LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART

Deuteronomy 6:1-25

Key Verse 6:5

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength."

            Happy New Year!! Thank God for 2005. In spite of many hardships, God sustained our faith and used us as his servants in 2005. The year 2006 has dawned for us with a great expectation. We all have started our journey. Time is a one way road. Let’s forget what is behind and press on towards our goal in 2006. Deuteronomy means "the Second Law" or "Repeated Law." It is a repeated instruction. This book teaches God's people how to live. It was Moses who first presented the message of Deuteronomy on the plains of Moab. It was delivered at the end of the desert journey.

            The people of Israel were about to enter the Promised Land. The time of long wandering was over. They shouted, "Our exile in the wilderness is over. We are moving into the new land." They felt like they were dreaming. The first generation of the people of Israel who left Egypt all died except Caleb and Joshua. A new generation of people arose. God denied Moses, one of the greatest leaders in history, entry into the Promised Land. Moses did not care too much about whether or not he would enter the Promised Land. Rather, he was concerned about his people. He was a good shepherd for them. His major concern was not about the powerful enemy they would confront in the Promised Land. Rather, his concern was the enemies within. He instructed them repeatedly, “Fear the Lord your God, love the Lord your God, do not forget the Lord.” Then he promised, “you may go well and prosper.” I pray that God may be our first priority in our hearts. May God bless us to serve him only in this year.

PART I. LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD (1-5)

            At that time the people of Israel were looking over the land of Canaan and they were dreaming of a beautiful new life in the land flowing with milk and honey. Young couples were dreaming of building a white marble house on the hill and living happily by raising up two boys and one girl. Dream house, dream couple, dream children, and dream family were in their minds. Children's mouths became watery when they thought about eating big delicious juicy grapes in the valley of Eshcol. People wanted to have a comfortable life in the house because they suffered a lot living in the tent. They wanted to have some rest in the new land. They were like people who bought a house after living in an apartment for 40 years. Anyhow they were thinking about the luxurious glorious life in the Canaan. However, what did God ask them to do in the Canaan land through Moses?

                Look at verse 1. "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.." Here the commands means the Ten Commandments and decrees and laws are detail regulations to implement the commands. God encouraged the people of Israel to keep the commands diligently instead of only enjoying his blessings in the new land. What was the purpose of this word?

First, they may fear the Lord. Look at verse 2a. "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 I give you..."

             The first generation that came out of the Egypt died in the desert because they grumbled against God's servant Moses and Aaron by saying in Numbers 14:3, "Why is the Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be taken as plunder. Wouldn't it be better for us to go back to Egypt?" They had a loser's mentality toward their enemies and had nostalgia toward their easy-going old life. But their old life had been far from easy-going. They had been slaves. When they forgot this, then they were negative in God's wonderful plan in their lives. There is always a wilderness between Egypt our old life and Canaan our new life. Everyone must go through this period of wilderness. This is a "must" to all God-loving Christians. The wilderness means "cross" according to Jesus. Jesus said in Mark 8:34, "Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said, 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.'" There is no free lunch in our spiritual life. This is a universal truth to everyone who wants to have a new life in Jesus. Each one must take up own cross and follow Jesus. The question is "Is our cross unbearable?" I do not think so. Jesus said in Matt. 11:30, "For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." When we have faith in God, it becomes easy and turns into a blessing. Are you afraid of taking up cross or would you like to obey Jesus and to take up cross? What can we say then? We can say confidently, "Triple Crosses are triple blessings. TCATB"  Dr. Steve Haga has to take up many crosses in his new school. I pray that God may give him strength to carry the crosses of a small ministry. Dr. Isaac Koh needs God’s vision to pioneer Harvard University-a bastion of liberalism and a center for humanism.

             Remembering God in times of success is our spiritual life-line. So Proverb 1:7 says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline."  This means that if we do not fear God, we become fools. Here God wanted his people to fear him generation after generation even after they entered into the Canaan land. God wanted them not to forget him in spite of abundant blessings. Therefore, God did not give them practical training how to get a job and how to plant seeds and how to make money. Rather, he taught them how to keep his word. It is very important to keep the word of God when God blesses us after we live by faith. Among us we have six new graduates. M. Joshua Kim was the least among us to get a computer degree. He did it by faith and prayer. My prayer for all graduates is that they fear the Lord and remember God’s love for them always.

Second, you may enjoy long life. Look at verses 2b and 3. "And so that you may enjoy long life. Hear, O 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 fathers, promised you." God promised his people that they would enjoy long life and go well and increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey if only they would be careful to obey his commands. It is natural for us to enjoy long life when we obey God. Even older people want to live longer and better. So many people play tennis or swimming or walking to have a longer life. Maybe it may help to improve our physical condition in this way. But God says that real way of enjoying long life is to obey his word. This is God’s promise. If anyone is not convinced of this, look at our senior missionaries. They look like young men and women ready to obey Jesus’ world mission command. They are studying Spanish and Chinese so that they may go out to a new country when they retire.

            Look at verse 4. "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one." God introduced himself as the only true God. At that time there were many small gods in the Egypt and Canaan land. People worshiped many kinds of idols. But the God of Israel is the only true God in the universe. Why? Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and earth.” He said to Moses in Exodus 3:14, "I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.'" This is God who dried up the Red Sea for the Israelites to cross. Now what command did God give to his people? Look at verse 5. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." The first duty to be done as the people of God is to love him with all our heart. This verse is the focal point of the whole Bible. Jesus said in Matthew 22:37-38 that this is the first and greatest commandment. Loving God and our neighbor is the greatest command. Human beings need an object to love because God created them in his own image. When they cannot find someone or something to love, they become thirsty and unsatisfied. This verse 5 shows that God is true object of our love. The true object we have to love with all heart is only God. Why? Because he is the only true God to be worshiped and the master of our life. Nothing can be spared to love him because he did not even spare his one and only Son to love us while we were great sinners. It is natural for us to love God because he initiated his love for us. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” God’s love endures forever.

            How should we love God? Look at verse 5 again. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." We have to love God with all our heart and soul and strength. Heart is the central part of our life. If heart stops, our life ends. Let’s ask you what is in your heart right now? God should occupy the first place in our heart. Soul maintains our physical life. Strength is our ability or our energy. Last year God blessed our center-management team very preciously. They used their strength to clean the center and mow the lawns. Many women used their strength to prepare delicious meals each Sunday. Heart, soul and strength represent our whole being. When we love God, we have to love him with our whole heart. Though we say we love God, often times we love ourselves more than God. Sometimes we serve God not because we love him but because we want to achieve our personal ambition or human recognition by others. But we must love God purely. We must always think about him and offer our time to him because we love him. Nothing is too precious to spend when we love someone. We want to stay with our loved ones always and we want to give them the best we have. We are joyful when we are near with our loved ones. It is important for us to put God in the first place in our life. How much should we love God?

             There is no 90% or 99% love to God. Love God with heart and soul and strength means that we must love him more than 100%. In the same way we have to love God intensively. It does not mean that we love God only when we feel like it or when we have an extra time. It means we love God all the time with full strength. Abraham loved God with his whole heart when he offered Isaac as the burnt offering. He did not spare his only son because he loved God. As a result, God blessed him to become a father of faith. A poor widow in Mark 12:41-44 offered all she had to express her love for God. One psalmist said that better is one day in God’s house than a thousand days elsewhere. Apostle Paul said in 2 Timothy 4:6-7, “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” Paul gave everything like a drink offering because he loved God. M. David Chung loves to play tennis so he loves God. Once I loved myself and did not know how to love God and others. But I found God’s love in Jesus. God changed my life to give and serve others. I struggled to love God not to love the world in time of success. God enabled me to overcome the temptation of money and pleasures of the world through the early morning prayers. When Jesus loved God, he was willing to give his life. He loved God unto his death on the cross. His love was not superficial but 100% love. As a result, God crowned him with eternal life and lifted Jesus above all names. We can apply this principle whenever we do the work of God. When fishing, let's do it wholeheartedly. When feeding sheep, let's do it with love and a mother's heart. Mary team set a good example of loving God by offering their time for campus fishing. In this year let's love God 100% with heart and soul and strength.

            God knew that his people would lose their spirit when they began to enjoy material life in the Canaan land. There was a danger for them to forget God when they tasted God's abundant blessings living in a big beautiful house filled with many good things. They could fall into the sinful pagan culture of Canaan watching X-rated movies through the Internet. There was a good chance for them to become couch potatoes forgetting God's love and grace upon them. There was a chance for them to love comfortable life with complacent spirit under God's blessing losing intense love for God. If they love the world, they would become unhappy. God did not want this happen to them. So he gave this word to them as the key for successful life in the promised land.

            There is a natural parallel between ancient Israel and modern America. Just as the Israelites were about to experience God’s blessings, so has America. As we know, God blessed America materially and spiritually. People call her "America the Beautiful". America can be compared to the modern version of the land of Canaan. Many former communist countries regard America as their dream land. Many puritans and pilgrims, ancestors of faith came to this land and built this nation with a vision of God. In the early pioneering period people loved God like life and death matter. But today America is becoming a nation of unbelievers after receiving many blessings. People became hostile toward God increasingly. Many people love materials and pleasures more than God. Jesus said in Matt. 6:24c, “You cannot serve both God and Money.” When we love Money more than God, we will forget God. The best way to fix our problem is to love God again as the source and giver of all blessings. We have to remember his love and grace upon us and restore our first love for him. Revelation warns those who forgot God in this way. “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.” (Rev. 2:4-5a) When we repent and love God again, many good things will follow.  

            As a matter of fact, when we love God, the streams of love and happiness spring up from our heart. Something very dramatic happens when we love God. The love of God transforms us into a new creation. Thirstiness and spiritual hunger disappear from our heart and we become very happy and powerful. We begin to love our neighbors especially our room mates and we begin to love our rebellious sheep with mother's heart and we begin to conquer school work. We love to come to pray in the early morning. More than anything else, we begin to grow as a spiritual oak tree that can feed the entire campus or nation. In addition, we know how to endure God's blessing. Though we are selfish by nature and love ourselves very much, let's love God with all our heart and soul and strength in this year. Who does not love to do these things?

PART II. TEACH GOD’S WORD DILIGENTLY (6-25)

            Then how do we express our love toward God practically? Two things are outstanding. What are they?

First, put God's word upon our heart. Look at verse 6. "These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts." This means that we have to abide in the word of God. We should not understand God's word with head only. We have to accept God's word into our deep heart. The word of God must guide our life and we have to apply God's word to our practical life. We have to meditate on it and study it and store it in our heart so that it may be available all the time. Of course, it is not easy for us to put God's word in our heart. Why? Many other things flood into our hearts with the flood of information because we are living in the Internet age. The desires of this world and worries of this life and many thorns invade our hearts. So we need to struggle to put God's word into our heart by prayer and by writing testimonies and studying 1:1. Look at verses 8 and 9. God told them to bind them in their foreheads. Why? When we look at the mirror to comb our hairs or shave our moustache or to see how pretty we are, we can read the Bible verse at the same time in our forehead saying, "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all things shall be added as well." Oh, I repent of my worry and trust in God. Why do we have to tie them as symbols on our hand? Because we can read God's word when we wash our face or shake hands or look at the watch. This means that the word of God should not depart from us at all. We must be very serious about God's word in our daily life. We chose our key verse for 2006 to live before God. We must love God's word in order to love God with all our heart.

Second, impress them on your children.  Loving God does not end with taking care of oneself. Look at verses 7-9, "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." Loving God involves first accepting God's commands personally. Then the next step is to instruct our children. Here, we can see the clear priorities of loving God. If we love God, we must love our children. How? Do not impose them but impress them. We must instruct our children to love God first through our living example. Parent’s faith is so crucial for planting faith to children. Children learn by education but from the way their parents live. They see how their parents live. Then they imitate their life of faith. Baby boomer parents gave their children material freedom but they failed to become good examples. They did not love God and their spouses. Now their children follow their bad example of divorces and unbelief. When we love the word of God, our children will love the word of God too. Parents are the best person to raise up children in God's way. Nation' future depends on children. Children are gifts from God. We must teach them the way of the Lord from young age. We appreciate our CBF teachers and Belssi Chang and James Park.

            Look at verses 20-23. Children must know the history of God's people. They must see the hand of the living God in their parents' lives. Children must know how their parents have arrived at their present place. The point of history lesson is to help them see God --his miracles and mighty works for their parents. In that way, they can put their faith in God. All children go through the necessary process of growth. When they face adverse human situation, they can rely on God rather than their own human strength. In loving God, training children in the Lord is extremely important. God's work cannot be completed in one generation. Each generation must pass on to the next generation the knowledge of God.

            In conclusion, God did not lead the Israelites to the promised land so that they could eat well and live well. God led them there to make them a kingdom of priests for the whole world. Exodus 19:6 says, "You will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." God had a great vision to make them a Bible-teaching nation for the work of world salvation. To accomplish this purpose they have to teach their children the word of God. It is important for us to feed our sheep with the word of God so that they can be future Bible teachers. God promised to bless them in the promised land if only they did not forget him. All they have to do after they receive God's blessing is to fear the Lord. We can devise many plans and make a strong resolution to make 2006 a fruitful year. But most of all, let's love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our strength and engage in our 1:1 Bible teaching diligently. Let's read key verse 6:5.