We're going to bounce this morning from Exodus to Deuteronomy, not to compete with Reverend Gordon, but just to complement what he's been doing and what the Lord has been doing through him. It seemed good to look at one of the most famous passages in all of Scripture, but one which, because it is so famous, perhaps we might overlook. Our text this morning comes from Deuteronomy, chapter 6, and the text is from 4 through 9. We'll read the first nine verses. God's holy, inspired, inerrant, infallible, and unchanging Word. 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, that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son's son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as I, the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you the land flowing with milk and honey. 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. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and you 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. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. As far as the reading of God's word, may he write this word on our hearts and may he give us true faith to believe it. Congregation of the Lord Jesus, this, as I say, is a famous passage, and justly so, but I hope that its familiarity doesn't diminish its impact. God gave this word to his people, his national people, which were temporarily his national people, all his believers now in Jesus, who is the Israel of God, all believers in Christ are the Israel of God, so this word is to us just as much as it was to them, because It was Jesus who went down to Egypt and went up and then came back, thus reenacting Israel's history in a brief period. Israel was, national Israel was under Moses and David and the prophets. National Israel was nothing but, nothing less, than a long-lasting, very colorful, violent, disappointing, extraordinary sermon illustration. One of the great sermon illustrations of all times. It gives some evidence to how stubborn and blind and stiff-necked we are that God had to illustrate his will and his grace to us repeatedly for 1,500 years and we still didn't get it. And finally, he fulfilled all of it in his well-beloved son, Jesus, God the Son, incarnate. He came to put an end to the temple and to the sacrifices and he even said, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again. And scripture tells us he was referring to his body. So that he is the Israel of God. He is the Lamb of God. He is the sacrifice. He is the priest. He is the temple. He is everything. And if we are in him, we have everything. So this word is to us when it says, Hear, O Israel. But it was given in a particular context to national Israel about 40 years after the Exodus. And it's given against the background of Egyptian polytheism. When I started my pastoral ministry in 1987, I had to give some explanation as to what polytheism was because we thought of ourselves, at least where I was ministering, as to some degree or other, whether truly or falsely is another question, as something of a Christian nation. I remember even as an unbeliever when I was confronted by an evangelical Christian with this question, "Do you know Jesus?" And I thought to myself, "Well, I suppose, doesn't everyone?" And, of course, I didn't know really what he was asking. What he was asking in his own way was, "Do you have a personal saving faith in the Christ of Scripture and history?" And over the months that became clearer that that indeed is what he was asking. But now, here we are in 2015, it almost feels redundant to illustrate polytheism because we're surrounded by it. In those years since I first encountered Christ in the mid-1970s to now, our culture has been transformed in remarkable ways. are granting rights to people to perform acts in the bonds of marriage that were, in 1975 in many places, illegal. In the original context, Egypt had a remarkable number of gods and it would take Dr. Vinny hours to explain to us the nature of Egyptian religion, so I certainly won't try to do it here this morning, except to try to give you a sense that there were gods everywhere and for everything. There were gods in the skies and gods in the water, or gods of the waters. Every city had a god. There was a god for Memphis, there was a god for Thebes. There were geospatial gods, as I say, gods for the sky, gods for the earth, gods for the water, gods for the sun, and eventually the sun itself became a god. There were gods for every function in life, a God for childbirth and a God for good fortune. As I say, we ought not to think, well, shame on those Egyptians, because we have become those Egyptians. We have our little gods all over, don't we, as individuals and as a culture. I can tell you, I can tell what the gods are in your house, in your life, if I come in and take it away. You say, well, I don't worship that. Well, maybe you don't bow down to it, but what happens if I take it away from you? Well, no, you can't do that. Well, just imagine for a moment as a thought experiment, children. If I went into your toy closet and took your favorite toy and gave it to someone else, not for me, gave it to someone else, how well would you take that? I don't take my toy. Well, grown-ups have big and expensive toys, and they feel exactly the same way. They might not cry outwardly, but they're crying inwardly, I guarantee you. We have idols. And that's because, as John Calvin said, quoting "man's nature is, so to speak, a perpetual factory of idols." And because we live now in a post-Christian culture, idols are proliferating. Scholars sometimes have talked about secular America. We don't live in a secular country. We should really stop talking about those secularists, as Bill O'Reilly likes to say. They're not secularists. They just have a different post-Christian, neo-pagan religion. It's a shame the word secular has become a bad word because it's not in and of itself necessarily a bad word. The truth is we're awash in religion. The church of the holy shopping mall will be packed today with devotees. I trust none of us will be there, by God's grace, there but for the grace of God. But you're tempted, aren't you? Oh, I'm so busy tomorrow, just turn in. The church of the holy fast food joint will be packed with devotees. We live in a culture where increasingly Basically, the idol is not even stuff, we're it, and I call as my witness the selfie. Even our president has a selfie stick and took a selfie of himself and then people took pictures of him taking pictures of himself. You get lost in a kind of vicious circle of narcissism. watching him, watching himself, watching him, watching himself. It's very confusing. Something very telling about the old-fashioned way, as in like last week, taking a selfie, when we used a mirror to take a picture of ourselves. I used to belong to a gym. I gave up. It was fruitless. But there's lots of idolatry in the gym. And what God wants you to know this morning from this passage is that the triune God is holy, H-O-L-Y-N-W-H-O-L-L-Y, one, and holy in both senses, one, for us. The triune God is holy one, and one, for us. If you look at your Bibles, you see this famous passage in Deuteronomy 6, 4, which says literally, Shema Yisrael Yahweh Eloheinu Yahweh Echad. Hear, O Israel, Yahweh, our God, Yahweh, one. And scholars struggle with how to translate this. It's typically translated the way that it's rendered here. But it could also be translated to say that, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord alone, God, which I think captures the sense, but there is a sense here in this first verse that God is one, over and against all the idols of the Egyptians, the sun god, the water god, the household gods, the local gods, the national gods, the personal gods, over against all those in the Egyptian pantheon and all those in the American pantheon. We even have a television show we did called American Idol. We have a pantheon of celebrities. Americans know virtually nothing, it seems, judging by man-on-the-street interviews, about founding documents, but ask them about the latest exploits of our celebrities, and they can tell you everything to the last detail. We have our own pantheon, don't we? And against all of those, God says he is alone, God, Yahweh. Now, this isn't bad news for those who believe. It is good news. The good news is that we have been rescued from our native natural idolatry. We've been rescued from our native, natural idolatry. That's the good news. The good news is that we have been brought into a covenant relationship, as God says in Deuteronomy 7, not because of anything in us, not for anything done by us or for us, but simply because God loved us from all eternity in Jesus Christ. That's the gospel this morning. That God loved us in Jesus Christ from all eternity, inexplicably. Which means, children, I can't tell you why. Because there isn't anything in you by nature that's lovable. I know Grandma says that you're sweet and lovable and huggable and she just wants to eat you up and take you home and give you cookies. But children, you and I know that deep down in your heart, There's a nasty little cesspool of sin. And your parents know that too. That's why they're laughing. Grandma and grandpa have forgotten what their children were like. Age has a way of wiping away those memories. The good news this morning is that God, despite our wretchedness, has come to us in Jesus Christ, the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and made us, who were not a people, into his people. for the glory of his name and for our salvation. That's all embedded when it says, Hear, O Israel, Yahweh, our God. Not some God, not the sun God, not the water God, not some figment of anyone's imagination, but the God who was in the beginning, who said, Let there be, and there was. The God who led his people out of Egypt through the Red Sea on dry ground that God is our God. He made us his people. When he says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. It means you have no other God. And I'm your God. And it also means that he's not two. He's one God in three persons, and we'll come back to that in a moment. but it means that he is wholly with us. In other words, whatever God does, he does wholeheartedly with all of his faculties, as it were. As it were. God doesn't have eyes, really, in himself. He doesn't have ears. He doesn't have a nose. But scripture attributes all those things so that we have some way of talking about him and thinking about him. And what he wants us to know here in the first part is that he has come and he has given himself completely to us, unreservedly. And you grown-ups know what it's like to have someone give themselves, you think, to you, only to take themselves back. You ever had someone, children, that you thought was a friend in school and then you went to school the next day and it seemed like something had radically changed and they were telling stories about you and making fun of you and pointing at you on the playground? And you thought, well, what happened? I thought we were friends. And that happens to grown-ups, too. One day, there's somebody at work, they thought. Somebody in the neighborhood, they thought, I thought we were friends. God's not like that. He never turns his back on you. He never changes his mind toward you. Having embraced you to himself in Jesus Christ, you can rely on him completely. All men, that is all human beings, are liars. But God in Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Him you can trust. When you're in your hospital bed, your life begins to ebb away, as it likely will if the Lord should tarry. I know that Pastor Gordon or Pastor Donovan will do their level best to be there. that they're fallible, they're frail, they get stuck in traffic. But God does not. Jesus does not. The Holy Spirit does not. When you hear those words, Hear, O Israel, the Lord, Yahweh, the covenant God, our God, is one. Do you think, that's my God, for Jesus' sake? He is one God, with all of his faculties. I learned that phrase from Pastor Kaminga, he used to summarize the law that way. Love the Lord, your God, with all your faculties. Which is exactly right. He is ours, with all, as it were, his faculties. With all that he is. And he is so, as I say, in three persons. Calvin says the Orthodox fathers aptly used this passage against the Arians. The Arians said that Jesus was God's most ancient creature, that God the Son was his most ancient creature. Because, he says, since Christ is everywhere called God, he is undoubtedly the same Lord, Yahweh, who declares himself to be the one God. And this is asserted with the same force respecting the Holy Spirit. That's why we confess the Nicene Creed. One God, three persons. That's what we're saying here when we say this verse, Deuteronomy 6.4, which is called the Shema. That's the verb, hear, O Israel. So the gospel is very clear, but there are three things necessary for us to know in the comfort of the gospel. And the third is how we ought to be thankful to God for such redemption. So what? What do we do? How do we respond? Well, God tells us very clearly in the rest of the passage, and we'll go through this very quickly, because frankly, it just doesn't need that much explanation. Sometimes God's word is so plain, I could talk to you about it for a good long time, as long as you want. But it's very plain. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. I didn't say it was easy. I said it was plain. That's what he wants. He's given himself utterly to you, and what he wants in return is all that you are. All. All. All? everything? Can't I keep some for myself? No? No? Let me ask you again, children, when Jesus died, did he partly die? Did he just sort of suffer a little bit, but not really all the way? Remember, now think back to the cross. Think now. What happened? Did he just pass out on the cross, as the Muslims say? You know, that's what they say. He didn't really die. We may all be people of the book, but we don't have all the same religion. Because they say he didn't die, and they say he wasn't raised on the third day. But scripture says, he died. He said, Eloi, Eloi, Lamas, Tabakdani. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? What have I ever done? He gave himself up completely for you. And as he did, he knew what you are. He knows and knew then what you would do today. That even today you will likely demonstrate that you in and of yourself are not worthy of his favor. And still he gave himself up for you. How then should you respond? What is our reasonable worship? To love that God, our God, our covenant God, with all of our faculties. What does that look like? Well, it looks like a lot of things, but one of the things it looks like is attending to his word. Here's a concrete, practical example of what it looks like to love the Lord your God with all your faculties. And these words that I command you shall be on your heart. It starts with the heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children. You shall talk of them when you sit in your house, When you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise. In other words, the word of God is to be constantly in our consciousness. Not occasionally. Not when it's convenient. Not just as soon as I get done with this really important Facebook post. But all the time. Does it mean that's all we do? No. But if the word of God is in your heart, it's going to be on your mind. And if it's in your heart and on your mind, it's going to be in your mouth. And it's going to be the organizing principle for your family. You teach them diligently to your children. Reading at the table is great and should be done, but it's not sufficient. Your children, parents, are looking at you all the time. They're little video recorders, which is terrifying, I know. We can only hope that they don't find a way to put on the Internet everything that they're recording. They watch you, and they see how much the Word of God matters to you. And you shall bind them. And here he uses a little hyperbole, which the Orthodox Jews, even to this day, The Hasidic Jews, even to this day, take literally and actually bind them in little frontlets on the front of their head, completely missing the point. The Pharisees did it. You could bind little boxes on your forehead and hate God. But please don't think that's what this has to do with. This is hyperbole. God so wants us to be devoted to his word, his holy word, that we would, as it were, bind them as a sign on our hands, and they should be as frontlets between our eyes. Should be as frontlets, not be frontlets, as frontlets. I told you, it's not really that complicated. It should be as if the Word is constantly before us. Now, when I was a young evangelical, we were made to memorize Scripture, and we carried little verse packs. Now, there were things against that and things for it. The thing for it was that I always had the Word with me, and I was always memorizing the word, and that was a good thing. The bad thing was, they were frequently out of context, and it's often still a surprise. I see a passage that I memorized 40 years ago, 35 years ago, and, oh, that's what that meant. So there are downsides, but the plus side is that it was a way of keeping the word constantly in one's consciousness. And just as a teacher, I can tell you, children, if you learn to memorize now, you will be ahead of everyone else. The secret to education that nobody ever told me is memorization. So memorizing the Bible, memorizing catechism, that's a beautiful thing. That will serve you well all the rest of your life. You shall write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates. Obviously, you can't transcribe all of the Word of God in such limited spaces. This is figurative, emphatic, hyperbolic speech. It's the same kind of hyperbole we say when my aunt is the worst driver in all of Kansas. Well, probably not, but we know what you meant. That's this kind of hyperbole. That's how much the Lord wants us to be devoted to his word. That's a very high standard. This week as we prepare to come to the Lord's table, and as we prepare, as Reverend Gordon reminded us recently, to be fed by the body and blood of Christ by the operation of the Holy Spirit, it would be a good week to renew ourselves in the reading and the hearing the memorization and the meditation on God's holy word, both his law and his gospel. His gospel, what he has done for us in Jesus Christ, and what he expects of us, not, now let me be clear about this as we come to a close, not in order to be accepted. Please don't hear me saying that. I'm not telling you that if you read the word sufficiently, if you memorize the word sufficiently, if you meditate sufficiently, that God will accept you because of it. I'm not saying that. That would be a lie. That's not true. I'm saying that because you have been accepted for Christ's sake alone, out of his free favor alone, through faith alone, trusting, resting, leaning on Jesus and his finished work alone, because that is true of you, You want, then, to respond by giving yourself to his word. Which is a way of giving yourself to him. It's a beginning of giving yourself to him. And if that doesn't interest you, then you need to meditate on that. Why doesn't that interest you? But I trust, as the writer of Hebrews says, better things of you, beloved, that you've been given new life by the Holy Spirit and that this week you'll respond in a good way, in a godly way, out of gratitude for his grace to us in Christ. Let's pray. Our God and our Father, we confess that we have not sought your word and your face in your word. We have not responded to your grace in the way that we should have. But we are so thankful, not that we have been given a second chance. Because Jesus has earned our place with you. But that you are not finished with us. And that you are so gracious that you will continue to work in us for his sake. and that you accept us for his sake, and that you will this week more and more in a mysterious way enable us to respond appropriately to the grace that we have received by being made the people of the one God who is. Hear our prayer for Jesus' sake. Amen. Thank you.