Loving God (Deut 6:1-9)

Announcements & Greeting

On March 31 at 7pm, we’ll be showing The Most Reluctant Convert. Admittance is free and we’ll provide snacks and drinks.

Quarterly Business Meeting on April 2 after AM Worship.

No Bible Study & Prayer on April 5th, instead join us for Good Friday Worship on April 7that 7pm at New Beginnings Baptist Church, 183 Logan St., Osceola Mills, PA.

Resurrection Sunday Worship on April 9th. Community breakfast at 10am; worship at 10:45am.

Giving Reminder

Prayer of Repentance and Adoration

Call to Worship (Ps 73:1-15)

Our Call to Worship this morning is Psalm 73:1-15, which is a little lengthier of a section this morning. It is a psalm of Asaph, which reflects on the goodness of God, though it does also recount some jealousy that Asaph had concerning those who are wicked. Please stand and read with me Psalm 73:1-15—I’ll read the odd-numbered verses, please join me in reading the even-numbered verses, after which, please join me in reciting the Apostles’ Creed.

Psalm 73:title–15 ESV

A Psalm of Asaph. 1 Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. 2 But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped. 3 For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. 4 For they have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek. 5 They are not in trouble as others are; they are not stricken like the rest of mankind. 6 Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them as a garment. 7 Their eyes swell out through fatness; their hearts overflow with follies. 8 They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression. 9 They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth. 10 Therefore his people turn back to them, and find no fault in them. 11 And they say, “How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?” 12 Behold, these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches. 13 All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. 14 For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning. 15 If I had said, “I will speak thus,” I would have betrayed the generation of your children.

The Apostles’ Creed

I believe in God, the Father almighty,       creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,       who was conceived by the Holy Spirit       and born of the virgin Mary.       He suffered under Pontius Pilate,       was crucified, died, and was buried;       The third day he rose again from the dead.       He ascended to heaven       and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.       From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,       the holy universal church,       the communion of saints,       the forgiveness of sins,       the resurrection of the body,       and the life everlasting. Amen.

You may have a seat. Sadie, can you read our Scripture Readings this morning?

Old Testament Reading (Gen 23)

Genesis 23 ESV

1 Sarah lived 127 years; these were the years of the life of Sarah. 2 And Sarah died at Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan, and Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. 3 And Abraham rose up from before his dead and said to the Hittites, 4 “I am a sojourner and foreigner among you; give me property among you for a burying place, that I may bury my dead out of my sight.” 5 The Hittites answered Abraham, 6 “Hear us, my lord; you are a prince of God among us. Bury your dead in the choicest of our tombs. None of us will withhold from you his tomb to hinder you from burying your dead.” 7 Abraham rose and bowed to the Hittites, the people of the land. 8 And he said to them, “If you are willing that I should bury my dead out of my sight, hear me and entreat for me Ephron the son of Zohar, 9 that he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he owns; it is at the end of his field. For the full price let him give it to me in your presence as property for a burying place.” 10 Now Ephron was sitting among the Hittites, and Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the hearing of the Hittites, of all who went in at the gate of his city, 11 “No, my lord, hear me: I give you the field, and I give you the cave that is in it. In the sight of the sons of my people I give it to you. Bury your dead.” 12 Then Abraham bowed down before the people of the land. 13 And he said to Ephron in the hearing of the people of the land, “But if you will, hear me: I give the price of the field. Accept it from me, that I may bury my dead there.” 14 Ephron answered Abraham, 15 “My lord, listen to me: a piece of land worth four hundred shekels of silver, what is that between you and me? Bury your dead.” 16 Abraham listened to Ephron, and Abraham weighed out for Ephron the silver that he had named in the hearing of the Hittites, four hundred shekels of silver, according to the weights current among the merchants. 17 So the field of Ephron in Machpelah, which was to the east of Mamre, the field with the cave that was in it and all the trees that were in the field, throughout its whole area, was made over 18 to Abraham as a possession in the presence of the Hittites, before all who went in at the gate of his city. 19 After this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah east of Mamre (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan. 20 The field and the cave that is in it were made over to Abraham as property for a burying place by the Hittites.

New Testament Reading (Matt 4)

Matthew 4 ESV

1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written, “ ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ” 5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple 6 and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, “ ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and “ ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’ ” 7 Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” 8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 9 And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10 Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “ ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’ ” 11 Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him. 12 Now when he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee. 13 And leaving Nazareth he went and lived in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, 14 so that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: 15 “The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles— 16 the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned.” 17 From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” 18 While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. 19 And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” 20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him. 21 And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. 22 Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him. 23 And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. 24 So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, those having seizures, and paralytics, and he healed them. 25 And great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.

Congregational Singing

My Jesus, Fair (300)

My Hope is in the Lord (213)

By Faith (361)

Preaching of God’s Word (Deut 6:1-9)

Introduction

Normally, we don’t go off track very often when it comes to where we are in Scripture, but this morning, we’re going to take a slight diversion from where we’ve been in the book of Acts to jump into the book of Deuteronomy. This sermon is the fruit of some work and reflection that I took part of this past week as the result of a child dedication service.

This past week, I had the blessing of being a part of the dedication service for seven children in State College and as part of that service, I was asked to preach. Truthfully, I couldn’t help but to think of Deuteronomy 6:1-9, which is our text this morning because of its plain statements about what God has called us to do as individuals and families and really what God has called us to pass on to our children and our children’s children and so forth.

If you have your Bible, please turn it to Deuteronomy 6:1-9 and while you’re turning there, let me give you a little bit of background information for sake of context.

In Deuteronomy 6, we’re in a special part of the Old Testament in which Moses takes some time to speak of the history of the Israelites after the Exodus--He speaks of their crossing through the Red Sea, how God had continued to multiply the nation of Israel numerically, how they had been blessed tremendously by God, and yet, they continued to rebel and disobey the Lord—to the extent that they were then required to wander the wilderness for forty years. Moses recounts different military battles and conquests in which God protected them and empowered them before urging them to obey God’s Law in chs. 4-6 and it is in these chapters that the Ten Commandments are repeated, Moses intercedes on behalf of the Israelites, and God responds by telling Moses that the Israelites need to return to Him and “walk entirely in the way which the Lord your God has commanded you, so that [they] may live and that it may be well for [them].”

This is what leads to our text for this morning, please keep it in mind as it provides the context for our passage. What I hope and what I’m aiming to teach this evening is rather simple but it answers the question of what does the Lord require of all His people. Now, let me be abundantly clear—this morning will not answer that question comprehensively—I’m not giving you a step-by-step guide of how you should respond in every situation in life. I’m giving you two general principles from God’s Word concerning what it is that you ought to do and they’re straight out of the text: (1) Obey God (1-3) and (2) Love God (4-9).

They both sound absurdly simple and you might think, “what a waste of time, I’ll just pick up the bestselling self-help book on my way home” but let’s be honest—how often do we find ourselves disobeying God—especially when we know what’s right and wrong and we choose to do the opposite? And how often do we find ourselves loving anything or anyone more than God—as seen in what we spend the most time, effort, and money in? The reality is that our two biggest issues in the Christian life is that we don’t love God as much as we ought to so we choose to disobey Him when something else seems better.

That’s what the Israelites did throughout the Old Testament, that’s what Judas, Ananias and Sapphira, who all loved money more than Jesus struggled with, that’s what the Judaizers, who loved the Law more than they loved Jesus struggled with, and it’s what the Corinthians, who loved money, power, and authority all struggled with (and we can go on and on and on again).

But I’m starting to get ahead of myself—let’s pray together and then we’ll dig into the text:

Prayer for Illumination

Obey God (1-3)

Let’s read vv. 1-3:

Deuteronomy 6:1–3 ESV

1 “Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the rules—that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, 2 that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. 3 Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.

Our text starts with Moses giving the reasoning for the rehashing of commandments and laws and statutes and judgments from the Lord. V. 1 says, “now this is the commandment, the statutes, and the judgments which the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you, so that you may do them in the land where you are going over to take possession of it, so that you, your son, and your grandson will fear the Lord your God.” Let’s pause here.

The first question that we really need to ask is “what are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments” that Moses is referring to in this text?

And there’s two ways that we can really look at answering this question—the first is by looking back through the context, which we already talked about in the introduction—remember how Moses reiterates the Ten Commandments? Or even if we just go back a few verses in ch. 5, we see what commandments that God commanded Moses to teach them v. 29, ”Oh that they had such a heart as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments”

Or in other words, Moses is literally referring to every command and every statute and every judgment that God ever gave.

So, just think, in the context of the Old Testament, this is the fifth book, which means the Israelites have already been given all the sacrificial Laws, all the ceremonial Laws, all the civil laws—they have already been given all these things and Moses has been commanded by God to exhort them to keep them all.

For the purpose of doing “them in the land to which [they] are going over, to possess it,” which is also known as the Promised Land.

But then there’s another reason or purpose given, “so that you, your son, and your grandson will fear the Lord your God.”

Their obedience to God’s Law expresses their reverence or their fear for God. Or in other words, if you truly understand who God is—that He is the Creator, that He is the sovereign, all-powerful, infinite, God. That He is high and lifted up—and if you truly understand who you are—that you are a man or woman, that ultimately, you aren’t in control, that you are weak, finite, and not God;

and you have a right understanding of who He is contrasted with who you are, then the proper response is for you to obey Him, which when you model that obedience to your children, will hopefully have a rippling effect (like a pebble thrown into a puddle) resulting in their obedience to the Lord, and their children’s obedience to the Lord, and so on and so on.

Or in other words, what Moses is saying here is that if you truly understand who God is and your relationship to Him—then you ought to be obeying His statutes, His commands, and His rules.

In the case of the Israelites, the obedience to God is really focused on obeying the Law that God had given them through Moses as part of the Mosaic Covenant.

And this following of the Mosaic Covenant ought to be done for and because their fear or their reverential awe of Him.

Put together, the idea is that if they truly understand who He is, they will obey Him because the reverence Him and they will teach their children to obey Him because they reverence Him and their children will teach their children to obey Him because they reverence Him.

And it is through this obedience to the Lord and the fear or reverential awe of the Lord, that God will then bless them and give them what He has promised them.

Meaning, He will grant them abundant life, that He will multiply them, and that they will attain the land flowing with milk and honey—the Promised Land.

Now, here’s the problem and if you’re familiar with the Old Testament, you may have already thought of this—if Moses is saying that they ought to obey the Lord’s commands, statutes, and rules; then, that means every command, statute, and rule. The traditional Jewish understanding of the Torah is that there are 613 Laws and in this time period, very few people actually had access to the scrolls that contained those Laws, which meant, the average Jewish person living life wouldn’t be able to keep track of 613 Laws. So Moses helps by condensing all the Laws into a simple statement that is still repeated to this day by Jewish people—it’s called the Shema and we see it in vv. 4-9—we see the Shema and what exactly the Israelites were supposed to do with it. Let’s read vv. 4-9.

Deuteronomy 6:4–9 ESV

4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 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. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

The Shema starts by calling the attention of Israel and by reminding them of who God is, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” There are a number of ideas worth noting here:

The word Shema actually means “listen” or “listen up,” so it makes sense then that the first word in it is “hear.”

It’s important to note that the idea isn’t just to hear the words—as in, Moses doesn’t just want them to let the Words go in one ear and out the other.

He wants them to hear the words and then do something about it.

Of course, we know that Moses is specifically calling the Israelites to do something about what he’s about to say.

But there is something else that’s of note here and in your English translations of Scripture, you probably see it but you may have never thought of the meaning behind it.

If you look at the word “LORD,” you’ll notice that they’re in all capital letters—and what that means is that this word is more than just the word “lord,” referring to someone of greater stature than you.

This word is literally the personal name of God, Yahweh.

Moses is emphasizing that Yahweh is their God and they have a personal relationship with their God.

And by emphasizing that Yahweh is one—Moses is emphasizing the truth that Yahweh is different—He isn’t like the false gods like Baal and Asheroth or Molech.

He is unique, He is different, He is the only God—and He is our God.

Thus, what should you do since He is the one and only God who is unique and different and unlike anyone else? V. 5, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”

The call for Israel by Moses is for the Israelites to genuinely love God.

Taken in conjunction with vv. 1-3, the idea then is that their obedience to the Lord isn’t to be done in some sort of legalistic mindset concerning necessity and duty.

Their obedience to the Lord and the Law of God is to be predicated not on just going through the motions but because they truly and genuinely love God.

And that love for the Lord is to come from every part of them

Some have tried to read into this idea that their love ought to be “with all [their] heart and with all [their] soul and with all [their] might,” and they’ve come up with some interesting arguments as to whether man is two parts or three parts.

And some focus into ancient Hebrew psychology to talk about how “The heart was regarded as the seat of the mind and will as well as of a wide range of emotions. The term soul . . . [refers] to the source of life and vitality” (JA Thompson, Deuteronomy: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1974), 138) and of course, might referring to strength.

But I think that might be reading into it a little. The reality is, the whole point that Moses is making is that every inch of your being, every ounce of who you are, every bit of you is to love God.

So much so, that God’s words and commands “shall be on your heart.” and 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. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

Or in other words, your love for God should so engulf you that God’s words are continuously on your heart and on your mind and in your thoughts and in your memories.

Your love for God should so engulf you that when you’re at home, you talk about Him and His Word and when you walk around, you talk about Him and His Word, and when you go to bed, you’re thinking about Him and His Word, and when you wake up, you’re thinking about Him and His Word.

Really, what Moses is saying here is that your love for God should be soaked into every part of your life to the extent that you can’t help but to want to obey Him, which results in you constantly reminding yourself of what He has said.

It results in you keeping His Word in front of you, bound to you, and in your forefront—to the extent that you’re constantly meditating on the truth of God’s Word to keep His commands in your heart.

It results in you not being able to contain your delight and desire for His Word (including having conversations with others about His Word—at home, as you go about your day, before you go to sleep, and when you wake up).

And it results in you teaching all the commands of God to your children, which is precisely what we’re gathered for this evening.

The word diligently carries the connotation that teaching these things to your children isn’t easy—it is work that is tiring, that takes significant effort, and it means that you are going to toil at doing these things.

It is going to require your consistency, your effort, and your endurance—and can I be quite frank (I think you can see this within the passage), it’s something that you simply cannot do apart from Jesus enabling you to do it.

The only thing that you can do is love God and obey Him.

Now, I think you can tell where exactly I’m going in all this, nevertheless, I want to spend our last few minutes giving specific application to help you apply this passage.

There are two explicit commands in this text: (1) obey God (1-3) and love God (4-9). And the beauty of this passage is that it informs us that these two commands are intricately woven together—meaning, if you love God, you’ll obey Him; and if you obey God (with the right motivation), you’ll love Him. But what are the practical ways that we can apply this?

Obey God (1-3)—the whole point of the first three verses is that the Israelites are to obey God—to keep His commands, statutes, and rules and that God would bless them for doing so. Likewise, Jesus speaks of obedience to His commands in the New Testament, except instead of promising great blessings on this side of eternity for it, He promises something better.

John 14:15-21, “15 “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. 16 “And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate, that He may be with you forever; 17 the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him. You know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. 18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 “After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also. 20 “On that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. 21 “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.”” (NASB)

Jesus promises a Helper that will Advocate on our behalf, who will be with us forever, and will abide with us and this Helper will aid us in loving Him by keeping His commandments.

And Jesus promises life everlasting to those who keep His commands because they love Him. See how the promise that Jesus gives is better?

Instead of temporal blessing through the Promised Land, we receive eternal blessing through the Holy Spirit.

But again, we obey not out of some sense of duty or out of legalism—we obey because we love God.

Now you might ask, do I then need to keep all 613 commands given throughout Scripture? And the simple answer is no because we no longer live under the Mosaic Covenant, we live under the New Covenant.

We can talk about this at length during another time but because Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law as the sacrificial atonement for our sins, we no longer follow the ceremonial Laws concerning sacrifices and since we aren’t exactly the nation of Israel, we aren’t following the civil laws pertaining to the governing of their earthly nation.

But we keep the moral laws—laws like the Ten Commandments and the laws that were repeated throughout the New Testament by Jesus or the apostles.

So laws like, “thou shalt not murder” or “thou shalt not bear false witness” or even maybe some common sense things—like don’t beat up your brother for fun and things like that—we keep all these but not necessarily the Laws concerning dietary restrictions and how we ought to offer certain animals as sacrifices because Jesus fulfills the Law.

If you’re a Christian and you claim to love Jesus, then you need to obey what He has said through His Word—and if you refuse, if you choose not to do this; then you need to check your heart to see if you actually do believe and follow Jesus.

Love God (4-9)—the last section speaks of that idea of loving God and Moses takes it a step further by making the statement that your love for God ought to engulf your whole life and influence everything about you.

We’re told that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might—or every part of you ought to love God with all your strength.

And beyond just stating the obvious—that your obedience reveals whether you actually love God; there’s a very simple way of gauging whether you love God—where do you spend your time, money, and effort?

If you love someone, you spend time with them, you spend money on them, and you make the effort to develop your relationship with them.

This ought to be even more true when you’re speaking about your relationship with the all-powerful, sovereign, Creator-God.

Especially when you think of that idea of loving the Lord with all your heart, soul, and might.

Where do you spend your time? What do you spend your money on? Are you actually seeking to develop your relationship with the Lord?

Or are you content with giving the bare minimum concerning time and effort with the Lord?

Are you actually seeking after God and choosing Him daily or are you ok with only thinking of Him Sunday morning?

If you claim to be a Christian then you claim to love God but does what you do in life reflect that you actually love Him?

Put simply, what Deuteronomy 6:1-9 teaches us is rather simple—if you claim to love God then obey Him and if you are trying to obey God make sure that you’re doing it because you love Him.

Pastoral Prayer

Congregational Singing

Every Promise of Your Word (363)