarm.

And today he stands at the door of our heart and he knocks on

the door. So let's just pray.

This is particularly a prayer for anybody here, and you're

saying, I want to come to Jesus for the first time or I want to

come back to Jesus. Well, Lord Jesus, I thank you

that you have done everything so I can have a relationship with

God. I thank you that you came to the

cross, you died, you rose again. And Lord, now you're knocking at

the door of my heart. And Lord, I want to say, Lord

Jesus, come into my heart. Lord Jesus, come in.

I'm sorry. I repent for the things that

I've done that were wrong and every way I've rebelled against

you. And I invite you to come into my

life to be my Saviour, to be my Lord.

And Lord, for those who wandered away, I say, Lord, I'm coming

back to you today. Lord, come into my heart, fill

me again. The Lord bless you and keep you.

The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you.

The Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace.