Sermon Tone Analysis

Doing, Seeing, Communicating

Why do we do what we do?

This morning I want to talk about the things that influence us.

Why do we do the things we do?

Why do we eat certain things?

Why do we buy certain merchandise?

What makes us desire to visit certain places, or to make a career choice?

It is interesting to consider.

Biblically, our desires come from within, yet they are influenced by outside stimulus as well

But why do we desire what we do?

There are certainly many factors, but as we look at our passage of study this morning, I am going to make the case that our desires are shaped in very large ways by what we see, do, and have communicated to us in other ways.

Over the past weeks we have been examining this passage.

We want to understand it well so that we can obey it well.

We study what it meant to say the Lord is one, and how we can love the Lord our God with all of our hearts and souls and might.

We looked at what it means to have these words on our heart, and last week what it means to teach them diligently to our children, to talk of them when we sit in our homes, when we walk by the way, and when we lie down, and when we rise.

This morning we are going to consider the influences to what we do with our hands, what we see with our eyes, and what we read and have communicated to us.

If you have ever been on a road trip to any tourist place, you have noticed that well before you arrive to your destination, you begin to see the billboards.

And those billboards are designed, if not to get the attention of the driver, certainly to get the attention of the others in the car.

I remember on road trips begging to go to one of those cool places on the billboards.

Sometimes the billboards get you so excited that by the time you arrive, you have built up this excitement in yourself, only to be perhaps a little disappointed by the experience.

This year in the US, almost $300 billion will be spent on advertising.

Billboards are a small part of that.

Most advertising is digital in some form.

Have you not ever bought an item because you saw the ad over and over again?

Social media is very good at this.

I see an ad and click to learn more, and then I see that ad repeated again and again.

And sometimes I actually buy something.

The desire starts out sort of mild.

“Oh, that looks sort of cool.”

Soon ad after ad causes your desires to go up.

Finally, you are checking prices, and reviews, and so on.

The art of advertising is to get you to desire.

What you see, what is communicated to you, and what you do have a lot to do with the many influences we encounter.

God is all knowing and all wise, and he knew that what we focus our energy on affects our desires, and that those desires drive behavior, and so he commanded his people to listen, or hear: “Hear, O Israel”.

He commanded them to have His words on their heart.

And he gave them some practical ways to be sure that they could do this.

The words, or commands, were to be taught diligently to each new generation of children.

They were to be talked about constantly in the family setting, as well as in the community.

And finally, these words were to be bound as a sign on their hands and as frontlets between thier eyes, and written on the doorposts and gates.

In other words, God was deploying what marketing experts today would call a multi-faceted marketing plan to keep the people having the right desires.

There is a difference, though, between today’s marketing and what God lays out in this passage.

You see, we learn in the Bible that the desires of our flesh are against the desires of the Spirit.

Marketers appeal to the desires of the flesh, but God appeals to the Spirit.

That isn’t to say that all marketing is bad.

It’s just that in most cases, the marketers are not worried about your spiritual state.

They just want you to buy their product or hire their services, as useful as they may be.

Let’s talk for a moment about this idea of signs on your hands or frontlets between your eyes.

What in the world does that mean?

Well, it was originally understood as a figure of speech.

We work with our hands, we communicate with our hands, we sin with our hands, we do good with our hands.

When the bible speaks of the work of our hands, it is not simply the work we do to earn a living, or tending the garden or something like that, but it means much more.

It really represents all of our actions.

And if we want our actions to be pleasing to God, we would do well to evaluate our own actions in light of His commands.

The frontlets on our eyes simply means that we need to look at the world through the lens of scripture.

God’s Word, in a sense, should be the lens we view the world through.

It is the standard we should use to evaluate all things, whether judgments or claims of truth.

It should help us to understand the world around us.

If we understand God’s word, we will not be so surprised when we see depravity around us.

According to Lange’s Commentary, We use the hand in our acts, and hence to bind them upon thy hand is to keep them for a sign for thy conduct, as ever to be regarded, and which must determine my manner of action.

The brow, between thine eyes, represents the chamber of thought, is as the door to the intellectual nature of man (hence the easy transition to the door-posts, ver.

9).

The commandments, as frontlets or browbands, become therefore a badge or confession by which one may be known, and embrace the private life, both on the side which is turned, and open to the man himself, and upon that which lies open to other men

Now, these have indeed been taken literally.

Some Jews today still at special occasions will wear a small box with tiny scrolls of scripture written in them, either tied to their forehead or to their wrist.

But in a sense, this cheapens the real meaning.

If obeying this command was simply strapping some sort of clothing item on, that would be very easy.

But living out God’s word is much more difficult.

It is likely that verse 9 was also to be taken figuratively.

Having the word written on the doorposts and on the gates, probably referring to the city gates, could be away of saying that this house or this city is founded on the godly principles we hold.

Now, that isn't to say that it is bad to write scripture on the walls, or to have posters of bible verses, or anything like that.

In many Jewish homes to this day, and I understand almost every hotel room in Israel, there are, or used to be, they have something called a mezuzah, which is a parchment or scroll with scripture on it attached in some container on the doorpost.

And really, if this were being done in an honest attempt to honor God, that would be ok.

However, sadly, it became for many nothing less than a good luck charm of sorts:

Spence writes: This custom originated, probably, in a desire to have the sentiments inscribed always in mind; but for the most part these inscriptions came to be regarded as amulets or charms, the presence of which on the person or the house was a safeguard against evil influences, especially such as were supernatural.

And Lange writes: the Talmud connects with ver. 9 the mezuzah, a metal case containing a parchment roll, inscribed with vers.

4–9, and 11:13–22, and dedicated to Shaddai, (the Almighty) which every Jew fastened to the right door-post of his house as a protection against death, the devil, ghosts and witchcraft.

So you can see a danger of taking something too literally.

God does not mean that simply having some scripture on the wall would ward off evil spirits.

If that were the case, every church would be safe from spiritual attack, and every Christian home with a scripture on the wall would never be attacked, then maybe ever car with a Jesus fish would be spared from accidents.

Who needs a good neighbor insurance company if we could do that?

And if that really were the case, even non-believers would catch on.

It reminds me of a scene in a move I saw long ago, and the man is being chased by something evil, and around his neck he has all these amulets of different religions and he holds them up one at a time to see if anything will help.

God’s Word is not something we hold up to prevent evil from coming.

Evil will come.

But His word can and will, for those who take seriously this passage of scripture, help them to be prepared and more likely to make the right decisions.

I started out talking about what influences us, what makes us want what we want?

We are bombarded every hour with temptations and lies and evil, and if we are not well-grounded in the Word of God, when we face those trials we will not be able to withstand.

But if we ground our lives on the Word of God, and truly have it on our hearts, if we teach and are taught these things diligently, if we talk of them at every opportunity, if our actions are guided by God’s Word, if our worldview is a biblical worldview, if we have founded our homes on this, then we will be able to win more of those battles.

Will we do perfectly?

Well, for those in Christ, the day of perfection is coming, but it is not yet.

I think of this often, about what blessings in heaven we will see.

And I’m hard-pressed to choose.

And really, scripture tells us we cannot even imagine the wonderful things God has in store for us.

But I can tell you one thing I long for, that heaven will bring for me.

that is, the inability to sin.

We need to keep scripture in our hearts.

In Revelation, we read about the 144,000 who are sealed on their foreheads.

But Satan always takes what God does for good and perverts it to something evil.

Here in Deuteronomy 6 God’s people are commanded to have God’s word on their hearts, and metaphorically as a sign on their hands, or some translations say wrists or forearms, and as frontlets between their eyes, meaning the forehead, and what does Satan do?

He causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark.

God says have my word ready at your hand and on your forehead, but the beast of Revelation perverts that.