“4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord 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 strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 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. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
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How do you help people who were never slaves in Egypt to know the joy of being delivered from slavery by miracles and wonders? How do you help people who have never seen Jesus in the flesh live like the original disciples after the resurrection?
In other words, how do you maintain an immediacy of faith over the generations? How can each generation act if they were stood at Sinai? How can each generation act if they heard the good news at Pentecost?
That has been the history of God’s people. Israelites who never left the Promised Land learned to honestly say, “We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.” Christians who never saw the risen learned to honestly say, “though I have not seen him, I love him, and even though I don’t see him in this sanctuary right now, I believe in him and I am filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.”
How do we maintain that identity? How did faithful Israelites maintain that identity? How do faithful Christians maintain that identity? We maintain that identity by giving total allegiance to the Lord. We learn to define ourselves not by the currents of the culture or by the declarations of our flesh. We learn to identify ourselves as God identifies us. We make ourselves putty in His hands. We gladly give Him total allegiance. In other words, we love Him with all we are.
Moses preached this message of total allegiance to Israel as they prepared to cross into the Promised Land. They would move into the land of the Canaanites and unless they were devoted to the Lord, they would become like the nations around them.
Now we Christians from Sri Lanka to the United States live among the nations. We maintain our God-given identity not by playing the judge to those around us but rather by giving our total devotion to the Lord. That’s how faithful identity has been and will be maintained until Christ returns.
You maintain your God-given identity by total allegiance to God. You maintain this over generations by impressing this allegiance upon each generation. That is the claim of this sermon: You maintain your God-given identity by total allegiance to God. You maintain this over generations by impressing this allegiance upon each generation.
We will study this in two points. We see the call for total allegiance in our first point: all you are only for God. We see the call to publicly express this total allegiance in our second point: your allegiance expressed. First, in verses 4-6, all you are only for God. Second, in verses 7-9, your allegiance expressed.
First: all you are only for God. In some ways, this sermon is a continuation of our sermon from two weeks ago, which dealt with the covenant marks of circumcision and baptism. If you have the mark of the covenant, keep the covenant. If you are circumcised in the flesh, have a circumcised heart. If you are baptized in the flesh, live a baptized life. If you have been born into the people of God, be utterly devoted to God. “Although [the Lord] owns everything in the universe, out of all the peoples He chose Israel’s ancestors to be the object of His affection and love… In light of this gracious election, the call for total devotion… is utterly reasonable,” as Daniel Block put it.
This sermon is about owning that total devotion to God for yourself and about passing it on to the next generation so they can pass it on to the next generation as has been done for generations.
Our passage this morning is an expression of that total devotion. The Israelites called it theShema. The word shema is just a transliteration of the Hebrew word for ‘listen; or ‘hear.’ “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
The American pledge of allegiance is to be said. The Israelite pledge of faith was to be heard. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” This pledge told them who they were and whose they were. They were the people God brought out of Egypt; they were Israel. They belonged to God and God alone. He was the only God for them; “The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
The Israelites repeated the Shema twice a day to reaffirm their devotion to God and God alone. Moses gave them this pledge because when they were about to enter Canaan. They needed to remind themselves of who they were and whose they were because they were to be in the world but not of the world just like you.
You need to hear who you are and whose you are regularly just like they did. Almost all of the letters of the New Testament begin with a description of God and of the church; you are the church; this is to whom you belong. Just listen to Ephesians for example, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.” Paul told them who they were and whose they were because they needed to be reminded.
You need to be reminded. You needed to be reminded last Sunday morning that new birth is possible because of the resurrection of Jesus; you needed to be reminded that there is an inheritance worth far more than anything available today. You needed to be reminded last Sunday evening that you have received charity from God and that therefore you should be charitable to others. You must be reminded just like Israel needed to be reminded.
Your children need that too. If you easily forget that you are loved by Jesus, imagine how much more easily your children forget. You need to regularly tell your children who they are and whose they are; they are not their own; they belong body and soul in life and in death to their faithful Savior Jesus Christ. They must be told often.
It is proper and right to let your children discover certain aspects of their personality, of their gifts and interests, but don’t imagine that their identity is something left up to them to discover. The children of the covenant already have an identity. They belong to Jesus. Impress this identity upon your children. Moses told Israelite parents to teach their children this pledge, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” ‘You are part of Israel, son. You belong to God.’ ‘You are part of the church, son. You belong to Jesus.’ You can never tell your children too often about what Jesus has done for them, is doing for them, and will do for them. You can’t be told that too often either.
Any member of the covenant must identify himself in terms of allegiance to God. ‘That is my God; I am one of His people.’ That goes for the youngest to the oldest person in this sanctuary.
The covenant calls for allegiance and it has a remarkable word to express this allegiance; that word is love. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength,” as verse 5 puts it. Love is the expression of allegiance. My acts of love for my wife are different for my acts of love for a friend because the allegiance is different. My acts of love for Christ is different from my acts of love for you because the allegiance is different.
You must express this allegiance of love with everything you are and everything you have. That is what the words, “all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength,” are about. The heart refers to your inmost self—that wellspring of you that is often shrouded in mystery. The soul refers to your whole person as we saw in the Catechism. Your strength refers to everything that you wield. My financial savings are included in my strength. My online presence, scant as it is, is included in my strength. My parenting authority is included in my strength.
Every person in the covenant must express allegiance but this expression will look different because each of has different hearts, souls, and strengths.
You can’t express your allegiance to the Lord with John Calvin’s mind; you must love Him with your mind. You can’t express your allegiance to the Lord with Corrie TenBoom’s personality; you must love Him with your personality. You can’t express your allegiance in my circumstance, and I can’t express my allegiance to God in your circumstance. Each of us must love Him with all we are as we are.
Children are a wonderful illustration of this. If you have raised children, you know how different each of them is from the others. They are different but the call is the same for each of them. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” Celebrate the uniqueness of your child and harness that uniqueness towards allegiance to God.
I appreciate the mission statement of the Christian school in town in that regard. When we went to Kindergarten Round-up we were told that the, “The mission of Inwood Christian School is to provide an atmosphere in which each unique child of God is challenged both academically and Biblically to live as a Christian, serving Him in all areas of life.”
That is what Moses is talking about: unique child of God challenged to live as a Christian, “The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Serving Him in all areas of life, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” The Christian School comes alongside parents in training children to express their allegiance to God with all their heart, all their soul, and all their strength.
Now for any of us to express this total allegiance to God, it must come from the heart. You will never get any man to do much of anything unless it comes from within him. That is verse 6, “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.”
You can tell when someone’s heart is involved. You can tell it on the basketball court. You can tell it in the workplace. You can tell it in obedience to God. Is your heart in your obedience? Don’t just be willing to obey God; consider obeying God to be the most pleasurable thing you can do. If that sounds strange, consider Jesus. He delighted to obey. Don’t view his pleasure in obedience as strange; view your own desire to disobey as strange.
You won’t give total allegiance to God unless you find pleasure in His ways. That is part of verse 6, “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.” Israel wouldn’t remain faithful for long in Canaan if they simply felt like they should keep the commandments. Obedience had to come from the heart. You won’t remain faithful for long in the world if you simply feel like you should keep the commands. Obedience has to come from the heart.
Now what comes out of the heart always finds expression. You don’t need to tell people who are excited at the new Avengers movie to talk about the new Avengers movie. Marvel doesn’t need to pay people to put pictures of Iron Man on Instagram. Their allegiance finds expression. What has gripped their heart finds expression. That is how it always goes. God says that living allegiance to Him will find expression. That is our second point: allegiance expressed.
The first place this allegiance finds expression is in the family. That is verse 7, “Impress them [meaning the commandments that are upon your heart] on your children.” If something is on your heart, like the commandments, of God, you will impress them on your children. In fact, you will always impress what is on your heart on your children. Make sure the commandments of God are pleasurably on your heart and you will choose to impress those on your children.
The warning John Piper gave to parents about what we are doing right now is appropriate. “The greatest stumbling block for children [during a] worship [service] is that their parents do not cherish the hour. Children can feel the difference between duty and delight. Therefore, the first and most important job of a parent is to fall in love with the worship of God. You can’t impart what you don’t possess.”
If the commandments of God are not on your heart, you can’t impress total devotion to God upon your children. If you dare to teach a girl that she should be totally devoted to God, you better believe that it will be good for that girl to be totally devoted to God and that it is good for you to be totally devoted to God. Chesterton is right, “the one eternal education [is this] to be sure enough that something is true that you dare to tell it to a child.”
If you are a parent of a covenant child, God has given you this child in the expectation that you will raise this child to be totally devoted to Him. That is part of the rationale behind the fifth commandment, “honor your father and mother.” Your will is not to be obeyed because you are bigger than your child. Your will is not to be obeyed merely because you are paying the bills. Your will is to be obeyed because your will is to reflect the commandments of God. That is the meaning behind, “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
If the commandments are upon your heart, the rest of verse 7 will happen; “Talk about them [meaning the commandments] when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”
You talk about what you care about. It is no challenge for a Twins fan to talk about the season so far. It is no challenge for a gearhead to talk about engines. It is no challenge for a child who likes Paw Patrol to talk about Paw Patrol.
If the commandments are upon your heart, it won’t be a challenge to talk with your child about faith. If that is true, the following statistics are alarming. According to a 2007 study, only 12 percent of youth have regular dialogue with their mothers about faith issues and only 5 percent of youth have regular dialogue with their fathers about faith. That is not verse 7, “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.” It seems that God is not gripping the hearts of many professing Christian parents.
Has God gripped your heart? Are His commandments upon your heart? You will impress your faith upon your children. Please don’t impress a heart that finds no delight in God’s commandments upon your children. That is not why God has given you this child.
God gave you this child to impress total devotion to Him upon that child. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” Yes, God gave you that child for your joy. Yes, God gave you that child for that child’s good. Above all, however, God gave you that child to be trained to give total allegiance to Him.
Now, you can’t outsource that responsibility. If you aren’t keeping verse 7, if you aren’t, “talking about the commandments when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up,” that will communicate something to your child. It will communicate that faith isn’t for the home. Praise God for Catechism teachers, but don’t imagine for a second that they teach doctrine to your children so that you don’t have to at home. Praise God for Christian Education, but don’t imagine that they spend time in the Bible at school so that you don’t have to do so at home. This is ultimately your responsibility parents; these are your children given by God.
You are to impress the grace of God and the commandments of God on your children, but you are not alone. God is so emphatic about total devotion that He invites others to help you. Deuteronomy scholar Daniel Block put it this way, “every adult Israelite is to be a teacher, seizing every opportunity for instruction.”
Welcome that collaboration. Israelite parents didn’t need to do it alone. They had the covenant community; “every adult Israelite is to be a teacher, seizing every opportunity for instruction.”
The ministries of this church are a manifestation of that and so is Christian Education. There is a reason that many churches call Christian education covenant education. It is designed to help parents raise their children in the ways of the covenant. It does in the academic realm what parents are to do in the realm of the home; “talk about the commands when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”
Deuteronomy scholar Peter Craigie put it well, “the commandments were to permeate every sphere of the life of man.” It takes a lot of work to see how God’s commandments permeates every sphere of life. You are still learning that in whatever realm you are in right now and so am I. It is monumental task for parents as they seek to instruct their children to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, and strength in every sphere of life, but that is the call of parenting. Christian Education was created to come alongside parents in that work of impressing the commands on covenant children as they walk along the way of the instruction called ‘school’. That is why it is called ‘covenant education’.
So, the first place this allegiance finds expression is in the family; parents impress the commands that God has placed on their hearts upon their children. The second place this allegiance finds expression is in the public realm. Daniel Block is right, “True love for God is rooted in the heart, but it is demonstrated in life, specifically a passion to speak of one’s faith in the context of the family and to declare one’s allegiance publicly to the world.”
You see a sign of this public allegiance in verses 8, “Tie them [meaning the commandments that are to be upon your heart] as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.”
Some Jews have taken these words very literally. They wrote, and some still write, select commandments on tiny pieces of paper and put them in small containers they wear on their foreheads called phylacteries; “bind them on your foreheads.” This was and is a public declaration of allegiance.
Now if you find that strange, please recognize that your public allegiance to the Lord expressed by loving Him with all your heart, soul, and strength will look about just as strange to the world. The world will not understand why you use your finances for God’s kingdom. The world will not understand why you take up your cross and die to yourself like Jesus did. You can’t get away from the fact that total devotion to the Lord will make you seem strange to others.
Treating others as you would like to be treated will seem strange to those outside the covenant. Rejoicing with those who rejoice and mourning with those who mourn will seem strange to those outside of the covenant. Fleeing sin and pursuing holiness will seem strange to those outside of the covenant. It will seem strange but to many it will be strangely attractive.
Jesus seemed strange to others because he was totally devoted to his Father. You will be peculiar if you become like Jesus. You will be peculiar if your total devotion to God includes public devotion, which total devotion must.
Even your home will become a public statement; “Write [the commandments] on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” Guests who entered the home of a God-fearing Israelite family would see His words on the gates on their way in and on the walls on the inside. The family who lived in that house would see God’s words on the doorframes of their home and on the gates when they went out in to the world. ‘You are in the world but not of the world.’
My guess is that many homes represented here are similarly marked. You might have a cross stitch Bible verse on a wall in the hallway. You might have wall art expressing Biblical truths like “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not be in want.” You might have a verse in calligraphy. You are expressing your total devotion to the Lord. You are expressing to your visitors and to your family and to yourself that, “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
You don’t put those words up to replace obedience. You put those words up to express the obedience which you long to offer. You put those words up to remind you about the call to total devotion. You want to maintain the identity God has given you. ‘I am a slave who was brought out of Egypt. I am a disciple of Jesus bought with his blood.’
You want to impress that identity upon your children. The people of God have been doing that for generations.
Every Christian in this sanctuary is to self-identify as a disciple bought with the blood of Christ. Every disciple in this sanctuary is to express allegiance to Jesus with all their heart, soul, and strength. We must all make it our business to express that allegiance in every sphere in which God places us. We must all make it our business to impress that allegiance to those under our care. That is how every generation of Israelites lived as if they themselves were delivered from Egympt. That is how every generation in the church in ancient Rome, in medieval Germany, and in India and the United States today lives as if we were with Jesus for those three years. Though you have not seen him, you love him – you express total allegiance to him in obedience. Though you do not see him now you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible joy. Amen.