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I wonder if you watched the Olympic Women’s BMX Freestyle. It was won by Britain’s Charlotte Worthington, but on her first of two runs she crashed out at the start, trying a stunt that’s never been done before in women’s BMX, and as she sat on her bike on the brink of her second run, the commentator said:

There’s a big decision to be made by Charlotte Worthington and her coach. Do they play a safe run now…or does she go all in again with the backflip 360?

And the answer is, she went all in and won gold. Well today we’re beginning a series in the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy – which tells us what Moses preached to God’s people Israel, when they were on the brink of entering the promised land of Canaan. And those two runs by Charlotte Worthington are a picture of the story behind Deuteronomy, because God had used Moses to rescue Israel from slavery in Egypt, and then lead them to the promised land.But then on the brink of the promised land that first generation rescued from Egypt crashed out like Charlotte Worthington on her first run because they said, ‘We can’t take this land. We’re not going in.’ And because of that failure to trust and obey God, he made them wander outside the land, until their generaton had died out, and their children had replaced them. And God then used Moses to lead that second generation back to the brink of the promised land and that’s where they were when Moses preached the content of Deuteronomy to them.

And they were like Charlotte Worthington on the brink of her second run because behind them was the way their parents had crashed out. Ahead of them was the second run at the promised land, and beside them, as their God-given coach, was Moses calling them to make the decision to go all in with faith and obedience towards the Lord. We’re just going to look at Deuteronomy 6-8, and we’ll find they’re full of motivations for trusting and obeying the Lord – which apply as much to Christians today as they did back then. So before we dive in to Deuteronomy 6, let’s pray:

Father, Thank you for these words which you spoke to Israel through Moses. Thank you that you meant them for us as well. And please help us to see our relationship with you and the Lord Jesus more clearly, through them. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

So if you have a Bible or app, please find Deuteronomy 6. And the first thing God wants us to see here is:

1. The blessing of obedience (Deuteronomy 6.1-3)

(By which I mean the good it does us, and brings us, to obey God). So, Deuteronomy 6.1-3, Moses says to that second generation on the brink of the promised land:

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 [ie, take him absolutely seriously, as we should], 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 the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.

Now what impression of God do you get there? Do you get the impression he’s out to spoil their lives with unreasonable dos and donts and that he doesn’t really want their good? Because that’s the way the world sees obedience to God, isn’t it? “Poor you not allowed to do what you want… missing out on what we’re up to…” But, end of Deuteronomy 6.2-3, the Lord said, I want you to obey me…

[so] that your days [in the promised land] may be long…[so] that it may go well with you, and [so] that you may multiply greatly…

Now some of those blessings were particular to Israel then; like keeping possession of the promised land for a long time, and multiplying as a nation. But at the heart of it, the Lord was saying he wanted it to go well with you and that he was about to give them a land flowing with milk and honey (Deuteronomy 6.3). Ie, of plenty and good things and enjoyment. So isn’t the right impression that he’s out to bless and give and enhance life? And Moses’ point, as they stood on the brink of the promised land was that experiencing blessing in the land would depend on obedience. Now don’t mishear that. Moses wasn’t saying they would earn God’s blessing through obedience. We never do that. God’s blessings are undeserved, unearned gifts, starting with forgiveness, and including everything good we experience. No, Moses was saying they would experience God’s blessing through obedience and that if they didn’t obey they’d miss out on experiencing it.

So take, for example, the promised land itself. That was a gift God was wanting to give them, but they wouldn’t experience the blessing of it unless they obeyed him and went in and fought for it. That’s how their parents crashed out, remember: they wouldn’t trust and obey, so they didn’t experience the blessing of the promised land. So what’s the lesson for us? Well, sometimes Christians talk as if forgiveness through Jesus’ death is a blessing, but as if obedience to Jesus is a more questionable good, something you perhaps accept more reluctantly, in order to have the blessing of forgiveness. But the Old and New Testaments say no to that. They say it’s a blessing to be forgiven back into relationship with God. And it’s a blessing, subsequently, to live in obedience to God because that’s how we’ll experience life at its best, as he meant it to be even if best is often harder in a fallen world. So that’s the first thing, the blessing of obedience. The second is:

2. The love beneath obedience (Deuteronomy 6.4-5)

Look on to Deuteronomy 6.4-5:

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.

Those are the best-known verses in Deuteronomy, and when Jesus was here, and was asked, (Mark 12.28):

Which commandment is the most important…?

He replied by quoting them, but look at Deuteronomy 6.4, and it is not a commandment at all, is it? It’s a statement about God which, if we really take it in, will motivate the love for him that Deuteronomy 6.5 is on about. So let’s try to take it in. Deuteronomy 6.4:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Now where English Bibles have capital L-O-R-D, the LORD, it translates the name God gave himself back at the Exodus. And the idea was that forever after, when anyone said the LORD (or ‘Yahweh’ in the original), it would immediately bring to mind what he’d done for them in the Exodus – how in his love he’d stepped in to rescue them from slavery in Egypt and into relationship with himself. So the name the LORD or ‘Yahweh’ had the same effect on a believer then as the name Jesus has today if you’re trusting in him.Because if you are, then the name Jesus immediately brings to mind what he’s done for you in dying for your forgiveness on the cross – how in his love he stepped in to rescue you in a way that the Exodus was just a trailer for. So where Deuteronomy 6.4 says,

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God

it’s saying, ‘Remember how he loved us at the Exodus! Remember what he’s done to bring us into relationship with himself!’ And the New Testament equivalent is to remember how God in Jesus loved us at the cross.

C.T.Studd died 90 years ago after working flat out as a missionary in China and then Africa, but he wasn’t always on fire for Jesus like that. At one point he wrote:

I was in one long, unhappy, backsliding state. My religion was minimal and formal, and my love for Christ had grown cold.

But just two years later, God opened his eyes fully to the cross. And he wrote:

When I really came to see that Jesus had died for me, it didn’t seem hard to give up all for him. [quoted in The Cambridge Seven, John Pollock]

And Moses knew that the Lord’s love for us would motivate the love beneath our obedience to him. But there’s more to Deuteronomy 6.4, Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Ie, ‘This God who has loved us is the one and only God there is. So our love should go exclusively and totally to him.’ And if you’d said that to the Cannanites living in the promised land,
they’d have thought you were mad, because, like in Hinduism today, the Canaanites believed in multiple gods, each of whom they thought controlled a different area of life. So there was one called Baal, for example, who controlled rain and fertility. So they sacrificed to him, hoping for crops and new lambs. And then there was another god in control of war, so if they were attacked, they sacrificed to him, hoping the fight would go their way. They believed in many gods, so they ‘spread their bets’ in worship between them all. 40% to Baal, 20% to Asherah, and so on. But Deuteronomy 6.4 says ‘no Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. The LORD is the one and only God there is. So he is in control of every area of life, he is the source of everything you have, he is the giver of everything you need’. And Moses knew that would motivate not just love for the Lord, but exclusive and total love for him. Not 60% to the Lord for spiritual stuff like forgiveness, and 40% to Baal because we’re not sure whether the Lord can do agriculture. No. 100% to the Lord. Which is Deuteronomy 6.5 if you’ve really taken in verse 4, then, Deuteronomy 6.5:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

Ie, ‘If this God has loved me and is the only God there is, then he deserves all of me.’ So he deserves all my heart. We think of the heart metaphorically as the centre of our emotions. Back then, they thought of it as the centre of your decisions, it was a combination of your mind and will, where you decided what to do. And the Lord deserves us to make all our decisions in the light of his will and his priorities spelt out in the Bible. And then he deserves all my soul. Which back then meant your whole inner being, not just your mind and will but your emotions and desires. And plenty of our emotions and desires are fallen and wrong and we’re not to let those guide or rule us. Instead, as we take in God’s love for us, it creates new emotions and desires which begin to take the place of the wrong ones. And then he deserves all my might – literally it says ‘all your very much ness’, the idea is of being ‘over the top’, doing something to excess. Like the woman who brought that jar of ointment worth a year’s wages – and blew it all in anointing Jesus, to show how much he meant to her.

I heard recently about the reaction of the mother of one of our students who’d just come to faith. “I don’t mind you being religious” she said, “Just don’t take it too seriously.” Which is like saying to a married person, “Don’t take marriage – the love of your life – too seriously.” But Moses is calling us to see the Lord as the supreme love of our life. And that’s what motivates the love beneath obedience. So, The blessing of obedience, The love beneath obedience, lastly:

3. The ‘all-ness’ of obedience (Deuteronomy 6.6-9)

Which is bad English, but gets the point, because Deuteronomy 6.5 has already begun to spell out the all-ness of obedience:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

Ie, ‘If this God has loved me and is the only God there is, then he deserves all of me.’ But he also deserves all of all people, doesn’t he – which means not keeping my knowledge of him to myself. Deuteronomy 6.6:

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

But he deserves all of all people. So if I’m married with kids, I begin there, Deuteronomy 6.7:

You shall teach them diligently to your children, 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.

Now Richard Dawkins attacks that. He says:

Children need to be protected so they can have a proper education and not be indoctrinated in whatever religion their parents happen to have been brought up in. (The Irish Times, 25 February 2015)

But Christian parents and churches that get this right don’t indoctrinate. As someone said, “We’re proposing the Christian faith to our children, not imposing it.” Our role is to provide the atmosphere in which they can hear about the Jesus of the Bible, and see relationship with Jesus modelled, but we we need to give them the space to accept that relationship freely for themselves – or not. So the ‘all-ness’ of obedience means all people – it means passing on my knowledge of the Lord, and not just to family, but to anyone and everyone I can. And then the ‘all-ness’ of obedience means all areas of life. Deuteronomy 6.8:

You shall bind [God’s words] as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

Some Jews took and take that literally with verses worn on hands and forehead, but was it meant metaphorically, as if to say, “Don’t leave your faith at home when you go out – remember, the Lord is Lord of all areas of life.” That’s why, Deuteronomy 6.9, again, is it literal or metaphorical, says:

You shall write [God’s words] on the doorposts of your house and on your gates [that’s the city gates, where justice and business and politics was done].

Which is a reminder that when we go out to school or work or university or being involved in the community and local government or whatever, the Lord is Lord wherever we go. So we shouldn’t be Christians at home but something else in the office or hospital. We shouldn’t have our home face for Christian family, and then our friends face for non-Christian schoolmates or uni mates or workmates. Because if this God has loved me and is the only God there is, then he deserves all of me in all areas of life. So that’s our first dive into Deuteronomy and like Charlotte Worthington on the brink of her second run, Deuteronomy sees each of us on the brink of something. Maybe the brink of coming to Jesus for the first time. Or the brink of coming back to him having drifted. Or the brink of a big issue you need to resolve in your Christian life, or of a big move or life change. Maybe just the brink of another day to be lived for Jesus. And it sees each of us as needing to make and re-make the decision to go all in with trust and obedience. And the more clearly we see that God has loved us in Jesus, and is the only God there is, the more that’s what we’ll do.