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Why do we like love stories so much? Because this world is about love. We are made to love. Our life is fulfilled through love. That’s where the meaning is. When we are facing the end of our lives, what is it we want most? We want the people we love around us. We may not reflect on it, but that’s really what gives our life joy and meaning.
The Bible is all about love. That’s what we learn in this passage. The teachers of the law said that this was the most important passage. The Jews would write it down and put it in little boxes and say it twice a day. Jesus said that this was what the Old Testament was all about, loving God and our neighbor.
But what does it really mean to love? That’s what we want to try and understand by considering verse 5 in the context of the book of Deuteronomy and applying it to our own lives. Our goal is to help us understand what it means to really love God and how we can do it better. By extension, this will also help us understand what love is in relationship to other people. We are going to look at this in three parts. First, let’s try to understand the word love. Then, we will try to understand what it means to love with all our heart and soul. Third, we will consider what it means to love with all our strength.
What It Means to Love
Deuteronomy gives us the greatest commandment in the Bible. This is contained in our passage. However, what’s interesting is that love in the book of Deuteronomy primarily refers to God’s love for His people and only secondarily to our love for Him. Moses speaks much more of God’s love toward us than our love toward Him.
What this means is that if we are going to understand what it means to love, we should understand what it means that God loves us. That will teach us how to love Him. So, what does it mean that God loves us?
First, it means that God pays attention to His people. Listen to Dt. 4:37, “Because he loved your ancestors and chose their descendants after them, he brought you out of Egypt by his Presence and his great strength . . .” God loved them and chose them and thought about them. He saw them in Egypt and paid attention to their situation. Why? Because He loved them and chose them. So, He took an interest in them and in their situation. He thought about them. He took notice of them.
Second, it means that God has affection for His people. He didn’t just notice them, He had affection for them. “Yet the Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations—as it is today” (Dt. 10:15). He valued them and thought highly of them. This is amazing because they didn’t deserve it and were unworthy of it. God chose them and set His affection on them as an act of grace.
Third, it means that God takes care of His people. His love is manifested in action. He moves out to take care of the ones whom He loves. “He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing” (Dt. 10:18). It is interesting that it says here that God loves the foreigner. And what does that lead Him to do? To take care of them. To look out for their interests. When God loves someone, He takes care of them and watches over them for their good.
Now, we can readily apply these things to God. When we love God, it means we think about Him. We pay attention to Him. We are interested in Him.
Second, it means that we think highly of Him and have affection for Him. Our heart moves toward Him.
Third, we do not need to take care of God, but we take an interest in His interests. We take care to do the things He wants done in the world. We want to make sure that His priorities are our priorities. If He cares about something, we will care about it and do something about it.
Now, if we understand the word love, then we almost do not need the rest of the verse. It really just fleshes out what is already understood by the word love. However, we should take that opportunity given by this verse. So, let’s consider it more closely.
With All Our Heart and Soul
Before we consider what it means to love the Lord with all our heart and all our soul, consider the word “all.” What Moses is saying here is that our heart, soul, and strength should be completely devoted to the Lord. Our whole being should be aligned with God. He wants our thinking, emotions, will, and work to be completely devoted to Him. It should not be half and half. Loving God is our first priority.
It also means that we should be perpetually devoted to the Lord. We should be faithful to Him. We should not be hot one week and cold another. We should be completely devoted to the Lord. We should be consistent. This is what Moses said in Dt. 30:20, that he wanted them to “love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him . . .” They were to perpetually and continually give their hearts and lives first and foremost to God, not just on the Sabbath, not just at church, not just for one week, but forever.
Now, what would it mean for them to love God with all their heart and soul? Now, notice that I say these words together. I do this because this is how Moses uses these words. If you look them up in the book of Deuteronomy, you will find that they are used together. What they refer to is the inner man in all that he is: intellect, emotions, and will. You will notice that in the Greek, they add the word “mind,” which is not in this text. The reason for that is because in the Hebrew language, the word “heart” referred to the mind as well as the will and emotions.
So, let’s consider more carefully what it means to love the Lord on the inside as well as the outside.
First, it means that we keep Him in our minds. To love God with our hearts means that we are always thinking about Him. “Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live” (Dt. 4:9). We are to keep it constantly in our minds and keep reminding ourselves who God is and what He has done. That’s why having His Word all around us and in us is so important, as we shall see next week.
Second, it means that we feel affection for Him. If you look at the word “heart” in Deuteronomy, you will see that it refers to emotion. The heart can fear or despair or turn after other gods. The point is that the emotions must be directed toward God. We fear Him first. We rejoice in Him. We are grieved by what grieves Him. We are angry at that which opposes His Word. That’s how we align our emotions in love of Him.
Third, it means that we will to obey Him. If we keep God in our hearts thinking about Him and aligning our emotions with Him, then we will wan to obey Him. God says in Dt. 5:29, “Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!” Their hearts wanted to obey Him. When we love the Lord with all our heart and soul, it means we want what God wants and want to do whatever God wants us to do. This becomes what drives us.
Now, let me apply this to your life. What God is telling us is that we must align our inner person, our thoughts and emotions with Him and in love to Him. Here is the problem, our inner world is complicated. We don’t always know what we are thinking.
So, here is the important point. What is really going on in your heart and mind? What are you really thinking? What story are you telling yourself? When the Israelites got scared, they told themselves some crazy stories. “God brought us here to kill us! We can’t take the land! We are all going to die!” We can do the same thing. When we get under pressure, we tell ourselves that things won’t go well. We don’t have support. God doesn’t give us good things. My life us just a series of failures. We need to know what’s in our heart and mind so that we can replace these stories with stories of God’s love and faithfulness. We can tell ourselves, God has blessed me with amazing things throughout my life. I have had opportunities to serve. I have a lot of people in my life. God has taken care of me. This is not just wishful thinking. It is more accurate. Our mind is like velcro for the bad and teflon for the good. We forget all of God’s blessings and so our hearts do not move toward Him in affection. We need to give attention to our inner world! When we replace our anxious stories with stories of God’s love and care for us, we will love Him more.
So, let me challenge you. Take some time to think about what is going in in your heart and mind this week. When you feel stressed or anxious, ask yourself, what am I really saying in my heart and mind? Is this really aligned with reality and what God tells me? Is this really leading me to the truth about God that will lead me to love Him? That’s what we’ve got to see. If you can’t do this just thinking, try writing it out. Try speaking to a friend. Ask God to help you. He will.
But we must not end with our hearts. What is in our hearts must manifest itself in action.
With All Our Strength
When God led the people in the wilderness, He said that He tested them. Why? “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands” (Dt. 8:2). Now, does this literally mean that God did not know what was in their hearts? Of course not. However, He would make it known to Himself and to all around them by giving them occasion to demonstrate what was in the hearts.
The point is that what is in our hearts is manifested in our actions. If we love God with all our heart, then it will manifest itself in loving Him with all our strength.
So, here is my question. What do your actions say about your love for God? Now, here you are. You are reading this or you are at church. This shows your love for God. But what about the rest of the week? Do your actions show that God is in your heart? Do you pay attention to His commands, even when you are on your own and no one sees? Is it evident that you think about Him? Do you love what He loves?
One constant point of Scripture is that God’s love should lead us to love other people. Here is how Moses explained it, “He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt” (Dt. 10:18–19). Do we show God’s love by how treat the people around us, especially the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner?
Do our actions show that the love of God is in our hearts?
Conclusion
When we think about the law of God, it can do primarily two things. The first is that it shows us our need for Christ and His grace. We have not loved God with our whole heart and strength. We have not loved our neighbor as ourselves. When we teach clearly what God commands, then we see this more clearly. This shows us our need for Jesus Christ and His perfect righteousness to be counted as ours as the basis of our justification and forgiveness. It also shows us what we should ask God to do in our lives to change us.
The second main thing that the law does is teach us our duty as believers. The goal of salvation is to be able to live and love as God originally created us to be. We need instruction in what this looks like. This instruction is contained in the whole Bible, including Deuteronomy. It is a guide for what real transformation looks like. This shows us what our goal is, what we should pray for, and what we should strive for.
So, as you hear this message, keep that in mind. This is our great goal, to learn to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and with all our strength. This is where God is leading us, and this is where our efforts should be. As we grow in this, we will find it is not a hard labor. It is one filled with delight. It is what we were created for. It is what will give our life meaning. It is what we will enjoy fully to all eternity, praising, enjoying, and loving Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Benediction: Hear this: the Lord our God is the one and only Lord. Therefore, as you go out into the world remember that you have one top priority: to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Your second priority is to love others as you love yourself.
And as you do so, may our God and Father transform your hearts to love Him more; may the Lord Jesus Christ grant you great fruit in love; and may the Holy Spirit who has poured the love of God into your hearts stir it up so that you may experience the fullness of God.
We go in peace to love and serve the Lord, in the name of Christ. Amen.
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