Family on Mission

Today we're going to continue in our series called Kingdom Work.

And so this month we're looking at what does it look like for us to live out the kingdom through our daily lives, through the work that we do?

And last week we looked at the different areas of our lives that provide kingdom work, right?

In our relationships with our husband and wife, through our parenting of our kids and through our jobs that God has placed us in here for this time.

And now today we're going to talk about what does it look like to be families on a mission?

And we're going to be looking at Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 4 through 9 this morning.

Deuteronomy 6:4–9

So let's pray and then we'll dive in.

Jesus, we just thank you.

We thank you for being a Lord who loves us, who's near us, God who desires for your creation to come under the Lordship of your authority.

And so, Lord, I pray this morning as we open up your word, would your spirit be present?

Would you convict us through your word?

Lord, would you help us grow in our understanding of you so that we may go out and live it in the way that you've instructed us to?

God, we are so thankful for who you are.

And I pray that we continue to strive every day of our life into a deeper relationship with you.

And we pray this in your name.

Amen.

Well, imagine, if you will, a teacher gives an assignment, and it's an unusual assignment.

She says, Tonight, I want you to go home and I want you to figure out what your family loves.

Pretty simple assignment.

But here's the one rule you're not allowed to ask your parents.

So the teacher gives this assignment to a class and she tells the kids, go home, figure out what your family loves, but you cannot ask them.

That means you can't walk through the door and say, hey mom, what matters most to our family?

Or dad, what is our family values?

Instead, the teacher says, I want you to watch.

I want you just to observe.

What does everybody get excited about?

What gets talked about at dinner?

What does your family spend money on?

Look at what's on the calendar.

Notice where everybody spends their time and what gets pushed aside.

Pay attention to what makes people angry, what makes them celebrate or excited.

Notice when your parents do something wrong.

Then come back Monday and tell the class what does your family love?

Now imagine your child, your grandchild doing that assignment and they come home with a notebook and they're ready to take this seriously, and suddenly they're just watching.

So, dad, you walk through the door after work, mom checks the calendar and they're just taking notes.

Someone gets unexpected news or a phone call.

There's an argument in the home.

Someone gets sick, the weekend gets full.

Sunday morning comes and a decision has to be made.

Do we go to church?

Do we stay home?

And your child quietly is taking notes.

Now, what you say matters, but what seems to actually matter isn't the words that you say, but what is actually lived out.

So maybe sometime during that week you sat your kid down and you said, Hey, our family, we put God first.

And they write it down, our family puts God first.

But then they watch what happens throughout the week when following Jesus becomes inconvenient and they see what we really do.

Maybe you say something like this to your kids, hey, prayer matters.

And they even hear you pray at church, but at home things got stressful, money is tight, something is hurting, uh someone is hurting, and you don't know what decision to make, and the whole week they see and hear nothing to do with prayer.

You tell them the Bible is the word of God.

What great instruction! Now they're watching to see, well, how does this word of God change your behaviors?

At the end of the week, the child sits down with the assignment and they asks themselves, what does my family love?

What do you think they would write?

Because here's the thing that applies to every parent, grandparent, every one of us in this room today.

Every home has a curriculum.

Every home.

You may not have written it down, it might not be in a nice binder on a shelf somewhere, there's no lesson objectives, but your home teaches every single day.

Your calendar teaches, your spending teaches, your screens teach, your absences teach, your celebrations teach, your apologies teach, and eventually the people closest to us learn what matters most.

Not simply by listening to what we tell them matters, but by watching what our attention gets, what our energy gets, what we sacrifice for.

Now, here's the reality: we are all forming people.

So the question is, what are we forming them to love?

Because every single one of us in here has influence and we're using it.

But what are we doing with that?

Now, thousands of years ago, before there were parenting classes and podcasts and self-help books and family devotionals and kids' ministries on Sunday mornings, God spoke to his people about this very thing.

He told Israel, if you want the next generation to know me, you cannot simply give them information about me.

Oh man.

It's so much easier when you do that.

Because you just say, here, take this, read it, and do it.

Problem solved.

But it's more than that.

It's more than just information.

God says, My word has to move from your ears to your heart into your home and through your life.

That is the purpose behind Deuteronomy 6.

You see, Moses is speaking to the nation of Israel before they enter the promised land.

And Moses knows something super important.

Sometimes the greatest danger to their nation's security and their faith is not future hardship, it's the blessing of comfort and provision.

You see, the nation is about to enter a land that's already provided for them.

Farms that they did not have to farm, trees that they did not plant, vineyards that they get to just reap the benefit from.

All this is going to be provided for them in this promised land.

And so the temptation for them is going to be do we enjoy the gifts but forget the giver?

You see, in the wilderness where they've been for a generation, who did they have to rely on day in and day out?

God.

Because if God didn't show up and give them manna or give them quail, they didn't eat.

If God did not provide for them every day, they would miss out.

But now they're entering a place full of blessing.

So before they get there, Moses wants to give them these words that would be central to the life of Israel and their worship.

It says this, Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

This verse is known as the Shema.

It's a confession, it's in a pledge of allegiance, it's a call to give God your whole life.

And it is the curriculum for passing on faith to the next generation.

Well, if you're able this morning, would you please stand as we read God's word together from Deuteronomy 6, 4 through 9?

The verses will also be on the screen.

Says, 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.

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

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.

Amen.

You may be seated.

It's always nice when the passage is a little shorter.

But just because it's a short passage doesn't mean that it's not powerful.

There is so much in these words today.

It begins with hearing, it goes on to moving, uh, it moves to loving, and then it moves to the heart and into the home, right into the everyday rhythms of our lives.

Now, God's word is not meant to stay outside of us, and its purpose was never meant to just be religious information that we retain.

The word of God is meant to move from our ears to our hearts, into our homes, and through our lives.

So today we will go through three important aspects of the text.

The first is this hear the God who alone is Lord.

The second is love God with your whole life, and the third is make God's word a part of your everyday life.

So let's begin with the first one.

Hear the God who alone is Lord.

Verse 4 begins like this: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

This verse traditionally is called the Shema because it begins with the Hebrew word Shema.

It's funny how they how they call things like that.

Genesis is named Genesis because the first words are in the beginning.

And so Genesis means beginning.

So in the Hebrew is typical to and traditional to name things after the word it begins with.

So Shema means hear a listen.

But in Hebrew, it often means more than just receiving sound with your ears.

So to Shema means to listen in a way that leads to a response.

So when it is hearing God's word and taking it seriously, is listening that leads to obedience.

Now, parents, I know you understand this because any parent who has said this to their child, did you hear me?

What we're asking is not, hey, did audible sounds make it into your ears?

We know that they did.

What we're saying is, did you receive what I said in a way that's going to change what you do next?

That is the sense of Shema.

Biblical hearing is not complete until the word changes our response.

James 1.22 says it like this: but be doers of the word, not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

Now, Israel's problem was rarely that they had no access to God's word.

He was with them, he was present with them, speaking to them, often through prophets.

Their problem was hearing without doing.

So that was their issue.

They would hear the word of God, they'd be given the word of God, but they failed to act on the word of God.

So Moses begins, hear, O Israel.

This is personal, but it's not individualistic.

Moses is calling the whole covenant community to listen together.

That means parents, children, leaders, tribes, uh, households, future generations are all called to Shema, to hear.

Then Moses says this the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

The word Lord in our English Bible represents God's covenant name, Yahweh.

The name that Moses demanded from God at the burning bush.

That God says, Oh, you want my name.

I'm not going to give you a name.

I'm going to give you who I am, and I am who I am.

And that got translated into Yahweh.

This is the God who hurt who heard Israel's cries in Egypt.

It's the God who remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

It's the God who delivered them from 400 years of slavery.

It's the God who brought them through the Red Sea, the God who provided manna in the wilderness.

This is the God who made them his people.

And so Moses is not saying, Hey, listen, Israel.

Do that and you'll be good.

No, he's saying, listen to the God who has rescued you, who has called you.

Listen to him.

And he says, the Lord is one.

Now, this can be translated with several closely related ideas.

It can mean the Lord is one, the Lord alone, or the Lord is our God, the Lord alone.

The point in this context is not merely a math statement, it's a statement about God.

It's a call to undivided allegiance.

So Israel is about to enter a land filled with other gods, other loyalties, other rivalries.

And so they're going to have to look at all these things that these other people groups have been worshiping and living out for generations, and they're about to enter it.

So the temptation will not always be to openly reject Yahweh.

Sometimes the temptation will be to add other gods alongside him.

Man, talk about transcendence.

You can look at our world today and say, that's exactly where we're at.

We are not a nation that is actively rebelling and say, there is no God.

We see that, but that's not the majority voice out there.

Instead, what we see is, yeah, God, that's great, but God plus.

Add something else.

God's not enough.

So to say we worship Yahweh, but we also want the fertility gods of Canaan, we can't do that.

We trust Yahweh, but we also want the security of nations, no.

We belong to Yahweh, but we also want the values of the culture around us, the Shema says no.

Yahweh does not take a place among other worship deities.

He alone is God, and that's what Moses is trying to tell them.

And that still matters for us today.

Because what are our rival gods?

They may not be statues, by the way.

They may not have ancient names, but they still compete with our hearts.

So what is it for us?

Is it achievement?

Is it comfort?

Is it power?

Is it relationships, success, entertainment, our children?

All these and more can easily become a God to us.

So the modern danger is rarely that Christians formally renounce Jesus.

More often it's we're trying to add Jesus to a life ruled by other gods.

But the Shema will not allow for that.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

In other words, there is one Lord, one highest love, one of authority, final authority, and God who reigns over every other loyalty in the world.

Jesus addresses this same theme in Matthew 6, 24, when he says, No one can serve two masters.

He's trying to tell his disciples, this world is not going to be short of other loyalties.

Things that are going to tempt you to say, put me as Lord in your life.

And he says, But you can't serve both.

There is only one.

James says, a divided person is unstable and double-minded.

So the Shema calls us out of divided devotion and into a whole life allegiance.

So Moses, uh, before Moses tells Israel how to teach their children, he first tells them who God is.

So we see this order.

Because we cannot pass on faith, we do not personally live out.

Sometimes we want to follow that phrase, do as I say, not as I do.

Because it's easier that way.

I remember my coach loved saying that to me.

He would be like, ah, do it faster.

I'm like, we don't see you doing it, coach.

And he would say, Do as I say, not as I do.

Meaning it's not about me or what I'm practicing.

It's just about you being obedient to the words.

And that's a much easier way to live.

But it's not the way we're called to live.

We cannot pass on a faith we do not personally live out.

We cannot teach the next generation to love God alone if our own lives are divided between God and our idols.

So the question is not how do we get our kids to believe?

The question is, are we hearing and following Jesus ourselves?

Because faith is passed on when God's word first moves into our own ears.

So brings us to our second point.

Love God with your whole life.

Moses continues in verse 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.

Now, this should be the only response to verse 4.

Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Love him with all that you are.

Because Yahweh alone is God, Israel must love him without division.

The Hebrew word here for love is Ahav.

We also see that transliterated in other places, Ahava.

So this deep, beautiful meaning of love that means more than just emotional warmth.

So again, we hear the word love and we think like Valentine's Day, like roses and like loving cards and like warm embrace or a hallmark.

And it just warms us up and tingles us inside.

That's that's a part of love, but that's not all of what this biblical love is talking about.

It includes affection, but it also means loyalty and devotion, trust, obedience, and covenant faithfulness.

So to love Yahweh is to desire him, to trust him, to listen to him, to obey him, to reject rival allegiances and to order your life around him.

So biblical love is affection that becomes allegiance and allegiance that becomes obedience.

Jesus says it like this in John 14, 15.

He says, If you love me, you will what?

You will keep my commandments.

That does not mean obedience earns God's love.

No, it means genuine love responds to God with faithfulness.

Because obedience without love becomes legalism.

But love without obedience becomes empty sentiment.

Biblical love joins the heart and the life.

So when Moses says you need to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your might, that word all carries the weight of this sentence.

He says, all your heart, all your soul and all your might.

You know what's fascinating about the Hebrew and Greek in the word all?

It means all.

Straightforward.

This is not Moses dividing a person into neat compartments, by the way.

He's not, he's not saying, okay, these separate parts of your life, love God in all those ways.

No, he is stacking language to say, love God with everything that you are.

So when he says your heart, he means your thoughts, your desires, your emotions, your decisions, your will.

When he says your soul, he means your life, your living self, your whole existence, your might, your strength, capacity, resources, energy, influence, and abundance.

Love God with everything that you think, everything that you desire, everything that you are, everything you possess.

God does not ask for one religious corner of our lives.

And that challenges our Western view of what we think of traditional church being.

We think like, no, no, Pastor, you're wrong.

I show up on Sunday, I'll write a check, I'll support this ministry.

But Monday through Saturday are mine.

That's not how it is.

All week is God's.

Every second, every breath, all that we are belongs to him.

The question is, have we had a biblical understanding of what it means to actually live for him fully and completely, holistically, where all that we are goes to him.

And then Sundays, we come to be equipped, we come to celebrate.

On Tuesday, I prayed for the first time ever out loud in front of a barista.

I don't know, God kind of put it on my heart, and I went and I prayed over them.

I wasn't planning to, it just started coming out, and they they were wrecked, they were crying.

It was like I was speaking right to them.

I don't even know them.

And all of a sudden, you're sharing, you're testifying to what God is doing in your life all week with your brothers and sisters in Christ.

This becomes a place of celebration.

This becomes a place where we get equipped to go out Monday through Saturday to do the work of the ministry.

That is our call.

But somehow we flipped it and we said, okay, Pastor, you better not go over 30 minutes today.

We got things to do.

It's a beautiful summer, and so don't waste our time.

Be quick, be efficient, and I'll be on my way.

Fill my cup so I can kind of get through the week.

Oh, church, no.

We are here together to be equipped, to celebrate, to be encouraged so we can go out and live it and then come back and do that on repeat.

So God's not asking for one part of your life, he's asking for the whole person.

This is why Jesus quotes the command when he's asked about what the greatest commandment is in Mark 12, 29 and 30.

Jesus answered, The most important is this hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and all your strength.

Jesus does not replace the Shema, he receives it, teaches it, and lives it.

And then he joins it to Leviticus 19, 18, where he says, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

So wholehearted love for God becomes self-giving love for others.

Your love for God becomes visible in obedience, in worship, in generosity, in humility, in repentance, in the way that we treat other people.

God's love becomes visible.

This is so important for the next generation because we pass on more than what we say.

We pass on what we actually love.

Children can tell what excites us.

Man, kids, they're they're attuned, right?

I mean, they may not fully be mature yet and they're dependent on us, but they're paying attention.

They can tell what scares us.

Man, they can tell.

What angers us.

They know what we protect and what we sacrifice for, what gets our best energy.

They can tell what we run to or what we we trust the most when life gets hard.

And now Deuteronomy 6 is not first a parenting technique, it's a call to love God.

Because before Moses even says, teach these words diligently to your children, he says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.

Because the faith we pass on begins with the God we love.

That does not mean parents must be perfect, because none of you are.

It does not mean grandparents must have all the answers because you don't.

It doesn't mean church leaders will never make mistakes because we will.

It means that the next generation needs to see authentic disciples who love Jesus.

That should be a relief to you.

You mean I don't have to pretend to be perfect every single moment of every single part of my day?

No.

It means that you faithfully live out this call to be like Jesus every day.

And when you fall, return to grace.

Man, when you mess up, seek forgiveness and repent.

Man, children need to see adults who repent.

I think sometimes we think it's we can't let our kids see our mistakes.

We can't let them know how much we failed.

Because then they'll think less of us.

And it's like, no, they need to see how much we are dependent on Jesus so they can see that they need Jesus as well.

Adults who love God not just with the right words, but with their ordinary lives.

That's what he's calling us to.

Then verse 6 says, And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

So before the word is even taught, it must first be on our hearts.

Now this order matters.

Hear the word, love the God who speaks them, and then put it on your heart.

Then pass it on.

Jeremiah 31, 33 looks forward to the new covenant for God's people and says, I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

Ezekiel 36, 26 says, And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

God has always wanted more than external conformity.

He wants a heart-shaped life that's transformed by his word.

He wants to be able to speak into our lives and see transformation happen.

This is a word for every single one of us today.

Spiritual influence on the next generation is not flawless performance, it is the visible transformation of our lives.

A kid's not going to look back and be like, my parents were so perfect.

That's why I followed Jesus.

Then we're going to look back and say, Man, I saw my dad grow and mature and become more humble, more gracious, more loving, pray more, take us to church more, prioritize God more.

He was a different man by the time I was an adult than he was when I was a kid.

That transformation is what kids will see.

A child who sees a parent repent learns something about grace.

A teenager who hears an adult say, I was wrong, will you forgive me?

Learns something about humility.

A grandchild who watches a grandparent pray through suffering learns something about trust.

A young believer who sees an older believer open scripture in a hard season learned something about dependence, and God's word becomes believable to the next generation when they see it transforming us.

So the most powerful spiritual influence on children is not a parent who knows all the answers, but a parent whose own heart is being shaped by God.

So hear the God who alone is Lord.

Love him with your whole life.

And then third, make God's word a part of everyday life.

Verse 7 says, 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 when you rise.

So the phrase teach them diligently is important.

You know, we think of the word teach like classroom setting, or almost like this setting, right?

Someone's up front and you're sitting down and you're hearing all these things being instructed to you, but that's actually not what this word teach means in the Hebrew.

What it is, it's like the idea of the process of sharpening a blade or impressing something through a repeated action.

So it's a slow, repetitive thing again and again and again.

It's not a one casual mention.

So oftentimes I think we just think like, tell our kids, love Jesus, and that's good enough.

No, it's intentional, repeated, patient formation.

Faith becomes transferable when it's visible, conversational, and woven into all parts of our everyday life.

Disciples are not formed through one conversation, they are formed through thousands of faithful repetitions.

Man, if discipleship was one conversation, we crush it.

I would just be all day.

All my opponents would just be, let's meet a Kvista.

All right, nine all the way to five.

We're just going to meet all day and one conversation.

Now you're a faithful disciple.

Go.

But that's not discipleship.

Discipleship is repeated over and over again.

It's through the ups and downs, through the challenges, through the good times and the bad.

And so Moses says this teaching happens when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise.

I love this because it's such a practical view of discipleship.

Moses gives four ordinary settings sitting in your home, walking along the way, lying down and rising up.

So these pairs are meant to cover the entire day.

At home, on the road, at night, in the morning, in other words, talk about God as you live your lives.

So he's saying, wherever you are, you can bring God into it.

So in the car, at bedtime, in the morning, at coffee, at church, after school, during work, when conflict happens, when you're arguing with the spouse, when prayers are answered, when bad news comes, when a child asks a hard question, when a teenager says, I don't know if I believe anymore.

When you stop and see the beauty of a sunrise or a sunset, when someone in the house needs forgiveness, all of this are opportunities to put God into practice in your life.

Now, this does not mean every conversation needs to be a sermon.

Maybe I'm just preaching to myself here, okay?

Because sometimes it could feel like we're just creating something for the sake of it being meaningful, but children should not feel like every sentence becomes a lecture.

But it does mean that faith becomes a normal part of our lives, of our household, of our language, of our communication.

God's word should not feel like something we visit once a week when we leave and then leave it behind at church.

It should become a part of how we interpret our reality.

So faith formation is not just one person, by the way, it takes a community.

So also when you think, oh, this is just me, it's not just you.

Parents matter, grandparents matter, uh, single adults matter, aunts, uncles, children's ministries, youth leaders, mentors, older believers, the church family, all of us have a role to play in the discipleship of the next generation.

But the command begins with, here, O Israel, not here, O parents only.

So, yes, parents, you carry a particular responsibility, but it's up to the whole covenant community that shares in forming the next generation.

That means the church does not replace the home, and the home does not operate apart from the church.

The church strengthens the home, and the home becomes a place where faith is lived out, and that is kingdom work.

Most of this will not feel dramatic, by the way.

You're not going to have some just like big, enlightened spiritual conversion moment.

No, it's going to feel ordinary.

But that's Deuteronomy 6, and that's what it teaches us that ordinary moments are the soil where faith is formed.

Praise Jesus.

Faith is passed on when God moves from our ears to our hearts, into our homes, and through our lives.

So Moses says in verse 8, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

The hand represents action, the place between the eyes represents our attention, thought, and perception.

God's word must shape what we do and how we see.

It must govern all that we do and think about.

So let me ask you, does God's word shape what you do?

Is it filling your thoughts?

Or are you on autopilot until Sunday and you're like, oh, all right.

All right, let's get God focused now.

Or is it just in us in what we do?

It must govern all our lives.

Then verse 9 says, You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

The doorposts mark the entrance to the home, the gate represents the public life of the community.

So the movement is comprehensive.

Heart, children, home, road, morning, night, hands, eyes, house, gates.

God's word claims every area of your life.

Don't get me wrong, a Bible verse on the wall, that's great.

Before I was a believer, my mom found a little picture frame that had a football player on it, so she got it for me, not knowing that inside that frame was a Bible verse.

I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.

Philippians 4 13.

So before I was even a believer, I was reading that every day.

It's good.

Bible verses in your home are great.

A cross in the home can be meaningful.

Scripture written on a card, on a mirror, to help us remember, those are good things.

But God's word is not meant to just decorate our homes, it must direct the home.

So let's return to the question I asked at the beginning.

What is your home teaching people to love?

What does your home teach your family to love?

What does your calendar teach?

What does your spending teach?

What does your worship teach?

What does your response to failure teach?

And I'm not saying this to shame you, because some of you might be feeling like, oh, I'm the worst.

I shouldn't have come to church today.

Like he was just, I didn't know the pastor was gonna pick on me.

No, this is not to shame you.

It's meant to awaken us to the ordinary places where God can do extraordinary kingdom work.

No household will get this perfect, no parent gets this perfect, no church gets this perfect.

The good news is that Deuteronomy 6 is not calling us to be perfect performers, it's calling us to be faithful hearers.

Listen again, love again, begin again because faith is rarely passed on, like I said, in one dramatic moment, it's passed on through thousands of ordinary moments offered to God again and again.

Every home has a curriculum.

All of you have a curriculum.

Every church has a curriculum, every life has a curriculum, and they're all teaching something.

So the question is not whether we are passing something on.

We are.

All of us, we're all passing something on.

The question is whether we are passing on a faith worth receiving.

Today's passage gives us a simple but powerful roadmap.

One God, wholehearted love, a word-filled life, and intentionally discipled generation.

We tend to overcomplicate it.

Like, nope, I need someone to write a book.

I need someone to start a new podcast.

I need something else to help me figure out how to do this.

And the Bible breaks it down for you.

It says, man, just make sure that you know that God and God alone is your God.

Love him with all that you are.

Fill your life with his word, and then intentionally pass that on to the next generation.

This can be the hardest and greatest kingdom work we ever do.

So we remember that the kingdom work happens in repeated faithfulness of our ordinary lives.

That faith is passed on when God's word moves from our ears to our hearts to our homes and through our lives.

Now the Shema began with the command to hear.

But the story of Scripture shows that God's people often failed to hear.

They forgot, they divided their allegiance and worshipped other gods.

They enjoyed the gifts and abandoned the giver.

They taught the words but did not live them out.

And if we're honest, we have done the same.

We have not loved God with all of our heart.

We have not loved him with all of our soul.

We have not loved him with all of our might.

We have heard his word and ignored it.

We have let rival loves shape us.

We have made our homes about lesser things.

We have spoken of God, but we have not always lived under his command and his word.

But the gospel is not build the perfect Christian home so God will accept and love you.

Praise Jesus.

The gospel is Jesus has been faithful where all have failed.

I want you to hear this.

If you're here today and you don't have a relationship with Jesus, listen to this.

When Adam and Eve failed in the garden, Jesus overcame with the word.

Where Israel failed in the wilderness, Jesus remained faithful.

Where we have divided our hearts today, Jesus loved the Father perfectly.

Where we have disobeyed, Jesus obeyed even to the point of death.

Philippians 2.8 says he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.

At the cross, Jesus died for people who did not love God the way that they should.

But through his resurrection, he offers forgiveness, new life, and a new heart.

And you might be thinking, well, I'm not good enough.

If if you really knew me, if you really knew me, you would know that a perfect God could never love me.

Listen to what 1 John 4.19 says.

That is the order of grace.

Not that you were good enough to earn God's love, but that God loves you.

So today, if you don't know Jesus, the invitation is to come to him.

Not with a perfect family, not with a perfect life, not with perfect obedience.

Come with repentance and faith.

Receive Jesus and the grace that he's offering you.

Let him give you a new heart.

Let him reshape your life.

Right here, right now, as you are, you can say yes to Jesus.

Confess and be saved.

It's not about a magical prayer.

It's not about me trying to convince you.

It's not about you having all the answers.

It's just about you responding to the invitation that God has given you.

Because at some point, every single one of us, we will all die and we will stand before that perfect judge.

And the only thing, the only acceptance is did you have the righteousness of Jesus on your life?

And the only way you get the righteousness of Jesus on your life is by believing and accepting Him here and now.

But then when you do, you're done.

You're saved.

Not because of any of your good works, not because you've paid enough or went to church enough or had the right words, because there was a God who loved you that you accepted into your life.

And I pray that you would do that.

And again, not because we're trying to make you into something else, because we want you to have the good news that God desires for all people.

Now, for the rest of you who already belong to Jesus, the shamal today of Deuteronomy 6, I want you to receive it again.

Hear, love, receive the word.

Bring your faith into the ordinary rhythms of your life.

And when you fail, return to grace again and again.

So this is my challenge for you this week, church.

You're gonna have so many opportunities to live this out.

I want you to try to be intentional this week.

Who is God placed in your life that you repeatedly get to disciple, that you get to pray for again and again?

It's gonna look differently for different people, by the way.

Don't compare.

Don't go, well, they're doing that, I'm not doing that.

Just do what God has called you to in the places He's called you to.

And I guarantee you, you start living this out, you bring the Word of God into your ordinary life.

Watch what He does.

Sundays we'll go from less of like, oh, a place where I get to sing the songs I like, into a place where we are testifying to what God has done throughout the week.

Let us pray.

Oh, Father, you alone are God.

Teach us to hear your word, not only with our ears, but with our lives.

Forgive us for our divided loyalties.

God, for too long we've allowed the comforts and blessings of this world to distract us from your goodness, Lord.

And Lord, we've maybe even allowed just thoughts of failure to divide us from the call you've given us to live out your word in every aspect of our life.

So I pray this morning, Lord, would we take your word seriously?

Would we read it daily?

Would we pray faithfully?

Would we do all these things, not to be better Christians, Lord, but so we can live out this relationship you've called us to and invited us to so that others will see and others can follow where we have gone.

Jesus, transform our lives so that we look more and more like you, so the next generation can see you in all that we do.

And we pray this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.