Deuteronomy 6:1-12 Jesus’ Laws in Our Hearts

 

What a special Sunday! It’s a day to celebrate the gift of life in the baptism of Elanor and the reminder that our life is rooted in Jesus. This is why I appreciate this passage that Adam and Heather chose for Elanor’s baptism; it’s a passage that reminds us of the importance of deliberately and consistently talking about what we believe and why with our children. If we desire for our children to grow up loving God and knowing Jesus, it takes a deliberate investment in time and energy to work with the Holy Spirit to grow the seed of faith into a flourishing love of, and belief in God.

Israel is spending time at Mount Sinai after being freed from slavery in Egypt by God. Israel left Egypt as slaves, but as they passed through the Red Sea and then God covered Pharaoh and his army, who were chasing Israel in order to bring them back into slavery, Israel truly became a free people. In the 430 years that Jacob’s family lived in Egypt, they grew from about 70 people to 600,000 men plus women and children; they have become a nation in that time; a nation of people chosen by God to be a blessing to the nations, as he told Abraham. Now God takes the time here at Sinai to give them the Ten Commandments, as well as a number of other laws, ceremonies, and festivals to shape them into his people.

Moses emphasizes the importance of teaching their children these laws, “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, 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.” These laws and commands are to be embraced by Israel to make God’s people different from the nations around them, a people who are going to reflect who God is to the world. God’s not just thinking about the people sitting at the foot of the mountain, God is thinking of their children, their grandchildren, and all the generations yet to come.

As God’s people, it’s important that they pass on and teach their children what God has commanded them by making it a regular part of their lives, “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.” Everywhere they go, whatever they’re doing, the people are called to teach the children who God is and who God is calling them to be. It begins by the parents and adults to hold God’s law in their own hearts first. As we see over and over again in Scripture, it doesn’t take long to get drawn away from God towards other gods. Perhaps the most important task we have as a church family is to help our children know and love Jesus with all their hearts and lives.

The Hebrew word for ‘impress” means to repeat often, to go over again and again until it becomes a part of who you are and it becomes part of what you believe. As a sign of your commitment to God’s ways, the Israelites were called to place these words close to their minds so that it shapes their thoughts, and on their hands so that it shapes what they do. They are written on their doorframes of their houses to show their families follow God’s way. This shows the children that our faith is part of our daily life.

You need to have a love for God in your own hearts before you can pass that love on to your children, or to the children in our church family. Moses reminds Israel, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord you God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” The first part of this is called the Shema and it reminds us that we serve one God and that God is Yahweh, the I Am who met Moses in the burning bush, the one God who created everything else. There is no other God, only created things that we make gods. This is still an important reminder for us today, we may not make wooden or stone idols to worship anymore like the nations around Israel did, but we make all kinds of other things gods today: power, individual liberty, sex, money, and more can all take first place in our lives over Jesus. This is why Jesus takes the second part of what Moses says here, and makes this the central part of what the Law is all about; loving God with everything you are and have. When this is true for us as adults, it becomes true for our children as well.

The deeper our love for God, the more natural our conversations about God become, when your relationship with God becomes more based on love than obligation and fear, the more you want to know how to please God with how you live. This is why Jesus connects loving him with obeying him, “If you love me, you will keep my commands.” It is because of Jesus’ love and commitment to us that led him to the cross to take our sin on himself so that we can be made right with God our Father.

As you read this passage, you hear God speaking in covenantal language, the language of commitment and promise, especially in verses 10 to 12, “When the Lord your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you—a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” God has committed to bring his people into a land filled with blessings, however they need to remember their side of the relationship with God in order to fully live into the blessings.

Jesus has given us a way of living that we find in the Gospels. Just as God called Israel to impress his ways on the hearts of the children, we are to impress the commands of Jesus on our children’s hearts today, teaching them that he is the way, the truth, and the life and we’re called to shape our lives in obedience to his teaching. When we do so, we will experience his blessings. Adam and Heather, you have been entrusted with the beautiful gift of Elanor Jane, your call is to raise her to know Jesus, to impress on her Jesus’ commands, and guide her in living in obedience to Jesus. Bethel, we have committed to walking alongside Adam and Heather to help them to raise Elanor to follow Jesus. May we all be faithful in helping Elanor to learn to love Jesus with all her heart, soul, and strength and to follow him all her days.