Do you know what kind of a book most people don't ever want to read? A book full of rules, laws, and regulations. Yet that is exactly what we are going to talk about today and trust me its anything but boring.
The Book of Deuteronomy is really Moses' last speech to the children of Israel. Moses doesn't have much time to live and before he dies, he has one last message for the people he led out of Egypt. Moses has been leading these people for the past 40 years and no one knows them better than him.
Arguably the core passage of Deuteronomy is the Shema, which is the Hebrew word for listen and respond.
Deuteronomy 6:4,5
"Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might."
Moses knew if the people could listen to these words and respond with obedience, everything would be alright.
But Moses also knew the Israelites way too well. They were going to fail and fail again.
Which isn't a Hebrew or Jewish problem, its an us problem. But here in the Shema lies the solution to my failure and yours.
Heart
Love the Lord with all of your heart.
Your heart is where you dream and plan. Its where we place our emotions and sometimes our motivations. Think of it this way, love the Lord your God with all of your dreams. What are the plans you have made for yourself? What would those plans and dreams look like if God was apart of them?
Pretty different right?
What if God was your motivation?
Do your emotions speak of Jesus?
Love God with all of your heart.
Soul
Love the Lord your God with all of your Soul. Biblically, a soul is a combination of the breath of God and the body of a man or woman.
Genesis 2:7
"Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature."
I believe the soul is the essence of who a person is. A combination of God's life giving breath and my now living body.
I believe when the Bible says to Love God with all of my soul it means to love Him with every part of who I am.
When people describe who you are, do they mention God?
Usually when people talk about myself they mention my spouse and vise versa. If we are truly lovers of God shouldn't it be the same as well?
Might
Another word for might is strength.
I recently had COVID about a month and a half ago. I survived. But the one thing that has lingered from that pesky virus was my lack of energy and strength. I lost so much weight and muscle that I now have to go through the difficult process of regaining all that strength. There were a couple of weeks where it was difficult to even wash the dishes.
We may read this passage a little bit differently, Love the Lord your God with all your strength and energy, with all your effort.
What do you put your energy and effort into?
To love the Lord with all your strength is to love Him with every ounce of not just your person, but your time and energy. It's almost as if your strength could be measured into a bottle. Moses is asking us to empty that bottle and use it for the sole purpose of loving God.
Blessings and Curses
Moses ends his last and final sermon by giving the people a list of blessings and curses. If they listen to his words and obey God, they will be blessed beyond their wildest dreams, but if they become rebellious and use their actions to run away from God, they will experience many curses.
The people would eventually rebel over and over again, but Moses gives them hope.
Deuteronomy 30:6
"And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live."
Circumcise our hearts?! What does that even mean?
During the 40 years that Moses was their leader and the one who communicated with God, it had become abundantly clear that the people's hearts needed to be changed and transformed in order to obey God's commands.
So God promises that He will indeed change their hearts, God is going to perform heart surgery on all of us, not to control us, but so we can come to know and love Him. In this way, we will be able to listen and respond with love.