Deuteronomy 6:4-9: What Does It Mean to Love God with All Your Heart?

INTRODUCTION

In 1945 Rabbi Eliezer Silver was sent to Europe to help reclaim Jewish children who had been hidden during the Holocaust with non-Jewish families.

Some of these children had lived with Gentile families for years. Many were so young they could hardly remember the life before they were rescued.

Here is how he was able to discover the Jewish children.

He would go to gatherings of children and loudly proclaim:

“Hear, O Israel:

The Lord our God is one Lord;

 and you shall love the Lord your God

with all your heart,

and with all your soul,

and with all your might.”

Then he would look at the faces of the children for those with tears in their eyes.

The children with tears in their eyes were those with a distant memory of their mother putting them to bed each night with these words.

This was the first prayer that little Jewish children have been taught since ancient times—long before the time of Jesus.

Mary probably put little Jesus to bed with these words.

It is traditional for Jews to say these words twice daily—just before dawn and just after sunset.

When they say these words they are supposed to say them slowly and distinctly, and they are instructed to put their hands over their eyes so as to avoid any distraction.

And according to custom, these are the last words the Jewish believer will say before death.

The story is told of a Jewish soldier who threw himself on a live hand grenade to save his comrades. And as he did so his comrades heard him say these words.

We read that Jesus quoted these words as recorded in Matthew 22 and Mark 12, and the scribe quoted the words to Jesus in Luke 10.

I. Deuteronomy 6:4-9 is the most important part of scripture to Jewish believers.

A. The entire passage reads:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord;

and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,

and with all your soul,

and with all your might.

And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart;

and 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.

And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand,

and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

The Jews call this the Shema Yisrael after the first two words, “Hear, O Israel.”

Usually it’s called simply the Shema, which means in Hebrew, “hear.”

B. The Shema was considered a confession of faith—and a prayer.

In saying it the believer confessed—in a world of many gods—that he or she belonged to the one true God.

The believer professed the intention to love the Lord his God with all his or her being.

Prayer doesn’t have to be asking for something or thanking God for something.

Prayer can simply be affirming a truth about God—reminding myself of what it means to belong to God and to be one of God’s children.

C. Notice how important this prayer is as it is presented in Deuteronomy:

These words are to be upon their hearts.

They are to teach them diligently to their children.

They are to talk of them when they sit in their house, when they walk by the way, when they lie down, and when they rise.

They are to bind them as a sign upon their hand,

They are to be as frontlets between their eyes.

And they are to write them on the doorposts of their houses and on their city gates.

Christians and most Jews think of binding them as a sign on their hands, and having them as frontlets between their eyes and writing them upon the doorposts of their houses as figurative language.

But orthodox Jews came to take the words literally.

Even today orthodox Jews recite the prayer with little boxes containing these words tied above their foreheads and on their left arms. They are called “phylacteries.”

By the door of his house, the Jewish believer has a little box attached to the doorpost called a “mezuzah,” which contains these words. They believe that the Mezuzah protects the home.

When the believer leaves his house, he touches the mezuzah and repeats the words.

II. Why does God say “heart,” and “soul,” and “might”?

A. The “heart” in scripture never means the organ in your chest that pumps blood.

To the ancient person the heart meant the center of your life.

The heart was the part of you that you think with, feel with decide with.

Evil desires come from the heart.

The heart can be disobedient, hard, faithless, dull, and far from God.

Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” (17:9).

But the heart is also where God dwells with you.

In Ephesians 3:17 Paul prays that God will grant the believers to be “strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man”—that means the heart—“that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

The heart is where we keep the Word of God: “Thy Word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee.”

So when God asks us to love him with all of our heart, he means with all our intelligence, all our feelings, and all our will.

B. After it says to love the Lord your God with all your heart, it says, “…and with all your soul.”

I used to think of my soul as the little invisible thing inside me—about the size of a walnut—that flip-flops up to heaven when I die. But your soul in the Bible is the whole you—your whole life.

Jesus said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will you give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28-29).

In the gospels the words “soul” and “life” translate the same word in Greek.

Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life (or “soul”—same word) will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? (or “soul”—same word).

So my soul is really another way to say myself, my whole self.

C. Then God tells us to love him with all our might. By this we see that our love for God must be complete—with all the powers of our mind and body. With our time and money and energy.

D. Maybe I should remind you that in the Bible love is not mainly a feeling. Love, in the Bible, is a way of behaving.

To love God isn’t to have fond feelings about him.

God isn’t telling us to feel the strong emotion we call “being in love.”

Love is a way of behaving.

To love God means to put him first.

It means that I want to please him in all that I do.

It means obedience and trust and service.

It means loving those whom God loves—my family, my friend, my neighbor, and even my enemy.

CONCLUSION

Do you remember that motto that we used to see on the walls of many homes: “Christ is the head of this house, the unseen guest at every meal, the silent listener to every conversation”?

I may be thinking about whatever occupies my mind, but I am always aware that Jesus is with me.

He is listening to my conversation.

He is sitting beside me while I watch TV, or read a book.

Jesus is my companion.

I’m not thinking about him all the time, but he’s always there in the background of my mind.

And if something good happens, I have the impulse to say, “Thank you, Jesus.”

And if a problem arises, it’s just natural to say, “Help me, Jesus.”

And to keep Jesus in mind we pray every day.

We call to mind scripture. We go to services. We speak of Christ to others.

To help them feel that Christ is present some believers keep a picture of Jesus on the wall.

Others display a scripture verse prominently in their room.

Catholic Christians hang a crucifix by their bed.

Or we may keep our Bible on a table where we will see it often, and where we can, any time we like, pick it up and read.

My grandmother used to sing hymns while she did her housework.

Here is a prayer that I use. It is from St. Columbanus, who died in AD 615:

I beg you, most loving Savior,

to reveal yourself to me,

so that knowing you, I may desire you,

and desiring you, I may love you,

and loving you I may ever hold you in my thoughts.

When we are ever holding Jesus in our thoughts, we are learning to love the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our might.