“Fearing the Lord Always (Deuteronomy 5:22-6:25)", Will DuVal | 2/22/26
Deuteronomy 5:22-6:25 | 2/22/26 | Will DuVal
We had family over for dinner last Sunday evening, and the kids ate and left to play, while we grown-ups were finishing up. When I heard Elijah yell from the kitchen, “Bo! You can’t eat that!”
So I said, “Bo, come in here”. And he slowly crept in the dining room, cheeks full, red goo dripping down his face.
I asked, “Bo, did you go in the pantry and get candy?”
[**shakes head; mouth full**]
I said, “Spit it out.”
Now, there are least FOUR rules he broke there: 1) No dessert if you don’t finish your dinner; 2) No food PERIOD without parental approval; 3) No PANTRY period for Bo (that’s an accident waiting to happen), 4) and worst of all: No LYING.
So, as the Lord commands, I took him back to his room to spank him. Now the problem was, he was wearing his Spiderman costume, which has lots of padding to look like fake muscles, including apparently, BUTT muscles. It’s also a pain to take the costume off, and I’m lazy, so I tried to just spank THROUGH it; didn’t work. We BOTH knew it, immediately upon impact; didn’t take. But Bo is SMART; this is MY SON, through and through. So he starts crying anyway, and hugging me. So I let it slide. But just 30 minutes LATER - I kid you not; not an hour later - he walked right back into the living room with a half-eaten COOKIE in hand this time, mouth full.
Why? Well for starters, cuz he’s a sinner. But even SINNERS can be taught to follow the rules, when obedience becomes WORTH it to them. The reason Bo continued ON in his sin, is because - in a WORD - he didn’t FEAR his Father.
What does “FEAR” mean, in such a context? Do I want him cowering and wincing every time I walk in the room? Of COURSE not. But it DOES mean RESPECT - “deference to one’s superior, in a higher position”. DEFERENCE means “respectful submission or yielding to the will of another”.
And in the case of GOD, it means - probably the BEST synonym - REVERENCE: “an attitude of deep respect tinged with awe”.
For many of us - Christians included - the Bible’s exhortation to FEAR the Lord makes us uncomfortable. Perhaps it’s because we’ve misunderstood it, as “cowering & wincing”. Perhaps it’s because we take OTHER Scriptures out of context (“Wait a minute; I thought the Bible says, “Perfect love casts OUT fear…?” - “Yeah, but not the fear of the LORD!”). Or maybe, more likely, I’d suggest, it’s because words like “deference” and “submission” are just about the DIRTIEST of dirty words in our culture of “expressive individualism”, where EVERYONE gets to be a ‘god unto himself’.
But in any case, the Bible is CLEAR, that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Ps 111:10), “a fountain of life” (Pr 14:27), and “the whole duty of man” (Ecc 12:13). The Bible says God’s “mercy” (Lk 1:50) and “friendship” (Ps 25:14) are reserved only for those who fear him. Even Jesus warned us, “do not fear those who kill the body… Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell”, that is to say, fear GOD (Mt 10:28).
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And this morning as we turn again to the book of Deuteronomy, we find the Lord Himself exclaiming of His people Israel, “Oh, that they had such a heart as this always, to fear me ” (5:29). And friends, God desires the same for us still today.
2 Corinthians 7:1 urges us to “cleanse ourselves from every [sin], bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.”
Philippians 2:12 calls us to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling”.
1 Peter 2:17 “Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God.”
These are NT commands for God’s NT people - for US. There’s not an OLD Testament God who wants us to FEAR Him, and then a NEW Testament God who wants us to LOVE Him; No, there is only ONE God, who is the same yesterday, today and forever, and who deserves BOTH our love AND our reverence, which as we’ll see this morning, are really two sides of the same coin. If you LOVE Him you WILL fear Him, and vice versa.
And there’s a reason why IMMEDIATELY after reminding Israel of God’s Law, the 10 Commandments last week, at the beginning of ch5, the very NEXT thing Moses wants to impress upon them is – WHAT? The FEAR of the Lord! Because no matter HOW great and true and important the Law is… it makes absolutely no difference if you don’t RESPECT (defer to, submit to) the Law-GIVER!
My family rules are GOOD; but I need a son who SUBMITS to them, out of RESPECT for his father.
When I was growing up, the 6 scariest words in the English language were… WHAT? Some of y’all know them…
[**counting] “Wait. Until. Your. Father. Gets. Home.”
And I LOVED my dad. But you better believe I FEARED him too.
How much MORE so our HEAVENLY Father. And Moses is gonna give us FIVE REASONS to fear Him in Deuteronomy chs5 & 6 this morning, if you’ll turn there with me now, and STAND with me (as you’re able) out of REVERENCE for the reading of His word: Deut 5:22-6:25; Hear the word of the Lord:
““These words the Lord spoke to all your assembly at the mountain out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice; and he added no more. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me. 23 And as soon as you heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness, while the mountain was burning with fire, you came near to me, all the heads of your tribes, and your elders. 24 And you said, ‘Behold, the Lord our God has shown us his glory and greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire. This day we have seen God speak with man, and man still live. 25 Now therefore why should we die? For this great fire will consume us. If we hear the voice of the Lord our God any more, we shall die. 26 For who is there of all flesh, that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of fire as we have, and has still lived? 27 Go near and hear all that the Lord our God will say, and speak to us all that the Lord our God will speak to you, and we will hear and do it.’
28 “And the Lord heard your words, when you spoke to me. And the Lord said to me, ‘I have heard the words of this people, which they have spoken to you. They are right in all that they have spoken. 29 Oh that they had such a heart as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever! 30 Go and say to them, “Return to your tents.” 31 But you, [Moses] stand here by me, and I will tell you the whole commandment and the statutes and the rules that you shall teach them, that they may do them in the land that I am giving them to possess.’ 32 You shall be careful therefore to do as the Lord your God has commanded you. You shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. 33 You shall walk in all the way that the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you shall possess.
6:1 “Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the rules—that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, 2 that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son's son, by keeping all his statutes and commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. 3 Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 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. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
10 “And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, 11 and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, 12 then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 13 It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. 14 You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you— 15 for the Lord your God in your midst is a jealous God—lest the anger of the Lord your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth.
16 “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah. 17 You shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God, and his testimonies and his statutes, which he has commanded you. 18 And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may go well with you, and that you may go in and take possession of the good land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers 19 by thrusting out all your enemies from before you, as the Lord has promised.
20 “When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the Lord our God has commanded you?’ 21 then you shall say to your son, ‘We were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. 22 And the Lord showed signs and wonders, great and grievous, against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household, before our eyes. 23 And he brought us out from there, that he might bring us in and give us the land that he swore to give to our fathers. 24 And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as we are this day. 25 And it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to do all this commandment before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us.’’”
This is the word of God…
The THESIS, the main idea of this passage is SIMPLE: “We must fear the Lord ALWAYS.” And God gives us FIVE REASONS here to fear Him:
#1- We fear God because He’s HOLY. (5:22-27)
What do you think God was trying to IMPRESS upon Israel there at Mt. Sinai, when He set the whole mountain to SHAKING (Heb 12) and BURNING with fire (v23), with “the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice”, (v22) thunder and lightning and trumpet blasts? Why were the Israelites BEGGING Moses to go speak with God on their BEHALF, “lest we DIE” (v25); “For this great fire will consume us”. What are they so AFRAID of?
In a word, God’s HOLINESS. God is SO “other”, so transcendent… that mere mortals like us, according to God Himself, when Moses asked to behold Him in all His glory, God warned, “Man shall not see me and LIVE” to talk about it (Ex 33:20). I’m too HOLY.
God is “holy, HOLY, holy”, Isaiah 6:3; it’s the ONLY attribute of God anywhere in Scripture, that is repeated 3x successively to signify completeness or PERFECTION. God is of course perfectly LOVING, perfectly JUST; but only His HOLINESS is explicitly lauded in this way. And when God GAVE the prophet Isaiah that vision of Him, you may recall Isaiah’s response: ““Woe is me! For I am [UNDONE]; for I’m a man of unclean lips” (6:5)! Beholding God’s holiness will necessarily convict us of OUR OWN sinfulness. “If we stick around and hear ANY MORE of God’s voice, it’ll be the LAST thing we ever hear; we shall DIE!”.
And again: He’s the SAME God, still today; Hebrews 12:28, NEW Testament, declares, “let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.” And we get a vivid picture of the FIRE of God’s HOLINESS in a passage like Acts 5, again, NEW Testament. Remember Ananias and Sapphira? Who tried to LIE to the church, and to God, about the relative size of their financial gift? God struck them DEAD on the SPOT!
Friends, we need to realize but for the GRACE of God, you and I would be right there WITH ‘em: in bodybags on our way out the door.Cuz we use the same MOUTH here on Sundays to sing God’s PRAISES, that we used last week to dishonor our spouses, and tear them down.
The same HANDS that we lift to the Lord on Sundays, we FAILED to lift last week, to help out others in need.
The same HEART and MIND that we fix on the Lord this morning, we were fixing on ourselves just MINUTES before we walked in. That’s why we’ve gotta be “called” to worship, first thing on Sundays, called BACK to it, and then promptly called to CONFESSION, for NEEDING to be called back, and RE-fix our eyes on CHRIST, instead of SELF.
Friends, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”, a HOLY God (Heb 10:31). We do not enter His presence cavalierly, or EASILY; I don’t have time to REMIND you of our study of LEVITICUS, 2 years ago now, and all of the precautions that Israel had to take just so that ONE guy - the high priest - could enter into God’s presence in the Holy of Holies, on just one DAY of the year, without DYING. God is THAT holy!
Can I just ask you, make it personal: How differently would you behave if you could somehow manage to maintain a CONSTANT AWARENESS of God’s HOLINESS? Imagine being an Israelite there at the foot of Mt. Sinai, while the mountain was literally ON FIRE and SHAKING; we don’t hear about any SINNING going on, in Exodus 19. But just 13 chapters later, 40 days later, they’re building a Golden Calf; they’ve ALREADY forgotten the fiery, shaking mountain. That’s all it takes: 30 minutes, and we’re back in the pantry, the cookie jar. Some of us will sinfully snap at our spouse on the drive home from church today; you will have already forgotten.
But Bo would never have reached for the cookie if DAD was standing right there in the kitchen, watching.
But here’s the thing: our Father IS always in the kitchen, watching! Whatever the “pantry” is for YOU, that “off-limits” place that God says “You’ve got no business going NEAR it”, if we just stopped long enough to think TWICE about it, we might remember His promise: “Behold, I am WITH you ALWAYS” (Mt 28:20); “I will never LEAVE you” (Heb 13:5); what a GLORIOUS promise, when you find yourself AFRAID, worried, lonely, depressed. But it’s a FEARFUL promise, when you catch yourself - once again - in the pantry.
Church: may we remember God’s holiness, and may we let it compel us to “BE holy as HE is Holy”, out of fear and reverence for the Lord.
#2- We fear the Lord because He is BLESSER. (5:28-6:3)
He is a God who DELIGHTS to BLESS us, when we obey Him.
Look at God’s RESPONSE to Israel now, in v29:
“Oh that they had such a heart as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments, [WHY???] that it might go well with them and with their descendants[e] forever!”
“I WANT it to go WELL for you; I wanna BLESS you! I’m the kind of Father who LOVES to give my children DESSERT, if you’ll just follow the family rules.”
v30: “Moses, they’re right: I’m too holy for them. But I will SANCTIFY you; I’ll MAKE you holy, Moses, so that I can give you my commandments - the “family rules” - and then YOU’RE gonna teach THEM, so they can OBEY - v33 - “that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the [good] land” that I am graciously giving you.
Do you trust that God gives us RULES for our FLOURISHING, that we might live LIFE to the FULLEST. You say, “But what about all the “Thou shalt NOT”s? Why’s God so NEGATIVE.” Is it NEGATIVE for me to give my kids rules like, “No playing in the STREET,” “No naked TRAMPOLINING”? I’m not trying to rein in their FUN; I’m trying to help them LIVE to see 18, and protect my chance of having GRAND-kids one day! Do you COMPLAIN about the “Do Not Enter” sign on the door of the LION’s enclosure at the zoo? The “Do Not TOUCH” sign on the electric fence? “Oh MAN! Now I’ll NEVER know what 10,000 volts feels like…” - No! You THANK the hanger of that sign!
And God loves Israel so much, He is now RE-hanging the sign for them; remember: “Deutero - nomy”, “second law”, second time through it. For their GOOD; chSIX now: “Now this is the commandment…”, v2, “...that you may FEAR the Lord your God” - there it is again - and OBEY Him, “...that your days may be long” (“I want you to live past 18!”), “...and that it may go well with you”, v3 (Not just QUANTITY of life, but QUALITY of life too), “and that you may multiply greatly” - Psalm 127 says “children are a BLESSING from the Lord”; I know I JOKE about mine sometimes, but I wouldn’t trade any ONE of them for the WORLD! It’s fun HAVING kids, it’s fun MAKING kids… - and God says, “Not only THAT, but you’ll get to DO it ‘in a land OOZING [the Hebrew word] with milk and honey.’” Cuz I delight to BLESS you.
Sometimes God HAS to use the STICK - the WARNING regarding His HOLINESS - but He’d RATHER use the CARROT to motivate us: His gracious invitation to ENJOY His BLESSING.
We don’t CONSIDER that enough, in our fight against sin. We MIGHT consider the STICK - “If I give IN to temptation, I’ll feel GUILTY in the morning”, “If I DO unbridle my tongue right now, and EXCORIATE my wife like I WANT to, in my flesh, I know the COUCH isn’t very COMFORTABLE…” - but what about the CARROT? What about the BLESSING that attends our obedience?
The INTIMACY with the LORD you get to experience, when you open your BIBLE instead of opening your **“pantry”.
The intimacy with your SPOUSE you get to enjoy, when you show them patience and kindness instead, “not insist[ing] on your own way; not [being] irritable or resentful” (1 Cor 13:4-5), but “covering a MULTITUDE of sins”, with your LOVE (1 Pet 4:8).
“Behold, how good and pleasant it is
when brothers [...and SISTERS… HUSBANDS and WIVES] dwell together in unity!
…It is like the dew… which falls on the mountains of Zion!
For the Lord has commanded BLESSING,
life forevermore.” (Ps 133:1-3)
#3- We fear the Lord because He is WORTHY. (6:4-9)
Now we come to perhaps the most important part of the passage, and one of the most important texts in all the Old TESTAMENT: the shema. Named after the first word of v4: “Shema”, “HEAR”. And as I’ve pointed out before, the Hebrew word really connotes MORE than just “listening”; it is listening with a heart to OBEY.
The shema was - still IS - Israel’s “Pledge of Allegiance” to Yahweh, recited twice daily by Jews still today. This is the confession of faith that JESUS would have started every day with, in the morning, and ENDED every day with in the evening. I taught Ellery the shema a few years back, cuz I think there’s something powerful about declaring the exact same words JESUS would have, in Hebrew. Would you like to learn some Hebrew this morning? It’s quite simple; just 6 words…
[[TEACH IN HEBREW! Line by line, then put all together…]]
“Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil
Adonai Eloheinu
Adonai echad!
Good! ““Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one.”
Let’s do a quick 30 seconds on each word there:
-We’ve already covered “HEAR”: not just LISTEN, but OBEY.
-“ISRAEL”: Who is this “pledge of allegiance” FOR? The NT calls US, the CHURCH, the “true Israel” of God (Gal 6:16). So we study Deuteronomy not just as HISTORY of them, but as INSTRUCTION for us.
- “LORD”: we’ve covered this recently too; any time you see “LORD” in all caps in your Bible, that is a placeholder for the personal name of God - Yahweh - that the Israelites, over time, considered too HOLY to say out LOUD, or even WRITE, so they substituted in this title “Adonai” instead, “Lord”. Which is a shame, for TWO reasons. First, it obscures the meaning of the text. It’d be like MY kids declaring, “Hear, O DuVal kids: DAD is our father”. Well, of COURSE he is; “dad” and “father” are two synonymous TITLES. But when they say, “WILL” is our father… And that’s the SECOND reason it’s a shame, because it IM-personalizes God - YAHWEH - when we can’t even bring ourselves to say His NAME. It’s one thing to FEAR Yahweh, in a respectful way; it’s another thing to approach God as… well, UN-approachable. When you’re SO scared He’s gonna strike you DEAD at any moment, you won’t even say His NAME; God NEVER commanded THAT kind of “fear” for His people. Can you imagine if we Christians never said Jesus’s name, out of respect? What a BEAUTIFUL name it is! The name above EVERY name, that at HIS name, every tongue SHALL confess that “JESUS Christ is Lord” (Ph2:12), for “there is no other name… by which we must be saved,” than the name of JESUS (Ac4:12).
-How about the word “OUR”? “Yahweh is OUR God”. It RE-personalizes Him a bit. He’s not just THE God; He’s MY God. And not JUST “mine”, but “OURS”. It’s a reminder that “our” faith is always personal but never PRIVATE. We share a corporate, UNIFIED faith, which Jesus TOO reminded us of in HIS prayer: “OUR Father…”
-”Yahweh is our GOD”, Elohim. Did you know that this word, this TITLE for God, Elohim - used roughly 2600 TIMES in the Bible, MORE than once per page, we find the word “GOD” - did you know it’s PLURAL? “The Hebrew word Elohim, grammatically, is a plural word used as if it were singular – the verbs and pronouns used with it are generally in the plural except when used in reference to Yahweh.” (David Guzik, Enduring Word, “Deuteronomy 6”)
Why do I point that out? To point out that even for JEWS, God’s OLD Testament people, God has ALWAYS been TRINITY. A TRI-UNE, “three-in-one” God. Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. Yahweh, Yeshua, and… Spirit (kinda wish He had a matching “Y” name).
-But as a matter of fact, concerning the LAST word of the shema now, “ONE”, commentator David Guzik points out: “The statement the Lord is ONE does not contradict the truth of the Trinity. In fact, it establishes that truth. The Hebrew word… echad, speaks most literally of a compound unity, rather than the Hebrew word yacheed, which speaks of an absolute unity or singularity... Genesis 2:24 uses the word echad in saying the two shall become one flesh. The idea is a unity (one flesh), made from a plurality (the two)” (ibid). God is a UNITY (one Godhead) consisting of a plurality (three persons).
Ask your Jewish friends if they realize that’s what they’re declaring of God, every morning and night.
Now, your Bible may have a footnote for this word echad, with an alternate rendering: “Yahweh is our God; Yahweh ALONE”. Not Osiris or Baal or Asherah… not Money or My Kids or Trump… just Yahweh ALONE.
Should we translate echad as “ONE” or “ALONE”? Yes. Both.
Now, v4 is the primary verse of the shema, but it includes ALL of vv4 thru NINE here, and continues…
V'ahav'ta eit Adonai Elohekha
b'khol l'vav'kha
uv'khol naf'sh'kha
uv'khol me'odekha.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” – Let me ask you: How do you COMMAND love? “Thou shalt LOVE me!” Well, you CAN’T… if it’s just a FEELING. But if love is a DEVOTION, a COMMITMENT to act in the others’ best interest, REGARDLESS of cost to self, the way JESUS defined it in words - “Greater love has no one than this: that he lay down his life for his friend” (Jn 15:13) - the way he defined it in ACTION, by laying down his OWN life for us, when we WEREN’T even his friends; we were his ENEMIES, rebel sinners - if THAT is TRUE love, then it CAN be commanded, God DOES command, that kind of self-sacrificing DEVOTION.
With all our HEART, soul and strength (Jesus adds “and all your MIND” in Matthew 22). You look at the Hebrew words for each, and you notice it’s very difficult to parse out where one STOPS and the next STARTS, and that’s INTENTIONAL. “Heart” (lebab) is sometimes translated as “mind”, or “soul”. “Soul” (nephesh) is sometimes translated as “heart” or “mind”. “Heart” refers to the “inner person”, “Strength” refers to the “OUTER person” (our actions), and “Soul” refers to the “WHOLE person”.
So what’s the upshot? “Love me with EVERYTHING you got! ALL of your entire being!” As the great idolater John Legend crooned of his “boo”, God wants US to sing of HIM, that:
“All of me loves all of you…
So I give you allllllllllll of me”.
And what does it LOOK like to “give allllllll” of yourself to God, in loving devotion? It looks like OBEDIENCE. Jesus said, “If you LOVE me, you will…” - WHAT? “Keep my commandments” (Jn 14:15)
Or as Yahweh says in v6 now: “These words that I command you today shall be on your heart.” Before you can DO them - externalize them - you’ve got to KNOW them - INTERNALIZE them.
And not just YOU; v7: “You shall teach them diligently to your children”. That’s what the 5 families who dedicated their children this morning are pledging to do: “train them up” to know the Lord, as THEIR God. How? By “talking” to and about the Lord and His word when they “sit in their house” and when they “walk by the way”, when they “lie down AND rise up”. In other words, ALL the time! Like I mentioned a few weeks ago, if your kids are only hearing about God HERE, for an hour on Sundays, that’s exactly how important He’ll BE to them: less than 1% of their waking weekly hours. But if you are CONSTANTLY talking about and WITH the Lord - praying - all throughout the day and all throughout the home, your kids won’t know how to make sense of the world WITHOUT God. And that’s what we’re aiming for, parents.
“You shall bind [these commandments] as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.” Warren Wiersbe explains (OT Commentary, 318): “The Jews took these commandments literally and wore portions of Scripture in little containers called phylacteries on their forehead and left arm (Mt 23:5). They also attached a small container of Scripture, called a mezuzah, to the front door… Each occupant touched the mezuzah reverently each time he or she passed through the door (Ps 121:8). It was a sign that the house was to be a sanctuary for the Lord and a place where the Word was loved, obeyed, and taught.” – Now, there’s a DANGER in that; in Matthew 23:5, Jesus CONDEMNED the Pharisees, for “making their phylactery boxes large and ostentatious to show off their supposedly greater spirituality” (Guzik). So we need to be CAREFUL about playing the “whose wearing the bigger CROSS around our neck” game (especially with gold now at $5,000 an ounce! Maybe it’s more about showing off your MONEY than your spirituality!) But I do believe this teaches that even how we adorn our BODIES and our HOMES ought to serve as REMINDERS to us of who we BELONG to. I used to do this every day (but I’m LAZY and FORGETFUL) but it’s a helpful reminder to me to **write the 2 great commandments on my wrists like this, so it’s a little HARDER for me to forget why I’m HERE: to love **GOD and love **NEIGHBOR. It also opens up doors for evangelism, when folks notice them and ask… So LONG as, I’m not DOING it to get noticed, like the Pharisees, “making my tattoos LARGE” (“HE must be SUPER spiritual…”). God says, “Man looks on the OUTWARD appearance; I care about what’s in your HEART” (1 Sam 16:7); “my words shall be on your heart” (Dt 6:6). The wrists are just reminders. The flowery word art hanging up around your house - “As for me and MY house, WE shall serve the LORD!” - that’s great… as long as it’s a REMINDER. As long as your house IS actually serving the Lord; THAT’s what’s important. But hanging the poster up in a living room filled with anger and bickering, pride and SELF-serving… the poster’s there to stop your sin in its TRACKS. If it helps - if you START to blow up at your spouse, but then STOP cuz you saw the poster - then by all means, HANG it. But if it’s not in your HEART, then the poster just hangs in JUDGMENT over your home, for FAILING to serve the Lord.
We love God with ALL of our being, because He FIRST loved us, and because He alone is WORTHY of “all of me”.
And that brings us to point #4: We ought to fear God because He is JEALOUS. (6:10-19)
We’re gonna FLY thru this for time, AND because we discussed God’s JEALOUS love for us LAST week, with the first four commandments, but QUICKLY:
God reminds Israel in vv10-11 of His promise to bring them into the land, with “GREAT cities you didn’t even have to build”, “BEAUTIFUL homes you didn’t even have to fill”, “cisterns”, “vineyards”... BLESSINGS on top of blessings, as we discussed in point #2; He is SUCH a generous God!
Generous, but JEALOUS. V12: “then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of… Egypt, out of… slavery.”
God warns: “It’s actually EASIER to REMEMBER me, when you’re stuck in EGYPT, desperately DEPENDING on me for deliverance.” But what about when life’s GOOD. When the sun is shining, and your belly’s full. See, we think just the OPPOSITE. We think, “God, WHY are you letting me go THROUGH this?! Why don’t you DELIVER me from this trial, and I’ll PRAISE you for it.” – Sure you will… for a day, a week. And then, like Israel, you’ll FORGET, when you don’t NEED God quite so much. What if God’s goal isn’t to give us COMFORT, but CLOSENESS to Him, intimacy with Him? I bet it’s easier for our brothers and sisters in PALESTINE to fear God - Palestinian believers - or Ukraine, or Iran… But 21st c. American Church: will WE still “fear Him”, v13, and “serve Him”, in our culture of comfort?
Or WILL we, v14, “go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around [us]”. Money. Kids. Trump.
BEWARE, friends: “Yahweh is a jealous God”. “My glory,” he declares, “ I WILL not give to another” (Isa 42:8).
“Don’t put me to the TEST”, v16, “like your FATHERS did at Massah”, in Exodus 17, in the wilderness. “God, if you really LOVE us, you’ll give us WATER…”. To which God replied, “Wait a minute; which one of us is GOD here? Cuz last time I checked, that’s ME… So I’LL be giving the orders here, YOUR job is to take them, and obey”; v17: “diligently keep them”.
Lastly, #5- We fear God because He is SAVIOR. (6:20-25)
V20: ““When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of these testimonies” - the word “meaning” is absent in the Hebrew; a more literal translation would be: “What’s WITH these rules and statutes?” “Why do we have to follow the boring rules” – you answer him: “Because SON, just listen to all that God has DONE for us: “‘We were Pharaoh's slaves… But the Lord brought us out”” (v21).
Do your children know your testimony? What God has done in YOUR life, personally, to rescue you from your sin? Do they know it so well that if I asked THEM to tell me the “signs and wonders” that God worked in YOUR life to bring you to Himself, they could recite your testimony from memory? If they can’t yet, that means you haven’t shared it enough yet. Keep telling them.
“We will… tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord… and the wonders that he has done.” (Ps 78:4)
How “he brought us out from slavery,” v23, “that he might bring us in” to the Promised Land. Christian: God didn’t just save you FROM something; He’s saved you FOR something, namely, for HIMSELF! For eternal LIFE with HIM, and we can start LIVING it even TODAY.
But how do we GET it? Look at where the passage ENDS, forebodingly, in v25: “it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to do all this commandment”. Tragically, friends, the converse is ALSO true “it is UN-righteousness for us, (not “IF” but) WHEN we FAIL to keep all these commandments”. And that’s why we needed a SAVIOR! One who didn’t WAIT for us to obey, before setting His love upon us, and coming to deliver us.
CONCLUSION: Let’s bring it full circle, in closing: the reason I can share the “Starburst” story without just “scapegoating” my son, is because I am Bo! YOU are Bo! How often must WE look like that to our heavenly Father, walking into His living room AGAIN, cookie in hand, not half an hour later. I blew up at Elijah last week, so bad I had to apologize to him later. Then 4 days after, I did the exact same thing to the REFEREES at Ellery’s basketball game; embarrassed myself in front of the whole gym, screaming like a MANIAC (in my defense, the other team was intentionally trying to INJURE our players, so there was some “righteous, protective anger and love” behind it, but still). “Here I AM again, God, with yet another cookie; you caught me CHOCOLATE-handed… DO YOU STILL LOVE ME?”
Hear the GOSPEL this morning, friend: “While we were YET SINNERS, God so LOVED us, that He gave His only Son, to DIE for us. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord Jesus will be SAVED.”
Let’s pray…