Deuteronomy 6: Loving the Lord

This sermon was preached first at CHBC may 27th 2007
The audio is here

“You can’t help who you love”

When I googlised that little sentence, or variation of it came back with over 30,000 results.

You can’t argue with google, can you!?

Isn’t love something that affects us, but we can’t really control, like our favourite pizza flavour?

You can’t explain it, but you can’t really change it either. Love is sometimes hugely inconvenient and we wish we could turn it on or off that easily, but it seems to be very much out of our control.

Most of us love to be loved. But we can’t ensure that other people love us.

We can invite others to love us. We can attempt to encourage others to love us, by trying to be lovely to them. But we cannot control anyone else’s love. And we certainly cannot command their love.

Imagine if Congress passed a bill to require each US resident to send a letter expressing your love to another randomly assigned US resident. They’d heard that if only everyone felt love, the economy would do better or something… bear with me here…

It would seem strange for various reasons.

But one thing that would seem particularly strange would be the idea that we could be required to love someone.

But imagine if it was not just a randomly assigned US resident that you had to send a letter of love and respect to – imagine that the President himself was willing to sign a piece of legislation saying that we must all send letters of love and appreciation to Him.

On memorial day weekend we know all too well that within living memory there have been nations whose leaders have demanded pledges of personal love and affection. Yet such commands to love do not result in a society characterised by love and freedom, but fear, oppression, and warmongering.

What then, do you think of the idea that God doesn’t merely invite us to love. He commands us.
And he doesn’t merely command us to love one another (though he does command that).

He commands us to love Him first and foremost.

And he doesn’t just command us to love him first, he command us to love him fully?

Love the Lord your God with all you heart and with all your soul and with all your strength, says God.

Do you consider it strange that God would command us to love Him?

Does it sound as if somehow he must be insecure, or lonely, or desperate or manipulative, that God would use his infinite authority to command us to love him?
And, in case you think that this is merely something that God commanded one nation in the Old Testament, Jesus reaffirms this as the Greatest Commandment.

28One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"
29"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'
When Jesus said these words he was quoting from Deuteronomy Chapter 6. This morning we are going to look at that whole chapter.

Turn with me please to Deuteronomy chapter 6. You’ll find this on page 190 in the main hall, page 178 in the West Hall.



1 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, O 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 fathers, promised you.
4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. [a] 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 upon 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.
10 When the LORD your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you—a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, 11 houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—then when you eat and are satisfied, 12 be careful that you do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
13 Fear the LORD your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name. 14 Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you; 15 for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the land. 16 Do not test the LORD your God as you did at Massah. 17 Be sure to keep the commands of the LORD your God and the stipulations and decrees he has given you. 18 Do what is right and good in the LORD's sight, so that it may go well with you and you may go in and take over the good land that the LORD promised on oath to your forefathers, 19 thrusting out all your enemies before you, as the LORD said.
20 In the future, when your son asks you, "What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the LORD our God has commanded you?" 21 tell him: "We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. 22 Before our eyes the LORD sent miraculous signs and wonders—great and terrible—upon Egypt and Pharaoh and his whole household. 23 But he brought us out from there to bring us in and give us the land that he promised on oath to our forefathers. 24 The LORD commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the LORD our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, as is the case today. 25 And if we are careful to obey all this law before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness."
Deuteronomy was given by God through Moses to the people of Israel on the very brink of entering the promised land.

Deuteronomy is set out like a great treaty between the tiny nation of Israel and their great and magnificent King, the Lord God.

Last week we looked at the Ten Commandments, to see that that obedience was right at the centre of how they were to relate to their king.

Perhaps you think that that would be enough. Surely so long as they kept the Ten Commandments, that was enough for the Lord to require of them.

But Deuteronomy Chapter 6 shows us that obedience without love is empty. If we seek to obey the Lord but will not love him then we have failed to see the whole purpose of the law. Love, writes the apostle Paul, is the fulfilment of the law.

So we see this morning that at the centre of the Lord’s commands is the command to love him.

We are going to ask three questions about

1) Why Should we love the Lord?
2) Why Don’t we love the Lord?
3) Do we really love the Lord?

So our first question: Why should we love God?



a) God tells us to!

We should love the Lord for He tells us to…
3-5

3 Hear, O 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 fathers, promised you.
4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. [a] 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
But we need to have a very different attitude to the commands of God and the commands of men.

When mere humans demand that we listen to them because of who they are, we are often rightly suspicious. The bible itself is hugely critical of human rules who exercise authority as if they were answerable to nobody but themselves. In fact, the story of Israel so far includes the account of God pouring out his judgement upon an Egyptian king who thought that he could enslave others to hi purposes.

But when God –the one who made us, speaks, we should listen up. Did you see that word, “Hear” that came at the beginning of verse 3, and verse 4.

This little word comes up again and again through the book of Deuteronomy. It is the Hebrew word Shema‘, thus this greatest commandment is sometimes known as the shema‘.

Why should we listen up to this command? Because our creator is speaking. And in giving the greatest command the creator is speaking of our design. That which the LORD commands us to do is that which he has designed us for.

What a privilege that we have God’s commands. Without the commands of God we would remain entirely ignorant of our purpose here in life.

Have you ever thought that it was your own responsibility to find your own purpose in life. My friend, if that is you, you have not realised what an incredible creature you are. You are created to know God and to love him.

God wants you to know him – that is why he has spoken. Not just these words – but 66 books over 1000 years.

If you’re not a Christian today, you are very welcome here. We’d love to hear what you think about what you are hearing afterwards.

But, if you are not a Christian, I wonder if you think that God is not knowable –

Do you think he is distant?
Do you think that all we can have is human opinions about God?

Like anyone, we can only get to know them if they speak and thus make themselves known. God has spoken. We need not grope around in the dark with our own thoughts. We can listen up to God’s own thoughts about us, but more importantly to God’s revelation of himself.

And, central to this revelation is the idea that God has designed us to be in a loving relationship with him, and so as our creator, he commands us to love him, lest we miss the whole purpose of our existence.

In the beginning of the bible, there are some things that are commanded of both humans and animals. All creatures were commanded to be fruitful and multiply… to survive and procreate. Do you live as if there was nothing more than this to live – survival, and hoping to ensure that you will be able to survive well enough to ensure that your children will also prosper?

To be a human being is to be made in the image of God. We are created not just to exist and procreate, but to know God.

If you don’t love the LORD, then you don’t know Him and you don’t know yourself.

To know how lovely the LORD is, is to love Him.
The Lord can command that we love him – and we’ll see both why we should love Him, and How we can ensure that we love him.

2) Love the Lord for there is no other God.

Did you notice, that the reason to love the Lord though isn’t merely because God Commands it. Before he commands to love him, he tells him something about himself that shows that me must love him.

Verse 4:

The LORD our God, the LORD is one

In the Hebrew there are merely four words here, but whether we understand these four words will make the difference between understanding the purpose of life or failing to understand it.

At the very least what is being affirmed here is complete monotheism. There is only one God and he has no rivals.

This reaffirms the first of the ten Commandments, that there is only one God and therefore he alone is to be worshipped.

But far more is implied that merely monotheism.

The idea is that because God is one he will not change.

That is in fact the significance of his name “The Lord” – literally YHWH meaning “he is”. We call him “He is” because he calls himself, EHYH, “I AM”

He is already perfect so he cannot change for the better, and he certainly will not change for the worse.

But more than that, as the eternal God who sees all things at once, he is entirely trustworthy. He will never make a promise and then have some unforeseen circumstance make him change his mind.

He will never do something and then think better of it.

Israel needed to know this on the brink of the promised land.

His power has not diminished. (He would be able to look after them in the land as surely as he was able to rescue them from Egypt
His love has not diminished. He is not like a forgetful spouse who wanders away from his marriage vows.

If you are following the Lord Jesus Christ today, take comfort in the character of God. It is his good and sovereign action that brought you to trust in Christ, and saved you. He will not think better of it.

Have you been weighed down by your sin this week? He hasn’t thought better of saving you. You may still approach him. Turn to him and love him once again. He did not turn you away the first time you turned to him. He will not turn you away if you turn from your sin and love him today.

I wonder if you think that you have grasped the reality of Deuteronomy 6:4, just because you don’t believe that there are lots of gods, but know there is but one. Perhaps you are a Muslim, or a follower of Judaism. You are most welcome here.

I’d love to ask you a question, though.

If God is ONE, then he doesn’t need us. He may love us, but if he is really infinitely more significant than us, he is the one LORD, he doesn’t need us.

Yet, if he is at his very essence LOVE, how can he love if he is merely ONE. For him to be love, he must have an object of his love. Who do you think is the eternal object of God’s love. The object of his love that he had before he made the world?

Jesus is very clear that he is the eternal object of God’s love.

On the night before Jesus died, he prayed in the hearing of his disciples.
24"Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.
On another occasion, Jesus said,
“I and the Father are one."
He was clearly referring back to this verse. The Lord is ONE. Who is the LORD? I and the Father are One, says Jesus.
The religious leaders certainly understood what Jesus was implying as they picked up stones to stone him, 32but Jesus said to them, "I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?"
33"We are not stoning you for any of these," replied the Jews, "but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God."
If you have not recognized that Jesus himself, together with the Holy Spirit are one God, then you haven’t understood this verse, and, according to Jesus, you haven’t understood what you were created for.
God’s oneness necessarily implies that he is also three.

But more than that, God’s oneness means that His attributes do not contradict each other. He is character is consistent.

Be careful not to suggest that there is somehow division or conflict within God’s character. If we are not careful, we can end up saying things like, “I know God is holy and just, but in the end is love overrides his justice and he forgives.”

No: God is ONE. There is no internal struggle between love and justice within him. He will only exercise his love in ways that are consistent with his justice. He will only exercise his justice in ways that are consistent with his love for all that is good. His justice is loving justice. His love is just love.

The extraordinary news of the gospel is that God has provided a way to be just and the one who declares the guilty innocent.

I’m going to say that again: God has provided a way to be just and the one who declares the guilty innocent.

If there is only one thing that you are going to understand this morning it must be this, so I’ll say it again:

God has provided a way to be just and the one who declares the guilty innocent.

That is what we need. We are all guilty. If we want to know God as we were designed to we must be declared innocent. He is just – if we are declared guilty on the day we meet him, we will be sent to hell. He will not overlook his justice for the sake of his mercy. He is one. Yet we are all guilty

We are all made to perfectly love God. We haven’t. We have lived as if we were the only God, not Him. God in his love for all that is good, hates our rebellion against him, and in his justice will see that our rebellion is punished. We deserve to face that punishment ourselves in hell. But in his incredible love God has provided another place for his justice to be met. He sent his SON. The one who is himself God, whom he loved before the creation of the world. That same son he sent to live as a man. He lived a perfect live, but died on the cross taking the punishment that his people deserved.

He calls us now to turn from our sin, and put our trust in the death of Jesus, so that he might justly punish our sin, and justly declare us righteous.

It is right that the Lord commands us to love him:, for he is the one Lord, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

It’s as if we are great Picasso paintings. But we are unsigned. Who’s name will you put at the bottom of the painting? Picasso’s? or someone else’s?

Well, if you are a Picasso painting, then only Picasso is worthy of having your name at the bottom. You can’t say, ‘well, I prefer Monet” Picasso would be rightly insensed.

If the Lord is the only God, then only He is worthy of our undivided worshipping love, and he is right to command such love.

Why Don’t we love God?

1) We prefer that which he gives to the giver.
10 When the LORD your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you—a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, 11 houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—then when you eat and are satisfied, 12 be careful that you do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
God rescued Israel, and then brought them into the promised land, not so that they could worship the land, but so that they could worship him.

If you are married, look down at your left hand. See that ring… what do you love about it? The gold? The diamonds? The rubies? Or the one whose covenant love it signifies?

The promised land was to be an extraordinary gift of love to God’s people. They have just lived in the desert for 40 years feeding of the manna that God supernaturally provided, for there was no other food.

Was it going to be easier for them to Love God when they had nothing, or when the lived in the plenty that God had provided?

Sadly, the story of Israel showed that for the most part they loved the gifts, rather than the Lord their God who gave them.

There has perhaps never been prosperity like the prosperity in the west today. I pray the Lord would not give my family or this church any growth in material prosperity without also giving a deeper understanding of His infinite wealth.

If ease and prosperity would lead us away from the Lord would that he would give us hardship and poverty, but a heart that loves him.

We are to love the Lord, for he is worth more than what he gives.

What is it that you love with all your heart?
Whatver is lovely is only a pale reflection of the loveliness of it’s beautiful creator. Love him more. Let your love for the gifts He gives only ever grow you love for the giver. Never let it squeeze out your love for him.

There was a lesson for Israel that was to come in the way that the Lord would provide gifts for them in the land.

Who had built the cities and filled the houses with good things? Who had dug the wells, who had planted the vineyards, and the olive groves?

The LORD would give them possession of the land by dispossessing nations who had enjoyed the water and the wine and the oil the Lord had given them, but had spurned the giver.

Do you realise that the Lord will always act like this.
Whatever you are working for in this world you will lose, unless it is the love of God, which will remain for ever.

In ecclesiastes we read,

I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the work into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless.

Love the giver not the gift, for only he can be enjoyed for ever.


2) We think it doesn’t matter
13 Fear the LORD your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name. 14 Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you; 15 for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the land.
16 Do not test the LORD your God as you did at Massah. 17 Be sure to keep the commands of the LORD your God and the stipulations and decrees he has given you. 18 Do what is right and good in the LORD's sight, so that it may go well with you and you may go in and take over the good land that the LORD promised on oath to your forefathers, 19 thrusting out all your enemies before you, as the LORD said.
The first time God called man into a loving relationship with him, he put two trees in the garden: a tree of life – showing that there would be blessings for those who lived under his loving rule, and a tree of the knowledge of good and evil, showing that there would be curses for those who thought that they should decide what was good and what was evil.

Deuteronomy too holds out blessings and curses.
Blessing in verse 18
18 Do what is right and good in the LORD's sight, so that it may go well with you and you may go in and take over the good land that the LORD promised on oath to your forefathers,
But if instead of loving him we test him – that is we fail to recognise that he is ONE – the one who can be trusted. There are curses.

God is a jealous God, who will hold us acountible to what we have have done with His love. Have we spurned it, or have we embraced it and reciprocated it.

God is a jealous God who will not let us go.

As we saw last week, Envy and covetousness are when you want something that doesn’t belong to you. Jealousy is the love that wants something that does belong to you.

An open marriage, where marriage partners will just let the other partner go off with someone else – that’s not love… is not loving precisely because there is no jealousy.

That’s saying that the marriage vows mean nothing.

A father who does not care about what his children gets up to is not loving.

God is jealous because he cares whether or not we love him.

He cares if we take the love that is due to him and give it to something that he has made.

Imagine the Picasso painting that scrawls ‘Monet’ all over itself.

Picasso would be right to come along and rip it up. I made you… and you act as if I’m nothing to you… how dare you.

A Jealous love holds out blessings and curses. Joy if that love is enjoyed, hatred if it is spurned.

3) We Fear he will let us down. 20-23

That had been the problem at Massah. Even though God had miraculously brought them out of Egypt, the people grumbled, because they wondered whether he would provide for them in the desert.

This was not to be the case in the land.
20 In the future, when your son asks you, "What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the LORD our God has commanded you?" 21 tell him: "We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. 22 Before our eyes the LORD sent miraculous signs and wonders—great and terrible—upon Egypt and Pharaoh and his whole household. 23 But he brought us out from there to bring us in and give us the land that he promised on oath to our forefathers.
I don’t know if you have experienced great pain, because you have loved, and you have been rejected, or let down, or brokenhearted. Everything in you wants to protect yourself from being hurt again, and so will not allow yourself the vulnerability of loving again.

What will you do with your heart?

CS Lewis writes

“If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

My friend, there is a place where you may put your heart, knowing that He will not prove inept in his love. He will not let you down. He is all powerful.

At times when you are tempted to hold back your love for you fear that God will let you down, don’t look to your feelings. Don’t look even to the situation you are in. Our feelings and our situation change for minute to minute. But our Lord does not.

He is the same Lord who miraculously rescued Israel from Egypt. He is the same Lord who raised Jesus Christ from the dead.
The Lord has a mighty hand. He is the same Lord who in his powerful love brought his people out of slavery. He is the same lord who sent his Son to bring salvation from sin.

4) We fear that he will reject us. (24-25)

But perhaps our greatest fear. The reason that we will not love him, is the fear that in the end we will be rejected by him.

It is the fear that should become very real when we read the last two verses of the chapter.

24 The LORD commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the LORD our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, as is the case today. 25 And if we are careful to obey all this law before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness

The Mosaic covenant is a strange covenant. It was never designed to provide salvation for anyone. That is why there is the whole book of Leviticus – it was clear that the LORD knew that his people would sin, and need forgiveness. They would not perfectly obey the law.

And in case they thought that they could obey it well enough to put themselves in God’s favour, the lord spoke words like these last two verses of the chapter.

Your want to be righteous in God’s sight by obeying the law? You’d better obey it perfectly then.


Don’t live life with an easy optimism that when the Lord meets you he will look at your life and think that it was good enough. He will not. For all of us, when he looks at our life he will see those who have robbed him of the hearts and souls and strengths that he created to worship him, and given them to other gods.

Yet the Mosaic covenant is more than a reminder that God’s people need forgiveness. It is also a reminder that God’s people can only be right with God through the living of a perfect life. But that life cannot be our own.

There is only one who has lived a perfect life. Only one of whom it could be said

He was careful to obey all this law before the LORD his God, as he has commanded us, and that was his our righteousness

In Jesus Christ there is another place that he may choose to look to find a perfect righteousness. If you have put you faith in Christ, you have been united to him by faith. When the Lord looks at you, he doesn’t see your divided heart, he sees the Lord Jesus’ undivided heart.

So, the apostle Paul writes in Galatians 3

10All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law."[c] 11Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, "The righteous will live by faith."

And..

24So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ[h] that we might be justified by faith. 25Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law

13Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree."[f] 14He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

For those who turn from self love, and begin to love and trust Jesus Christ, their righteousness has already been secured by Christ.

So, finally, we must ask ourselves, do we love the Lord Jesus?

Let’s have a look back to verse 5:

5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

Chris Wirght writes, “God is one whole single God, so you must love him with the whole single you.”

We are not merely to go through what our heart and soul and strength are, and thus find all kinds of other faculties within us that do not need to love the Lord. Heart, soul and strength are to signify the whole person.

Whatever faculties we have are to be exercised in the love of the LORD.

Heart:

Not heart as in Romantic, but heart as in Wholehearted.

It’s the love of the mother who does everything she can to dash across the city in time to see her daughter in the school play.

Are we committed to spend time reflecting on what God has done.

That seems to be the force of 5-8.

Love for God isn’t something that happens merely spontaneously. It must be cultivated.

One of the biggest causes of marital breakdown in this country is the idea that it isn’t love if it isn’t spontaneous.

People can get through the first months of a marriage almost entirely upon hormones.

But you can’t do that with a lifelong marriage. The marriage sustains the hormones, not the other way around.

Commitment is a more truly love than obsession.

Yet anyone who has been in one knows that committed loving relationships must be worked at.

There is no short cut to a deepening love of God. We love him more the better we know Him. That means we love him more as we spend time reading his word, and thinking about it, and learning it off by heart and talking about it with our families and our friends.

This isn’t to be a whole extra set of rules – the Pharisees got it wrong when they had bible texts written all over them, but didn’t let them affect their hearts.

Certainly put bible texts on your screen savers, but unless you read them and think about them they won’t do you any good!

It means being the first one in a group of friends to start talking about things that God has been teaching you about him, and asking your friends what they have been learning about the Lord.

Soul:

It’s the love of the teenager who loves watching to his Dad fixing the car (I live in doubt that my sons will love me like that as a teenager).

It means desiring God. Enjoying Him. Realising that there is no life outside of him. You see, when we spend time reflecting on what God is like, if we believe in him, our love for Him will grow.

Knowledge and love go hand in hand in the bible. The better we know God, the more we love him.

Some people seem to think that the more we are in the dark about God, the more we will love Him because he is mysterious.

I can’t think of anywhere in the bible where we are told to love God for things that we don’t know about him. No! if you want to love God more, get to know Him better. That’s why he has gone to all the trouble of revealing himself.

Strength:

Action comes in here as well. It’s not just affection, though it must be affection. This is the love of the Husband who gets his buddies round and creates a new garden when His wife is away.
The love of the friend who sees that you are in financial need and writes you a big fat cheque.

In terms of our love for the Lord, this means using everything that he has given us in His service.

If he has given you a brain, then use it to think about him.

If he has given you children, remember that they are his before they are yours. Your faithfulness as a parent is measured by how well they know His word from you.

See that in verse 7

Impress them upon your children…

Why do you think that the Lord has given you children? What are you going to teach your children to value? Things God has made, or the God who made them?
What we teach our children to value reveals what we really value ourselves.
Good behaviour? We value being respected by others above all else.
Hard work? That is what we value
A bit of peace and quiet? We teach our children to value that above the Lord.
One of the great encouragements of conducting membership interviews here are the number of people – maybe nearly half of those whom I interview who talk about how they consistently heard the gospel from their parents from as early as they could remember.
May that be true of our children.

Children: do you know why the Lord has given you parents? He has given you parents to teach you more about him. The parent-child relationship is to be a model of God's self-sacrificial love to you, but also the place where you hear about God. Ask them more questions about God. If they don't know the answers, ask them to find them out - that is their responsibility as a parent. if your parents are trying to follow the Lord I cannot tell you what an encouragement it would be for them to hear you ask them to teach them more about the Lord and how to know his love.

Our conversations show whether we love the Lord.

V7 Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

Is Jesus always on our lips. Through the lunchtime evangelism talks I’ve had the privilege of seeing a little window into Andy Swiston’s life at work. He is there almost every week, and often with another colleague with whom he is faithfully sharing the gospel.

That kind of consistent witness will not come by gritting your teeth and deciding to be a more faithful evangelist. It will come from a devotional life that loves the Lord, and so of course he will be on your lips all day long.

What patterns are there in your life to ensure that you are thinking upon God’s word when you get up and when you go to bed. If you are doing that, it is far more likely that he will be on your lips through the whole day.

Spend some time this afternoon thinking about all that the Lord has given you. How are you spending that in love for the LORD?

If he has given you money, then think about how you can best use that so that God will be better known, and so that you can enjoy him, not just his world.


Does the command to love seem a burden, or a joy…?

“Love the Lord” is not a burdensome command.
If you do not trust Christ today, the Lord commands you to love him.

But it isn’t the command of a vindictive schoolteacher who is trying to ruin your fun.

It is the command of a loving King, who longs to have a relationship with you, where you love him because you’ve realised just how much he has loved you.

In the end this is why it is not only appropriate, but good and loving of the Lord to command us to love him: we can find joy nowhere else.

God is no maleficent dictator who commands us to love him to fulfil something lacking in himself. He is a beneficent Lord, who commands us to love him for if we don’t, everything will be lacking in US.

Love cannot be a burden. It is love that removes our burdens.
It is the love God has for us that removes our guilt if we trust in Jesus.

In the end the Lord commands us to love him, for that is the only route to joy. We were not created to find our joy in our own purposes, but to find our joy in the purposes of God.

Jonathan Edwards writes,

“The most benevolent, generous person in the world seeks his own happiness in doing good to others, because he places his happiness in their good. His mind is enlarged as to take them, as it were, into himself. Thus when they are happy, he feels it; he partakes with them, and is happy in their happiness. This is so far from being inconsistent with the freeness of beneficence, that, on the contrary, free benevolence and kindness consists in it.

Is your joy wrapped up in your own finite, selfish happiness, or will you love God, and find your joy is His infinite unbounded happiness for which you were created?