Scriptures: Exodus 20: 1-2; Deuteronomy 6: 1-9; 1 Corinthians 8: 4-6
Sermon: Love the Lord your God
Topics: Commandment, Shema, Good News
Preached: September 11, 2016 am Woodlawn
Rev. Mike Abma
Preamble: This is the first of a series of sermons on the 10 Commandments.
The 10 commandments can be found in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5.
The first command is basically this:
Then God spoke all these words:
2 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 3you shall have no other gods before me.
The beginning of Deuteronomy 6 is, in many ways, an expansion of that First Commandment.
Now 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.
4 Hear, 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.
Our New Testament Lesson is from 1 Corinthians 8: 4-6. Here Paul refers to the Jewish Shema, but, in one small step for language, but one giant step for theology, Paul includes Jesus in the Shema. Listen.
1 Corinthians 8: 4-6
4 Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that ‘no idol in the world really exists’, and that ‘there is no God but one.’ 5Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as in fact there are many gods and many lords— 6yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
INTRODUCTION
By the time we get to Deuteronomy, Moses is an old man.
It has been decades since God first gave his commands on Mount Sinai,
with all its smoke and fire.
Pretty well all the people who witnessed that are now dead.
Moses is speaking to the next generation, and to their kids.
His big concern is that this new generation,
and the one coming after that,
and the one coming after that….
Loves the Lord God,
And stays Loyal to God’s commandments.
What Moses says in Deuteronomy 6: 4-9
are some of his most famous words —
words included in the morning and evening prayers
of every Jewish man and woman, girl and boy.
It is known as the Shema – the Hebrew verb for “Hear.”
Shema Israel — Hear O Israel.
The Shema basically restates the First commandment in a positive way.
In the Ten Commandments
There is the identity statement – I am the Lord your God who brought you
out of the land of slavery;
then there is the command — you shall have no other gods before me.
Notice how that is a negative command – no other gods.
The Shema does the same thing.
First there is the identity statement –
Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone.
Then there is the command — You shall love the Lord your God with all your
heart, with all your soul, with all your strength.
Notice that this is a positive command — love the Lord.
In these verses, 4-9, there are 6 Hebrew verbs, 6 imperatives.
Two of them focus on Love –
Hear, O Israel, ….Love the Lord your God!
The remaining 4 focus on Loyalty:
Keep these commands.
Recite them to your children..
Bind them on your body..
Write them on your houses….
This fall, as we preach through the 10 commandments, we will talk a lot about the loyalty part — what it means to keep these commands,
To live them,
To abide in them.
But this morning I want to focus on the Love part –
on Hearing the Lord,
and loving him with all our heart, soul, and strength.
Yes, I want to talk about our feelings!
I know we Reformed folk are much bigger on faithfulness than feelings.
I know you may even prefer I talk about loyalty over love.
But I want to begin at the beginning –
knowing God
and loving God.
FRANCIS SPUFFORD
Francis Spufford is an English writer.
A number of years ago, he found himself in a café one morning after a very bad night.
He and his wife had argued.
He had said things too sharply.
They both finally fell asleep, but things remained unresolved.
In the morning, when his wife went to work,
there was still tension in the air.
Being a writer, he had the luxury of not going to work.
He had the luxury of going to a nearby coffee shop.
But it did not feel luxurious because all he did was
wallow in his regrets,
and wonder how in the world was he going to pick up the pieces
of his life and his marriage.
Feeling truly miserable,
he suddenly heard this…..
[Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto – played via sound system]
That was the middle part of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto.
The music is simple, yet profound.
It expresses joy, yet with the full acknowledgment of sorrow.
Francis had heard it before,
but that morning he heard it in a totally new way.
For Francis that morning,
this music felt like news – good news.
The music said to him
that everything he feared was true, and yet….
yet, there was something deeper than his fear.
The music said to him
that everything he had done wrong was really wrong, and yet….
yet, there was something wider than his guilt.
If he could capture it in a word,
the music sounded to him like Mercy —
he was expecting to face grim consequences
and unexpectedly he was receiving gracious kindness.
Francis Spufford writes that the Holy Spirit was using Mozart that morning
to rescue him and to wrap him in God’s mercy.
Francis Spufford writes about this and more in his book Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity can still make Surprising Emotional Sense.
The stress is on the word Emotional.
Spufford writes that our faith has to be more than simply saying yes
to a list of commandments in a passage;
our faith has to be more than simply saying yes
to a list of propositions in a Creed.
It has to start with that overwhelming feeling
that we are loved and forgiven by God.
Only out of that love,
can we begin to love in return.
Only out of that love,
can we say yes to the Commandments
and Amen to the Creed.
It is our feelings that make
the presence of God
the reality of God
the love of God
real, and personal, and engaging.
It is our feelings that
fuel our hopes and dreams.
It is our feelings that
cause us to stop in awe and wonder.
It is our feelings that
disarm our fears and our sorrow.
Out of a sense of God’s presence,
out of a feeling of his love,
We love with all our heart, all our soul, all our strength.
LOYALTY
But we all know that love is more than a feeling.
Love needs rhythms and routines.
Love needs habits and rituals.
Show me a married couple that says,
“We are so in love we no longer need to spend time together.
We don’t need little rituals and routines like other couples.”
Show me such a couple
and I will show you a couple that is drifting apart.
Will Willimon, former Dean of the Chapel at Duke University, writes about seeing a student he knew walking rather intimately with a young man through the Campus Gardens.
When Willimon saw her a few days later
he asked, “Have you fallen in love?”
She answered: “Who me? No.”
He said: “Well, I saw you the other day walking through the Campus Gardens
with that young man.”
And she smiled, and said, with a wisdom beyond her years, “I was there because I
want to fall in love.
We may not feel the love of God every day.
But we shape our lives
to include rhythms and routines,
habits and rituals,
Like being here every Sunday,
That show we want to fall in love.
Not only do we want to fall in love,
but we live a certain way,
talk a certain way,
uphold certain traditions
so that our children will fall in love too.
Can I say a word about that word Tradition.
For some odd reason it has acquired a negative nuance,
as if tradition was a bad thing.
But the word Tradition, comes from the Latin word trado, and traditio,
Which means
to hand over,
to pass on.
Isn’t that what we want?
To hand over and to pass on
the truth that God loves us
and that life can only be fully lived by loving him back?
In Francis Spufford’s book,
he writes that he has a 6 year old daughter.
He writes that soon she will discover that her parents are weird.
They are weird because they go to church every Sunday.
He writes that as his daughter gets older and older,
The voices in the world will get louder and louder.
These voices will say
That we lovers of God are delusional;
That we lovers of God are believers in bronze-age absurdities;
That we lovers of God
Are stuck in the past,
Can’t enjoy the present,
And have pie-in-the-sky fantasies about the future.
He ends with this:
The really painful thing is that his daughter
will hear that her believing parents are an embarrassment.
“Listen,” they will whisper,
“there probably is no God.
So stop worrying and enjoy life.”
To which we must say, again and again,
“No, Listen, there is a God, He is our God. He alone is Lord.
He loves us. He forgives us.
That is why we love him with all our heart,
With all our soul,
With all our strength.”
That is why We live with him.
Why We live through him.
Why We live for him.
That is the only way to truly live life – the good life.
CONCLUSION
In the novel Driftless by David Rhodes,
a young woman by the name of Winnifred Smith
finds herself a little lost on a Wisconsin country road.
She stops her car by a bridge.
It is autumn – a crisp, cool, misty morning.
Deer drinking at the stream gracefully bound into the woods.
Geese in a V-formation fly south overhead.
There is beauty all around her.
Winnifred has a strong sense
That Someone is beside her,
Someone is Behind her
Someone is Before her.
Someone she cannot see.
Someone she cannot touch.
But someone whose presence is undeniable.
Winnifred begins to feel buoyant.
Not only is she sensing this Other,
But she is sensing this Other sensing her, knowing her, fully.
She realizes something very unusual is happening.
It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
It is terrible, yet terribly comforting,
To fall into hands that are scarred,
Hands that are tender,
Hands that are gentle
Hands that hold you with a grip that loosens all despair, and melts all fear.
It is just then that a white truck comes, and stops.
An older man gets out and asks Winnifred, “Hey, you okay?”
Winnifred answered: “Oh yes, I am more than okay. I feel God’s presence here.”
“I don’t believe in God.” he responded.
“I don’t understand.” Winnifred said, “ How can anyone not believe in God?”
“Well, I don’t,” said the older man, “ Never made much sense to me — a man in the sky writing laws, judging people….”
“No, no, not that god.” Said Winnifred, “Did you think I was talking about that god?”
“I guess so.” Said the old man.
“No, not that god.
I was talking about the real God.
The One God.
The True God.
I was talking about the man on the cross.
The One from whom all things come.
The One for whom all things live.
Including me……
including you.[1]
Amen
-
David Rhodes, Driftless Epiphany chapter, 102-112. ↑
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