- Forgetting
How quickly we forget! It doesn’t take long for even the important things to be forgotten, the things that we shouldn’t forget, that shouldn’t be overlooked, or left behind do get forgotten. We all forget things, and sometimes the things we forget matter little, but sometimes they are really important things that we ought to remember and not forget.
1.1 We need reminders
I’ve got to the stage that if something is really important for me to remember, I’ll set a string of reminders or notifications in my calendar – 30 minutes out, a couple of hours out, a day out, three days out and a week out. I need that constant reminders to not forget things that are important. Even then if I’m busy and distracted by all that’s going on around me, I’ll sometimes see the reminder/notification and think to myself I’ll get back to that and then forget to do it. There are just so many distractions out there, things that can draw our attention away from what’s important and that we should not be forgetting.
1.2 Israel needed to be reminded not to forget the Lord (6:10-12).
Israel needed reminders and this is what is happening in Deuteronomy chapter 6. In the passage that we are looking at Moses warned the Israelites who were about to cross over into the Promised Land that they needed to be careful that once they were in the Promised Land enjoying all that it had to offer that they didn’t forget the Lord their God who had brought them out of slavery in Egypt. In the case of the Israelites Moses seems to suggest in verses 10 to 12 of chapter 6 that it was all the good things that the Lord was about to give them that had the potential to become a distraction and a temptation for them to forget.
Deuteronomy 6:10-12
10 When the Lord your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you—a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, 11 houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—then when you eat and are satisfied, 12 be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. [1]
None of these things that the Lord was giving them were bad or wrong things in and of themselves. They were the Lord’s good provision and Moses reminded them of this in the way that he emphasised that they had no part in providing these things. But the danger for the Israelites was that once they were living in the Land enjoying all these good things that they would forget the Lord.
It is easy to forget the Lord especially when things seem to be going well for us. As God’s people, we aren’t just tested when we go through the hard times in life as difficult as those times might be. Our faith is also tested in those times of plenty when life is good, and when things seem to be going well and we feel satisfied with what we have. In these times we can easily forget the Lord.
In Deuteronomy chapter 6 and verse 4 Moses has again called Israel to listen or hear, the word can be translated either way. This is a command not just to hear what he had to say, but to really listen, to hear and take in what he has to say and to respond rightly. In this part of Moses second sermon speech Moses reminded the Israelites that they were to love and obey the Lord (verses 4 to 9). And secondly, that they were to fear and serve him only (verses 13-19) and lastly, they were to tell their children to do the same (verses 20 to 25).
- Love the Lord (6:4-9)
The first thing that Moses called the Israelites to do was to love the Lord and keep his commands. They were to do this because as Moses said, “The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (v4).
There are several ways that this verse has been interpreted over the years and the thing that has made the verse a little difficult for the translators is that there isn’t a verb in this statement. According to Gary Miller, verse 4 simply reads; “Yahweh, our God Yahweh one/alone”[2]. Yahweh is the name that God revealed to Moses when Moses asked God to tell him his name (see Exodus 3:13-15). The Lord told Moses to tell the people that Yahweh sent him. The name Yahweh appears over 6,500 times in the Old Testament[3].
Our English translators over the centuries rightly or wrongly have followed the tradition of the ancient Jewish scribes who regarded God’s name as something that was just too holy to say aloud. When reading the OT Scriptures instead of saying Yahweh they substituted the Hebrew word adonay which is the word for “Lord”. In the Greek version of the Hebrew Scripture the translators actually translated the name of the Lord using the Greek word kurios which meant Lord. And our English translations followed this tradition and so wherever you see “the LORD” with the word, “Lord” being written in capital leaders it is translating the name, “Yahweh”.
Now while this verse could be talking about the nature of God being one in essence, or that there is only one Yahweh and not many, it seems more likely that Moses is making a statement that only Yahweh is God or that Yahweh alone is God. Israel was being reminded that they have only one God, Yahweh, the one who made himself known to Moses and who rescued them out of slavery in Egypt. It was for this reason that he was to be the object of all their love and devotion as outlined in verse 5.
Deuteronomy 6:5
Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
Israel was told that they were to be totally devoted to the Lord. They were not to forget the Lord who had loved them and had saved them and brought them out of the land of slavery. They were to love him with all their heart, with all their soul and with all their strength. As one writer has put it, “the two terms heart and soul between them indicated that a man [or a woman] is to love God with unreserved devotion”[4]. For the ancient Jews the heart wasn’t just the seat of our emotions but the seat of our will and our mind while the soul had to do with our inner being and the source of life. The words, “with all your strength” indicates the intensity with which they were to love the Lord. With everything that we are, all our strength we are to love him.
But what does it look like for God’s people to love the Lord in this way? This is what gets explained in verses which follow.
Firstly, Moses explained that such love is expressed by having the Lord’s commandments on their hearts (6v6). This was how they were to express their love for the Lord. When we love the Lord, we will love his commandments, his words and we will keep them on our hearts so that they shape who we are and what we do and how we behave as his people. As Moses told the Israelites in verse 17 and 18…
Deuteronomy 6:17 & 18a.
Be sure to keep the commands of the Lord your God and the stipulations and decrees he has given you. Do what is right and good in the LORD’s sight…
When you love the Lord, you will want to do what is right and good in his sight. You will want to please him and so it’s his words or commandments that are to be on our hearts, tied to our hands and bound to our foreheads (Deut. 11:18).
These verses in Deuteronomy 6 in Jewish tradition are referred to as the “Shema” with the name deriving from the Hebrew word for “listen” that begins these verses. These verses were recited daily by ancient Israelites and still are recited by orthodox Jews today. Orthodox Jews take these verses literally and during morning prayers they wrap their arms and heads in straps with little black boxes on them with Scripture in them. But I don’t think what Moses was saying that it had to be done literally, but that it was that the Word of God that was to be controlling their hearts, minds and hands. This was what Moses was teaching the generation that was about to enter the Promised Land and what they were to teach subsequent generations.
Deuteronomy 6:7
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.
They weren’t to forget the words of the Lord. Having been saved by the Lord, the Lord’s words were to define who they were as his shaping how they thought and behaved and worked with their hands. When God’s people love the Lord then it his words which they take to heart so that we might please him.
This is still true for us today as it was then. God’s people are people who the Lord has saved from slavery. We have been saved from the slavery of sin and death and we are to respond to the Lord’s grace by living a life to please and honour the one who has saved us. We do that by listening to him and what he has said. The Lord Jesus told his disciples, “If you love me, keep my commands” (John 14:15) and he also went on to say… “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me” (John 14:21) and “anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching (John 14:24).
If we love the Lord who has saved us and redeemed us then it is his words, his gospel, that will shape us and define us as his people. We will be reading them, teaching them, reminding one another of them and most doing what they say. James wrote that we only deceive ourselves when we listen and don’t do what the word says (see James 1:22).
- Fear the Lord and only serve him.
But if the Lord our God, is God alone then we are not just to love and obey him, but we will also fear and only serve him. We are to have no other gods before him. If the Israelites were not to forget the Lord, they needed to also fear and serve only the Lord.
Deuteronomy 6:13-16
13 Fear the LORD your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name. 14 Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you; 15 for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the land. 16 Do not put the LORD your God to the test as you did at Massah.
The Israelites were to remember who it was that had rescued them, and they were to fear and serve him only. They were to take their oaths in his name as those who belong to him. It was Yahweh (the Lord) who had brought them out of slavery through his powerful outstretched arm, and they were to honour and submit to him as their God, and not anyone else. Moses told the Israelites that the Lord’s anger would burn against them, and he would destroy them from the land if they adopted the gods of the peoples around them. They would suffer the same fate as the nations that were being driven out.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t have it both ways. It isn’t possible to turn away from the Lord and at the same time go on enjoying his blessing. You can’t disobey the Lord and think that it will turn out for your good, for doing what is right and good in the Lord’s sight is the only way that things go well for us. If you reject the truth, you end up living a lie. If you reject the light, you end up in walking in darkness. If you spurn God’s grace, you end up coming judgment (see Hebrews 10:26-31). Moses therefore told the Israelites to be sure to keep the Lord’s commands, stipulation, and decrees. They were not to test the Lord as they had done at Massah.
What Israel failed to do at Massah was to trust the Lord that he would get them to where they were going supplying their needs along the way. Not long after being rescued out of Egypt, Israel arrived and camped at place called Rephidim but at Rephidim there was no water to drink.
No water was a real problem as I recently discovered on a hike I did while on holidays. It was the third day of the hike and the longest day, and we were told that we needed 4 litres of water each. I had taken out the water bladder in my backpack and had three litres of water thinking that it would be enough. And it would have been if I hadn’t left it behind at the campsite. An hour and half into the walk I discovered that I had no water and suddenly we faced with a dilemma. Do we go back or press on?
When the Israelites discovered they had no water the decided to complain and quarrel with Moses because there wasn’t any water there. Instead of crying out to the Lord trusting him to provide for them as he had already done with the manna, the bread from heaven, they threatened to stone Moses claiming that he had brought them out of Egypt only so that they might die of thirst in the desert.
Our faith gets tested when things are going well and when things don’t. How we react to the circumstances or the situations that we find ourselves in is a test of our faith. It was this way for the Israelites in the wilderness and it would be true also for them once the were living in the Promised Land. Not everything would go right and the temptation at these times is to not trust the Lord and his promises but to do what seems best to us in the situation.
We fail that test when we give into the temptation to swap out what the Lord has said that we should do for what we think might be a more practical or expedient way of doing things. We lack faith when we just fall into line with what everyone else is doing because what they are doing seems less demanding on us. Gary Miller has written that the temptation for Israel in the land would be to swap “the commands of Yahweh for the less demanding allegiance to gods of the nations.”
This temptation is something that continues for God’s people today. We are tempted to not listen and obey the Word of God but to swap out what the Lord has said for what seems to us to be an easier road to go down. Or we ignore what God says to get what we want. We don’t do things God’s way and instead we decide to do them our way. We forget the word of the Lord when we believe something will make us happy. But the Lord Jesus says that “everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock” (Matt. 7:24). It’s the one who does not put his words into practice that he says is the fool who has built their house on the sand so that when the rain comes and streams rise and winds blow and beat against that house it is destroyed.
- Teaching the children to not forget
In verses 20 to 25 Moses reminded the Israelites that they needed to teach the next generation to not forget the Lord. Moses imagines a child asking their parents about these instructions and why they follow all the stipulations, decrees, and laws of the Lord. It’s the sort of question that children are perhaps inevitably bound to ask their parents. Why can’t we do what all the other kids around us are doing? Why do we have to do things differently? Why do these things that we do when everyone else around us thinks that we are weird and strange for living the way that we do? What Moses instructed the Israelites to tell their children was the gospel, the way that God had saved them and made them his people.
Deuteronomy 6:20-23
In the future, when your son asks you, “What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the LORD our God has commanded you?” 21 tell him: “We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. 22 Before our eyes the LORD sent signs and wonders—great and terrible—on Egypt and Pharaoh and his whole household. 23 But he brought us out from there to bring us in and give us the land he promised on oath to our ancestors.
4.1 Tell them OT gospel story
What their children needed to know was how God had saved them out of Egypt and made them his people. What they need to hear, was what one writer has referred to as the “OT gospel event”[5]. They need to know that they had been slaves in Egypt, but the Lord had rescued them with a mighty hand and had brought them in and had given them the land fulfilling his promise to their ancestors.
4.2 Tell them God’s words are the words of life.
The second thing that they need to understand was God’s words are the words of life. Doing what God says works out for our good.
Deuteronomy 6:24-25
24 The LORD commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the LORD our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, as is the case today. 25 And if we are careful to obey all this law before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness.
The Lord had given them his decrees for their good so that they might live and prosper in the land that the Lord was giving them. Listening to God and honouring him by doing what his says is the only way that they were going to continue to live and prosper in the land and be righteous before the Lord, their God. God’s words are the wisdom that we need to live life they way that it is meant to be lived, so that things might go well for us.
- Israel forgot, but God didn’t forget his promise to them
Sadly, Israel failed to remember the Lord and to love him as they ought by keeping his commands and serving only him. It didn’t take long after that first generation before they had forgotten that they were to serve only the Lord. They turned to the gods of the people around that seemed to promise more and demand less of them. Even though the Lord was patient with them, sending the prophets who called them to repent, they refused to do so and eventually they were expelled from the land.
But the story fortunately for us didn’t end there. God did not forget his promise to Abraham – to bless him and through him to bless all the families of the earth. Ultimately it was Jesus, who would come and love and serve God doing what is right and good in the sight of the Lord. When tested by Satan in the wilderness he told Satan that it is written: Worship the Lord our God and serve him only (Luke 4:8) and that is exactly what he did. In the garden of Gethsemane he said to his Father in heaven, not my will be done but yours. When tempted by Satan to prove that he was the Son of God the Lord replied, “It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” (Luke 4:12). He was the righteous one who came to make us righteous.
As the apostle Peter explained, the Lord Jesus “suffered for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous to bring you to God (1 Peter 3:18). Paul wrote that for those who are in Christ Jesus the Lord Jesus has for us “become wisdom from God – that is our righteousness, holiness and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30). He is the way that we can live with a holy God and dwell with him forever and be found to be righteous in God’s sight. We share in his righteousness and at the same time by hearing his word and through the work of the Spirit in our hearts we are being transformed to be like him so that we might do what is right and good in the eyes of the Lord.
[1] The New International Version (Dt 6:10–12). (2011). Zondervan.
[2] See Gary Miller’s commentary on the Gospel Coalition website (https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/commentary/deuteronomy/#section-17)
[3] See the Bible project: https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/yhwh-lord/#:~:text=Over%20the%20centuries%2C%20Israelites%20wanted,Lord%2C%E2%80%9D%20which%20is%20adonay.
[4] J. A. Thompson, “Deuteronomy” Tyndale Old Testament Commentary, page 122.
[5] George Athas, “One Nation Under God”, Reading the Bible Today, Location 1878 of Kindle Edition.
