The Greatest Commandment

The Blade he served in the late 18th century.

We remember him now as the father of theological

liberalism, and not a wonderful title that you want to carry,

but he carries it. The other was Jonathan Edwards,

the American bastion of theological conservatism.

If you've seen a Great Awakening, you've probably heard

his name. He brought the Great Awakening

with George Whitfield to American soil. 2 Very different

people, but have more in common than is realized.

The lecture brought the similarities between the two for

both men, true religion consisted in the heart.

It had to be in the heart and what they would call the

affections. And so there's there's emotions,

right? Those fleeting things.

If you want to think about emotions from a from a

scriptural standpoint, remember the very people that came before

Jesus throwing their palm branches down saying Hosanna

Hosanna blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord a few

days later said crucify him, crucify him.

We can't trust our emotions, but the the affections is what they

were getting at. True religion consists there,

those deep, enduring inclinations of the soul that

weather all of the emotional ups and downs.

Both men, he said, were responding to the hard logic of

18th century Enlightenment, which was committed to science

and to individualism and to reason.

And they're coming out of that. And they're both part of a

movement that was called Romanticism, which was the world

overreacting to the Enlightenment.

And they're they're leading with sentiment and they're over

prioritizing the feelings. And both emphasized the

importance of having an experience with God and related

to these things was actually what set them apart above all

else. The one difference that set them

worlds apart was. Jonathan Edwards believed that

the affections and the heart arise from knowing truth about

God, knowing doctrine, knowing theology, and believing it

yields the fruit of religious affection, joy and peace and

love of God. And Schleiermacher believe that

the Bible is primarily a record of religious experience.

And he believed that doctrines are a byproduct of religious

affections, meaning that doctrines are produced by

writing out what I feel. And so for him, doctrine

evolves, religion evolves. And so he doesn't have much room

for books like Deuteronomy because there's more evolved

religion. We can go to the New Testament.

There's a higher religion. And so Christian doctrines are

accounts of Christian religious affections set forth in speech.

So for one, affections written down become doctrines.

The other one is you take the doctrines that have been written

down and they lead to your affections.

Who was right is the question. Listen to Deuteronomy 65.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all

your soul, and with all your might.

If there's ever a text that pointed toward the affections

are aimed at the affections of your heart, this is it.

And they're obviously aimed at that.

But the very next verse is Deuteronomy 66.

These commandments that I command to you today shall be on

your heart. And so there you have the proper

order. Moses shows you the order.

It's not your write down your affections.

And then we'll we'll have a list here.

No, he says these commandments that I preached to you today are

to be written on your heart. We love the Lord our God by

writing His commandments onto our heart.

Edwards was right. So regarding the transformation

or the renewal of our heart, the instrument of the heart, renewal

is the word of God. And the agent of a renewed heart

is the Holy Spirit who works through that word.

And the fruit is properly ordered.

Affections, joy and assurance, and namely love.

That's how it works. That's the renewed heart.

And as you come to the book of Deuteronomy, this is the first

place in the Bible that God's people are commanded to love

him. It's demanded of us that we love

God before this. I mean, it talks about God's

love. He shows the steadfast love to

thousands. But we are, we are commanded to

fear God, to have an awe of Him, and to have a respect of him.

And you finally come here. And today God commands for the

first time. You shall love the Lord your

God. And why love?

I'll go back and quote Jonathan Edwards to you.

He says because love is the 1st and the chief of the affections.

It's the fountain of joy. It's the fountain of gratitude

and hatred of sin. And Edward says that love is

what drives everything we do, not the emotion of fear, not the

fleeting passions of pleasure, but the affections of love and

joy that are found in Jesus Christ and in the teachings of

Scripture about him. And open up to Deuteronomy 6.

And I want to read with you this passage, the greatest

commandment, Deuteronomy 6, verses 1 to 9.

Deuteronomy 6:1–9

Moses says, Now this is the commandment, the statute, and

the rules that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that

you may do them in the land to which you're going over to

possess it. That you may fear the Lord your

God, you and your son, and your son's son, by keeping all his

statutes and his commandments, which I command you all the days

of your life, and that your days may be long.

Here therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may

go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the

Lord, the God of your Father's has promised you, in a land

flowing with milk and honey. Here, O Israel, the Lord our

God, the Lord is 1 And you shall love the Lord your God with all

your heart, and with all your soul, with all your might.

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

heart. You shall teach them diligently

to your children. You shall talk of them when you

sit in your house and when you walk by the way, when you lie

down and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on

your hand, and you shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on

your gates. The oldest manuscript of the

Bible until just we, we got our Dead Sea Scrolls went all the

way back to the 2nd century BC and this is what we found.

They were, it was called the Nash Papyrus.

I'll spare you all the details, but what was written on it was

this little transition verse that we saw a few weeks ago,

Deuteronomy 445, which says these are the the testimonies

and the statutes and the rules which Moses spoke to the people

when they came out of Egypt. And then it put the 10

commandments on there. And then it was followed by

these words, Deuteronomy 6, four to five.

I say that to tell you this has been a premier verse for the

people of God, if not the premier verse for the people of

God from the very beginning. And when Jesus was asked by a

scribe in Mark 12/29 which commandment is the most

important of all, He didn't hesitate.

And very rarely, if you know Jesus, you know he doesn't

answer questions with answers. Very often people ask him

questions and he answers questions back.

But this is one of those rare times.

They say, what's the greatest commandment?

He doesn't hesitate, but answers directly.

And he says the most commandment, the most important

commandment is this. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our

God, the Lord is 1. And you shall love the Lord your

God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your

mind, and with all your strength.

And the scribe agrees with them and he says you've answered

correctly. O teacher, you've truly said

that he is 1 and there is no other beside him.

And to love him with all the heart and with all the

understanding, with all the strength, and to love one's

neighbor as oneself is much more than all whole burnt offerings

and sacrifices. And then Jesus declaration to

him, he says, you've got it right.

You understand, I desire steadfast love and not

sacrifice. I desire mercy and righteousness

and not sacrifice. And so he tells them, you are

not far from the Kingdom of God. You've understood the most

important verse. And so we're studying a text of

Scripture now and Deuteronomy 6 that our Lord and Savior, by his

own confession, says is the most important commandment in the

Bible. And this is a commandment that

Jewish people have been reading twice a day when they rise up

and when they go to bed for millennia.

And we call it the Shema, which is the Hebrew verb meaning to

hear or to obey. He says it twice and verse 3 and

verse 5. And there's some word play going

on here that to help you remember it, he says hear O

Israel Shema. And then he adds to it the word

keep, which is shemar. And so he says, hear Shema and

keep the word Shemar. And this is a passage of

scripture that's represented the heart of the Old Testament from

the beginning is why commentators say if you

understand Deuteronomy, then you understand the Old Testament

because it's the heart of the Old Testament.

And we have the Talmud, the definitive record of Jewish

traditions instructed Jewish people to this is the first

thing that you were to teach your children when they can

talk. You start here.

And this ought to be the last thing that you confess before

you die. It's that important.

Eugene Merrill It's the expression of the essence of all

God's person and purposes in 16 words of Hebrew text.

And Jesus Christ himself says this is the greatest commandment

in the law. And the reason is because Old

Testament commentators point out that when you confess the Shema

verses 4 to 5, when you commence the, when you confess this, you

are swearing allegiance to Yahweh, You are yoking yourself.

That's the, the language that they use.

You're yoking yourself to the Kingdom of God.

You're swearing allegiance to the Kingdom of God and it's King

Jesus Christ and Jesus commands all would be followers.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.

We're yoking ourself to the Kingdom by reading and

confessing these verses. You're yoking yourself, you're

binding yourself, you're bonding yourself, swearing allegiance to

God's Kingdom. So the emphasis of Deuteronomy 6

is loving the Lord and keeping his commandments.

And you're soon going to see that's the same thing, right?

This is two sides of the same coin.

To love the Lord is to follow his commandments, which is why

there's a premium on these verses of knowing the word,

writing it on the tablet of your heart, and then doing the word,

not being a forgetful here. And I've I've see in these

verses, these 9 verses, what kind of binds them all together,

at least in my mind's eye is this language of totality.

It's all you see in verses one to three.

It's all of his statutes and all of his rules for all the people

of Israel for all of life. Verses 1 to 3 is all his

statutes. Verses 4 to 5 is this, it's

giving all of yourself. Verses 6 to 9, all of life.

Say another way, it's, it's all his statutes.

You can see verse 2, he says by keeping all his statutes and

commandments all the days of your life.

The second he says it's all of yourself.

Verse 5, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and

with all your soul and all your mind and all your strength.

And then you come to the Third Point.

He says it's for all of life, which is why he says, I want you

to bind this on your hand. As a matter of fact, ride it on

the doorposts of your house and put it on your gates.

You know what's the location of our obedience to God and his

covenant. It's it's everything.

It's it's all of life. And so I want to I want to look

at these three things. All his statutes, all of

yourself, all of life, beginning in verses one to three.

Read it with me again, and all his statutes, When you see the

word all you can say it with me, he says.

Now this is the commandment, the statutes, and the rules that the

Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them

in the land to which you are going over to possess it.

That you may fear the Lord your God, you and your Son, and your

Son's Son, by keeping all you say it with me, all His statutes

and His command, which I command you all the days of your life,

and that your days may be long. Here therefore, Shema, O Israel,

and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, that

you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your Father's

has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.

I think part of the significance of this comes from the fact that

the expectation of Israel, when he's given them this law is that

they will do it and it will go well for them.

The expectation is that they're going to default to obedience.

He's not giving them this law. And he's like, hey, look, I know

this is really hard, and you're probably not going to keep it.

You know, he's giving you the law and he's saying this is not

too hard for you, right? These commandments are for you.

The assumption is that you're going to be blessed.

It's the same way for the children that are in your

household. There's an, there's not an

expectation of discipline. We give the household roles.

We set expectations because we expect our children to follow

them, that they will there will be peace and harmony and that

there will be blessing. And the same is true of our

Heavenly Father. He gives these commands

expecting that it's going to go well.

And so you'll see in verses 1 to 9, there's all these verbs that

Moses is giving and he's expecting us to follow them and

to do them. And so you say just following

through as, as we read through the script, he says, I expect

you to keep the commandments, Shamar.

I expect you to do them. And then he says, and I expect

you to teach them. This is for all the people.

There's a, there's an outlet for each of you to teach the

commandments. My favorite quote from erman

Vitius. I know he's your favorite Dutch

for the Reformation theologian. I know you guys well.

He's mine too. When you read him, he says no

one teaches well unless he first learns well, and no one learns

well unless he learns in order to teach, and both learning and

teaching are vain and unprofitable unless they're

accompanied by practice. What's he saying?

You have to to learn in order to teach or you're never going to

learn. The best teachers are those who

learn in order to teach. And you're a worthless teacher.

You're an ineffective teacher if you're not putting it in to

practice. That's what he's saying here.

Keep the law, keep the commandments, do the

commandments, teach them, talk about them, bind them on your

hands and write them. That's the expectation.

And when you do these things, you will be blessed.

When you swear allegiance and you follow through, verse 2, you

will live long in the land. Verse 3, it will go well with

you. So he's reminding them and we,

this is a broad statement, general statement, that

obedience to the covenant is promised broadly with blessing.

Otherwise, if you're not following the covenant, then

there's going to be the consequences due to sin and

there's going to be the discipline of the Lord and

there's going to be his chastising and there's going to

be refinement. And these are painful

experiences. But the expectation of God and

of Moses here is he says, I'm trying to spare you of all that.

I'm trying to give you blessing. I'm inviting you, he says, into

the land that's flowing with milk and honey.

So he's going to, we're going to take all of his statutes, all of

his law. And then he addresses in verse

2, he's addressing the people of God as a whole.

So it's all of the statues of God, all of the people of God.

And as you've already confessed yourself, for all the days of

their life, there's nowhere where obedience, there's no

location where obedience is not commanded, where allegiance is

not demanded. And so it's all the commandments

for all the people for all the time on earth.

It's all of yourself poured out for him.

Paul takes passages like this. He puts it in the metaphor of

you are to be a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God,

which is your spiritual worship. It is your Christian service.

He says it's pouring yourself out as a drink offering, as he

says in in second Timothy, even as I'm being poured out as a

drink offering on the sacrificial offering of your

faith. It's a pouring yourself out.

It's a it's a whole life experience.

It's laying down your life all the days of your life.

That's why when the Bible tells you to do something, the one,

the, the command that comes to mind is from Doug Melton in the

marriage retreat. If you remember, he was right

here. What's the first thing he said,

the most important thing that you were to do with your spouse?

Anybody remember #1 pray. We're supposed to pray with our

spouse. What if we don't feel like it?

What if we had a bad day? What if we just got in a big

fight? And you say, I don't know,

husband, I don't want to pray with my wife.

I don't feel like praying with my wife.

That's where verses like this are so significant because we

have to recognize in this moment, I am not the Lord of my

life. Aaron is not the Lord of Aaron's

life. Jesus Christ is the Lord of my

life. And he said I'm supposed to pray

with my wife. And so in that moment, I have to

swallow my pride. And what do I do?

I pray with my wife. Same wives to your husband's or

your family's. I don't want to.

My kids are acting foolish. I don't want to pray for my

kids. I don't want to put them to bed.

I'm going to do melatonin. I'm going to go take a bath.

No, scripture says you are not the Lord of your life.

Jesus Christ is the Lord of your life.

It's all of your life and every sphere.

And so you pray for your family and you serve your family and

your children. Moses goes on past this.

He continues this kind of all-encompassing comprehensive

language. He continues into verse 4 to 5

as he says we must apply all of ourselves to this covenant

second point. All of yourself read with me

this incredibly famous passage of Scripture in Deuteronomy 6,

four to five hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is 1.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all

your soul, and with all your might.

This is the the passage of scripture that we call the

Shema. It's these verses specifically

and it's it's always been read in one of two ways.

All of you will have a footnote in your Bible, a little note

that says that there's kind of some some different readings

that you can have here. Regardless of the reading, it's

it's allegiance to Yahweh is the point.

The most common readings are this one.

Number one would be the Lord our God.

The Lord is 1. Emphasizing of course, the the

oneness, the unity of God over and against all of the

polytheistic religions of the ancient Near East.

No, no Baal follower could make the confession.

Baal is 1. There's so many gods that would

they would give the title Bail to.

It would make no sense to say that Bail is 1.

And the second common alternative is that the Lord our

God, The Lord alone is God, emphasizing his uniqueness and

hit the exclusive nature. He is the only God in a world of

counterfeit gods. And so in light of the first

commandment, we are to have no other gods beside him.

That would be the emphasis and you can have your take on it.

I read it as the Lord our God. The Lord alone is God flowing

naturally out of that first commandment that says you shall

have no other gods besides me. Meaning Yahweh alone is God and

he doesn't compete for glory. This is what the scribe says.

I think it he kind of interprets that when when Jesus says this

verse, the scribe says, right, you are right.

There is no other God beside him.

And that's what Deuteronomy 435 says Yahweh alone is God.

The Lord is God. There is no other beside him.

Deuteronomy 439 the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth

beneath. There is no other.

Isaiah 4521 says it beautifully. There is no God besides me, a

righteous God and a savior. There is none beside me.

This is a verse that is demanding you, yoking yourself

to the the the Kingdom of God. It's your swearing allegiance

and it's, it's important to see that in Mark 12/29 when, when

Jesus uses this, it's recorded in Mark at the absolute climax

of all of his teaching in the capital city of Jerusalem.

And I, I think Carson and Beale, their commentary kind of walk us

through this, this theme of loyalty and allegiance.

And they show how we get to this climax.

And they begin in Mark 834 to 35 as Jesus is teaching, you can

hear the radical nature of his teaching.

He starts by saying you have to lay down your life Contra or

evangelism strategies. Jesus makes it hard to believe

and he says you have to take up your cross every day and follow

me. That's what loyalty is going to

demand of you. Set your alarm, you wake up,

confess me as Lord, take up your cross and follow me.

Mark 942 to 48. Then he says you have to deny

yourself. He says you're human fleshly

inclinations. He says if your right hand

causes you to sin, what are you supposed to do?

Cut it off? You know, I actually cut it off.

It's hyperbole. He says you need to take your

sin seriously and if your right eye causes you to sin, what do

you do? You pluck it out because it's

better to go into heaven missing 1 member than to go into hell

with all of your members. He's saying take sin extremely

seriously. He continues to mark 1017 to 21.

And here he says you're going to need to lay down your material

goods and don't make an idol of those.

It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than

for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of heaven.

And he continues to build. And then he comes.

Then comes Mark 12/29. You shall love the Lord your God

with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind

and all your strength. And he just takes it all to the

pinnacle. And he says it's going to cost

you everything, all of your resources, all of your life.

Total focus. This is what it means when we

say that salvation is a narrow path.

It's a it's a narrow gate because we enter through Jesus

Christ who is the door, and it's a narrow path and we cannot go.

That's what he said last week in our passage in Deuteronomy 5.

You can't go to the left or to the right.

We have to stay on the path of righteousness and keep our gaze

focused on Jesus Christ. It's a giving of your whole self

to every commandment at the expense of yourself for the

glory of God and Jesus Christ. And to yoke yourself to the

Kingdom of God means you look at your own affections and there

are no competitive affections. You look at the goals of your

own heart and there are no competing goals.

When I think about this in my own mind comes used to drive for

a living before like 4 lifetimes ago and did non-emergency

medical transportation and you meet some very interesting

people in that and some would confess to be Christians.

And there was this one lady who was addicted to drugs, and

there's a very stark image in my mind of trying to follow an idol

while you follow Jesus Christ. Her prayer, I'll say it in her

own words. She said, I pray every day that

God will help me find a way to keep smoking crack and still

keep my baby. And you say, how foolish to

think that you can follow after the things of the world and

follow after idols and then expect the blessing of God and

the things that he's promised. And yet we are so foolish.

We are that foolish when we try to serve God and mammon.

We try to serve God while we serve all of these other

functional gods in our lives. And we expect blessing.

And Jesus says no. That's what this text is saying.

He demands allegiance. He doesn't share his glory with

another. The Lord our God.

The Lord alone is God. What's the greatest commandment

according to our Savior? You shall love the Lord your God

with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your

might. And he, he says with all your

mind and with all your strength. That's how Jesus reads it.

And he's not cataloging, you know, the different aspects of a

person where you've got a mind and you've got a soul and you've

got, it's not what he's doing, it's rhetorical force,

rhetorical emphasis showing Christianity is going to demand

everything of you. And so he begins with the heart.

And you go back to the ancient world and you think of heart.

We kind of have heart and mind backwards of them.

The heart for them was the intellect.

Your heart is your mind. Your heart is your will.

It's where you make decisions. David says in Psalm 1/19/11.

I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin

against you. And he moves on and he says it's

the soul, which is your inner person.

The soul is you as you know yourself to be.

And he says with all of your strength, which is your

muchness, literally your very variness, what does he mean by

that? He's saying your full

capacities, your natural abilities, even your resources.

You might say your time, your treasure, and your talents.

What does he demand of you? All of your might.

You are everything. Your time, your treasure, your

talents. The Shema teaches you to love

exceedingly. The Shema asks you to love

unreservedly. We sometimes use death as kind

of an intensifier, right? I'm bored to death.

You can apply that here It's it's it's the greatest love.

We love him to death, literally and metaphorically.

Lord, I love you to death and what is love and scripture

accept obedience to God's commandments.

Driver, the infamous commentator, says that when God

expresses his love for mankind, it's expressed in benevolent

acts. What does that mean?

John 316 For God so loved the world that he gave his only

begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him will have

everlasting life. He says in Deuteronomy, we're

going to come to it in just a few moments that God loves the

sojourner and it never stops there, giving him food and

clothing. There's no such thing as loving

that doesn't follow with loving actions.

If you love someone, you move. And so it's Israel's duty to

love. God is inseparable from actions.

It's not just emotion of the heart.

Love is not an emotion at all. Love is a commitment and it

manifests itself in obedience to God's commands.

So to love someone means also to act lovingly.

It's not works righteousness. It's love that shows itself in

life and ministry and devotion. Last week God said in

Deuteronomy 510 he shows his steadfast love to thousands who

love him and who keep his commandments.

And if you want this picture, Jesus had much to say about

this. You'll be This list is going to

exhaust you. Listen to Jesus in the upper

room what he says to his disciples.

John 1415 If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 1421

Whoever has my commandments and keep them, keeps them.

He it is who loves me. 1423 If anyone loves me, he will keep my

word. 24 Whoever does not love me does not keep my word. 1510

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I

have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his

love. John 1514 You are my friends if

you do what I command you. So he's not saying obedience is

the cause of love, and he's not saying obedience is separate

from love. He's saying it's the necessary

expression and evidence of genuine love.

And so to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our

soul and all our strength means we have to internalize the Word.

We have to know it so that we can fulfill it.

We have to know it in order that we do it.

So we've said before last week, we'll say it again this week,

You have to take it. God has written His law on stone

tablets. It's your responsibility now to

take the stone tablet and to write that law on your heart.

And he's written it onto the pages of the Scriptures, and

it's all your responsibility to take that.

Proverbs 3 says this. Write it on the tablet of your

heart so that you can know it. You know His will and you do it.

Remember the word play that comes here, Shema.

Hear the word shemar. Keep the word, internalize it,

and do it. Moses has some metaphors.

Not the metaphor I would use, but a metaphor nonetheless.

Deuteronomy 10/16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your

heart, and no longer be stubborn.

Internal internalizing of the word.

Deuteronomy 30 verse 6. And the Lord your God will

Deuteronomy 30:6

circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring so that

you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all

your soul and that you may live. You go back to the the rabbinic

teachings was reading some of that this week and some of these

essays that Doctor Mario sent me as I'm trying to wrap my head

around this Shema passage. And they emphasized kind of two

ways that you can gain obedience.

And they said those two ways are fear or love.

And you can, you can use those. You can get obedience as a

parent, as a landlord, as a employer through fear.

You can, you can do that, but the same rabbi said that love is

more durable than fear. What do they mean by that?

You can consider in your own household, do you want children

that obey because they're afraid of you, because they're afraid

of how you're going to react, because they're afraid of what

you're going to do, because they're afraid of the

consequences? Or do you want children that

obey you and are obedient to you because they love you and

because you are for them? And you can think about as an as

an employer, do you want employees that obey you because

they fear you and they're afraid of how you're going to react and

the consequences of what they do?

Or do you want employees that that love you because they know

that you love them? The answer is clear.

Love is more durable than fear. Fear is here.

It's in verse 2. You can go back and see it we we

still have this respect and this awe of God.

He says that you may fear the Lord your God by keeping all his

statutes in command, but this fear is is a respect.

You go to the the old Baptist, John Gill, He said this isn't a

a slavish fear where we're afraid of what God's going to do

and these consequences. He's just delivered them out of

that. He just delivered them from

Egypt, which was they were afraid of their taskmaster.

This is not God as a taskmaster. This is a filial fear.

He says there there's a respect of God as their father, but he

says that that relationship is characterized primarily by love.

That's the the point of this John 316.

The emphasis is love, for God so loved the world that he gave his

only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him will

not perish, but have everlasting life.

That's John 316 first, John 316 By this we know love, that He

laid down his life for us. That's how Israel knew the love

of God, because he redeemed them from their slavery.

He heard them, He delivered them.

Now he gives them the law as he swears himself to them, as they

swear themselves to him. The nature of the relationship

and the covenant is love. Obedience is an outgrowth of

love. And then finally, more than more

than all of the statutes, more than all of yourself, Moses

takes us to this Third Point. He continues this

all-encompassing language by expressing that it is for all of

life. Let's read verses 6 to 9 one

more time. And these words that I command

to you today shall be on your heart.

You shall teach them. Here's the word again,

diligently to your children. You shall talk of them when you

sit in your house, when you walk by the way, 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 should write them on the doorposts of your house and on

your gates. Just bind them on your house.

Teach them diligently to your children.

Talk about them when you sit in the house, when you walk by the

way, when you lie down, when you rise.

What's he saying with all of this?

This is always the Word of God. His covenant is always to be on

your mind and the most, the most mature Christians that I know,

and I know this is true for you too, because out of the

abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

The most mature Christians I know, when you talk to them,

you're going to talk about the Bible.

It doesn't matter what the context is.

It doesn't matter what you came to talk about.

They're going to take the word. They're going to apply it

because they love it. They know it.

That's why they reached maturity.

And it's not debates and conflict about the less known

parts of the Scriptures or the less clear parts of the

Scriptures. It's taking the word of God and

applying it to our circumstances.

That's what mature Christians do.

His word is for all spheres of life.

And you can look at how he begins with the word is for you

as an individual and it slowly out pours into society.

Look at verse 8. He says you were to bind it on

your hands. This means the word of God is

for you as an individual. And then he extends out into

verse 9. He says and you shall write them

on the doorpost of your house, meaning that the word of God is

is for your family. This is meant for you as a

family. And then he goes on and it says

and on your gates and the the Jews have no gates on their

houses at this time. It's very rare.

This is the gates of business and society.

This is like Trafalgar Square is for London.

It's the heart of the city. It's the Civic Center.

So is the gate. He's saying it it out pours.

What's the location of obedience for you as a Christian?

The answer is yes. There is nowhere that this, this

law does not touch. What's the location of your

obedience? It is your daily rhythm.

It's your daily habits. It's all of life, all of the

context. You're applying the word of God.

And he says as you're going, you teach the word diligently and

you talk about it constantly and you write it down and you teach

it to your family. And what does it mean to to keep

them and do them? I don't think he would ask if it

was easy, if this was something that was just going to come

naturally. We never have any problems.

It's it's difficult to keep the word of God and it means doing

it even when you don't feel like it.

It's doing it when it's hard. It's you're saying I'm not the

Lord of my life. You are the Lord of my life.

And you show with your action that you believe the words

nevertheless not my will, but yours be done.

What does it mean? Teach them means, teach the

culture, teach your children, teach your grandchildren.

The emphasis in in Deuteronomy 5 last week was on the generation

that came before where he rehearses the 10 commandments as

he's giving it to the next generation.

And our text today is is forward directing.

The rest of the book is going to be forward directing as he's

saying now this is for you as you enter into the promised land

and for your children. And Deuteronomy 6 says covenant

succession is too important to be left to chance.

So we teach our children so that they can take it.

It's not a, it's not a game. We teach them diligently.

If your kids are in the the children's area at this church,

they're going to get the Bible three times.

They're going to go through the entire Bible three times before

they hit youth. And then Chris is going to teach

him about discipleship and he's going to bring systematic

theology in. And if these kids depart from

it, we've taught them the way to go.

We, we're not leaving this to chance.

And he says just to talk about it, it's supposed to always be

coming out of your mind and always be coming into

conversation. And then he says, bind them to

yourself. Write it on your hands, put it

on your mirror, on verses, on T-shirts, on bracelets, on

necklaces. The oldest document we have of

the Old Testament, the most the oldest manuscript we have of the

Bible period actually doesn't technically qualify as a

manuscript because it was an amulet there was to be worn

around the neck. And the oldest Bible manuscript

we have was somebody writing the words of number six on their on

a little piece of paper that they wore around their neck.

It's that may the Lord bless you and keep you, turn his face to

cup, shine upon you, be gracious to you, give you peace.

They took it and they bound it. That's what that was for.

So we write them. Proverbs 3 three.

Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you.

Bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your

heart, so that you will find favor and good success in the

sight of God and men. And then lastly, it says you

write them. Remember kings, when they came

to succession on the throne, had to write the entire law.

This was Deuteronomy 1718 to 20. When he sits on the throne of

his Kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this

law, and it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the

days of his life. It's not just for kings.

It's it's for us. We write it.

And as you write it, and as you journal the word, you take it

from the pages of the Bible and you write it onto your own

heart. So what's the Shema teaching?

It is the greatest commandment in the Bible.

It's this passage is teaching complete your complete

allegiance to Yahweh, and it's teaching that that relationship

with you and God is characterized first by love.

As we've already sang the hymn said summer summarizes this

whole message. Love so amazing, so divine,

demands my soul, my life, my all.

So make the word and your obedience to it part of your

daily rhythm. Remember this all of life, when

you lie down, when you get up, when you walk along the road,

all the days of your life, keep it.

And it's all the law, verse 2, all of the rules and all the

commandments. And it's all of yourself, all of

your heart, all of your soul, all of your mind, all of your

strength, your time, your treasure, your talents, and in

all contexts, personally, in your heart and that internal

monologue. And he goes on to say and, and

personally and in your household and in your society.

And the ask of you is that you yoke yourself to the Kingdom of

God. And the ask is that you confess

his lordship and you remove all rivals from him, because His

glory He will not share with another.

And you bind yourself to Him in life and in death, and you give

allegiance of yourself totally to him with that.

Let's pray for the strength to do that.

Lord, we believe, help our unbelief.

Lord, increase our faith, increase our love, increase our

knowledge. Lord, we want to do this.

We've sworn allegiance to you. And Lord, we know we constantly

fall short. If there is any in the room who

do not know Jesus as Lord and Savior, I pray that they will

remember that the day is coming where every knee will bow and

every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, whether out of love and

obedience or because He makes them.

But I pray that now they would see you.

You'd open their eyes to the beauty of the gospel, that it's

you first loved us, that you gave yourself for us.

I pray that they would turn in their hearts and they would

swear allegiance to you so that it may go well with them.

They would experience peace and joy and blessing and assurance

for those who are trying to swear.

They've sworn allegiance to you, but they're, they're being held

back, Lord, by some sins, some rival.

Lord, help us to remember now your power that you've given us

the Holy Spirit, that you've given us all things for life and

godliness. You've given us a local church

that can keep us accountable and keep us believing and keep us on

the path so that we don't go to the right or to the left.

And I pray that they would come and confess that sin to somebody

so that we can help them, that they would turn and follow you

and you alone. And Lord, I pray for those who

are who are keeping their heart under control as so far as they

are able, they're free from from major idols in their life, that

they would strengthen the others, that you would keep them

on the path that they would experience this blessing.

God, we thank you that your word is for all of us.

We submit to it. Lord help us in Christ's name,

Amen. Thanks for listening.

To learn more about Heritage Church or if you'd like to

respond to this sermon, visit our website at

www.heritageshawnee.org.