St. Luke’s Evangelical Lutheran Church – Watertown, WI
Pastor Mark Gartner
Sermon for Pentecost 22 – October 17^th and October 20^th, 2002

Deuteronomy 11:1, 16-21

Love the LORD your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands..... ¹⁶Be careful or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. Then the LORD’s anger will burn against you, and he will shut the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the LORD is giving you. Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ¹⁹Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ²⁰Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, ²¹so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land that the LORD swore to give your forefathers, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.

In our English language it is not uncommon to use phrases and words that go together. For instance when I say the words "cops and ...", most of you are thinking of the word "robbers". When I say the words "hide and..." most of you are thinking of the word "seek". When I say the words "ketchup and...." most of you are thinking of the word "mustard". These word phrases and many other word phrases like these have been a part of our lives so long, that they have become almost second nature to us. They just go together so naturally.

This morning we are going to look at a couple of Bible phrases and see how closely these words fit together and see how naturally they sound to us. Let’s look at one of the word phrases that is used by Moses in the first verses of our text. God through his inspired servant Moses used the word love. What word would be put together with love? I’m sure that many of us would think about things like God and the cross, but that isn’t what Moses used. Moses points out to us this morning that "Love and obedience" go together as well as "Love and God’s Word" which should be phrases that are very common for us. And if these phrases sound new to us, I pray that after this morning, they will be word phrases that are etched in our minds. This morning we will use the simple theme:

Theme: Love The LORD Your God

1. By keeping his commands
2. By making God’s Word the center of our lives

The words for our text come from Moses’ farewell speech as the people of Israel had almost competed their 40-year journey in the wilderness. As the people sat on the plain of Moab, just across the Jordan River from the land of Canaan, Moses was telling them what God was expecting from them as they moved into this precious land. He didn’t want any of them to lose sight of what was really important. He wanted them to clearly see that it was God who brought them this far and it is God who will always lead them as long as they look to him. As we travel through our lives, I pray that we never forget who has brought us this far in our lives. We know very well that it is God and his loving mercy that has brought us this far. With this in minds, let’s move on.

The first words phrases that Moses let’s us look at is Love and .... Obedience, "Love the LORD your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands.". It is quite interesting to see how many people have mixed up this word combination of love and the obedience of keeping God’s commands. There seems to be the notion out in the world and even in Christian circles that it is possible to love God without obeying his commands. Usually the argument goes something like this. The whole business about obedience and commandments is all part of the Old Covenant from the Old Testament, but we live under the New Covenant of the New Testament, which is all about this thing called love. It is this kind of thinking that leads people to say that I can love God and not go to Church, because true love is more than singing and trudging through the liturgy as you wait to sit for those important 20 minutes while the preacher goes on and on about all the things you should and shouldn’t do. It is these same people that say that God is love and wouldn’t hold anyone accountable for their wrong actions. How can people say that I love God but live a blatant life of apart from God.

As we sit here this morning, we most likely think that this doesn’t apply to me, but only to those who really mess up God’s commands. But Moses wanted to make sure that Christians of all ages realize that loving God has everything to do with obeying his commands. In fact, in the very first verse of our text, Moses uses four different phrases to tell us what obedience is all about. He tells us to "keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands.". These four phrases go along way in telling us what God expects from us. For a Christian, it should follow as naturally as night follows day that when God says to do something, it is there to be done. Loving God and his commands is not about finding loopholes or excuses or to hold soul-searching debates as to whether or not God really meant that command for us or to be followed in this way.. These phrases point out to us that his commands are etched in stone. With this in mind, we begin to realize that his laws are not meant to be changed to fit our lives or twisted so that we can fudge just a little bit. They are final, and God is the eternal judge. Obeying God our of love is not intended to be a stroll in the park, but rather it is to take our greatest effort, because our complete love for him should be a part of our whole life.

But before we go too much further, we need to make one thing clear. None of us sitting in this building nor anyone outside of this building is ever capable of giving this kind of love to God. Only when we fall helplessly before our God asking for his forgiveness will we truly realize why will want to dedicate our love to God as we obey his commands. But how much love have we shown to our God? How hard have tried to lead lives to thank our God who has given us everything.

Just think for a moment what our God has done for us. God’s greatest display of love came in the form of his plan for saving the world. A plan that is impossible for us to truly grasp now or ever in our lifetime. Every time we think we got a handle on it, some other facet turns up that amazes us even more. Just think for moment the miracle it took for the Son of God to take on human form, not to mention the actual literal death of God for his people’s sins, and all this he did willingly out of love for us all. For all of this Martin Luther wrote, we ought to thank and praise, and to serve and obey him. May we always realize that God demands perfect obedience done out of love and thanks, but that we have fallen short and daily need to repent and ask for God’s forgiveness.

2. By making God’s Word the center of our lives

As we think about our word phrases, we now want to think about the word love and how it ties together with the teaching and learning of God’s Word. Moses writes, "Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds." All of the ways that we put God’s Word in front of us, must be done with this thought in mind. I’m using God’s Word to draw myself closer to God’s love and forgiveness or to draw someone else closer. I’m not doing this to make myself look good or to just go through the motions. Christianity was never intended to be a "go-through-the- motions" type of religion. We need to ask ourselves why we do the things we do. In our text, it tells us to tie God’s Word as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. In the Old Testament, a Israelite would put these Bible verse on their arms and foreheads to remind them physically what God meant for them and how it important it was to act out your Christianity.

All this sounds rather silly to us today, but think about the benefits that could come from something like this. God is always guarding against the false notion, that religion is an inward feeling about God or some sort of inner strength. Rather God wants us to put our faith into practice. If you are wearing God’s Words on your arm or forehead, you are showing that God is important to you. But how can we do this? How many people could tell that you and your family are Christians? If they walked into your home or bedroom would they notice anything different that showed God was important to you? If they followed you around for a couple of days, would they notice that God is first in your life and that God’s Word is the most important book for us? Or are we to afraid to wear our religion on our sleeves, because of what others might say or think about us? Are we truly willing to make sure that we aren’t just going through the motions of being a Christian

Are we willing to talk about God’s Word anytime and anywhere with our children. Do your children know that God is the most important thing in your life, or would they have trouble figuring that out? How well have we done at bringing up our families to truly understand what it means to love God as we obey his commands and as we study our Bibles in Church and at school and even in our homes? We might laugh, but how many of the fathers sitting here today have done more work at making sure our kids know how to play football, basketball or other sports? How many dads have insisted that their children be a dedicated Packer fan, long before they ever thought about talking about their faith? How many parents have spent more time teaching their kids about how to make money, rather than how to be good stewards of the money God has given us? .If a parent would withhold food from their children, we would all be extremely outraged, but how many parents are starving their children’s spiritual life, by not making it the most important thing in their lives. If the truth be told, speaking about matters from God’s Word doesn’t seem to happen much outside of the walls of church and the Christian Schools, which gives us lots of room for improvement..

But we need to remember that it isn’t strict obedience to God’s commands that we are trying to make stronger. Rather, it is faith in Christ Jesus, who fulfilled all the Law of God for us and won for us eternal salvation. May we always strive to make sure that God’s Word doesn’t become that dusty book on he shelf. When our hearts are firmly trusting the true Savior of Jesus Christ, then our days in the heavenly Jerusalem will be forever as we live side by side with our Savior. This promise was given to us by God and is sealed in the blood of Christ, and it is made certain by the empty tomb and it is guaranteed by the gift of the Holy Spirit who is living in our hearts. Let us never forget how we can show our love to God who has given us everything. Amen