In this series we’re talking about the ancient Jewish prayer called the Shema, found in Deut 6. This has been prayed by Jewish believers for centuries every morning / evening. It demonstrates the character of God, and shows us how to respond to him.

• Deuteronomy 6:4-5 Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.

Last week: talked about “Hear” or “Listen” – the Hebrew word Shema. The very next phrase talks about God, who he is and what he is like. The heart of this prayer is: “Love the Lord your God…” But to love him, to declare allegiance to him, we need to know who this God is. 

The God We Love Is Eternal

“The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.” Just 8 words in English. 4 in Hebrew. 

The word “Lord” is “Yahweh”. It’s related to the Hebrew word “to be”. It means that God is eternal and self-existent. He has always been God and always will be. This is revealed in Exod 3, where God revealed himself to Moses at the burning bush. He told Moses that his job was to bring Israel out of Egypt, where they were slaves. Moses was thinking about how Israel would respond when he showed up with that message.

• Exodus 3:13-15 “They will ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what should I tell them?” God replied to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. Say this to the people of Israel: I AM has sent me to you.” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: Yahweh, the God of your ancestors – the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob – has sent me to you.”

God identifies himself a “I AM WHO I AM” or simply “I AM”. That name means “the one who is”. This is the name God uses to relate to his people. By the way, older Bible translations refer to God as “Jehovah.” The name Yahweh would never have been spoken by Jewish people, because it was considered too holy. Whenever the name occurred in the Old Testament, Jews would subsititute the word “adonai”, which means “Lord”. So English Bible translators took the consonants from Yahweh and combined them with the vowels from adonai, to come up with “Jehovah”. 

The name communicates that God is ETERNAL. There was never a time when he did not exist. He is simply “I AM” – eternally in the present tense. To make it even more clear, there was never a time when he did not exist AS GOD. He has always been everything it means to be God, from eternity past. The New Testament reveals the same concept.

• Revelation 1:8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega – the beginning and the end,” says the Lord God. “I am the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come – the Almighty One.”

The name Yahweh also communicates that God is SELF-EXISTENT. If God is simply “I AM”, then he’s not dependent on any other being or force for his existence. We are not self-existent. We would have NO existence if God had not created. We require God to continually sustain us. 

• Psalm 90:2,5,12 Before the mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and the world, from beginning to end, you are God…. (5) You sweep people away like dreams that disappear. They are like grass that springs up in the morning. In the morning it blooms and flourishes, but by evening it is dry and withered…. (12) Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom.

God’s timeless nature makes us reflect on the limited span of human life. We’re dry grass: here today, gone tomorrow. God is like the mountains: seemingly there forever.

That’s just the first word in this phrase: “Yahweh”. Let’s look at two more words.

The God We Love Is the Only God There Is

In Deuteronomy, Israel is about to enter Promised Land. The people of that land – and the land of Egypt, which they were leaving – had dozens of different gods. Against that backdrop, this verse says: “The Lord is our God, the Lord ALONE.” This is the word “one”. Moses says: there is only one God, and this God is unique. While every religion has a concept of God, only one God actually exists.  

• Isaiah 44:6,8 This is what the Lord says—Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies: “I am the First and the Last; there is no other God. (7) Who is like me? Let him step forward and prove to you his power. Let him do as I have done since ancient times when I established a people and explained its future. (8) Do not tremble; do not be afraid. Did I not proclaim my purposes for you long ago? You are my witnesses—is there any other God? No! There is no other Rock—not one!”

God is not one god among many others in the universe. He is not “one God for us”, but the only God, period. Only one being is self-existent. This God is not the same god other religions serve. Some people say: we all worship the same God. Not so. The God of the Bible is not the same as the god of Islam. The biblical God is unique.

If God is “ONE”, what about the Trinity? The biblical doctrine of Trinity does not undermine the claim that there is only one God. This one God is a tri-personal being. So sometimes we say, “the TRIUNE God.” The idea of the Trinity doesn’t come from just one verse. It’s not taught here in Deuteronomy 6, but it is not impossible in here either. This doctrine develops over the entire course of the Bible, from the whole teaching of the Bible taken together. There is no single place in Bible that says: “There is one God eternally existing as three persons.” Yet the Bible unwaveringly speaks of only one true God, not three. At the same time, it also reveals the Father as God, the Son as God, and the Holy Spirit as God, and it portrays them as distinct persons, not just one person playing separate roles. 

So when we consider the nature of the God of Deut 6, we would expect the same to be true of Jesus. Is he eternal?

• Hebrews 13:8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Again: this is not just interesting info. The nature of God calls for a response. When I think about him, it fills me with awe! that the God we worship is so unique, and so different from any concept of deity that humans could invent. This God is so far beyond me / my ability to grasp.

• Romans 11:33-36 Oh, how great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways! 

“For who can know the LORD’S thoughts? Who knows him enough to give him advice? And who has given him so much that he needs to pay it back?” 

For everything comes from him and exists by his power and is intended for his glory. All glory to him forever! Amen.

Thinking about the nature of this God calls us to get on knees and worship him!

If all this is true about God: he is the one and only true God, he invites us into a personal relationship with himself as he did with Israel, then it follows…

Our Deepest Reverence Belongs to This God Alone

We’re going to anticipate our next episode a bit. After introducing God, Deut 6 says, “Love the Lord your God…” Next time, we will introduce what “love” for God means. Let’s build a bridge to that. We saw last week: Jesus taught the Shema and made it of first importance. 

• Mark 12:28-30 One of the teachers of religious law was standing there listening to the debate. He realized that Jesus had answered well, so he asked, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.”

The point here is this: because the Lord our God is the one true God, we don’t give our deepest reverence to any other being. Just as God doesn’t share his existence with any other God, we don’t share the honor / devotion of our hearts with anyone / anything else on a par with him. Nothing compares to this God. So our whole heart / soul / mind / strength should be focused on Yahweh alone. 

This points us to the Ten Commandments, because the first four commandments (Exodus 20:3-11) reinforce exactly what the Shema is saying about God. The first commandment says, “You must not have any other god but me.” The second adds this: “You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea. You must not bow down to them or worship them…” We don’t make little images of gods anymore. But all of us have things we’re tempted to love & desire more than God. Third, “You must not misuse the name of the Lord your God….” And fourth: “Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy,” because the Sabbath is to be a day “dedicated to the Lord your God.”

All of this can be summed up by the word “reverence.” Reverence means honor and respect deeply felt and outwardly expressed. Reverence is not stuffy religiosity reserved for church – far from it! It is a vibrancy toward God that animates our lives every day.

The Takeaway

We see today: knowing about God – the real God – is important. But knowing about God is not enough. This knowledge should lead us to give him the response he deserves: humility before him; a deep awe of him; the decision to put him first above everything else. The rest of the series will help us understand what all of that means.

This is our third week studying the powerful Old Testament prayer called “The Shema.” It’s a prayer faithfully recited by Jewish believers every morning and evening for centuries. It’s a prayer that declares one’s devotion to God, and at the same time demonstrates the character of God and shows us how to respond to him. So each week we’re highlighting a specific word in the prayer. Today, that word is “love” (“ahava”). 

• Deuteronomy 6:4-5 Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.

When we typically think of the word “love”, the first thing that comes to mind might be an affection or feeling. In our culture, love is an emotion that gets turned on and off. It can be manipulated by people or circumstances. 

But the word “love” in Hebrew is different. The word is “ahava”. It’s not just a feeling or emotion. It’s also deeply connected with action. The root of the word in Hebrew is “to give”, literally to give oneself. So this kind of love is not just something that you feel, it is something that you give or you do.

God Loved Us and Created Us in His Image So That We Can Love.

Last week, we saw that the Lord our God is the one true God. When we look deeply at his nature and attributes, not only is he eternal and supreme:

• 1 John 4:8 …God is love.

Throughout the Bible, God shows us what genuine love is like. This is not just how his love is explained, but we also see God’s love on display, seen in: his covenant relationship with his people, his constant protection and guidance for them, his heart of forgiveness. God didn’t love the Israelites because they earned it. His love and affection for them is genuine, but it originates from who he is, not who they are. It’s who God has always been, which means his love never changes. 

• Jeremiah 31:3 Long ago the Lord said to Israel: “I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself.

Considering that the word “ahava” means “to give”, God eternally gives of himself to others. His love is not just a sentiment but is central to his activity.

• Deuteronomy 4:37 Because he loved your ancestors, he chose to bless their descendants, and he personally brought you out of Egypt with a great display of power.

God says, “Here’s why I rescued your ancestors from slavery. Because I loved them. Here’s why I have blessed you. Because I love you.”

Back to what we read in the Shema: because God loves us, we can love as well. 

• Genesis 1:27 So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Because you and I are created in God’s image, we’re like him. If God is love, then we can love in a way that reflects God’s love. It won’t be perfect, but it will reflect God. So let me put it like this: we are CALLED to love God because he is the one true God. We are ABLE to love God – and others – because God made us to reflect him.

Remember, this isn’t just about the emotional side of knowing God. It’s not just what you feel from being in relationship with him…

More Than a Feeling, Our Love for God Is Demonstrated in Action

Remember the saying: actions speak louder than words? That applies to our definition of love. Telling someone you love them is sweet, but it means nothing if its just words. Whether or not you actually love that person is proved by your behavior toward them. The same thing applies to our love for God. We can love with affection, with passion, with warm feelings toward him. Worship helps cultivate and express that. But if we love God like it says in the Shema, we put our love for God into action. 

• Deuteronomy 10:12-13 And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? He requires only that you fear the Lord your God, and live in a way that pleases him, and love him and serve him with all your heart and soul. And you must always obey the Lord’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good.

God was calling his people to show their love and devotion through action, by serving him and obeying him. 

But here’s the thing. If we are made in God’s image, and that gives us the capacity to love other people, we are called not only to love God in action, but also to show God’s love to others. Jesus made this clear in his discussion with the Jewish leaders. These were the religious elite, who would never have missed an opportunity to pray the Shema:

• Matthew 22:37-39 Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’” This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Jesus is quoting the Shema here. He’s saying: you should love God with everything you’ve got. But then he added something that was also very important: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Most of us love ourselves a lot! We invest a lot in ourselves. We’re very attentive to our own wants and needs. Jesus says: love your neighbor with the same attention and care. In fact, they Bible says: you can say you love God, but if you don’t love other people, that claim is empty. 

• 1 John 4:20 If someone says, “I love God,” but hates his fellow believer, that person is a liar, for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see?

Loving God and loving our neighbor are completely interconnected with each other.

So let’s get practical for a moment: how do we love God? We have deep, reverent respect and honor for him. We put him first in our whole being. We live our lives in a way that is pleasing to him. (By the way, we find out what pleases God by reading his priorities in his word, the Bible.) And how do we love other people? We tell them about Jesus. We mentor our family and friends. We demonstrate practical ways to step in and meet people’s material needs. 

Here’s the truth: if we say we love God but don’t follow what he says, then we don’t actually love him, no matter what we say. If you say you love God but don’t obey him, and don’t care about what he cares about, then any claim you make about loving God isn’t real: no matter how you feel or what you say. Just like his love for us, our love for God is more than a feeling, but is demonstrated in action. 

That makes me think about the most significant action God took to prove the reality of his love for us.

God Demonstrated His Love for Us in the Most Costly Way

• John 3:16 “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”

There’s that word “give” again. It’s the heart of “ahava”. And it’s what God did for us. You see, in the beginning, God created us for a relationship with him, to experience his perfect love and to love him in return. But we chose to turn away from him, to disobey him. Through our first parents, sin entered the world, and we all inherited it, and we all practice it. That sin separates us from God.

• Romans 3:23 For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.

It says ALL have sinned and fallen short. There is a chasm between us and God, a chasm of our own making. A righteous, holy God has every right to bring judgment on those who disobey him. In fact, he would not be righteous if he failed to do so. According to the Bible, that judgment is death:

• Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

What sin pays is death. But God loves his people so much that he took action so we could be reconciled to him. He exchanged our death with that of his beloved Son. 

• Romans 5:8 For God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

Jesus proved his love by willingly dying on the cross, for a bunch of sinners. For people who were his enemies. That’s “ahava”. That’s love.

Now: Jesus was fully God, but he was also fully human. He had human emotions. Before he died, as he went to the cross, he struggled. It was difficult. He was gripped with fear and anxiety. What if – at the last minute – Jesus thought, “I don’t love this, this is hard! I hate this feeling, I don’t like doing this.” If he had based his decision on his feelings alone, none of us would ever be forgiven of our sins. We would all be hopelessly doomed to hell – because Jesus would never have acted. But instead, he was more interested in doing the Father’s will than following his own feelings. So Jesus showed that love is what a person chooses to do, not just what a person feels. That’s how God acted toward us. That’s  how we express our love for God – and for others.

The Takeaway

What we learn today: God loves us first, so we can love him back. We’re made in his image, so we can love others as well. Understanding, of course, that love is proven by what we do, for God AND for people around us. The greatest example of that is how Jesus gave up his own life. How he took our sin upon himself so that we could be right with God.

We want to invite you to receive his love for yourself today. It starts when you admit your need, and own up to all the ways you have failed to obey God, to love him and to love others. Then you simply call out to him for his mercy. Jesus already did everything for our sin to be forgiven and for us to be right with God. He paid for us on the cross. You can trust in him and his finished work. Express that trust through prayer, inviting Jesus to forgive you, and then to take up residence in your life to empower you for a new way to live.

In this series we’re talking about the ancient Jewish prayer called the Shema, found in Deut 6. This is a prayer of allegiance for the Hebrew people thousands of years ago. It has been prayed for centuries every morning / evening, so it’s kind of like our Pledge of Allegiance. It demonstrates the character of God, and shows us how to respond to him.

• Deuteronomy 6:4-5 Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.

Week one: we talked about “listen”. The word “shema”. Week two: we talked about “the Lord”. In week three, we discussed “Love” or “ahava.” The second half of the series focuses on how to love God. The three words are “heart”, “soul”, and “strength.” By examining these words, we’re going to learn how we can also pray like this, and make a commitment like this, to love the Lord this way. So today’s word is “lev”, the Hebrew word for “heart.” 

When we talk about the heart, a lot of people these days advocate following your heart: doing what you most WANT to do, or what FEELS right. But so many stories can be told about people who followed what they wanted or what felt good, but ended up with tragic consequences. To understand why, let’s take a look at how the Bible defines the “heart” and what that means for us.

Your Heart Is Where You Think and Feel

We think of the heart as the place where we feel. Biblically, it does include that. 

• Jeremiah 15:16 When I discovered your words, I devoured them. They are my joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear your name, O Lord God of heaven’s armies.

That describes human emotions: joy and delight. But that’s not all the heart is. In biblical Hebrew, it also represents the place where our thoughts come from.

• Proverbs 14:33 Wisdom is enshrined in an understanding heart; wisdom is not found among fools.

In our culture we would say, “wisdom is enshrined in a person’s brain / head.” But the Hebrew language didn’t have a way to say that. They didn’t understand the role of your brain in your inner life. For them, it was the heart. So when the Shema says “Love God with all your heart,” it’s not just talking about feelings. That also includes the way you think.

Let’s add one more facet to this picture…

Your Heart Is Where You Make Choices

It’s the seat of your emotions. It’s the source of your thoughts. It’s also the home of your will. You might have a thought, or an emotion. What moves that to action is your will. It’s the faculty of choosing. In other words, we could say that the “heart” – biblically speaking – is the sum total of  your inner person. It’s not talking about the organ that beats to circulate blood. It’s your thoughts, feelings, and intentions. Your mind, emotions, and will. 

None of these exist independently of the others. When you have a feeling, it can feed your thoughts. If you continue to feed that in your mind – like a temptation, or a picture on your phone – it starts to play on your desires, which ends up affecting your choices.

So when we read “heart” think about the inner person. God is saying. Don’t just give your feelings to me, or just your thoughts, but surrender your entire inner self to me.

• Psalm 37:4 Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires.

When we love the Lord with our whole heart, that changes the will / the intentions we have. 

• Proverbs 4:23 Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.

The Bible doesn’t teach us to “follow your heart.” It teaches us to “guard your heart.” IOW: guard your thoughts, your emotions, your intentions. Because the inner person is such a key part of who you are. Whatever you allow to feed your mind / emotions / will, the Bible says all of these things together will determine the course of your life. We see this progression in the NT: 

• James 1:14-15 Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.

Your heart, with its thoughts, feelings, and intentions, eventually manifests itself in action. When that goes unchecked, your inner self can destroy you.

Let’s talk about why that is the case. There’s a reason why we guard our hearts and don’t just follow them wherever they lead.

Our Hearts Are Broken By Sin, But God Can Change Our Hearts

Here’s how we define sin: following your own opinions and feelings above God’s truth. Anytime we do that, it’s an expression of sin. Because our inner self is fundamentally broken. It’s true of every human being, even the most admirable.

• Jeremiah 17:9 The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?

The next time someone tells you to follow your heart, read this verse! This warns us how easily we can be fooled by our hearts. Your mind can play tricks on you. Your emotions can lead you astray. Your will / intentions can undermine what’s best for you. Instead of following our hearts, we need to let God change our hearts. Think about what Jesus said:

• Mark 7:21-23 For from within, out of a person’s heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these vile things come from within; they are what defile you.

There’s something on this list to include everyone! Jesus was challenging the religious leaders of his day because they thought you could please God by just doing outward rituals. Jesus said, “That won’t do it. Because where sin comes from is not external. It’s deep within the inner person.” The heart. So when the Shema calls us to love the Lord our God with our whole heart, that’s a real challenge! Because left to themselves, our hearts don’t love God / don’t honor God / don’t obey God.

So how can our hearts change? From being desperately wicked, deceitful, and defiled?

• Deuteronomy 30:6 The Lord your God will change your heart and the hearts of all your descendants, so that you will love him with all your heart and soul and so you may live!

In Deut 6, Moses is talking to Israel before they enter the promised land. Here in ch 30, he’s bringing that speech to a close. He says: when you get into the promised land, if you really want to live – to have a full, satisfying life – here’s how. God will change your heart. God will change your inner person: so that you will love him.

Don’t get caught up on moralism. Which says: I’m going to be a better person. I’m going to try harder. I have to get control of my thoughts / emotions / choices – to make better decisions. That’s not it! The only hope we have of a changed heart is when God changes it. You can try as hard as you want, but you cannot change your own heart. It’s broken and you can’t fix it. Only God can.

• Ezekiel 36:26 And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart.

This is a promise God makes in the Old Testament. It’s related to his promise in Deut 30. But also to this promise in Jeremiah 31:

• Jeremiah 31:33 “But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel after those days,” says the Lord. “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

God gives this incredible promise through Jeremiah. I’m going to put my instructions deep within you. I’m going to write them on your hearts. The bad news is that our hearts are wicked. On our own, our thoughts, feelings, choices all lead us away from God. But here’s the good news: God can change our hearts. Can change us from the inside out.

The Takeaway

In the end, the command in the Shema to love God with all your heart is only possible if you get a new heart. That happens when you give your heart to God. To do so, you must recognize your need: that you are broken, you’re a sinner. Admit that your heart is desperately wicked. 

You must also give up trying to fix it yourself. You have to come to the place where your only hope is for God to do what only he can do. Instead of trusting your own efforts, you put your faith in Jesus alone, and trust what he did on the cross for you. Trust that he took  your sin on himself. He took the penalty of all your wrong emotions / thoughts / intentions / actions, and nailed it to the cross. 

The Bible says that when you come to Jesus in faith, he does something new in you. He changes you from the inside out.

• Romans 10:9-10 If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved..

How can you have a right relationship with God? Deut 6 says: by listening. By acknowledging that the Lord is God, the Lord alone. By making a commitment to love him with all your heart. In Romans 10, that commitment starts by declaring that Jesus is Lord, and believing (or trusting) in him. 

When you do that, he gives you a new heart. He makes you new from the inside. Your mind, your emotions, your will – are all made new. You can make the prayer of Romans 10 your own by inviting God into your heart, to transform you.

During this series we’re breaking down the Shema, looking at the specific words and their meaning. The Shema is a prayer found in Deut 6. It’s a prayer that declares one’s devotion to God, it highlights God’s character, and it shows us how to respond to him.

• Deuteronomy 6:4-5 Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.

In this part of the series, we’re looking at how this prayer calls us to love God. It uses three words that describe aspects of who we are. Last week we looked at the word “heart.” Today we’re following this with the word “soul”. The word is “nephesh” in Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament. 

Your Soul Is the Essence of Who You Are

Last week, we saw that the “heart” is your inner person. It doesn’t just mean your emotions, but every aspect of your inner being: what we might call mind, will, and emotions. This week, the word “soul” refers to the whole person. There is some overlap between these words. In English, we have a lot of words for our inner reality, and they all share some common meaning. The same is true of the Hebrew words we’re exploring.

In English, the soul is the non-material essence of a human, the part that survives after death. But that idea is foreign to the authors of the Old Testament. Biblically, people don’t HAVE a soul; they ARE a soul. In Hebrew, “nephesh” is a living, breathing, physical being. In fact, this word is often just a synonym for the words “me” or “I”.

• Psalm 119:175 Let me live so I can praise you, and may your regulations help me.
• Literally: Let my nephesh live so it can praise you…

What the author is emphasizing here is not just the inner part of himself, but his entire being. He’s saying, “My whole person, my inner and outer self, offers praise to God.” So “soul” in the Bible means your entire life, your personality, your whole self, your identity – the core you.

Now that we understand the word “soul” as our whole person, I want to talk about three ways we can love the Lord… (connect it to full circle)

You Love the Lord with All Your Soul by Putting Your Trust in Him

Today I want to put Deuteronomy 6 into the context of the whole Bible. Whether it’s in the Old or the New Testament, people are invited into a relationship with our Creator. That begins when we put our faith in him, meaning a complete trust in him for our life and our eternity.

Think about the people the Shema was originally addressed to. God had called this people – Israel – to be his people. He had rescued them from slavery in Egypt and brought them to the borders of the promised land. In Deuteronomy, this is like a coach’s pregame speech. Moses is getting them ready for the game. He is reminding them who they are. He is going over everything he has taught them, so they can go into the promised land and succeed.

But in order to have this kind of relationship with Israel, God had to set up a way to deal with their sin – because sin always creates a barrier before a holy God. So right after the people had escaped from Egypt, God instituted a system of sacrifices. When someone sinned, they offered a sacrifice to cover that sin, to allow them to remain in a relationship with a holy God. That’s the heart of all the religious rituals we read about in the Old Testament, involving all the priests and ceremonies and the temple. It was a repetitive process, because people kept on sinning. 

We learn, when Jesus comes, all of that is temporary. The whole system looked forward to him and found its fulfillment in him. On the cross, Jesus paid for our sin once and for all, so no more animal sacrifices or repetitive rituals were required. So all those who trust in him and what he did have their sins forgiven and are right with God.

• Romans 3:22 We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are.

The point is this: you can’t love God with your whole soul until first you are in a relationship with God. That can’t happen until your sin is dealt with. So it all begins when you trust in Jesus, and what he did for you on the cross. When your sins are forgiven and you become part of his people, we can talk about loving God with your whole soul, as a response to God’s character and God’s mercy.

That relationship with God impacts every aspect of your everyday life. So let’s look at two more ways to love God with all your soul…. 

Love for God Takes Shape As You Live to Honor Him in All You Do

It will help us to look at the verses that come just after the Shema. because they give us an idea of what the Shema looks like in practice. What it actually means to love God with all your soul.  

• Deuteronomy 6:6 And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today.

In other words, loving God looks like doing what God says. We saw 2 episodes ago that “love”has an active element. It’s not just affection or emotion, but involves commitment and action. Jesus said the same thing to his followers:

• John 14:15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

Jesus sets forth the real test of whether a person truly loves God or not. If you say you love God, then you are willing to do what he says. 

So: how do we “keep his commandments”? First, we read what pleases God in his word, the Bible. Then, as we make an effort to understand what God wants, we adjust our choices and our lifestyle accordingly. 

But it’s not just checking the boxes on a list. The Shema goes beyond that when it speaks to the whole soul. It’s saying: everything about you as a person is to declare that God is Lord. Everything about us is to give honor to God. The way we think and act and breathe, our entire “nephesh”, our whole being. Let me show you how the New Testament puts this:

• 1 Corinthians 10:31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

In context, I Corinthians is talking about the choices we make – even simple choices – and the impact or consequences they have. So whatever your daily behavior is, this is our motive: we want it to bring glory and honor to God. That is loving God with our desires / motives / perceptions / thoughts. But also with how we talk, what we do with our hands, how we utilize our talents, how we react to challenges. Our entire being is to display that God is first! 

Now, one more way to describe what it means to love God with our entire soul….

Love for God Means Intentionally Helping Others Pursue Him.

Let’s go back to Deut 6, and continue looking at the verses that follow the Shema. As we look at verses 7-9, you’re going to see: loving God with your whole soul is not just a private matter.  It’s not just a relationship between you and God, but it involves other people as well. Verse 6: keep God’s commandments. Then…

• Deuteronomy 6:7-9 Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Moses told Israel: if you love God, you point your children toward him. You tell your family about him and his ways. You make it a seamless part of the fabric of your daily life, from the time you get until you go to bed.

In that world, Israel was not commanded to convert the pagans, but they were commanded to reach the next generation. But since Jesus came, God has opened the doors of faith to everyone – not just one chosen nation. So it’s fair to apply these verses beyond just the family. As you commit yourself to love God with your whole self, then it’s natural that you would invite your neighbors to commit to him also. That you would invite your co-workers into a relationship with him, and tell your friends so they can know him. In the New Testament context, this means: we tell the world! We love the Lord with all our soul by incorporating him into all our relationships.

Jesus expanded the Shema in a very similar way. He was asked to identify the greatest commandment in the Old Testament:  

• Matthew 22:37-39 Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God will all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

So commandment #1a: Love God with all your soul. And commandment #1b: Love your neighbor as yourself. These two issues cannot be separated. What starts with “Love the Lord your God” flows over into “Love your neighbor.” 

There are many ways to love your neighbors. But the greatest way is to help them pursue God. This applies to your neighbor who is a Christian. That’s why we mentor others: to help them become fully mature Christ-followers. This applies to your neighbor who is not yet a Christian. That’s why we invest in relationships with people outside of our Christian bubble, why we invite people to join us at church on Sundays, or to go through the Pursuit together. It’s so people will have an opportunity to discover a life-giving relationship with God for themselves.

The Takeaway

Again, your “nephesh” is your whole self, your whole being. Is that how you are loving God right now in your life? Or are you holding back some element of your life? Maybe something small, like a habit or an attitude. Or something bigger, like a key relationship. 

Here’s one simple thought to end with today: You can trust God with your whole life. Sometimes we hold part of ourselves back, wondering: if I give it all over to God, am I going to be okay? Is God really going to come through? I want to assure you that God can be trusted. He loves you so much! He only wants the best for you! It is safe to give everything you are to him.

We’re in our final week of this series, studying the Shema. We’ve looked at six key words in this important ancient Jewish prayer. The Shema is a prayer of allegiance. If you were Jewish, you knew this from childhood. Faithful Jewish believers would recite it twice a day.

• Deuteronomy 6:4-5 Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.

Today we look at the sixth and final word, the word “strength.” In Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, the word is “me’od.”  What does that word mean? What does it mean to love God that way? 

Let’s set the stage with the historical context. Deuteronomy is the final message of Moses to the people of Israel. They are about to enter the promised land, to set up homes, a society, a community in this new land. Moses wants to give them both information and motivation to convey how to live in this land, and what it would look like for them to succeed. His message was: God should be everything to you. He should impact every part of your life. 

Maybe you’re a Christian. Or maybe you haven’t yet made a commitment to follow Jesus. Either way, we want you to understand that this prayer is not about being a religious person. It’s not just about the spiritual part of your life. It’s about your WHOLE life, your everything. As we talk today, I want you to ask: “Does God impact every part of my life?” Or do I just go to church, give God one hour of my week? So may people who claim to be Christians habitually separate their spiritual life from the rest of life. Their relationships, emotions, finances, family, marriage are lived out separately from their relationship with God. Moses is calling Israel to a life greater than that.

“Strength” Is Not Muscle Power, But “Muchness”

When you first read, “Love God with all your strength”, some of you might think of physical power, like the person you know who lifts weights. That’s not what this word is about. This is a word used to modify another word. When combined with another word, it gives the idea of “muchness.” We can see that in the biblical account of creation. 

• Genesis 1:31 Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!

The word “very” is our word “me’od.” On the first five days of creation, God said, “It was good.” The sun was good. The birds were good. And all the rest. But not until the sixth day, when God was done, did he say it was “me’od” good. It was VERY good. There was “much” goodness in what God had made. 

Now let’s look at the story of Cain and Abel. They were brothers, sons of Adam and Eve. They both brought offerings for God. 

• Genesis 4:5 …but [God] did not accept Cain and his gift. This made Cain very angry, and he looked dejected.

Again, “me’od” is translated “very”, in this case, “very angry”. That’s the same word “strength” in Deuteronomy 6. 

Let me show you one more.

• Genesis 30:43 As a result, Jacob became very wealthy, with large flocks of sheep and goats, female and male servants, and many camels and donkeys.

“Me’od” here refers to the “muchness” of Jacob’s wealth. He had a lot. The point is that this word in Deuteronomy 6 doesn’t mean “strong” in the way we typically think about that. So let’s explore what it does mean.

“Strength” Means What You Trust In or Rely On

The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, but in ancient times, it was translated into other languages. This gives us some insight into how people understood those words. We’re going to look at two examples that date from before the time of Christ. One is the Greek Old Testament, and the other is the Aramaic version. 

Greek-speaking scholars translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek (called the Septuagint). When they got to Deuteronomy 6, they came across the word “me’od” and translated it using the Greek word for “power” (dunamis). The New Testament was also written in Greek, and it uses this word as well.

• Acts 1:8 “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere – in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

The Greek word translated “power” in this verse is the same word used to translate Deuteronomy 6:5.  Where the Hebrew Bible said: Love the Lord with all your “me’od”, the translators said, “With all your power.”

The other example is Aramaic. This was the language Jewish people in Palestine spoke in Jesus’ time. It was probably Jesus’ native language. When Aramaic-speaking interpreters got to “me’od” in Deuteronomy 6, they translated it with the word for “wealth”. It’s the word “Mammon” in older New Testament translations. You can see that word in Matthew 6.

• Matthew 6:24 “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other, you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.”

The word here for “money” is the same word Aramaic translators used to convey “me’od” in Deuteronomy 6:5. In other words: Love the Lord your God with all your wealth, or all your means. Again, “me’od” means “very” or “much”. It intensifies the idea it is attached to. That’s why it can be translated as “strength”, “power”, or “wealth.”

Speakers of English are understandably confused by this. What is the connection between “very” and “power” or “wealth” or “strength”? The Aramaic word “wealth” can also mean “what a person trusts in”, because if you have wealth, you trust in that.  Likewise, if you have power, you trust in that. So Deuteronomy 6 is saying: Love the Lord your God with all you’ve got. With your best, with everything that empowers you, with everything you draw on in your life.

As we’ve seen in this series, Jesus quotes from the Shema. He does so twice. So the most important lessons we can learn about the words here come from him.

All the Abundance of Life Offers a Chance to Love God and Others

Jesus was once asked by a religious leader: what is the most important commandment, out of all God’s commandments in scripture?

• Mark 12:29-30 Jesus replied, “The most important is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.”

Did Jesus make a mistake? It sounds like he misquoted Deuteronomy 6:5? Because he uses four words instead of three. No, what he’s doing is helping us think about how to follow God. Where Deuteronomy says “all your strength”, Jesus understands “me’od” as “all your mind AND all your strength.”

So what does this all add up to, when it comes to our relationship with God? It’s not about checking a box on Sundays. 

“I’m done with the God thing for another week. Now I can go on with the rest of my life. I can do whatever I want and live however I want, I can be my own person and follow my own heart, for the next 6 days. Some day, I will come back to church again for 60 or 90 minutes. That’s the part of my life God can have.”

We saw in recent weeks: the Shema calls us to love God with our HEART: our entire inner being, our mind, will and emotions. It calls us to love God with our SOUL: with our whole, essential person. Finally, it calls us to love God with all our mind and wealth and power and energy and muchness – with our everything. In our generation, we might say it like this: Love the Lord your God with all your time, all your talents, all your treasure.  

 Now let’s go back to Mark 12. Jesus said something else very important there, as he answered the question about the greatest commandment of God.

• Mark 12:31 “The second commandment is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”

One thing we’ve been saying in this series: Shema isn’t just about your relationship with God, but also about your relationship with others. Jesus says: if you love the Lord your God, it will impact your relationship with your neighbors. The two are interconnected. 

This quotation is not from the Shema. It’s actually from Leviticus 19. 

• Leviticus 19:18 …love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.

The book of Leviticus was given a generation earlier than Deuteronomy. It has all the instructions God gave Moses for Israel’s priests. It’s filled with detailed laws, regulations, and rituals. When you read Leviticus, it seems like God is all about rules and laws. But that would miss the deeper point. Leviticus 19 shows us what the rules are all about. If you read the rest of that chapter, you’ll see what it means.

• Verse 11 – Do not steal. Don’t deceive or cheat one another.
•  Verse 13 – Don’t defraud or rob your neighbor. Don’t make hired workers wait to receive their pay.
• Verse 15 – Don’t twist justice in legal matters by being partial to the rich and powerful.
• Verse 16 – Don’t spread slanderous gossip. Don’t stand idly by when your neighbor’s life is at risk.
• Verse 17 – Don’t nurse hatred for any of your relatives.
• Verse 18 – Love your neighbor as yourself.

In Leviticus 19, we see that when you give your everything to God, when you’re loving the Lord your God with heart and soul and strength, that will spill over into your relationships.  

This same principle appears often in the New Testament. Romans 12:1 talks about a serious dedication to God reminiscent of the Shema: “Give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice…” The rest of Romans 12 emphasizes relationships in a way that brings Leviticus 19 to mind: “Love each other with genuine affection” (10). “When God’s people are in need, be ready to help them. Always be eager to practice hospitality. (13). “Live in harmony with each other” (16).

The Takeaway

If you are a Christian, you might be wondering if it is really possible to live out the Shema. How can I love God in that way? God has provided the source of power through the Holy Spirit. As you develop a daily dependence on him, through practices like prayer and Bible study (see the series called Breakthrough Disciplines), you can experience his leading and power to transform you into Jesus’ vision of the best kind of life.

Or maybe you have never put your faith in Jesus before. You’ve never trusted in him to become one of God’s people. Understand that the answer Jesus gave to the religious leader who asked about the greatest commandment is not about moralism. It’s not about trying to become a better person. It’s not about doing the right things so God will like you, accept you, and reward you. 

What Jesus said there about loving your neighbor makes perfect sense in light of the cross. Jesus willingly gave his life for US on the cross, because every single one of us is broken. Every one of us struggles to obey these basic commandments. On our own, we can’t live the Shema. But Jesus paid for our sins, for all the ways we fall short, to bridge the gap between us and a holy God. When you trust in Jesus to be right with God, he forgives all your sins. Then he begins to change you from the inside out. He changes your heart. He changes your soul. He gives you HIS “muchness” in place of your own “not very muchness.” The result is that we CAN love the Lord, and we CAN love our neighbor, as a result of God’s work in us.

If you have never made a personal response of faith in Jesus, why not do that today? I can’t think of a better way to cap off this series than to offer you an opportunity to know and follow the one true God – the God of the Shema. You can learn more about this at The Pursuit, Lesson 6: Getting Right with God.