Shema - Week 3

 Shema Week 3 - "Written on the Doorframes" Deuteronomy 6:4-9(nasb) - '"Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons 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 up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. ' How It Shapes Daily Life (Deuteronomy 6:7-9) Big Idea: Love for God was never meant to stay private or occasional. It's meant to shape ordinary conversation, the work of your hands, what your eyes fix on, and even the entryway of your home. 1. Teach your children - passing it forward - The first application of internalized love is generational transmission, not private devotion alone. o Deuteronomy 6:7 - "teach them diligently to your children" - repetition and intentionality are built into the verb itself o o Psalm 78:4-7(nasb) - 'We will not conceal them from their children, But tell to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, And His strength and His wondrous works that He has done. For He established a testimony in Jacob And appointed a law in Israel, Which He commanded our fathers That they should teach them to their children, That the generation to come might know, eventhe children yet to be born, That they may arise and tell them to their children, That they should put their confidence in God And not forget the works of God, But keep His commandments, o Proverbs 22:6 - "Train up a child in the way he should go." o Ephesians 6:4 - 'Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. 2. Talk of them in every posture - sit, walk, lie down, rise - A merism (using opposite pairs to mean "everything in between") covering every hour and setting of the day. o Deuteronomy 6:7b - the four postures cover the full range of daily life: at rest, in motion, at night, in the morning. o Deuteronomy 11:19 - the same instruction repeated later in the book, reinforcing its centrality. o Colossians 3:16 - "let the word of Christ dwell in you richly... teaching and admonishing one another" - ordinary conversation saturated with God's word, not confined to formal settings. 3. Bind them on hand and forehead - hands and eyes - Later literalized in Jewish practice as tefillin, but the underlying image: what your hands do and what your eyes fix on should be shaped by God's word. o Deuteronomy 6:8 - "bind them as a sign on your hand, and... as frontlets between your eyes." o Exodus 13:9 (nasb) - 'And it shall serve as a sign to you on your hand, and as a reminder on your forehead, that the law of the Lord may be in your mouth; for with a powerful hand the Lord brought you out of Egypt. ' nearly identical instruction tied to remembering the exodus - action and attention both anchored in God's redemptive acts. o Matthew 6:22-23 (nasb). ' "The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! Jesus's teaching on the eye as "the lamp of the body" - what you fix your attention on shapes the whole person. o 4. Write them on the doorposts and gates - even your home's threshold - Later literalized as the mezuzah. The doorway marks the line between private and public life - even that boundary carries the word. o Deuteronomy 6:9 - "write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." o Joshua 24:15 (nasb). 'If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." ' o Pick one ordinary moment this week - a commute, a meal, a bedtime routine - and deliberately let it become a "talking of these things" moment rather than something God's word is absent from.