Deuteronomy 6:4-5

Introduction:

-What is your favorite verse in the Bible?

-Does anyone have one?

**take some verses**

Wouldn’t it be nice to know what Jesus’ favorite verse or passage is? What do you think He would have said?

-Well, we actually have an occasion in the life of Jesus where he wasn’t asked that exact question, but He was asked something at least similar to it

Mark 12:28–30 NKJV

Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that He had answered them well, asked Him, “Which is the first commandment of all?” Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment.

Background

-We are going to be in Deuteronomy 6:1-5 this evening looking at this passage that Jesus deems to be the most important of all of God’s commands

Now, what I like to try to do on Wednesday evenings when I preach is help us become better at reading and interpreting Scripture for ourselves.

-So while I’m preaching this, I also want to teach you how you can be better at interpreting Scripture in your own time with the Lord

-So I have some basic principles this evening for how to read and interpret the Pentateuch, and I’ll get to those in just a moment

-But first, I want you to notice the illustration I have at the bottom of the page

-This is something I got from one of my seminary professors, and I think it illustrates how to rightly read and interpret the Bible

We live in 2022 in the Charlotte area in America.

-We have a way that we view the world

-The Bible, however, was written to people that lived a long time ago

-And so what can be tempting for us to do is just to read the Bible as if it was written to us in America in 2022.

-Now, it’s important to make a careful distinction

-The Bible was written FOR us . . . amen?

-That being said, the Bible wasn’t written TO us, in the sense that we were not the original intended audience

-We don’t have the book of “Charlotteans” that Paul penned, because he didn’t write to us like he wrote to the Philippians or the Corinthians

So when we read and interpret the Bible, we need to seek to cross this bridge, out of 2022 Charlotte, and over into the biblical world

-So tonight, we are going to cross into the world of the nation of Israel in 1400BC

-We want to read and study and understand the text in its context — how it was meant to be read and understood by the original audience

-THEN, we want to seek to cross back over the bridge and see how this applies to us as NT Christians

-This is especially important when studying the OT

-Why? Because although the audience of Paul’s epistles lived in a far different situation than we do, Paul is still writing to NT Christians who live on this side of the Cross and the empty tomb, so we share a lot in common with them spiritually

-With the OT, however, these people lived before the cross, and therefore there is not as much as share in common with them as we do with the recipients of Paul’s letters

-For instance, in the OT, they had the Tabernacle/Temple and sacrifices, whereas we don’t have that today

-Sound good?

Now, I’m going to walk us through a few of these principles I’ve written down, and then we’ll get to the rest at the end.

-The book of Deuteronomy is found in what we call the Pentateuch, so named because they are the first five books of the Bible, hence the word “penta”

-These books have been attributed to Moses throughout the Bible (1 Kings 2:3, John 5:45-47)

-As we read the Pentateuch, there are a few things we need to keep in mind as we seek to understand it

-The overarching theme of the Pentateuch (or metanarrative) is the God bringing about His plan of redemption for sinful mankind

-And I want to kind of lay this out for you, because it’s extremely important in understanding our text today

The Pentateuch begins with the account of God creating the world and creating man and woman in his image and in right relationship with Himself

-However, man and woman chose to sin, plunging the world and the human race into sin, resulting in broken fellowship with God

-Despite this, God promised in Genesis 3:15 that a descendant would come from the woman who would deliver a crushing blow to the Serpent, the enemy of God

-Genesis begins then to trace the line of the woman down through history

-The first descendant of the woman is Cain, and he quickly shows that he is not the descendant we’re looking for, seeing as how he murders his brother.

-And so the line continues from Adam to Seth and then to Noah eventually, and down through the centuries we trace it until we get to a man named Abram.

-God calls this descendant out of his place of comfort and into a relationship with God

-God promises that He will make of this man a special people that will bless all the families of the earth

And so we begin to trace the line of the woman through this man, and we see the story unfold of how God is marking off for Himself a special people who are to be distinct from those around them

-This man Abraham has a son named Isaac, who has a son named Jacob, who has 12 sons.

-And it seems that no matter how sinful these descendants can be, no matter how bad they mess up, or no matter who threatens them, God protects this line of descendants

-When there’s a famine in the world, God prepares a special place for them to grow and be protected in the land of Egypt

-And when they’ve grown to somewhere between 1 and 2 million people in the land of Egypt, God brings them out of their slavery despite the powerful Egyptian Pharoah’s best efforts

-God recruits a man named Moses to be His instrument in bringing the people out and in representing Him both to Pharoah and the people

-Moses doesn’t go without a fight, but God wins out and uses this unlikely servant to bring out the Israelites with such power and force that it devastates one of the world’s most powerful nations

-And if that’s not enough, when they get to the Red Sea with the Egyptian army in pursuit, God opens up the Sea, allowing His people to cross on dry land

-And when the Egyptians try to pass, He drowns their entire army

-God soon brings this group of descendants (who quickly show themselves to be a bunch of grumblers and complainers) to Mount Sinai, where God Himself makes a covenant with them

-He has rescued them from Egyptian slavery and wants to enter into an exclusive love relationship with these people

-He will be their God, and they shall be His special, marked-off people

-He promises to guide them, provide for them, love them, and bring them into the land He promised their ancestors

-And they in turn are to love Him and obey His commands as evidence of their love

-Moses no sooner receives the Ten Words (as they’re literally called) from the Lord on Sinai that the people have already made a golden calf as a visual representation of Yahweh and worshipping it

-Despite this massive failure, God guides them all the way to the brink of the promised land

-Before they go in, they ask if they can send in spies to scout out the land

-God allows this, and the spies go in

-They come back and give a bad report to the people, saying that there is no way that they can take this land!

-The people are too strong and powerful

-The people rebel against God’s command

Deuteronomy 1:26–28 NKJV

“Nevertheless you would not go up, but rebelled against the command of the Lord your God; and you complained in your tents, and said, ‘Because the Lord hates us, He has brought us out of the land of Egypt to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us. Where can we go up? Our brethren have discouraged our hearts, saying, “The people are greater and taller than we; the cities are great and fortified up to heaven; moreover we have seen the sons of the Anakim there.” ’

How incredibly sad this is!

-This is literally the opposite of the truth

-It was God’s love for the people that caused Him to rescue them, and He had promised them victory over the enemies inhabiting the land

Because of this, God punishes the Israelites

-He sentences them to wandering around in the wilderness for 40 years until every male over the age of 20 is dead

-Only their children will be able to inherit the land

-And so they wander aimlessly for 40 years

-Until once again, here they stand, a new generation, again on the brink of the promised land

-Behind them lies the failures and rebellions of the previous generation

-Before them lies the promises of God

-What will they do?

-And it’s in this context, that we find ourselves this evening as we begin to exegete and exposit the book of Deuteronomy

Background of Deuteronomy

-Deuteronomy is the culmination of the Pentateuch

-As I just mentioned, Israel sits on the brink of the Promised Land, finally ready to attempt once again to enter the Land after their failure 40 years earlier

-Deuteronomy then is a collection of sermons delivered by Moses to the nation of Israel, the second generation since the Exodus

-In chapters 1-3, Moses recounts the history of Israel since the Exodus and the Crossing of the Red Sea

-He recounts their journey to Mount Sinai to receive the Law, and then their journey to Kadesh-Barnea

-This is the place where they failed to trust God and take the land

-He then recounts that failure and their subsequent years of wandering, back up to the present time

-In chapter 4, Moses commands the Israelites to live in obedience to God’s commands, and warns them of the horrible consequences of abandoning God

-In chapter 5, Moses gives the 10 Commandments once again, just like in Exodus 20.

In in this context, we find our passage for this evening.

Vs. 1-3

-What is the commandment, statutes, and judgments?

-If you glance back at chapter 5, you’ll see what he’s referring to in context

Deuteronomy 5:1 NKJV

And Moses called all Israel, and said to them: “Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your hearing today, that you may learn them and be careful to observe them.

-He’s referring to the Decalogue, the 10 Words, or as we know them, the 10 Commandments

-This is the commandment which Moses has been commanded to teach the Israelites

In these first two verses, we have three intended outcomes or effects that are intended with the teaching (expositing) of the command of God by Moses, all of them beginning with the word “that”:

“That you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess”

-God wants them to do the commandments, to follow them, to obey them

-He is giving the Israelites this land that He’s promised, and they must obey Him in this land

-The love of the Israelites (or lack thereof) to the Lord will be demonstrated in whether they obey God or not

-This idea of obedience demonstrating love is a constant theme throughout Deuteronomy and throughout the Bible!

-The love of God’s people is shown in their actions, and specifically in their obedience to God

-And we all understand that true love is shown in actions!

-People who say that they love their kid: but then are absent from their lives and do nothing to provide for them show that they don’t love their kid

-People who say they love their spouse: but spend no time talking with their spouse, having fun with them, getting to know them, providing for them, seeking to meet their needs and give them joy, show that they don’t truly love their spouse

-And when it comes to God, our love for God is shown not purely in our fuzzy feelings for God (although our love for God should stir our affections!), but in our obedience towards Him

Let’s bring this principle across the bridge real quick:

-We are living in a time when many Christians equate speaking of obedience to God’s commands or spiritual discipline as legalism

-And this is probably a reaction to the times when Christianity has been reduced to “do this and don’t do this and God will love you” or “you’ll be a good Christian if you look like this”

-And we must guard against turning our relationship with God into this!

-But on the other hand, the Bible is clear that our love will be made evident by our obedience, or our lack of love will be made clear by our lack of obedience

John 14:15 NKJV

“If you love Me, keep My commandments.

2. “That you may fear the Lord your God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you, you and your son and your grandson, all the days of your life”

-God desired His special marked off people to fear Him

-This is a reverential awe

-(from an article) When you are in awe of something, it blows you away, it re-shapes your mind, it causes a healthy respect for the object of awe that consequently makes you feel rather small

-Many of you have experienced something like this before in your lives

-Back in May, I had the privilege of visiting Victoria Falls in Zambia

-When Zambia is in the rainy season, Victoria Falls is one of the biggest waterfalls in all of the world

-As we hiked out to this part of the trail and were able to get our first full-on view of the falls, it blew me away

-The amount of power it possessed, the unfathomable amount of water that poured over those cliffs every second, the roaring of the water hitting the rock below

-It blew me away

-It challenged the “normal” world I lived in

-It gave me a respect for this impressive fall that made me feel tiny and insignificant

-And the point of Moses teaching the Israelites the commandment of God was for them to fear God

-To be in awe of Him

-Which is once again demonstrated in keeping His command

-The third and final intended outcome of Moses teaching the Israelites the command is this:

3. “That your days may be prolonged.”

-God wanted to bless the Israelites in the land

-God wanted to enjoy a loving relationship with them

-He desired to have them experience all the blessings of obedience

-If they were to listen to Moses, to obey the commandment, to fear God, then they would experience a long and full life

Vs. 3

-So Moses exhorts them!

-hear the teaching of the commandment!

-and observe the teaching of the commandment!

-For with loving obedience and reverential awe comes the blessing of God

-God had promised to make of the Patriarchs a huge nation and to bring them into a fruitful land

-In order for these promises to be realized in this generation, they would need to obey

-Failure to obey would mean that they would not get to see the fulfillment of these promises, just like the previous generation had not seen the fulfillment

Vs. 4-5

-We now get (not only) to the very heart of the book of Deuteronomy, but what could even be described as the heart of OT or even the very heart of the whole Bible

-This is, in fact, what Jesus said about this passage when asked what is the Greatest of all Commands

-These verses are known as the “Shema” — taken from the Hebrew word for “hear” which begins these verses

Vs. 4

-This verses establishes the very essence of who God is

-Yahweh, the God of Israel, is ONE

Now, what does this mean and what is the significance of it for our Israelite audience?

There are really mainly 2 trains of thought on the meaning of this verse

Is this verse speaking of the Unity or Simplicity of God

-That God is One

-One being

-In other words, is this verse all about Monotheism

Or, is this verse speaking of the need for Israel to worship only God

-In other words, “Hear O Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh alone!”

There are good arguments for both positions, and I don’t think there is necessarily a reason to choose one to the exclusion of the other

-Jesus quotes this verse in Mark 12:29

Mark 12:29 NKJV

Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

You see, the Israelites came out of Egypt where NUMEROUS gods are worshiped

-In an article on worldhistory.org, around 2,000 gods of Egypt are listed

-Now, this may represent an accumulation of gods over the years, so it’s hard to tell exactly how many gods there were in Egypt when the Israelites came out, but needless to say, that’s a lot of gods!

-And the people that Israel was about to conquer worshipped many deities!

But the very heart of the message of God to His people is that Yahweh is ONE

-There’s not multiple Yahweh’s

-He is ONE is His very essence

And right along with that, He is God alone

-There are no other deities aside from God

-In many of these religions, they believed in what we might call or think of as a Pantheon of deities

-There were gods for different aspects of life

-And some gods may have been more prominent or powerful than others,

-Peter Craigie, in his commentary on Deuteronomy, points out that Baal was the prominent god in the Canaanite pantheon, Amon-Re in the Egyptian, and Marduk in the Babylonian pantheon

-In these religions, even if there was a prominent or most-powerful god, there were still plenty of other gods

But God wants His people to know that this is not true

-There are no other gods

-There is only Yahweh

And this would have been so bizarre for people of the ancient world to hear or understand

-“What do you mean there’s only One God?”

“You’re saying that there’s just one God who rules the skies, and the seas, and is the god of battle, and the god of peace, and the god of fertility, and the god of the harvest?” . . . and on and on

-This was so unique in this ancient world!

-And yet God clearly tells them that it’s just Him

-He is One, and He alone is God

Vs. 5

-E.W. Nicholson made the comment on this verse that the entire book of Deuteronomy is a commentary on this one verse

-This is the Greatest Commandment in all of Scripture

-When Jesus was asked by an expert in the Law during the Passion Week, “what is the Greatest Commandment?”

-Jesus didn’t say “well, all of God’s commands are equally important”

-He answered, seemingly without hesitation, “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.”

-So what does this mean?

-Many theologians and commentators have tried to differentiate and attach certain significance to each of these phrases

-maybe heart means the mind/will, soul means emotions, strength means possessions

-While their may be validity to some of these attempts, I find it best to see this as way for Moses to teach the Israelites that they must love God with the totality of their being

-They are to love God with everything they are and everything they have!

-It would not be enough just to have a mental understanding of God and love Him in an intellectual way

-It would not be enough just to love Him in an emotional way. A way that focuses purely on some feeling that I derive from God

-It’s not enough just to love Him with my possessions, simply giving of my offerings and thinking that is enough

-No, the Israelites were to love God with all of their emotions, all of their thoughts, all of their resources, all of their time, all of their faculties

-The One True and Living God must be loved totally and supremely!

-Far from the Law teaching legalism, the heart of the Mosaic Law was a loving relationship with God that was expressed in heartfelt worship and obedience to all of God’s commands

-And when this was the case in the lives of the Israelites, there was true blessing and joy and rest that God gave

God desired to bless His people! He desired to lavish His goodness upon them! And most importantly, God desired to be close with them and to give them the unspeakable joys of a unique and intimate relationship with Himself

I grew up in a very loving household

-My parents loved us kids immensely

-And my parents understood that it was important to build a loving home, discipline was needed

And so because my parents loved us, they set certain rules and principles for our household

-We couldn’t be disrespectful to Mom or Dad

-Instead, we were to be obedient in the rules that they laid down

-And they did this, not to restrict us, but to protect us and build a loving home

-And I know that in raising me in particular, this was hard on them

-I was quite a rebellious child

-And sometimes I would get disciplined multiple times a day

-And I’m sure that in those times, my parents would think “Oh that Braden would just live in obedience! How much better things would go for him and how much more could he enjoy his relationship with us and we could enjoy our relationship with him!

And this gets at the very heart of God for His people the Israelites!

Deuteronomy 5:29 NKJV

Oh, that they had such a heart in them that they would fear Me and always keep all My commandments, that it might be well with them and with their children forever!

All of God’s Law was for their benefit!

-To protect them!

-To nurture them!

-To help them be a special, marked off people for His sake

And their obedience ultimately came down to a simple question: “how much do I love God?”

-“do I love me more, or God more?”

-“do I love sin more, or God more?”

And the whole point of Deuteronomy is: Love the One True God with all of Your being

Application:

So, let’s cross back over the bridge and come back to Kingsway Baptist Church in 2022.

-What are we supposed to come away with from our look into Deut. 6:1-5?

-What are the principles of God’s Word that we are to come away with on this side of the cross?

Let’s start with the things that are not the same on either side of the bridge, so that we can narrow down what our application ought to be

First, God has not promised you and I some promised land out in the Middle East

-He has not promised to our ancestors this evening to give us any real estate

-And we are certainly not sharpening our swords, ready to go in to this land and do physical battle against its inhabitants

-Furthermore, God has not promised abundant crops and livestock and rain if we love and obey Him

-So there are definitely some specifics that are drastically different between us and the Israelites of this time period

But what is the same?

-You and I are God’s chosen people

1 Peter 2:9–10 NKJV

But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.

-God has chosen us by sovereign grace to be His own special possession, a marked-off body for His glory

And therefore, as God’s people, we are called to love God supremely!

-We are called to love Him with all that we are and all that we possess

-And on this side of the cross, we know how this is possible

1 John 4:8–10 NKJV

He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

1 John 4:19 NKJV

We love Him because He first loved us.

And we are called to love Him by obeying His commands!

-Some may object and say “well, it’s possible to do the right thing and still not be loving God! Look at the Pharisees!”

-And brothers and sisters, this is true!

-It is possible to conform outwardly to some standard while not really loving God and being right with Him

-But while loving God is more than just outward conformity to God’s commands, it is certainly not less

Jesus Himself has told us

John 14:15 NKJV

“If you love Me, keep My commandments.

When we love God with our entire being, it will result in obeying God!

-Brothers and sisters, this is not legalism!

-So many Christians today want to associate any talk of obedience and spiritual discipline with legalism, and it is simply not the case

When we truly love God, we will joyfully and willingly submit to His Word in glad-hearted obedience

and we will find

1 Samuel 15:22 NKJV

So Samuel said: “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, As in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams.

And yes, there will be times when we don’t feel like obeying!

-But even in those times, we can humbly submit to God and show Him our love by trusting that He knows what is best for us and obeying His Word

Ken Collier once said “just two choices on the shelf, pleasing God or pleasing self.”

Brothers and sisters, let us love our God supremely for the sacrifice He has made for us in the giving of His Son Jesus Christ

-And let us live in joyful, loving submission to Him, because His commands are not burdensome for those who truly love Yahweh