Just about everyone who believes in God believes there is a breach between Him and us. I suppose some aren't sure that He is a He. Others are not sure He is only one, either, but I would bet just about everyone admits there is some kind of gap between God and us and the way things are supposed to be.

I'm not going too far out on a limb to say this. I don't know anyone who thinks life on earth is perfect. I don't think I could find anyone who would say, "Life is exactly the way it should be. I have known no pain, no sorrow, no frustration."

No, everyone would admit life is not what the Creator had created it to be. So to sum it up really simply: God created the world. He created it to be perfect. It isn't.

Everybody with me so far? God has a certain picture in mind of what life ought to be like and how we ought to behave. He had that picture when He created the world. It was there, when He was done. It isn't anymore.

Now, snow on Oct. 10, even for MN, especially when the crops aren't all in, is not exactly ideal. Things just don't work out the way we might like, and we have no control over it. Tsunamis in American Samoa or flooding in parts of our country are also not part of the way the world was set up to run. But we can't do anything about the weather, or a lot of different things that are part of the natural world. It has been cursed ever since Adam and Eve, and we have to learn to live with it.

But can't we do something about our behavior? Wait. We're getting a little ahead of ourselves. We have established there is a gap between us and God. God expects us to be a certain way and we aren't. He expects us to be holy because He is holy. He expects us to be holy because that's the way He created humans to be. We aren't. Big problem.

Who is going to fix it? Who is going to bridge the gap? We naturally think we will. We think we are the ones to bridge the gap. So, we take a condition that applied to Adam and Eve and apply it to ourselves and others. It's called perfection. Adam and Eve were wired to do this, to be perfect, and we think we'll just do what they did.

This is really basic. I'm not saying anything new. Usually, when it's really simple, your mind is running a 1,000 miles an hour, wondering where this is going. It's not going anywhere. It's as basic as it sounds. So, we recognize this gap between God and us, and figure the way to remove the gap is for us to take the steps to resolve it. We will do it.

God says, "If that's what you are going to do, here's what I expect." He says, "This is what it was like for Adam and Eve before sin came into the world. When they were in the Garden of Eden, they loved me with all their heart, and with all their soul and with all their mind. They also loved each other as much as him or herself."

In other words, Adam and Eve's love was all directed toward God. There was no one or no thing they loved more. As a result, Adam loved God by loving Eve, and Eve loved God by loving Adam. They loved God completely by seeking to serve each other.

So far so good. This was natural for them. They didn't struggle. The Holy Spirit living through each of them, loved the other as much as himself. It's all good.

After sin came into the world, however, it wasn't so easy anymore. Humans had become wired differently. Love for another wasn't so natural. Yet, the rules had not changed. God's expectations were still the same. "Love me with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." And also "Love me, by loving other people and wanting what is best for them over wanting what is best for yourself."

So, the rules are still there. You want to get back to God? Follow them. Love Him with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind." Don't even worry about the part about your neighbor. You get the first part, and the second part is thrown in. So, that's it. Do that and you're good. There's the solution.

Does that sound right to you? The Pharisees thought it must have been something like that. These religious folks who were so concerned about purity and holiness, that is, holiness before God, were sure this was the way. One of them, a particularly good student of God's laws, asked Jesus a question about which commandment of the law was the most important. Jesus gives him two.

He wasn't surprised by Jesus' answer. In fact, the Pharisees recognized the importance of these two and so listed about six hundred other commandments, all designed to give tips on keeping them. Keep these extra ones, observe them, try to do them, and you will be going a long way toward keeping these two main ones. So, as you can see, they knew they couldn't really keep these. They knew they couldn't love God with all their heart, soul, and mind, nor their neighbor as much as themselves, but they still were working toward it. They acted like: This is the ideal, but God knows we can't really do it, so He doesn't expect it anymore.

That's where they were wrong. He did. He does.

Do you know anyone who thinks, "Yeah, it would be nice if we did these, loving God with everything we have and our neighbor as ourselves, but God knows we can't so He expects us only to do our best?" Do you know anyone who thinks that way?

Most people do. We have a lot of people, even those who regularly go to church, who think this way. They think by going to church, they will be helped toward this goal of doing the best they can.

Earlier you had a picture in your mind of a gap--God on one side, you and I on the other. Go back to that picture. Now, based on what we have talked about, you would see us making the greatest effort to bridge the gap. "We're working at this, God." God simply responds by saying, "I can see you're trying. I'll go easy on you. You don't have to do everything, just the best you can."

One problem. He's holy. He can't go a little bit easy on us. He can't say, "I can see you're trying. Just do the best you can." Because the best you can is not enough. He is holy and He can handle nothing less than holy. We can't be restored to Him until we are holy, completely holy. We can't be restored to Him until we actually do love Him with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind. We can't bridge the gap until we love our neighbor as ourselves. And that ain't going to happen without a miracle.

So, although this is a solution, the solution to get ourselves back to God, it's not going to work for us. So these commandments, which we call the Law, are good. The Law is holy. It would be helpful if we could do this, but we can't, so it isn't. Instead, it just shows our failures. It shows that we can't do this.

If I were to keep preaching about what we are supposed to be doing, teaching how we are to love God and our neighbor, we might actually change our outward behavior and appear to be getting a little better as people. We might be able to do what looks like love toward our neighbor and God, but we wouldn't be any closer to bridging the gap. God still stands there, with his arms crossed and a sour look on His face and says, "If that's the way you want to do it, then I want perfection."

Compare this effort to bridge the gap to the act of declaring bankruptcy. Here's what it would be like. Now listen closely. I have the perfect solution to avoid bankruptcy. It's so simple. Just pay all your bills. Duh! You're declaring bankruptcy because you can't pay your bills. It's an idiotic statement. The same way, "You want to get back to God? Just love Him completely, then you will be perfect and salvation will be yours." That's the problem. No one can do this. No one does good. All have turned away. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

But we don't have a God who stands there with His arms crossed and gives us a sour look. We have a God who has taken the first step, the only step. He has bridged the gap, when He sent His Son to become a human being, to live the perfect life and die a sacrificial death, the death we deserved. Only He could do it. In fact, when we think we are taking steps to bridge the gap on our own, when we think we are healing the breach by trying to be good, we are actually going in the wrong direction--the wrong direction. So, He has to bridge the gap and then go a step further as He uses the Holy Spirit to pull us into position, basically as He has done in our baptism, when He first brings us to faith.

If we look at it like bankruptcy again, then we would say our bank has already paid our debts. Go along with me, because it would never happen this way, but your bank sees you can't pay what you owe and says "We will cover it all for you." They don't say, "Pay what you can, and we'll let the rest go." Every last bit needs to be paid. They say, "We'll pay it all; every bit of it. That's what God has done in Christ. He covers it all.

That's where Jesus is going in the next scene. After He answers the question, "Which is the greatest commandment?" He then asks His own question. It's kind of similar to what He had asked the disciples a couple years before, "Who am I?" "Who do you say I am?"

This question is designed to do two things. Point to the Messiah, which is the Gospel message, and point to Him in such a way the Pharisees can't deny who He is.

They already believe in the Messiah. They see Him as God's anointed One, to restore peace and order, not just for Israel's sake, but for the whole world. When He comes the great judgment will come. God's people will be granted eternal life and their enemies will be judged eternally.

But their understanding of the Messiah fell short. He asks them, "What do you think about the Christ?" "Christ" is just the Greek word for "Messiah." Both are translated "The Anointed One." Somehow, in all their studying, they managed to miss what Jesus makes so clear as He quotes Psalm 110. David who prays this Psalm is speaking of the Messiah. No argument there. The Pharisees agreed. But what does David call the Messiah? He calls Him, his Lord. David, the greatest king Israel had ever seen, who answered to no one but the Lord Himself, calls his son, "Lord." Understanding the power and authority of kings in that day, no human being would ever be over Him, and yet he calls his human Son, his Lord. His son, therefore could not be just human. He had to be God Himself. Who could be his Lord, other than the Lord himself?

Not only this, but notice the time reference. "The Lord said to my Lord." A communication from the Lord to David's Lord. It's already been said. Yet, the Messiah had not yet come. The Son of David has not yet been born. If the Messiah was just human, this could not be said until he was born. But if the Messiah has existed since the beginning of time, this could be their communication from the beginning of time. Indeed it is. The Messiah is the second person of the Trinity, who existed before time. David's Son is David's Lord, because David's Son is God Himself. This passage clearly confesses Jesus, the Messiah, to be God.

And now we have been given the real solution, exactly where Jesus was going with this. What do you say about the Christ? The answer: He is God. As God then, He is the solution to the gap between Him and us. The Christ, or the Messiah, is the One who has come to bridge the gap. We can't do it. To think we can, is to make the gap bigger, but Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of David, crosses over and brings us to our Heavenly Father.

He lived the life of perfection that God expects from anyone who would be restored to Him. He suffered eternal death, which is the penalty for our sinning. This means everything is complete. "It is finished," Jesus cries from the cross. Indeed it is. What we might think is a solution to our problem--our attempts to be holy--really only exposes our failed attempts. Again and again, it leads us finally and forcefully to the only real solution, Jesus Christ Himself--who has already and will continue to be given to us.

AMEN