09.25.22 Deuteronomy 6:4–9
4 Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God. The LORD is one! 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 These words that I am commanding you today are to be on your heart. 7 Teach them diligently to your children, and speak about them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as a sign on your wrists, and they will serve as symbols on your forehead. 9 Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates.
Christian Education Is Basic. Listen, and Speak, about Jesus
When Jesus was asked, “What is the most important commandment?” in Mark 12, He answered with Deuteronomy 6:4-5. This is it. Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God. The LORD is one! Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. It might seem strange to us. How can you command someone to love someone else? Love doesn’t work that way, does it? You find yourself attracted to someone by the way they look or act, and you find yourself wanting to smile at them and be with them. It comes naturally. It can’t just be commanded.
But sometimes love isn’t always that natural. Think of God’s love for us. It’s natural for Him to love, because He IS love. Yet His word says that because of our sin we are by nature “objects of wrath.” Our sinful nature makes God angry with us. He shouldn’t love US. Yet God’s love overcomes His wrath in a dedicated type of way. He works to love us. It’s an “I’m going to die for you anyway” type of love. This is true with our kind of love too, as Christians. Your spouse comes home from work and he’s grumpy and tired. He doesn’t hardly utter a word and he’s short with you. You realize he’s had a bad day. You dig within to kindly ask, “Is there anything I can get for you?” You don’t do it because he deserves it. You do it because you love him.
Yes, love usually takes work in a sinful world. So the greatest commandment tells us to love the Lord your God with all your STRENGTH. It shouldn’t take work to love God since He is so generous and kind and merciful. It should come naturally, but we are naturally lazy and selfish people. So if we’re going to do it, we have to work at it against our sinful nature. But God wants there to be emotion in our love too. Love the Lord your God with all your HEART. He also wants it to be spiritual; love the Lord your God with all your SOUL. This is an all out thorough love from the inside out.
How can you love someone you can’t even SEE? HEAR! “Shema!” the Hebrew says. It can also mean to “pay attention to, focus on.” Leah named her son Simeon when God LISTENED to her cry for a child and responded by giving her what she wanted. Listening and doing go hand in hand in the Shema. But here God calls on us to LISTEN to HIM, primarily because HE has something to GIVE us. This is what generates faith, when we listen to WHAT He has to give us. Faith comes from hearing the message. (Romans 10:17)
God has something to say about Himself, something very LOVABLE. We read vs. 4. Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God. The LORD is one! At first blush that might not seem like a big deal. What’s so lovable about that? Think about it in the context of being an Israelite. This is in contrast to the many gods that the Israelites had dealt with throughout their history. These were gods that demanded child sacrifice. They were perverted gods that could be “turned on” by temple prostitutes have sex on top of a hill, Baal and Ashteroth. There were gods with different strengths, gods of the valleys and the hills. There were petty gods. They had to be carved and carried around and protected. You had a multitude of gods, sometimes working against each other, and none of them were great. They did evil things and they commanded evil things. So people oftentimes had MANY gods, different gods for different occasions. God is different. God is ONE and ONLY.
This God, this ONE true God, made Israel into a nation through the calling of Abraham to the Promised Land and the miraculous birth of Isaac. He protected them as He brought them to Egypt in a famine, and then rescued them from slavery in Egypt through mighty signs and plagues. He dwelt over them in a pillar of cloud and fire. He personally spoke the Ten Commandments from the top of Mt. Sinai in the midst of fire and billows of smoke. As opposed to the many gods, this God was known as the LORD, the God of the covenant, who was faithful and true to the Israelites. Why was He faithful and true to them? So that He could COME through them, and save the WORLD through the MESSIAH that would come through the offspring of Eve, then Abraham. One God, with one purpose, to save the world through Him.
Isn’t it interesting then how John starts His gospel? In the beginning was the WORD, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. God chose to communicate with us through JESUS, the Word made flesh. Jesus is more than a word, He is also the personification of love in action. He didn’t come here to be a Superman and fly through the air with superhuman powers. He came here to die on the cross and be blamed for the sins of the world, for your sins and for mine. This is true love. The Father cried from heaven, “This is my Son, whom I love, LISTEN to Him!” I want to LISTEN to Him, the one of a kind Son of the ONE God. I want to Shema Him. I don’t only want to listen, I also want to love Him with all of my heart, soul, and strength.
Think of when you listen to someone that you like on a podcast, oftentimes something will be said that you feel is worth repeating. It is a source of conversation with your spouse or your friend. Or maybe you hear an interesting quote from a TV show or a movie. You can’t help but repeat it because of its humor or its wisdom.
The same is true with hobbies that we love. A father shares his love of hunting with his child. They rejoice together over the kill. Take pics together. Prepare the meal. A mother shares her love of the Michigan Wolverines with her daughter. They rejoice with victories and mourn with losses. It becomes a part of their family as they wear the blue and gold. It’s something that we love.
Why should God expect any less? Shouldn’t He expect even MORE as our God and Lord? Teach them diligently to your children, and speak about them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as a sign on your wrists, and they will serve as symbols on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates. “Diligently” could also be translated as “repeatedly.” Keep on talking about God. That’s what we do at Trinity Lutheran School. That’s what is done at Michigan Lutheran Seminary and Martin Luther College. Even in gym class, which you would think is nothing but hitting a ball or doing calisthenics, we still teach that we are using the bodies that GOD gave us and created us with. That’s the advantage of Christian education.
But notice also that God wants this done while you are on a journey, and when you’re at home, when you’re going to bed and getting up in the morning. Have you ever actually done that? “Hey son, let’s talk about God today.” I mean, where do you start, especially if you’re not used to it? It probably sounds almost cheesy in a sense to just try to bring it up in a conversation with your family.
A part of the problem is that families just don’t talk that much it seems. We might talk about schedules or sports a bit, but it never gets too deep. It’s all light and surface conversations. (That, by the way, is something that other countries despise about Americans. They feel we are very fickle and phony to a point, and they might be right.) We don’t like talking religion and politics, because those might lead to fights. But talking religion can also lead to UNITY in a family and friends when you are preaching about forgiveness and mercy and grace.
There are actually plenty of opportunities for you to talk about the LORD that maybe you just aren’t seeing. Your children have catechism lessons and Bible lessons at school. Why not ask them on the way home, “What was your Bible story about today?” Let them retell the story. Why not ask them on the way home from church today, “What did you think of the sermon? Do you remember what it was about?” When I used to take the kids to school I would drill them with catechism facts every morning and simple Bible history facts. What languages were the Bible written in? What are the poetical books of the Bible? Who wrote the New Testament? We would recite the books of the Bible together one by one in round robin fashion. If you’re afraid that YOU don’t know them, then this would give you an opportunity to review yourself. 7th and 8th graders have quizzes every week on a portion of the catechism. Why not review it WITH them? What better model could you be than to have some humility and admit you’ve forgotten some of that stuff and you need to review yourself? There was a mini series that came out a few years back that was pretty well done. It was called the Chosen. It’s based on the Bible, and it isn’t too fanciful in most of its interpretations of the Biblical characters. Why not watch that at home with your family? There’s Luther’s Morning and Evening prayers that we have in the entryway. Pray them with your family! Pray before your meals.
These are simple things that are supposed to be done in the HOME. This is where the most IMPORTANT Christian Education needs to be done. The problem comes when you leave it ALL to the school and ALL to catechism class and act as if that’s all God expects, as long as you pay the bill for it. If you aren’t coming to worship on a regular basis, how do you expect your children and grandchildren to keep coming to worship? All it takes is one to two generations to lose it all. Then you ask your grandchildren, “Who is Moses? Who is Abraham?” They’ll look at you with a dull stare. But ask them about Matthew Stafford or Kim Kardashian? They’ll know who they are no problem. And in the end, without continuing in the Word, they’ll know nothing of salvation. And guess what, they’ll end up in hell with their Christian education, because it will all become nothing but nostalgia of days gone by. And guess what, you’ll have no one to blame but YOURSELF, because you didn’t take it HOME!
The question is, how seriously are you going to take this? The Jews took this commandment so seriously that they literally wrote Bible verses on small pieces of paper and put them in leather boxes, attaching them to their foreheads and their arms. Deuteronomy 6 was actually one of the four verses they put on their foreheads. It took time and effort to make these boxes. Eventually, they ended up doing it for show more than anything else. The point God was making was that He wanted us to know His Word with our heads so that we would use them with our actions. You can put them in your head through a continuous reading and memorization, which will then lead to your actions. The more you get into the Word of God, the more you study it and learn it, the more opportunities you will be giving the Holy Spirit to let it penetrate your HEART and your SOUL. Over time it will no longer be a duty. It will be a joy and a love. Think of the seven years that Jacob worked for Rachel. They went by quickly because every day he could see Rachel and know that she would be his wife. His work was driven by love. The more you listen to Jesus in the Word, the more you will want to know and the more you will want to speak.
Think of a soldier being sent off overseas to a dangerous area. He’s got a wife at home he just married a few months back. What does he do? He brings a picture of her with him. He tries to send her letters and call her when he can. He loves hearing her voice on the phone. But what if she doesn’t answer when he calls? What if she doesn’t send any letters? What if she becomes engrossed with her job and doesn’t take the time to communicate with him? What if she stops looking at his picture? What if she starts getting close with another man at work? How would he feel? What would become of the relationship? It would be in great danger. If you stop listening to the Word of God, remembering who the LORD is, the one who created you, died for you, rules in heaven for you. . . if you stop looking at Him through the eyes of faith . . . what will happen to your faith and your love if you stop listening to Him?
There are so many temptations in this world, so many images of wickedness that we are being bombarded with, so many voices that are speaking contrary to the Word of God. . . they are attractive . . . they look so lovely . . . but they are so deceitful. In 1973 Niko Tinbergen did an experiment on butterflies to see how they would react to stimuli. Douglas Browning writes about it,
(Tinbergen) took a cardboard box, drew a picture of a large butterfly on it, painted it with exaggerated markings and deeply saturated colors, cut it out, put it on a stick, and planted it smack-dab in the middle of a kaleidoscope of butterflies. The male butterflies were more attracted and stimulated by this new fake butterfly because she was larger and more colorful than the real ones! The male butterflies even tried to mate with the phony cardboard butterflies. And they completely neglected the female butterflies flying around them!
https://www.defendyoungminds.com/post/protect-kids-from-porn-fake-butterflies
It is a sampling of how deceptive the world can be with its fake beauties and its false idols, sports, sex, work, it can all be so deceptive in the end. What is the remedy? Shema! Listen! Get to know the one true God, the only God, by listening to His word. Where? In Christian Education! There we learn where true beauty is, in the God who died for us. There we can be captivated by true love, sacrificial love, forgiving love that we have in Jesus. He shows us what is real and what is fake. He opens up heaven to us by His grace and mercy. Christian Education happens at Trinity and it can happen at home too. It needs to happen there too, both working together. When it comes down to it, it’s pretty basic. Listen, and speak, about the love of Jesus. Amen.
