Text: Deuteronomy 6:1-9

Focus: Loving God

Function: To help people conflate loving God with loving others.

6:¹Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the ordinances—that the Lord your God charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy, ²so that you and your children and your children’s children may fear the Lord your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long. ³Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe them diligently, so that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has promised you.

⁴Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. ⁵You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. ⁶Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. ⁷Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. ⁸Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, ⁹and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

For some reason, I have always loved reading this passage of scripture. I guess because it is a call to love God and it gives us an idea of the extent of how we demonstrate our love for God.

It contains a couple of important verses. The Jewish people call it “The Shema.” Shema is the Hebrew word for “hear.” And it is listed as the great “Hear Ye” of the Jewish faith. One site calls it the “central pillar of the Jewish belief.”

And it is interesting that the Shema, the great “Hear This,” is not the great commandment that we are focusing on this morning, but the pillar of how the Judaeo/Christian heritage approaches its belief system.

The statement that they were to hear, according to the Jewish people is this: “Hear O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One.”

Now, our translation uses the term the Lord is God alone, meaning that there is no other God.

And that is the central core of the meaning of the phrase, The Lord is One. The Jewish people lived in the midst of pagan cultures that worshiped many different gods. The Romans, the Greeks, the Chinese and the Indian cultures all worship or worshiped a pantheon of gods.

And the Jewish Shema was a direct repudiation of the idea that there were several gods. God alone is One God and is not divided.

I once got into an argument with an orthodox Jew about the trinity and he cited this verse and said some thing like it was a foundational understanding of God that God is One God.

I explained to him that Genesis 1 says this of God, “Let Us make God in our own image… ...male and female (in the image of God.)

Taking from John 1, I tried to explain to him that Jesus was the manifestation of God that God gave us that we can understand and then I tried to defend the doctrine of the trinity. It takes faith to believe it (and I do).

However, I now I realize this: It never helps to argue with someone, the bible makes it clear that the kindness of God is what draws people back to God.

But you get the idea that it is a foundational principle of the Jewish and Christian faith that God alone is God.

And, the Jewish people did not misunderstand the difference between the Shema, the central pillar of their belief, and the Great Commandment, which immediately follows it.

For some reason, I feel, the great commandment gets washed over. I hope not.

The great commandment, which this passage is about, and which Moses, the author of the book, takes 4 whole verses to introduce, is this: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.

So, he uses the Shema, the central pillar of the Jewish faith to introduce the great commandment which is to Love God.

And then he tells them how to visibly remind themselves to do this. Diligently teach the commands of God, which will help us to love God, to your children. Teach your Children the words of God and be diligent about it.

He says to show so much devotion that we tie them to our foreheads and doorposts. If you see a picture of an Orthodox Jewish Priest, you may see a square patch of cloth fixed with a band to his forehead. In it is written the words, The Lord is God, The Lord is One.

Also, you have probably seen pictures of seen for yourselves the doorpost of an orthodox Jewish family. There is a little brass device, generally shaped like a scroll, and it inside it is again, the words of the Shema.

It is a visible way, a literal way to accomplish the commandment in this verse. The visible icon reminds them to Love God.

But the command is still the important part. Love God will all your heart, soul and strength.

Mark’s gospel records the account of the teacher of the Law asking Jesus which was the first commandment of all, or the greatest commandment. Jesus quotes the Shema, then says Love God and then Jesus adds another verse from the OT, Love your neighbor as yourself.

The Jewish expert in the law answered Jesus with the affirmative, that Jesus had interpreted the law correctly. Then Jesus said to Him. You are not far from the Kingdom of God yourself!

I love it when Jesus’ patience with His enemies leads them to their own salvation. We don’t know if the man converted and believed in Jesus or not, but he does understand the purpose and mission of Jesus and he agrees with it.

So, you caught this, I am sure. Jesus added to the great commandment. It was, you shall love God and Jesus says, you shall love God and you shall love others.

And, once Jesus combines the two, He wraps them up together into one command. He says, the command is to Love God and Love your neighbor.

And the teacher of the law who was first questioning Jesus and is now being called to love God by Jesus, agrees that loving your neighbor is part of the “first commandment of all.”

Jesus was clear that this is the greatest commandment and I am glad the Jesus added the love your neighbor part to the commandment that is to be listed as first of all.

Jesus actually goes farther, right before He dies, while He is giving last minute instructions to the apostles, in the upper room, He says, A new commandment (a new “first of all commandment”) is to love one another. You will be known to be Christians by the way you love others.

This is our moniker. And in this, Jesus changes the Great Commandment. Well, not changes it so much as addresses a way for us to be engaged with Loving God. You remember Matthew 25 where Jesus tells us that we are either sheep (members of God’s kingdom/family) or goats (not members) based on the way that we love others.

You hear me gripe about refugees, well in the passage, Jesus gives eternal blessings, or denies them, based on the way we treat the stranger. I have to make these warnings.

But I love the command to love others. It makes the Christian faith, and doing the Christian faith, easier for me. Love God by Loving others. That is how we reconcile the concept of which is the greatest between loving God and loving others.