Loving God
Notes
Transcript
Meet me this morning in Deuteronomy 11. This text is tailored to teach us how to obey the command of Deuteronomy 6:4-5
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord 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.
In his bestselling book The Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman categorizes love into five languages. He proposes that each human communicates and/or receives love in one of these five languages. His categories are as follows . . .
Words of affirmation, physical affection, gift-giving, service,and time
Words of affirmation, physical affection, gift-giving, service,and time
Chapman teaches that learning and implementing your partners love language is key to a healthy relationships. Scripture contains thousands of verses that communicate God’s love language.
If human being, made in the image of God, have a love language then we should ask ourselves; does God have a love language? God has left no doubt as to how he and who he loves.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
John further teaches us about God’s love in . . .
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.
Without any effort I could pile verse on top of verse to further clarify God’s love for us but I digress. Deuteronomy 11 was not primarily written to communicate God’s love to us though it does. It was written to teach us how we are to love God in response to his love for us. I can teach you how to love God in 7 words.
To love God is to obey God.
To love God is to obey God.
Love for God is not a feeling but a life of daily devotion.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
Love for God is not optional. It is mandatory . Our chief duty is to love God, and we are to love God by obeying God.
The Book of Deuteronomy records three farewell sermons from Moses. These sermons are meant to spiritually prepare the people of God to enter The Promise Land. Deuteronomy 11 contains the concluding words of his second sermon. This second sermon contains a general exhortation to obey God. His third and final sermon, beginning in chapter 12, will lay out specific stipulations and statutes of this obedience.
In Deuteronomy 11:1 Moses says
“You shall therefore love the Lord your God and keep his charge, his statutes, his rules, and his commandments always.
Moses wastes no time in laying down the foundational truth of this chapter: To love God is to obey God.
In verse two, he reminds them of how God has been faithful to love them
And consider today (since I am not speaking to your children who have not known or seen it), consider the discipline of the Lord your God, his greatness, his mighty hand and his outstretched arm,
Note the urgency of his exhortation “today”. He exhorts them to examine the work of God in their life. He tells them you’ve seen too much to go your own way and we have seen too much to continue in our foolish ways.
In the middle of the verse he says “consider the discipline of the Lord”. The words discipline means education. Every event in their life was meant to educate. The ups and downs, the highs and lows, the successes, the failures—we call it life. God calls it school. Every event is mean to educate. Don’t think of discipline as retribution, Jesus has already taken our punishment, think of it as remediation. Remediation is not God lashing out but loving us.
for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.
God’s loving disciplines leads us to obedience which leads us to love God.
Next he tells them to consider God’s love expressed in his greatness, his mighty hand and his outstretched arm
And consider today (since I am not speaking to your children who have not known or seen it), consider the discipline of the Lord your God, his greatness, his mighty hand and his outstretched arm,
his signs and his deeds that he did in Egypt to Pharaoh the king of Egypt and to all his land,
and what he did to the army of Egypt, to their horses and to their chariots, how he made the water of the Red Sea flow over them as they pursued after you, and how the Lord has destroyed them to this day,
and what he did to you in the wilderness, until you came to this place,
and what he did to Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, son of Reuben, how the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households, their tents, and every living thing that followed them, in the midst of all Israel.
We may love flippantly but God loves fiercely. God’s fierce love is shown in his judgment against evil outside of Israel (Egypt) and from within Israel (Numbers 16). His love is so fierce that it drives Him to protect His people for His name sake. The events of Egypt and Numbers 16 where meant to be educational. These events are meant to to teach I’M SERIOUS ABOUT OBEDIENCE.
If verses 2-7 teach that disobedience leads to discipline then verses 8 through 25 teach that obedience leads to blessing.
Obedience leads to blessing.
Obedience leads to blessing.
I’m not, nor is Scripture, teaching that you can manipulate the hand of God by doing good stuff to put God. No one can put God in their debt. It simply means God's good nature makes him inclined to be generous.
Moses says if you obey God, he will bless you, and he describes the blessing. He says God will bless you first of all with land.
“You shall therefore keep the whole commandment that I command you today, that you may be strong, and go in and take possession of the land that you are going over to possess,
Note that "all the commands I am giving you today." Obedience is not selective. Selective obedience is disobedience. Moses says you must keep the whole commandment. Note the consequences or blessings of obedience: you will be strong, you will go in, you will take possession of the land, then fourthly, in verse nine,
and that you may live long in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give to them and to their offspring, a land flowing with milk and honey.
These consequences are repeats from earlier chapters expect for one. He says in verse eight that if you obey God, you will be strong. There's a real sense in which disobedience handicaps strength but obedience will give you strength no matter the obstacle.
This chapter is often spiritualized, but Moses is not spiritualizing anything. Land means land. All of the conflict that exist in the Middle East centers on land. The God who chose a people chose a land. God’s faithfulness to His people is demonstrated in His faithfulness to the land. They can fight and dispute about that land all they want to it’s God's land.
Look at
For the land that you are entering to take possession of it is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it, like a garden of vegetables.
But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven,
a land that the Lord your God cares for. The eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.
Egypt is a dry, arid land,that required strenuous cultivation. The Promise Land was cared for and cultivated by God. This truth makes their desire to go back to Egypt mind-blowing. They desired to go back because they thought it was better. If we don’t put our Egyptian mentality to death we too can miss out on God’s blessing.
Watch what he says in verse 12: "from the beginning of the year to its end." Moses is engaging in some spiritual smack talk. In the land of Canaan, they worshiped the gods of Baal gods. Baal gods were fertility gods. When Baal was present, the rains would fall and the land would be fertile. During their dry seasons they claim that Baal was in seclusion. God is saying; "Don't worship a god who goes into hiding and can't help you when you need it. My eye is on that land from the beginning of the year to the end of the year."
Quick recap of this section. If you are obedient I will bless you with land and fruitfulness.
Look at verse 13
“And if you will indeed obey my commandments that I command you today, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul,
Notice the cluster of three terms here. Obey God. Love God. Serve God.
To love God is to obey God, and to obey God is to serve God.
To love God is to obey God, and to obey God is to serve God.
He says if you do this,
he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil.
And he will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you shall eat and be full.
He says, "If you'll just lovingly obey me, I'll take care of all your needs."
Look at
Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them;
then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly off the good land that the Lord is giving you.
These two verses are like smelling salts. They are not intended to wake us up but to focus us. Moses is saying the key to your provision in life is not the weather, government, or the economy: It's your relationship with God. If you lovingly obey God, he'll take care of everything—no matter what the economy is, no matter what the weather is, no matter who's in charge in the government. However, disobedience will shut up heaven to force to you recognize where your real help comes from.
If Moses was a modern man he would say to us
You cannot afford to let anything or anyone come between your relationship with God.
You cannot afford to let anything or anyone come between your relationship with God.
He'll bless you with land (8-12), fruitfulness (13-17), and victory (18-25). , as we see in verses 13 through 17.
Verses 18 through 21 repeat Deuteronomy 6:6-9.
“You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.
You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates,
that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth.
He is saying to love God is to obey God, and to obey God, you need to saturate your life with the Word of God. He already said, in
And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
You need to be getting the Word when you wake up and when you lay down. When you go out and when you come in. When you're by yourself and when you're with your family. The keys to God's blessings are found in his Word.
Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.
He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.
If you'll saturate your life with the Word of God, look at verse 21:
that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth.
Look at verse 22
For if you will be careful to do all this commandment that I command you to do, loving the Lord your God, walking in all his ways, and holding fast to him,
Notice this cluster of terms: Do his command, love him, walk in his ways, hold fast to him. If you will live in loving obedience to God, this is what God will do:
then the Lord will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations greater and mightier than you.
Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours. Your territory shall be from the wilderness to the Lebanon and from the River, the river Euphrates, to the western sea.
No one shall be able to stand against you. The Lord your God will lay the fear of you and the dread of you on all the land that you shall tread, as he promised you.
If you lovingly obey God, God knows how to put you right where you're supposed to be.
If you lovingly obey God, God knows how to put you right where you're supposed to be.
Then once you get there, he knows how to take care of every one of your needs. Not only will he take care of your needs, but if somebody rises up against you, he knows how to fight your battle.
Look at verses 26 through 28.
“See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse:
the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today,
and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside from the way that I am commanding you today, to go after other gods that you have not known.
"What are you going to do in response to the Word?" There are two ways to live: the way of divine blessing and the way of divine curse. As with any choice their are consequences. Some choices hinder future choices. A momentary choice can end up having lifelong consequences. So Moses is not just saying "make your choice." He's saying "do the right thing because God punishes disobedience. God blesses obedience."
In verses 29 through 32, he shifts his focus to the future.
And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, you shall set the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal.
Are they not beyond the Jordan, west of the road, toward the going down of the sun, in the land of the Canaanites who live in the Arabah, opposite Gilgal, beside the oak of Moreh?
For you are to cross over the Jordan to go in to take possession of the land that the Lord your God is giving you. And when you possess it and live in it,
you shall be careful to do all the statutes and the rules that I am setting before you today.