Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction:

-Wouldn’t it be nice to have Jesus preach to us?

-I often read the account in Luke 24 of how Jesus taught the 2 disciples on the Road to Emmaus of all things about Himself from the OT

-And that’s something that I’m sure all of us would be willing to trade just about anything to have heard that

-Imagine if Jesus were here Himself to preach to us this evening, how truly amazing that would be

-Well, unfortunately, that won’t be the case until we get to heaven

But, it seems that Jesus knew Deuteronomy 6 very well and thought very highly of it, because not only did He say that the Greatest Command in all of Scripture is found in Deuteronomy 6, but He also quotes our passage this evening twice when He is being tempted by Satan in the Wilderness

-So, our passage this evening was a passage that Jesus knew well and relied on during His earthly ministry

-And because of that, we have the very help of Jesus’ Words in the Gospels to help us understand God’s inspired text from Deuteronomy

-And that’s exciting, because there is no better interpreter of the OT than Jesus Himself!

Background to the Text:

-Moses has reminded the Israelites of their past

-And then beginning in chapter 4, he urges them to listen to the commands of God that He is teaching them for their God so that they won’t endure God’s displeasure

-In chapter 5, Moses rehearses the 10 Commandments which form the very core of what God desires of the nation

-Then in chapter 6, we looked 2 weeks ago at the Shema

And we saw how really the whole book of Deuteronomy is a commentary on the command to love God supremely

Then last week, we looked at how the Israelites were to keep these words on their minds constantly

-They were to teach their children God’s commands and His ways constantly

-It was something that was not just to be memorized, but thought through

-God’s words were to permeate every aspect of their lives

-They were to talk about them from sun-up to sun-down

-They were to keep them always in front of them

Why?

-So that they wouldn’t forget the Lord!

-There was a real danger to them that when they came into the land and received the blessings that the Lord was going to provide for them, that they would forget Yahweh

-Prosperity could tempt them to forget the dependence on God that He had taught them in their wilderness wanderings

-There was the real danger that they would come to the myriad of blessings that God had given them, and then they would forget Him and go their own way

This brings us to our text this evening, verses 13-19

13-15

vs. 13

-There are 3 things that Israel is commanded to do that all go hand in hand:

-The first is to fear Yahweh

-We talked about this some a couple weeks ago as a reverential awe of God

-When you stand before something incredible, like when I stood in front of Victoria Falls in Zambia, or some of you going to the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls, you’re overwhelmed with a sense of awe and respect and fear for the incredible thing before you

-I’m going to skip to the third thing, and come back to the second thing:

-the third thing is to take oaths in His name

-This could be referring to swearing allegiance to God alone as their covenant God

-Or it could be referring to their everyday integrity

-That their word could be trusted because they were ultimately giving their word on the basis of God being their God

Either way, the idea is that the Israelites were to be a people who lived with an integrity that was worthy of their faithful God

-The thing there in the middle that I left for the end is to serve Him

-This Hebrew word here occurs close to 300 times in Scripture, and 88 times it is translated “worship”, and 108 times it is translated as “serve”

And it is appropriate to translate the word either way, since these two ideas are so closely connected

-You truly worship something without serving it

-To worship means to ascribe worth to something

-What is it the thing in your life that all other things bow the knee to?

-What is it you’re willing to sacrifice everything for?

-People don’t have to bow down to it physically necessarily

-People don’t have to pray to it

-People don’t even have to verbally acknowledge it

-But every person in the world worships something

-Their life and their actions show that this is the one thing that everything else in their life is subservient to

And all though there are millions of things that people can worship (job, family, relationship, money)

-Ultimately, there are only 2 categories

-God

-Or something else

And the Israelites were to worship and serve God alone

Does the same apply to us today?

-Is there a NT passage like this?

-Actually, our Lord Himself used this verse in His earthly ministry

-In the third temptation from Satan that Jesus endured in Matthew 4, Satan comes and tempts Jesus that if He will but fall down and worship him, Satan would give him all the kingdoms of the earth

-And Jesus says:

And He quotes this verse right here

-So a questions for us then to consider would be:

“Do I worship God alone?

Is He the thing that everything in my life gets sacrificed for?

Do I show not just with my words, but with my actions, my choices, my finances . .

.”

Does my life show that?

There’s only obedient worship of God, or there’s idolatry

Vs. 14

-This idea of worshipping God alone is brought out now in the negative aspect

-The Israelites are not to worship other gods

-Why would Israel be tempted to worship other gods?

-think of it:

-the gods of other peoples had physical representations

-you could see these idols, touch and feel them, picture them

-And it would be tempting to switch to a god that you could see and feel and picture

-Or maybe the ways that these gods were served and worshipped would be appealing

-There would be times when their sensual worship style perhaps would be appealing

-the dancing or the sexual involvement, kind of like was seen in Numbers 25.

Or maybe the other gods would be easier to serve than Yahweh

-they demanded less offerings or time commitment perhaps

-Or the gods of other peoples didn’t demand the same rigorous kind of “all of life obedience”

Do you think there is that temptation among God’s people today?

-Are we tempted to go after other gods that allow us to have our sensual pleasures?

-Are we lured away by other gods who demand less of us?

-That are ok with us skipping church, who don’t demand our financial resources or our time?

-Are we tempted to go after other gods who don’t require such us to be as ethical or devoted

Why were the Israelites to worship God and beware of idolatry?

Vs. 15

Because God is a jealous God

-Now, we really need to make sure we understand this concept of the Jealousy of God

-This Hebrew term here is only used 6 times in your entire OT

-And this one here in Deuteronomy 6 is actually the last time it is used

-The first 3 are in Exodus, and the last 3 are in Deuteronomy

-All 6 of these occurences are describing God

-So in the OT, this term “qa-na” is used only of God

Now, when we think of jealousy, we think of it usually as a negative concept

-We think of someone who is jealous of someone else’s money or success

-jealous of someone’s good looks or their popularity

-But with God, this is not in anyway a negative concept