Tag: Moses

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Our First Priority: What It Means to Love (Dt. 6:4–9, Part 3)

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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.

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Our First Priority: Seeing God (Deut. 6:4–9, Part 2)

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How does love grow up in our hearts? We “see” the object of love as desirable and loveable. Now, note very carefully that this does not mean that we literally see these things with our eyes. We can have these objects in our mind. For example, we may love the place where we grew up, but we may not be there or even see it in pictures. We simply have it in our memory and those memories awaken love in us. We may love our children, but we do not always have them with us. Our hearts can yearn for them even when they are not with us. The point is that it is how we see with our minds that will determine what and whom we will love.

It’s not surprising, then, that when Moses tells the people that they are to love God, he begins by teaching them to “see” God. Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one.

Why did Moses begin by saying “Hear”?
They needed to stop what they were doing and listen. An image in our mind begins with hearing properly. They would hear God’s Word and that would enable them to think about and meditate on God. They may have had many things in their mind. They needed to give attention to God in order to know Him.

We cannot do this on our own. We can know things about God. He has not left Himself without witness. However, to really see God in the way we should, God needs to show Himself to us. When we get ready to listen to God, we should pray. We should pray for God to open up our eyes to see Him in His glory like Moses did. This is what will move our hearts to seek Him.

Second, we have to get some margin for thoughtful meditation. Our society is a go, go, go society. We are always on the move, always doing something. We need to take time and think and pray. We have to find margin to do so. We think that it will be a waste of time. Our fear of lack of activity is out of all proportion to reality. We’ve got to sit in the quiet. This is what will actually fill us with joy and happiness. Simply glossing over our anxiety by keeping ourselves busy will never enable us to develop the happiness we truly desire.

So, how does listening to this phrase help us to know God? We want to consider the three things this phrase tells us. What did Moses mean by “the LORD”? What did he mean by “our God”? And what did he mean by saying that “the LORD is one” (Dt. 6:4–9).

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Our First Priority (Dt. 6:4–9, Part 1)

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When we think about the blessings that God has given us in this land, it is truly amazing. We are blessed in this land with freedom, prosperity, and resources unparalleled in the history of the world. So many of the problems that our ancestors faced we no longer face or to a much lesser degree.

But that doesn’t mean that there are no challenges. What do we do with all this prosperity? How do we maintain it? How do we handle this technology that has made our life so much easier? How do we live in peace with other nations that have their own ambitions and different perspectives from our own? How do we deal with broader threats to health and economy that we have not yet experienced? How do we deal with the polarization that seems to inhibit us from acting in a rational way, grates on our spirits, and splits families and friends?

On a more personal level, we face the question of how to live a meaningful life? How do we deal with the pressures of relationships? And what about our children and their future? What about our children who now seem to be going off the rails? How do we manage our own declining health and learn to live within new limits? What about our church and its future?

What is our priority in the midst of this? If we go back 3,000 years to the book of Deuteronomy, we find the people of Israel facing a big challenge. They were going to go in and take a land that was already inhabited. They were going to have to fight many difficult battles in order to take the land that God had given them. Moses, their leader, was going to die, and they would have a new leader. As they thought about their situation, what was their priority? What was the most important thing for them to do? Our text gives the answer. Love God. That was their first priority. Moses taught them that their blessing did not depend on their skill or wisdom or life but on their connection with God. That’s what we want to see in this lesson, from reason, from Jesus, and from Moses.

Our First Priority According to Reason
If we do not believe that there is a God, then, obviously, loving God is not the highest priority. However, most of the world does and has believed that there is a God who is almighty and infinite and rules the world. If this is the case, then what could be more important than knowing Him and aligning our lives with who He is? He is the one who has made the world and made us. Doesn’t it make sense that we’d want to know something about Him?

You can see this in people’s lives. They try to make power, money, pleasures, or people the center of their lives. It really doesn’t work. It’s a fruitless quest. We need something much more stable to base our lives on. This center of stability is a relationship with God.

Humans throughout the world and throughout world history testify to this fact. Before they entered battle or took a voyage or began their reigns, they would sacrifice to the gods. Granted, they got badly wrong who God is, but they had enough sense to realize that their relationship to God was what mattered most.

If we believe the world is created by God and for God, then what could be a greater priority than knowing Him and loving Him? What Moses was teaching here in Deuteronomy 6 is what is in line with what is revealed to the hearts and minds of all people.

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