Scripture: Deuteronomy 6:1-9
Video Link: https://youtu.be/ncW1DISd1kQ
Audio Link: https://soundcloud.com/tawabaptist/sermon-3-jul-2022-love
Structure:
- Introduction
- Love for God is Loyal
- Love for God is Obedient
- Love for God is Voluntary
- Love for God is Educational
- Conclusion
Introduction:
Good morning everyone.
Last Tuesday a parcel arrived for Robyn in the post. It was relatively large, about 600mm square. The parcel contained a flat pack table, that Robyn wanted me to assemble for her classroom.
While I quite enjoyed woodwork at school, flat packs are not my favourite. Flat packs tend to be a bit of a lottery. Sometimes they go together okay and other times, there are pieces missing or the instructions don’t exactly line up with the pieces you are given.
When it comes to assembling flat packs, you give yourself the best chance of success by reading the instructions all the way through first. The other thing I find helpful, is having a picture of what the finished product is supposed to look like. That way, if the instructions are a bit vague, you can at least see what you are aiming for.
As it turned out, this particular flat pack was decent quality. It had good instructions and a picture of the finished product on the box. I managed to assemble it without any trouble, while watching the sports news and the weather. The things we do for love.
Today we continue our series in Deuteronomy. Among other things, Deuteronomy contains detailed instructions on how to assemble the flat pack of Israel’s life in the ancient world.
In this morning’s passage, which focuses on the opening verses of Deuteronomy 6, Moses shows the Israelites a picture of what the finished product is supposed to look like. The Israelites need to keep this bigger picture in mind because it makes sense of the details. From Deuteronomy 6, verses 1-9 we read…
These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. 3 Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, promised you. 4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.
These words, about loving God with all your heart, all your soul and all your strength probably sound familiar because we hear them on the lips of Jesus, who identified loving God as the greatest commandment.
But what does it mean to love God? True love for God involves at least four things. Love for God is Loyal, Obedient, Voluntary and Educational. L.O.V.E. spells love. First let us consider loyalty.
Love for God is Loyal:
Sylvester Stallone once said: “I learned the real meaning of love. Love is absolute loyalty. People fade, looks fade but loyalty never fades.”
We might not expect that sort of wisdom from the man who played Rocky and Rambo, but I think there is more to Sly than meets the eye. He is right on the money with that quote. Loyalty is at the heart of true love. I guess a life time of working in Hollywood and the fickleness of fame showed him what matters.
In Arthur Millar’s play, ‘The death of a Salesman’, the main character Willy says, “You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away. A man is not a piece of fruit.”
What Willy means is that you can’t treat a person like he is a piece of fruit. You can’t take the best out of him and then chuck him away when he is used up. That’s not loyalty. Loyalty is about remaining faithful, sticking with someone through thick and thin. Accepting the person, peel and all.
The Bible is full of stories of loyal love. There is Ruth’s loyal love for Naomi, Jonathon’s loyal love for David, Barnabas’ loyal love for Mark, Moses’ loyal love for Israel, the Father’s loyal love for the prodigal, Jesus’ loyal love for Simon Peter and so on.
One of the key messages of Deuteronomy is, remain loyal to Yahweh the Lord. Do not turn aside to the right or the left. Do not worship any other gods. Stay on track with God Almighty. Don’t treat the Lord like an orange.
In verses 4-5 we read: 4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
These verses are known as the Shema which means ‘hear’. For centuries Jews have recited these words as part of a daily ritual of prayer.
Verse 4 is sometimes translated ‘the Lord is one’ and other times, ‘the Lord alone’. This is not an either / or choice. The original Hebrew embraces a both / and meaning.
To say, the Lord is one, points to the wholeness, the oneness, the unity and integrity of God Almighty. God is wholehearted in his commitment to the promises he makes. God’s loyalty is undivided. This means, if we are going to be in a relationship with God, we must give Him our undivided loyalty too.
To say, the Lord alone, points to the reality that there is no other god. It connects with the first of the Ten Commandments, ‘You shall have no other gods before me’.
The Lord God Almighty is not in competition with anyone or anything else. There is only one God, therefore, to worship anything else is a lie, a falsehood, a meaningless fantasy. Again, this belief calls for our undivided loyalty to the one true God.
When we hear the word love we may be inclined to think of a nice, warm fuzzy feeling. An emotion, like falling in love. Sometimes good feelings accompany love but not always.
Loyalty is the backbone of love. Loyalty enables love to stand under the weight of gravity. Loyalty provides strength with movement. Without loyalty, love is like a jelly fish; beautiful to look at but with no skeleton, no integrity, just a nasty sting in the tail.
We might also compare loyalty to the roots of a tree. The deeper the roots of loyalty go the more resilient the tree of our relationship with God. But if the roots of loyalty don’t run deep, then when dry times come, the tree of our relationship withers and dies.
So that’s the first thing: to love God is to be loyal to him. Closely connected to loyalty is the idea of obedience.
Love for God is Obedient:
If you grew up in the 80’s you are probably familiar with the movie the Princess Bride. It is a story of loyal love. The story begins with a boy sick in bed with a cold. His grandfather comes over to his house to look after him and reads him a story from a book.
In the book we are introduced to the heroes, Westley and Buttercup. Buttercup is a farm girl and Westley is a farm hand. Whenever Buttercup wants something Westley answers with the words, ‘As you wish’. He obeys her, doing just what she asks, simply because he loves her.
At the end of the movie, after the boy’s grandad has finished reading the story, the boy asks him to come back and read again tomorrow and the grandad answers, ‘As you wish’, because he loves the boy.
Deuteronomy is peppered with commands, decrees and laws and with the encouragement to obey the Lord, so things will go well for you in the land.
In verse 5, we are told the essence or the DNA of all the commands and laws and decrees of Deuteronomy…
5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
This is the picture on the box, showing us what the finished product of a life of obedience to God looks like. This is what we are aiming for. This greatest commandment makes sense of all the detailed instructions. The main reason we obey God is because we love him.
The heart, in Hebrew thought, refers to a person’s inner life. Not just our feelings but our mind and our will, or our decision making faculties, as well.
The meaning of the word soul can have a different nuance depending on the context, but in this verse the soul refers to our whole self, including our physical body and our life force or vitality.
The word translated as strength, in verse 5, is more than just your physical energy or your ability to bench press heavy weights. Your strength here includes your wealth, your money, your time, your tools, your social influence, your house, your skills and talents, as well as your livestock (if you a farmer) or your car (if you live in the modern world).
Your strength basically equates to the resources at your disposal.
The point is, love for God involves using everything we are and everything we have in obedience to God’s purpose.
So, for example, loving God with all your heart, soul and strength means paying a fair price for things, even if that might cost a little more, because we know that God wants us to do justly and not rip other people off.
Of, if you are in the place of the seller, loving God with all your heart, soul and strength means charging a fair price, rather than letting the market decide.
I know Christian landlords who are charging their tenants significantly less than the market rate because they are motivated by love for God, not love of money.
Love for God is Voluntary:
This obedience of love is not an empty, heartless, fulfilling of duty. Nor is it a callous, mercenary, self-interested obedience, so that God will bless me. The obedience God wants is voluntary, motivated by love. In verse 6 we read…
6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.
In other words, the obedience of love isn’t just for show. Our obedience needs to come from the heart, from the core of our self, from the inside out. Not because we have to, but because we want to. True love for God is voluntary.
As much as I don’t like assembling flat pack furniture, I will volunteer to do it for Robyn because I love her. I don’t hold Robyn in my debt for assembling her table. I take pleasure in being able to help her. In fact, I would feel jealous if she asked anyone else.
If you are a parent of small children, then you may not like changing nappies but you volunteer to clean up your child’s mess because you love them. You don’t keep an account of all the money you spend on nappies and wipes in order to invoice them when they are older. You don’t even think of it as a debt.
Or, if you are a parent of teenagers, then you may not like picking your kids up from wherever they happen to be in the middle of the night, but you volunteer because you love them. You don’t expect your kids to pay you like an Uber driver. You may not even expect them to thank you. You are just pleased to have them home safe. Love is its own reward.
Or, if you have a friend in hospital, then even if you don’t like hospitals you may still volunteer to visit because you love them. You don’t expect your friend to entertain you when you arrive. Nor do you tell them all your troubles. You are there for them, to listen and be present so they know they are not alone.
When we volunteer to help others, out of a heart motivated by love, we are imitating God our Father. God’s love for us is voluntary. God is not obligated to us in any way. God takes care of us, even though there is often nothing in it for him. And he does not count the cost.
Now when we say that ‘love for God is voluntary’, we are implying that true love is an act of freedom. Love is not involuntary, like a sneeze or the hiccups or an obsession of some kind. Love is a conscious choice. In fact, we cannot love God unless we are free. God sets us free so we can love.
The Israelites had to be set free from their slavery in Egypt and from their fear, before they could truly volunteer to love God with their all. What things are binding you? What things are holding you back from loving God more fully? What hurts from the past do you still carry?
Okay, to recap what we’ve covered so far: Loving God with all your heart, soul and strength is the greatest commandment, the one that makes sense of all the other laws and decrees. Love for God is loyal, love for God is obedient and love for God is voluntary.
As nice and neat as this sounds, it’s a pretty tall order. Loving God with all your heart, soul and strength, all the time is not easy. Do not despair though. The ‘E’ in our L.O.V.E. acronym stands for educational.
And by ‘educational’ I mean love for God is a learning process. We aren’t expected to know everything all at once. Nor are we expected to never make a mistake. But we are expected to learn from our mistakes.
Love for God is Educational:
Those of you who watch the TV show, The Simpsons, will know how every episode starts with Bart writing lines on the board at school. I’m not sure if teachers still make students do this but I remember having to write lines on the odd occasion.
Zig Ziglar is quoted as saying: “Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment.”
There is truth in this I think. The more we repeat something over and over again, the more it sticks in our memory. That’s true, not just of writing lines, but of anything we attempt to learn.
Remember when you first started to learn to drive. Everything was a bit stressful and unfamiliar. You were trying to remember to look in the rear vision mirror, while changing gear and keeping an eye on your speed limit. After a couple of months though it becomes second nature.
Returning to Deuteronomy 6, from verse 7 Moses says…
7 Impress these commandments on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
This is education by saturation, learning by repetition.
We probably never learn more than when we have to teach someone else.
Deuteronomy always has its eye on the next generation. Moses doesn’t want the people to forget. He wants them to remember and pass on God’s law of love to their children and grandchildren and so on.
Verse 7, instructs adults to talk to children about God’s commands in the everyday circumstances of life. You see a rainbow you talk about the hope we have because of God’s promises. You watch a movie with a redemption arc in the story line, you find a way to connect it back to Jesus. The kids get grumpy and have a fight, you talk about forgiveness, once they have calmed down enough to listen.
When you sit down for a meal you say a prayer to thank God. When you put your kids to bed at night you read a Bible story or two. When you start the day you recite the Lord’s prayer together. These are just some of the ways we might apply verse 7.
Thinking of verses 8 & 9, we might not tie Bible verses to our hands and heads but some of you may have a fish symbol on your car or perhaps a cross stitch Bible verse hanging on your wall. When I was younger, and had time for hobbies, I used to make small wooden crosses and give them to people as gifts. Maybe you have decorated a cake with the words ‘Jesus loves you’.
Use your imagination, be creative. What can you do to remind yourself and the people in your household of God’s law of love?
Conclusion:
The night before his crucifixion and death Jesus said to his disciples:
Whoever accepts my commandments and obeys them is the one who loves me.
This means we love Jesus by obeying his commands.
In a few moments we will share communion together. Communion is a time to remember God’s love for us in Christ. Jesus opens the door to friendship with God. It is Jesus who makes it possible for us to love God.
Where we have failed to be loyal to God, Jesus has been loyal for us.
Where we have failed to obey God, Jesus has obeyed for us.
Jesus volunteered for the cross, because of his love for God.
By following Jesus in faith, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, we receive an education in loving God.
Grace and peace to you on the journey.
Questions for discussion or reflection:
What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?
- Have you ever assembled a flat pack before? How did it go? Are you the kind of person who reads the instructions first or do you prefer to wing it?
- What is loyalty? Why is loyalty important to love?
- Why do we obey God? What is the difference between obedience motivated by love and obedience driven by duty? Who do you obey?
- Discuss / reflect on the meaning of Deuteronomy 6:5 ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength.’
- Who do you volunteer for? What things are binding you or holding you back from loving God? What hurts do you carry from the past?
- What can you do to remind yourself and the people in your household of God’s law of love?
Outtakes
This idea that love for God is educational isn’t just an Old Testament Moses thing. It’s a New Testament Jesus thing too. Jesus taught his disciples the meaning of love and in turn commanded them to make disciples also.
Incidentally, the word ‘disciple’ simply means student or apprentice. To be a disciple of Christ just means we are learning to be like Jesus.
We shouldn’t compartmentalise discipleship exclusively into some form of church programme. Christian discipleship doesn’t only happen when you are listening to a sermon or attending a Bible study group or doing your personal devotions. Learning to love God encompasses all of life.
Discipleship, learning to be like Jesus, happens in singleness and marriage, when you are at work or play, whether you are well or sick.
Tawa Baptist 