I am reading the book Deuteronomy right now as part of my Bible reading regimen, and to enrich my understanding, I am looking at a fresh perspective by reading Denise Prager’s new commentary of Deuteronomy in His Rational Bible series of Torah commentaries. Prager is a Rabi, a national radio commentator, and deep thinker of our society to include the human condition. My thought, is a good Rabi, can help a Christian be a better Sunday School teacher.
I was in the beginning of Deuteronomy in chapter 6 where the SH’MA begins at verse 6:4; and it says,
SH’MA Yisrael, ADONAI eh/lo/ HEH-Y/noo ADONAI eh/KHA-D or;
4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Sh’ma means listen, hear, understand, and obey, or; you shall! … All at one time. It is the most prayed prayer in Judaism (3 times a day). This is followed by verse 5;
5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
Sound familiar? God is commanding us to love Him, and this is what I often refer to when I am repeating in this sanctuary the greatest commandment of the Bible according to our savoir and Lord Jesus Christ. Who in Matthew 26:37 quotes this most important statement of fact. “You shall love our God with all you have!”
So how does this the Sh’ma relate to today’s title; Being Loved Aint: Like Being Saved! Because we, can try to love God with all we have and we will never be in a position to save the Lord who requires no saving, or ourselves who require His grace. But then again, our Love of God does do something for us in our own right, and is key in transforming our lives.
Today, I am excited to get a chance to talk with you about:
- The difference between loving God, and really loving God, similar to the way God loves us.
- The difference of being loved, and being saved.
- Learn what love is not.
- Fear
- Contractional rule compliance
- Learning what we are saved from.
We know that we are commanded to love God by God, all the way back in the Exodus from bondage under Moses in Deuteronomy 6:4-9; The SH’ME or Shemeh
4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 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. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
This is not just paying lip service to God but living our faith with all we are, and then teaching our children non-stop to love the Lord our God. Oh, and if you are having a hard time loving God, perhaps that’s why He commanded us to love Him, because He knows that loving an all-powerful deity is easier said than done.
There is no comparable command to fear God with all we are and all our being, because that could warp love of Him. Even though Proverbs 9:10 teaches;
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
And yes, we are instructed revere (fear the Lord) to aid our wisdom in Him, while we are commanded to love our God with all of our being. And when I am actually learning how to love God, my appreciation for this life, and His creation begin to blossom into a true reverence for He provides for my very being. It actually begins to add to my understanding of scripture and passages like today’s Call to Worship reading from, Psalm 84:1-8;
1 How lovely is your dwelling place,
Lord Almighty!
2 My soul yearns, even faints,
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh cry out
for the living God.
3 Even the sparrow has found a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may have her young—
a place near your altar,
Lord Almighty, my King and my God.
4 Blessed are those who dwell in your house;
they are ever praising you.
5 Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.
6 As they pass through the Valley of Baka,
they make it a place of springs;
the autumn rains also cover it with pools.
7 They go from strength to strength,
till each appears before God in Zion.
8 Hear my prayer, Lord God Almighty;
listen to me, God of Jacob.
Blessed are those whose hearts are set on pilgrimage, which in reality is our faithwalk in this life that must be set on walking towards our Lord as we walk with Him. Instead of being consumed with the things that addict us to this world around us, we are focused on Him!
For the world is consumed with chasing itself for the latest in thing, and is ever concerned about feeding that endless pit with stuff. Always fixated on getting the largest portion of whatever, and being accepted into the in-crowd of whoever. Living in total ignorance of the Psalmist instruction from, Psalm 84:10;
10 Better is one day in your courts
than a thousand elsewhere;
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of the wicked.
Or to put is even more succinctly, I would rather receive the scraps from God’s table than sit in the place of honor in hell or anywhere other than in our Lord’s presence. By the way our God does not serve up scraps, but delivers grace in abundance.
The difference between loving God and really loving God, is probably the learning to trust in Him, and then understanding that God’s love for us is real, and it is wholesome and not warped like the world’s concept of love.
Also, it is important to understand that God loves all of His creation, and the only thing preventing His love for us into actually saving us, is us. The Lord will not force me into a relationship in and with Him against my will, but stands ready to respond to my invitation for Him to enter my heart, and to allow His Holy Spirit to walk with me as I build, or rebuild my life in and with Him.
Because He loves each of us, God stands ready to be a part of our lives to the very end. But if I choose to cut the Lord out of my life and go it alone, I am given the freedom to destroy my salvation through free-will. He will still love me, as my self-hatred and loathing arrogant ignorance leads to assured destruction, and separation from Him.
As we are being saved by our Lord one day at a time, we begin to understand what a blessing God’s word (Scripture) truly is in our lives, because we are actually reading, learning, and applying God’s word into our lives. We learn that a personal relationship with God has been desired by Him from the very beginning, and is the reason for the reciting of the Sh’ma or the command to love Him.
And when I do, I begin to live my faith, instead of just following rules. Because I love God, I am concerned about not letting my God, my family down, by missing the mark or sinning. Our Faithwalk becomes a way of life instead of just following the rules so that we are not destroyed by our sin, by a God who don’t abide with sin, and that’s fearful!
Yes, God is still full of vengeance, but that vindication is there to reassure you and me that God is going to right the wrongs of this life in due time, and only those who choose to go their own way, do evil, and harm others need worry about God’s righteous indignation that is on its way. We who live our faith are learning to; act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our Lord, and have been learning to love Him with all we are, and to love others as ourselves. We invited God in, and share Him with others.
Our faith becomes a way of life and not a rule book that bends us to obedience and is realized with laws, compliance, and the sadness of not measuring up. No, we anticipate all of God’s laws when we love Him and others, by putting God and the people we live with before our own selfishness.
That is when we can read instructions from Paul about how our lives can be like and not wince at the challenge or grumble about what we are giving up, because we are beginning to get it. Here is what Paul wrote to the church in Rome two thousand years ago, but it could have been last week and it would have still been spot on for you and I. Reading about being a “A Living Sacrifice”, from Romans 12:1-6;
12 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.
*Please let me cut in at this point to say; Being a living sacrifice is not being a living martyr walking around in sackcloth and ashes, but living joyfully because you know salvation is at hand in your future, and you want to share this joy with others. And we get to do this through our “Humble Service in the Body of Christ”,joyfully. Continuing now at verse 3;
3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. 4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us…
This may sound somber, daunting, and even overwhelming, but what it means is that once we start to get it in our own life, we must not get so filled with our new found status in the universal scheme of things that we forget to love God by serving others and appreciating their individual worth to our Lord. Simply put, everyone that is seeking our God is invaluable to our family in God!
But our loving others as God does, simply is not enough to save them. Our love for others means that we also want to share the Good News of the Lord’s salvation offered to all of the willing. We get to explain just what it is to others what we all are being saved from.
All of us are being saved from our selfish individual and combined selfish natures. Our map through the mine field of our proven depravity is God’s word, our Bible, where we learn from the mistakes of others, and how to rise with the “Better Angels of Our Nature”,by putting God and others before our selfish desires. Oh, and we continue to love others regardless of their decision to join our family in God or not.
The further down the road I get with the Lord, and His Body in Christ, the more today’s Message Reading begins to register within my heart. Reading again from Luke 18;9-14;
9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Yikes, and ouch some more! Cuz this Faithwalk aint all about me and what I have done, in fact none of us can earn the right to heaven by our actions, but are given that entry permission only through God’s grace as the supreme gift of all ages, to all of the willing.
The only act really that we can make that makes any sense is to ask for His forgiveness, as we invite the Lord into our lives to live in our heart. That is when we begin to make life changes and begin to; act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our Lord, and begin to learn how to love Him with all we are, and to love others as ourselves. When we do these things we; praise, glorify, and magnify God’s Holy and precious name as we become living sacrifices of joy in this incredible life He has given us!
Suddenly, I am no longer moved by fear to love my Lord, but to reverence the fearful nature of a God who has given all for selfish stiff-necked people, who are the apex, the pinnacle of His creation. The question becomes, how long will God accept humanity’s unacceptable, selfish attitudes, and behavior? Our answer must be to love the unlovable by joyfully living, caring, and sharing God’s Good News to anyone willing to listen.
To sum up, today we have explored how we are all loved, and only saved when we accept God’s gift of salvation, which frees us of the fears others will face through selfishness and going it alone without God. Hence the title out front “Being Loved Aint: Like Being Saved!”, becomes easier to understand.
My hope and prayer for all of you this week, is that you will begin to discover the joys of God’s love both individually and with other members of God’s family, and then share that goodness with those you meet in your day-to-day beautiful life.
Amen!