Love the Lord your God

Deuteronomy 6:1-9 NIV
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, 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. Hear, 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 ancestors, promised you. Hear, O Israel: The lord our God, the lord is one. Love the lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 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. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Sermon Notes
 
Some of the great texts in the Bible are deceptively simple. We can read the text and spend time meditating over it, and after doing so you come to the realization that the truth is so important and so clear that little can be done other than repeat it over and over again. Deuteronomy 6:4-5 strikes me as such a text. I want to share with you just briefly this morning three points we can take from this text. The writer of Deuteronomy suggests three good reasons why it is important for us to love God. We love God, first of all, because of who he is. V4 The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Yahweh revealed himself to the people of Israel. He had chosen them to be the people through whom He demonstrated his love for the world. God had let them know that he was not just their God as one god among many but God alone over all creation. We also love God because of what He has done for us. This admonition to love God comes to the people in the context of a book designed to remind Israel of her covenant with the God who delivered her from the bondage of Egypt. He made himself known to her in the very act of redeeming her. By grace she was brought into a very special relationship with God. In Jesus Christ God made himself known to the whole world as a saving, redeeming God who desires to bring men and women into a relationship with himself. And the third reason why we love God is that this is the way he wants us to respond to his love. There is certainly a recurring theme in the book of Deuteronomy where people are instructed by the Lord to respond to his gracious activity by loving him. And of course our motivating force behind the love we are to have for God is his prior love for us (1John 4:19 We love him, because he first loved us.) So what does is really mean to love Him? Well, Chuck Colson says, the beginning of loving God is a passionate desire to obey and please God – a willingly entered into discipline.

My Copious Notes

I didn't actually take any notes today, I just sat and listened.

May God bless you richly this week.

Richard.