Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Deuteronomy literally means “second law,” which is fitting because it is composed of the
final sermons of Moses given to the Israelites before they entered the Promised Land, and
much of their content is repeating the laws and commandments that God gave them forty
years earlier. In the sixth chapter, we find our present text, which is one of the most
important portions of Scripture. Called the Shema (the Hebrew word for hear), they
essentially formed the doctrinal thesis of the Jewish religion, the central belief of their faith.
Because of this, these verses were regularly prayed in both the morning and the evening and
were often the final words upon the lips of dying Jews. Jesus, of course, affirms their
importance by citing verse 5 as being the greatest commandment within the Bible. This text,
therefore, is certainly worthy of our study and careful attention

The general outline of the passage is:

1. The central doctrine is presented in verse 4,

2. The central command is given in verse 5,
3. And proper application is given in verses 6-9.

1.THE LORD IS ONE // VERSE 4

Hear.

I am tempted to spend all our time with this one word, but alas, we shall not (today…). The
importance of our text beginning with this word is multitude.

First, by being command to hear we must conclude that something is about to be said that is
worth listening to. Something important is about to be communicated, so we would be
wise to give our attention.

Second, we must remember who is commanding us to hear: Moses is speaking on God’s

behalf, commanding us to pay careful attention to his words.

Third, God speaks this command to Israel, His people. God’s people should, of course,
listen to their God.
This, then, begs the question: are you listening?

The reality of life is that we are hearing messages constantly. The entire field of business
marketing is devoted to getting you to listen to a company’s message. People and devices are
constantly vying for our attention, and we are largely influenced by the voices we are
hearing. The Creator knows this, so He steps forward and demands our listening. As we will
see, this God wants nothing less than to have our full attention. He requires it of His
people. Why?

He is our God. Two names are given here for the Creator of everything: the LORD and
God.

Lord: One who is controlling your life, The creator is the controller too

God, therefore, identifies Himself as being the God of Israel, but He also identifies Himself
as being one. The LORD is God, and there is no other.

There were no gods like Yahweh. The children of Israel had discovered that the
Egyptian deities were nothing. They were powerless. They were hopeless. There is
nothing with which to compare Him. They had come into the presence of the living
LORD. He was a reality to them. To Him alone belongs the name Yahweh. He is the One
absolute God.

THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT // VERSE 5

Following such a necessary declaration of doctrine, Moses then provides us with what Jesus
calls the Greatest Commandment: You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all you might. Each command is contained within this
one. Even the second command, love your neighbor as yourself, will naturally be
accomplished if we truly love God as we ought. Therefore, if the aim of our life is to obey
God, the process has been simplified tremendously. Obey this one command, and
everything else will be naturally obeyed. How then should we obey it?

Moses explicates three realms of obedience.

First, we must love God with all our heart. In Hebrew, this refers not only to feelings and
emotions (as we think of the heart today) but also to the mind alongside its thoughts, desires,
and will.
Second, we must love God with all our soul. Again, the Hebrew’s conception of soul
differentiates from what is common to today. We tend to imagine the soul as metaphysical,
akin or even conjoined to consciousness. While the Hebrews did conceive of the soul as
being alive (perhaps even the lifeforce of a person), they also viewed the physical body as
part of being a soul.

Finally, we must love with all our might. The word used here is often translated
as very or much. When used as a noun, the word implies might, strength (as it is said in the
Gospels), force, or we might add, fervor or zeal.

Together these categories encompass the entirety of a person.

So how then do we obey the command? Only one word its love

Love is not simply an action that can be accomplished; it is the prime motivator behind our
actions.

We spend time with our spouse because we love them.

We watch television because we love it. Even actions we dislike, we do out of love. We
work a job we hate because we love what it provides for us (at least more than the alternative
of not having an income). Because love is a motivation, while it is easy enough to do loving
things, it nearly impossible to force ourselves to love something or someone.

Every thought, emotion, desire, intent, word, action, breath, and heartbeat come from
your love of God. That is what the word all means, after all. Nothing lies outside of
your love for God.

His love for us is more than sufficient. The glorious news of the gospel is that God extended
His boundless love toward us, even when we willfully refused to love Him. Although we
could never fully obey this command, Jesus did. He lived a life of total love for God, never
once failing to glorify the Father in all things. Such obedience is a battle to even comprehend
for us. Yet He obeyed perfectly, and then He willingly submitted Himself to die in our place.
His undeserved death then became the payment of the penalty for disobedience for all who
believe in Christ.
SCRIPTURE AND DISCIPLESHIP // VERSES 6-9

Verse 4 gave us the key doctrine, and verse 5 was the key command. These final verses
show us how to apply them into our lives. Verse 6 is the backbone for the remainder of
the passage, while verses 7-9 explain what that verse looks like when lived out.

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. What words is Moses
referring to? Of course, the immediate context is in reference to verse 5, but they also
apply to the words of all of Deuteronomy and, then, to the rest of Scripture. But even if
Moses only meant verse 5, we could not properly love God without keeping His entire
Word upon our heart.

"These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart" (v. 6). How
do you keep God’s Word "on your heart"? You do it by meditating on it. Only as we
know it and apply it to our own personal lives can we teach it to our families. The Word
of God must first be in our own mind and heart then we impress them diligently upon the
minds of our children. They have to become a part of you and your lifestyle.

This is our first responsibility. We are to keep His words on our heart, to think on them, to
meditate on them, to reflect on them. We cannot give our children what we do not
possess. We cannot pass along what we do not own. No one else can do it for us. Our
children’s programs, Sunday School and public school cannot assume that
responsibility. It is our responsibility as parents. We are to love the Lord with all our
heart and to share that love with our children.

Our children are watching us and modeling our attitudes and behaviors. They are
parroting back our attitudes about Christ and His church.

Do you have an intimate love relationship with Jesus Christ? Is He the priority of your
life? The words of Jesus in Matthew 6:33 are a good commentary of this passage. He said,
"Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you."

I pray you will set a priority in your personal life and in your home to love the Lord
with your entire person.
Verses 7-9 describe how to do this. First, Moses gives the command of discipling our
children in the Word of the LORD.

We must never forget the ancient truth that, for parents, our children are our primary
disciples. They must not be recipients of our second hand efforts. They must be our first
and most important ministries, second only to our spouse.

Example of a foreign missionary team helped a boy to walk in his leg…….

Moses continues in verse 7 to show how this is to be done. By stating two pairs of opposites
(sitting-walking and lying down-rising), the prophet is emphasizing that all of life should be
filled with discussion of the Scriptures.

In order to discuss the Scriptures with our children and the people around us, we must
first know them, and we can only know them by first consuming them. This is why
Moses tells the Israelites to bind these words to their hands, place them on their forehead,
and write them on their doorposts. While many Jews have (and still do) take these
commands literally, the prophet is simply commanding them to be remembered.

Of course, the added depth of meaning to having them on your hand, forehead, and
doorposts is that they are visible to others. The significance here is that as we saturate
ourselves in the Scriptures, we will be marked by them.

When I was in EU I leaned the TWO by TWO and walking prayer.

He doesn’t say lecture them or beat up on them with a Bible. The idea is in your casual
conversation talk about the things of God. Let it be part of your lifestyle.

"When you walk by the way." What do you talk about while in the car? As you journey
through life observe people and situations all about you and seize the teaching moment to
share the difference Christ makes in your life.

"When you lie down and rise up" probably refers to those quiet moments before you go to
sleep.

Your life is an open book to be read by all (v. 8).

Yahweh is our God; Yahweh is one” (v. 4b). This is the essential truth that Moses calls the
Israelites to remember and to celebrate.

A literal translation would be “Yahweh our God; Yahweh one.”

• These words can be interpreted to emphasize Yahweh’s singularity—that Yahweh is the

one and only God. All other gods are false gods, devoid of power or meaning.

• They can also be interpreted to emphasize the singularity of Israel’s faith—that Yahweh is
to be Israel’s only God. Other nations might have their gods, but Israel is bound by covenant
duty to worship only Yahweh.

• They can also be interpreted to emphasize the exclusivity of Israel’s relationship with
Yahweh—that Yahweh belongs to Israel and not to others. However, there are hints
throughout the Hebrew scriptures, beginning with Genesis 12:3 (“All of the families of the
earth will be blessed in you.”) that, while Yahweh’s covenant with Israel was exclusive, his
love for people was not.

Perhaps the ambiguity is intended to bring all three of these meanings to mind as the
Israelites recite these words daily.

“and you shall love (‘ahab) Yahweh your God” (v. 5a). This is the essential obligation that
grows out of the truth that God is one. It requires the Israelites to love Yahweh with all that
they are and all that they have.

The Israelites have good reason to love Yahweh, who brought them out of slavery in Egypt
—and sustained them through their wilderness wanderings—and is about to bring them into
the land that he long ago promised to Abraham’s descendants (Genesis 12:7). Yahweh has
proven himself to the Israelites—both his power and his faithfulness—time after time. He
has been faithful to them even when they have failed him. They owe Yahweh their very
lives.

“with all your heart” (lebab) (v. 5b). Our physical hearts are at the core of our physical
beings, so the Israelites used this word, lebab, to speak of their inner being or inner self.
They associated lebab with what a person is at the core of his/her being—his/her character or
personality or mind or will.

While they thought of other organs, such as the liver or kidneys, in conjunction with
emotions, they could also think of the heart as being glad (Deuteronomy 28:47)—so it is not
as if the lebab was devoid of all emotion.

“and with all your soul” (nepes) (v. 5c). The Israelites thought of the person holistically,
and would never have divided the person into body and soul, as the Greeks were later to do.
They could not have conceived of a soul apart from a body—or of the soul continuing to live
after the body died. The Christian concept of resurrection grows out of this holistic
emphasis.

The Israelites used the word nepes to mean breath, the animating force that gives the creature
life—and, by extension, the living creature itself. Therefore, when God breathed the breath
of life into the man’s nostrils, “the man became a living soul” (nepes) (Genesis 2:7).

Nepes is also associated with blood, because blood is another force necessary for life.
Therefore, we have a commandment that says, “Only be sure that you don’t eat the blood:
for the blood is the life; (nepes) and you shall not eat the life (nepes) with the flesh”
(Deuteronomy 12:23).

“and with all your might” (me’od) (v. 5d). The word me’od has to do with strength, power,
might, and abundance. It would therefore be appropriate to interpret this phrase as meaning
that we should love the Lord our God with all of those things with which God has “gifted” us
—our talents and treasures and strength and friends, etc., etc., etc. All that we have has not
come to us from God, and everything that we have can be used to glorify God.

The book of Deuteronomy will go on to lay down many commandments that the Israelites
are to keep. Many of those commandments are quite specific, and over time rabbis would
add a great deal more specificity to them in their attempt to help people know exactly what
they could and could not do. They incorporated their findings into the Mishnah and the
Talmud—human commentaries that they tended to consider as authoritative—even as the
Torah is authoritative.
One problem with an extensive system of laws, however, is that adherents of those laws
often focus on the jots and tittles of the laws rather than on their intent—thereby falling into
the trap of rote legalism. However, if a person keeps this commandment to love God with
one’s whole being and substance, it will help him/her to avoid that trap.

When asked, “Which commandment is first of all” (Mark 12:28), Jesus responded, “The
greatest is, ‘Hear, 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 mind, and with all your
strength.’ This is the first commandment” (Mark 12:29-30). Then he added, “The second is
like this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater
than these” (Mark 12:31; Leviticus 19:18). Jesus then added, “The whole law and the
prophets depend on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:40).

“These words, which I command you this day, shall be on your heart“ (v. 6). As noted
above, the heart is at the core of our being, so this commandment to keep these words in our
hearts is a requirement to keep God’s commandments at the core of our being. It is a
requirement to internalize the commandments so that our compliance springs from the heart
rather than from legal obligation. It is a requirement to keep the commandments, originally
inscribed on tablets of stone, inscribed on our hearts.

“and you shall teach (sanan) them diligently to your children” (v. 7a). The

word sanan means to whet or sharpen. “In the intensive form of the verb, it means to teach
incisively (Deut. 6:7). The idea here is that just as words are cut into a stone tablet with a
sharp object, so the Law should be impressed on the hearts of the children of every
generation” (Baker and Carpenter, 1179).

I must mention a concern here. In many churches today, Biblical instruction for children is
relegated to a distant back seat. Pastors and worship committees focus first on worship
schedules and then tuck in Sunday school wherever it will interfere least. Many churches
provide little (if any) teacher training, and sometimes emphasize entertainment-oriented
activities over actual instructional time.

Also, publishers of children’s curriculum often fail to produce materials that help children to
make sense of the Biblical story. One major publisher presents Biblical stories, but groups
them in accord with artificial themes rather than in accord with Biblical chronology—a bit of
the Old Testament one week and a bit of the New Testament the next. The themes (such as
“We Choose God”) often have little meaning to the children, who are left trying to figure out
how last week’s lesson on Daniel relates to the next week’s lesson on the Widow’s Mite.

Our failure to teach our children the Bible is one of the several reasons that mainline
denominations are in decline. Churches that fail to teach their children the Bible deserve to
wither away. Failure to teach children the Bible constitutes ecclesiastical malpractice.

Let me also comment about adult Bible studies. The next time someone tells you that they
are involved in a Bible study, ask what they are studying. You will find that few are actually
studying the Bible. In most cases, they are studying a book by Philip Yancey or another
popular author. While Yancey and other popular authors provide an important service,
substituting their work for the study of God’s word constitutes unfaithful discipleship.

“and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way“ (v.
7b). The technical word for this kind of expression is “merism.” A merism is a pair of
contrasting words (such as near and far) used to express totality or completeness. In that
example, “near and far” mean “everywhere.” In this verse, “when you sit in your house, and
when you when you walk by the way” means “wherever you are.”

“When you sit in your house.” We need to persuade parents that Christian education begins
at home. We need to encourage them to read Bible stories to their children, preferably from
age appropriate Bible story books.

We need to have good children’s Bible story books in our church libraries—and lists of such
books with places where they can be ordered online (such as Christian Book Distributors or
Amazon)—and some idea of prices.

We need to give children age-appropriate Bibles, such as the NIV Adventure Bible, when
they are in third or fourth grade—and regular Bibles when they start high school.

We need to encourage parents to pray with their children on a regular basis—and to say
grace at the table.

“and when you walk by the way.” When the parents bring their children to church, we
need to have excellent Sunday school classes and youth groups. In both cases, we need to
have an appropriate mix of fun activities (so they will want to keep coming) and good, solid
Biblical education (so they will have something to guide them in their daily lives).

“and when you lie down, and when you rise up” (v. 7c). This is another merism, which
means “whatever your state or condition.”

In other words, this verse calls for us to devote all-consuming attention to talking about God
and the commandments. Those are appropriate subjects of conversation wherever we are and
whatever we are doing.

“You shall bind them for a sign on your hand, and they shall be for symbols between
your eyes“ (v. 8). This verse gave rise to the wearing of phylacteries (also known as tefillin),
which are small leather boxes containing verses of scripture (usually Exodus 13:1-10; 11-16;
and Deuteronomy 6:4-9; 11:13-21). Typically, when attending to his prayers, a Jewish male
would affix a small scripture box to his left arm and a larger scripture box to his forehead.
These would serve as reminders to him of the core beliefs of his faith—and would also serve
as witnesses to his faith to those who might see him.

While phylacteries might seem odd to us, they served a religious education purpose in the
same way that stained glass windows or Stations of the Cross do in Christian churches.

“You shall write them on the door posts of your house, and on your gates“ (v. 9). This
verse gave rise to the mezuzah, which is similar in purpose to the phylactery. A mezuzah is a
small metal device containing the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) which is affixed to a
doorpost.

It is possible to misuse any spiritual discipline, and that happened with phylacteries. Jesus
told his disciples to practice what the scribes and Pharisees taught, but not to do what they do
—for “all their works they do to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad,
enlarge the fringes of their garments, and love the place of honor at feasts, the best seats in
the synagogues, the salutations in the marketplaces, and to be called ‘Rabbi, Rabbi’ by
men” (Matthew 23:5-7).

We are all subject to the same kinds of spiritual pride. What pastor doesn’t enjoy sitting in
one of the best seats at a banquet? What pastor doesn’t enjoy the kind of instant respect that
a clerical collar often affords? What pastor doesn’t enjoy the titles that come with the
pastoral role—Reverend, the Very Reverend, Father, etc., etc., etc.

SCRIPTURE QUOTATIONS are from the World English Bible (WEB), a public domain
(no copyright) modern English translation of the