Steps for Getting All of God's Blessings

Deuteronomy 6:1-9
“These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, promised you.

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 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. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”     (Deuteronomy 6:1-9 TNIV)

In the preceding section (Deut. 5) before this wonderful passage, Moses has just recounted the 10 Words (often called the 10 commandments or the Decalogue).  Moses has given God's law to a new generation to instruct them in how to please the Lord God.  Now we turn to Moses explanation of the greatest instruction in God's law.

vv. 1-3.  These verses in chap. 6 are a continuation of that instruction, which came in chap. 5.  The opening, vv. 1-3, describe motivational factors to obeying God's instruction.  There are two repeated words again and again throughout these verses - "so that"- it comes up 5 times.  Now, we shouldn't think of the commands given to the Israelites as ways for them to earn salvation.  Instead we should think of them as grace.  The "so that" passages are motivational in the sense that they are there to motivate the people of God to be obedient.  But the idea is not that they earn the blessing.  Remember, they were already the covenant people of God.  God made a covenant with them in the book of Exodus.  God has already bound himself to covenant faithfulness to his people and I believe that they were his children.  They are already promised blessing, not they are commanded to obey the LORD in order to enjoy that blessing to its fullest and to receive even more blessings.

This is the biblical pattern in both Old Testament and New Testament for the people of God.  If we obey the Lord, we receive rich and abundant blessings and rewards.  If we don't, then we miss out on what God has in store for us to some extent.  But no matter what we are his children and we remain in his family.

vv. 4-5.  This section starts out with the famous 'Shema' in v. 4.  It emphasizes God's oneness, his completeness, and that he is the only God worthy of being God and receiving worship.  This is the God who has made a covenant with you and the next verse (v. 5) calls those who are part of the covenant, those who have been redeemed, to be loyal to God and to the covenant - "Love the LORD your God."  The LORD, or in Hebrew YHWH, alone is worthy of covenant love.

But how are we to love God?  Well, v. 5 tells us to do it with all our "heart."  In Hebrew, the heart was considered to be similar to the mind - in fact, this verse could easily be translated "with all our mind."  We need to be careful to not think of heart with all the connotations that we bring to it in English.  In the Old Testament, the heart is not the center of the emotions, rather it is the center of a person's will, intentions, and intellect.  So, we are to love God with all our mind, our will, with full intention to adore him.

We are also to love God with all our soul.  The soul again, is thought of differently in Hebrew than in English, with all its connotations.  We should take this word to mean, our "life."  But it means more than that.  It also means our emotions and our desires - basically anything that makes us unique as humans.  So, putting the last two terms together, we are to love God with our whole self - our mental intellect, our desires, our  moral choices, our will - basically the deepest roots of our self.

Finally, we are to love God with all our "strength." We should understand this as instructing us to love God with everything we possibly have - everything we have left after our heart and our soul - all our substance, our possessions - everything!

vv. 6-9.  Verse 6 tells us to have the commandments of God upon our hearts, which emphasizes the idea that runs throughout the whole book of Deuteronomy that obedience is not something that you just perform, but it must be inward, it must be obedience of the heart, as we have already seen in part in the previous verses.

Verse 7 tells us that the commandments of God need to be passed on the next generation, just like a runner passes on a baton in the middle of a race.  We need to pass the baton of God's Word on those young and old who have not heard it.  But this verse is speaking of the older passing it on to the younger.  But how is this done, well I believe the deeper meaning of this passage leads us to say that passing on God's commandments is not done by simply enforcing them in our homes as we would enforce a code of law.  But rather, the idea is inward, it is done by making God's instructions the fabric of our life and conversation.  It's like we can't help but talk about God when we are home and when we are with other people.  It exudes from us - it's like it oozes from the inside out in powerfully impressive way.

Finally, vv. 8-9 speak of having the instruction of God always before us.  These verses were taken literally by Judaism and the Pharisees of Jesus' day wore things called "phylacteries," which were small leather boxes that contained the Hebrew Bible in them and were worn on the forehead like a visor.  But we don't have to resort to wearing leather boxes to take these verses literally, which I believe is the proper way to interpret them.  We simply need to keep the Word of God on our minds - this means we need to be getting in the Bible each day and we need to be trying to apply it throughout the day.

These verses in Deut. 6 are about covenant family loyalty.  Remember, that Jeremiah 31 is about the New Covenant, the same covenant that Jesus' ministry is based upon.  We are people with covenant between us and God.  God has been and will be faithful, now we must be faithful to that covenant in obedience - not for salvation, because God has taken care of that, but for us to be the people we were meant to be in relationship with God - for us to reach our potential in relationship with him and getting all of God's blessings.