Have you ever gotten so caught up in the minutia that you missed the “main thing”? If so, you’re not alone. I know I can easily fall into this, and I know many others the same way. And the passage we are going to look at today suffers greatly from this sort of thing.
Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are away on a journey, when you are lying down and when you are getting up again. Tie them to your hands as a reminder, and wear them on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Deuteronomy 6:4-9Deuteronomy 6:4-9
English: Contemporary English Version (1999) - CEV
4 . Listen, Israel! The Lord our God is the only true God! x The Lord... true God: Or “Only the Lord is our God.” 5 ; ; . So love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength. 6 . Memorize his laws 7 and tell them to your children over and over again. Talk about them all the time, whether you're at home or walking along the road or going to bed at night, or getting up in the morning. 8 Write down copies and tie them to your wrists and foreheads to help you obey them. 9 Write these laws on the door frames of your homes and on your town gates.
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Most people know verse 4, though they likely know it from Jesus’ use of it in the gospels, and not its place in Israel’s law. They can quote it – heart, soul, mind, strength, etc. But fewer continue on till the end of verse 9, and those who do often get caught stuck in the weeds at verses 8 and 9 which suggest that those who worship God should even bind his instructions to the hands and foreheads!
But we need not fall into this trap. We come to this passage and recognize how important God’s commands are to the life of a believer. God’s words, handed down through time, are so important that we should be repeating them to our children at every opportunity. Whether at home doing the normal routine, or on a trip which breaks the routine, and to open and close the day. They are to be stuck to us like glue, ever present in and on our person and our homes.
The Scriptures have been given to us as a means of experiencing who God is, and knowing who we are. We need to scour them, to meditate on them, to share them with one another. We need to take them as our own. They help us to know what is pure and acceptable in God’s eyes. They remind us of the consequences of sin, and the hope we have from a God of promises. They teach us wisdom and connect us with generations who have stood humbly before God and endured the shame of the cross.
We must drink in God’s word at every stop, whether it comes through oral or written means. We cannot produce fruit without the word planted and growing. And we cannot just pick a few verses, a few books, that we really enjoy and continually focus on them. We must lay all of God’s word before us that we might know him more fully. That means going beyond the “Love chapter” or John 3:16John 3:16
English: Contemporary English Version (1999) - CEV
16 God loved the people of this world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never really die.
WP-Bible plugin - inspiring and powerful as they are – and digging into the overlooked and sometimes even maligned bits, such as the hard sayings of the law, the imprecatory prayers of the psalms, and even the spectacular symbolism of apocalypse. But if we will dig deep, and allow the Spirit to speak through the words, we will know our deliverer like never before; know him, not just about him.
Be prepared to experience God as he is, and not as you’d like him to be!
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