Deuteronomy 6:4-15

Hear, O Israel! The Lord is 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. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons 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 up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Then it shall come about when the Lord your God brings you into the land which He swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you, great and splendid cities which you did not build, and houses full of all good things which you did not fill, and hewn cisterns which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, and you eat and are satisfied, then watch yourself, that you do not forget the Lord who brought you from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall fear only the Lord your God; and you shall worship Him and swear by His name. You shall not follow other gods, any of the gods of the peoples who surround you, for the Lord your God in the midst of you is a jealous God; otherwise the anger of the Lord your God will be kindled against you, and He will wipe you off the face of the earth.^[1]

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” These commandments of the Lord are not empty and lifeless words and they are more than reasonable considering all the Lord has done for us. He gave us splendid cities, opulent houses, and a host of other things we did not earn because of His love for us. Obedience to these commandments emanates from more than any sense of ritualistic practice. They grow and are borne out of a love relationship with the Lord who gave them. That love relationship causes them to be written on our hearts and not just our lips. Out of our devotion to them, we teach and talk about them with our children. They become integral to who and whose we are, written upon everything important in our lives.

All that He asks of His people is that in the midst of receiving these manifold blessings we do not forget from where it is He has brought us, that we revere Him, and not follow other gods. If we are honest we have failed on all three points. We tend to credit our own merit for whatever we have acquired. We give more respect to our intellect and technological achievement than the One who ultimately created them; and, we gladly worship created things rather than the creator. The result of which is that His anger is ignited and we are destroyed. Is it any wonder that we find our world in the condition it is in? What is the remedy? In the strong suggestion out of the Book of Revelation, let us resolve today to return to our first love and do the things we did at the first.

Gracious Heavenly Father, Your love for us is so amazing while our love for You is so lacking. Forgive us for the ways in which we have grieved Your Spirit as we repaid Your gift of grace by forgetting You, disrespecting You, and running after other gods. We grieve over the many ways we have sinned against You and fallen short of Your glory. So humbly we rededicate our lives to You and thank You for relenting from Your anger and and judgment, and restoring to us the joy of our salvation. Amen.

^[1] New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Dt 6:4–15.