Where would you like to be 5 years from now? Next question: If I had asked you that 5 years ago, is this where you thought you’d be?
They’re great job interview questions. But they’re also great questions to ask ourselves about our whole lives.
Some people here are just starting out as Christians. Those 4 who were confirmed a few weeks back. And a number of others. Where will your life be in 5 years’ time?
Others here have been Christians for years. Think back to when you began. Everything was so clear. God’s good news. Your response to that. Where your life was heading. Would you say you’re on track today?
And every week we’re delighted to welcome some window-shoppers. You’ve not yet started out as a Christian. Still got questions to answer, things to think through. If that’s you, you’re very welcome. What would your life become if you did join up?
In our passage today in Deuteronomy, the people of Israel are perched on the edge of the land God has promised them. Their whole future stretches before them. And Moses is given them a pep talk. What kind of people will they become? What will things look like in 50 years’ time.
That makes this a great passage for us to review where our lives are going. Where do we want to be?
And it all hangs on the character of the God we have. Where our lives need to go is shaped by the God we serve.
I’ve got three headings this morning to help us look at this passage and map out our lives.
Let’s start with God. What kind of God have we got?
The one and only God
We have the one and only God. The one and only God.
Verse 4 is probably very familiar: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
It’s pretty pithy. The Lord our God, the Lord is one. But what does it mean to say that God is one.
It means that God is unique. He’s in a class of his own. There’s nobody else like him. There’s no other god made the world. No other god knows the future and can tell it to you. No other god died to save you. The other gods people claim to worship are nothing like this. They’re not gods at all. Our God is unique.
But saying that doesn’t do justice to the statement that God is one. It’s not just that he’s the only God. He is one. That’s his nature. There are lots of aspects to God’s character: He’s powerful. He’s loving. He’s faithful. But right at the heart of it all is this: He is one. God is one.
God is not divided. He’s totally consistent. He has perfect integrity. The Bible teaches that God is a Trinity: three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But there are not three Gods. The three persons are one God. In terms of what they are. In terms of all they do. They never fight each other. They never compete. They’re never rivals. They always work together. They have one plan.
God is one. He is consistent from one day to the next. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. God is not fickle. God has no rivals.
And in Deuteronomy 6, all of this wonderful consistency has converged to save and bless these people. No other god has ever done anything like this. Deuteronomy chapter 4, verses 32 to 35 says this:
For ask now of the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and ask from one end of heaven to the other, whether such a great thing as this has ever happened or was ever heard of. Did any people ever hear the voice of a god speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and still live? Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, and by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great deeds of terror, all of which the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? To you it was shown, that you might know that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him.
And then verse 39. Because God did this, know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other.
And even more than the Israelites were, we today have been blessed by God in a way that no other religion can claim.
God sent his own son to die for us so that we can be forgiven. We are loved and welcomed by the God who made us. Pure grace, totally undeserved. We are adopted as his children. No other god does these things. And God is unique, with no-one to stand in his way.
That’s the God we’ve got. The one and only God.
How wonderful that is.
Fear and love your God
How are we to respond to such a wonderful God?
The answer’s our second heading: Fear and love your God. Fear and love your God.
Fear and love. In the same sentence.
There’s a crude caricature of the Bible that says the Old Testament is about fearing God; the New Testament is about loving him.
Actually, both Testaments tell you to fear him, and both tell you to love him. Jesus himself tells us to fear God. Matthew chapter 10 verse 28. And he tells us to love God. Mark chapter 12 verse 30.
In fact, when Jesus tells us to love God, he’s quoting this chapter of Deuteronomy. Loving God is an Old Testament idea; Jesus just quotes it. And in this chapter, the one Jesus quoted, the first two paragraphs say very similar things. But the first paragraph couches things in terms of fearing God, while the second paragraph uses the language of love. They’re two sides of the same coin. Fear and love.
That’s how we respond. So what do those things mean?
Fearing God is not about being afraid of him, or living in fear. It’s about respect. Reverence. Awe. Having the deepest admiration for him. Holding him in the highest esteem.
Ask these questions: Whose opinion do I care about the most? Who do I most want to please? Who do I want to avoid offending or upsetting at any cost? That will tell you who you fear, and the Bible says it should be God. Of course it should, if he’s the one and only.
I won’t embarrass anyone by asking you to raise a hand if you’re afraid of spiders. Some of you will be. Many people have things they are deeply afraid of. Needles. Heights. Spiders. The dark.
God’s not asking us to add himself to this list. Let’s coin a term: He doesn’t want us to add theophobia to our arachnophobia, fear of spiders, or our nyctophobia, fear of the dark.
It’s more like when I used to have piano lessons, many moons ago. I used to practice quite hard. Sadly, it’s all gone rusty, and I’ve forgotten most of what I once knew. But why did I practice? Partly, I respected my teacher. He was a good teacher, and I looked up to him. I wanted him to be pleased with how my playing was coming on. I didn’t want him to think I hadn’t taken it seriously. I wanted constructive feedback to help me improve.
He was just my piano teacher. I had other role models for other areas of life. But God wants us to fear him, to have that kind of respect and reverence, in every area of life.
Deuteronomy 6 says: Fear your God.
But it also says to love your God.
Love is another misunderstood word. This is not romantic love or friendship. This is putting someone else’s interests above our own wants and needs. To love God is to devote yourself to him. Listen to him. Talk to him. Become like him. His priorities become yours. You love what he loves. Love your God.
Ask these questions: Who or what do I love the most? Is it God? Or is God in competition – with my family? My work? My career plans? My school? Or even my church?
God’s not asking us to stop loving and valuing those other things. Far from it. When you love God, you then find he commands you to love your family, to devote yourself to work, and to commit to your church. But these things are an expression of your love for God. You’re not doing them because you love them more than you love God.
You serve your local community. You throw yourself into helping rebuild the school pool. Great! That can bring God great honour. But let’s just check you’re doing that because you love God, not because a swimming pool matters more to you than God.
Which do you love more? God or school? God or your children? God or your job? God or your dream home?
Deuteronomy 6 says: Fear and love your God.
Jesus later made this instruction his own. Yes, he quoted it. But more than that, he lived it.
It all starts with God’s love for us. How much did God love you? If you’re one of his people, he loved you so much that he sent his own son to die to save you. It’s on the back of that that he asks us to love him above all our other loves.
Fear and love your God.
Absorb and relay the word of God
Our God is the one and only God. We respond by loving and fearing him. But how do we do that in practice?
Answer, heading 3: Absorb and relay the word of God. Absorb and relay the word of God.
In this chapter, fearing and loving God cashes out in the way we treat God’s commands. His words. Verse 2: That you may fear the Lord your God, … by keeping all his statues and his commandments. Verse 5: Love the Lord your God. Verse 6: These words that I command you today shall be on your heart.
In the Bible, the heart is what makes me me. It’s the core of my being. God’s words are to be written there. They are to run right through me, like the writing in a stick of rock. We are to drink, imbibe, soak, absorb God’s words.
In verse 8,he says to his words on your hand and forehead. Some people write things on their hands so they don’t forget. Personally, I find it a little unnerving to read someone’s shopping list as you shake their hand. But if this works for you, why not put your Bible verse for the day on your hand.
As for your forehead, you could write it on in mirror-writing if you really wanted, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Then verse 9 says to write God’s words on your doorposts and gates. You could do it literally. The chances are you’d stop noticing it after a few days. That’s not the point. It’s saying to surround yourself with reminders of what God says. Post-it notes on your desk. Screen savers. An audio Bible to play in the car. Calendars with a verse on. Whatever works for you.
You may have heard of John Bunyan who wrote the Pilgrim’s Progress in 1678. One nineteenth century writer was full of praise for Bunyan. Here’s what he said:
Read anything of his, and you will see that it is almost like the reading the Bible itself. He had read it till his very soul was saturated with Scripture; and, though his writings are charmingly full of poetry, yet he cannot give us his Pilgrim’s Progress—that sweetest of all prose poems — without continually making us feel and say, “Why, this man is a living Bible!” Prick him anywhere—his blood is Bibline, the very essence of the Bible flows from him. He cannot speak without quoting a text, for his very soul is full of the Word of God. I commend his example to you, beloved.
We’re not only told to absorb God’s word. We’re told to relay it.
Verse 2 – this is for you, your children and their children.
Verse 7: You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
They’re looking ahead, down the generations. Will they keep on fearing and loving God? That all depends on whether they pass God’s word on.
So God tells the parents to teach his word to their children. Many families have heirlooms that are handed down the generations. One person rides their granddad’s bike. Another wore his great great-grandfather’s christening gown. God says: Whatever else you hand down, hand down his words.
That feels like a big responsibility. Not all parents feel ready. They’d prefer the church did it. We’re happy to run the best Sunday school we can. But ultimately, God asks each parent to do this. We, the church, can help, equip and encourage. But we’re partners with the parents.
If that feels slightly scary, let that drive you back to do more absorbing. The more the Bible flows around your veins, the more naturally you’ll pass it on.
But we also need to notice that he’s not asking parents to run formal Sunday school classes for their children. Verse 7: When you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise. In other words, beginning and end of the day, at home, out and about, on a journey, and so on. Make the Bible the air you breathe around your home.
I don’t know if you tell stories at home, over meals. Why not some of your favourite Bible stories? Or how about a few minutes over Sunday lunch to chat through the sermon with the kids. Let’s work out how to live this out.
Today is Mothering Sunday. Patterns are changing, but in many families it is still the mother who spends most time with the children. Being a mum is often a thankless job. But it also carries the privilege of being the one who gets to spend time with the children, to listen to them, to teach them, to share stories and jokes with them, to laugh and to cry with them.
What a privilege it is to be the one who gets to shape the next generation. To be a mum who is soaked in the word of God, who has that word flow through her veins, and then to pass it on.
Absorb and relay the word of God.
Relay is the word here. I love the relay events at school sports days and at the Olympics. Each runner runs with the baton with complete determination. But if the team is to win, their job is to hand that baton on to the next runner.
That’s what God calls us to do as Christians. We are to love and fear him. We are to absorb his word onto our heart, into our veins, in our minds, in our souls. So that, we can pass it on to the next generation of runners.
Conclusion
The people stand on the edge of the promised land; they are staring at their own future. What kind of people will they become?
What kind of people will we become? Will we be shaped by the kind of God we have –the one and only God. Grow in our fear and our love of him. Paying deep attention to his words, absorbing them and passing them on.