No turning back

Pastor Devon Ortiz returned to Deuteronomy 6 after singing "I Have Decided To Follow Jesus" with the church. If you are less of a Christian today than you were last year, he said, you are living for the wrong god. God has been pruning the church. It lost a comfortable building where it did very little, then another, and its van was stolen in the first week at the new location. Some have stepped back because the challenges are too much. Others will dig in their heels and say there is no turning back, and that may be what God needs to get rid of the superficial and build on something with depth.

Love Him with all of it

Reviewing the start of the chapter, he noted that Moses preaches like a father to his children. Verse 2 calls them to fear the Lord and keep all His statutes, and the way you live your life is the way you view your God. If your Christian life is casual, you view God as casual. Moses did not say to keep the commandments you agree with. There is plenty in the Bible he does not like, Pastor Ortiz said, and we do not get to pick and choose. It does not stop with you, either, because your son and your son's son have your pattern to follow, and when one parent lives right and the other does not, children will take the easiest path.

Verse 3 says to obey "that it may be well with thee." Obeying God is not simply doing it so He does not hit you over the head. We all deserve death, but "the gift of God is eternal life," and from there on obedience is how He gets to bless us, just as children are told to honor their parents that it may be well with them. Verse 4 declares that the Lord our God is one Lord, so His word is not divided between Old Testament and New. Verse 5 commands us to love Him with everything.

With all thine heart. This is our emotion and our core, our motives and affections. But someone who loves God with only their heart will be moved by feelings, on a spiritual high one day and in the valley the next. Feelings matter, he said, but they do not stop the world or change God's word.

With all thy soul. This is our life, our whole self, our identity. He hoped people would be known as Christians at home, at work, and everywhere they go. But some make God their identity and, because their actions do not follow, give Him a bad name, even to their own children.

With all thy might. The word means exceedingly, a muchness, a passion that gives more than the bare minimum. Without it neither of the others will ever be consistent. That is why someone will read their Bible on Monday after church and then leave it closed the rest of the week.

Take it home

Verses 6 to 9 take that love home. "Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children." You cannot teach diligently what you are not living diligently, Pastor Ortiz said. You cannot teach obedience, respect, love, or the Bible if you are not there yourself. A person who acts one way at church and another at home is a fraud. The legalists of Jesus' day wore scripture on their bodies to show how spiritual they were. There is something good about having God's word posted in your home, he said, but if it is not posted in your life, take it down from your house.

Most fall from the mountain

Verses 11 and 12 look ahead to the promised land, with houses they did not fill, wells they did not dig, and vineyards they did not plant, and warn, "Then beware lest thou forget the Lord." Most Christians do not fall in the valley, he said. Most fall from the mountain. When things begin to go well we start to feel good about ourselves and spoil the very blessing. When you gain a victory, do not start celebrating it. Rededicate to God, because verse 15 says the Lord is a jealous God. Jealousy is really the fear of losing to something better, he said, which is why it belongs only to God. When you walk away from God to something else, you have stepped down.

Verse 16 warns against tempting the Lord as Israel did at Massah, when they had seen the plagues and the Red Sea and still turned on Moses when they got thirsty. To tempt God is to demand proof after He has already proved Himself. Jesus quoted this very command to Satan in Matthew 4, and when tempted again answered, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." Verse 18 calls us to do what is "right and good in the sight of the Lord," not what we want to make good, because God does not take what is wrong and make it right. If you want those dreams and desires God has promised, he said, do it the right way. Verse 19 speaks of casting out the enemies. If a doctor told you that you had cancer and you said you would rather keep it, that would make no sense, he said, and yet we hold on to the sin that is holding us back from serving God.

When thy son asketh

Verse 20 says a son will ask what these commandments mean that the Lord "hath commanded you." Pastor Ortiz pointed to that last word. The son is on the outside looking in. How can we draw him near if we are not near ourselves? "I don't know, we just have to figure it out" is not the right answer. Grandparents, parents, teachers, and teenagers all have someone looking up to them, and to say "it's my life" is selfish. In verses 21 to 24 the answer begins with a testimony, "We were Pharaoh's bondmen in Egypt," and it is always "us": He brought us out, He commanded us, "for our good always." The way we live is not only for me, he said. It is for us. Israel was redeemed before the law was given, he said, so verse 25 is not about earning salvation. Righteousness is shown in who we follow.

He closed with a story from when he was fifteen and spent a summer hanging sheetrock for a man from his church who flipped houses. He did not pay attention when he was shown how, broke several sheets, and after a ten-hour day had hung one sheet with a hole in it. He had a bad attitude all summer and told one of the workers he only went to church because his mother made him. The man said he had been about to ask him something he was reading in the Bible, and then walked away. That Sunday his employer paid him and told him not to come back, because that man had been going to ask how he could get saved. He has never forgotten it, he said. He was not acting like who he was following. What about you?