PONDERING... Are You Being Diligent? (Deuteronomy 6:4-12)

Are You Being Diligent? (Baby Dedication Sunday)

GIST: God is everything, so He should be my everything. (Simple, but life shaking!)

SCRIPTURE: Deuteronomy 6:4-12

4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.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. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

10 “And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, 11 and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, 12 then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

Today, we have a wonderful opportunity. At the end of this message, we are going to be dedicating several children (it’s not a baby dedication per se since some of these kids are older...but they are still our babies 😃). I have been excited about this service all summer. I had no idea it would fall on my first “official” Sunday as your pastor, but could not be more humbled or grateful that it did. This is what it is all about! It’s so easy to lose sight of this in the midst of the craziness of life, but having families who want to raise their children to know Jesus, and taking responsibility as a church to help in that process, that is a picture of what the church should be like. This happens to also be our last service in the little series I’ve been preaching through on just that, “what the church should be like”, and I wanted to end with this simple, but crucial truth: If we’re the church, we should live this statement: God is everything, so He should be my everything.  Is this similar to what we talked about last week? Sure. Will we ever not need to hear these truths? Nope.

1. GOD IS EVERYTHING (vs 4 & 10-12)

This Truth Is Foundational. I love this passage, and I love that the opening and closing contexts echo the same truth: this is all about God. (Have you noticed that has been the case with nearly every passage I’ve preached on this summer…. Hm, think God is trying to tell us something?😃) This first verse played a huge role in Jewish tradition. They called it the Shema and recited it every morning and every night. Why? Because this was to be the foundation of their lives, so they needed that constant reminder. This hasn’t changed for us today.

The Lord Is One. I know saying this in a church setting in this country sounds almost redundant. Because of our Christian heritage, even people who have absolutely nothing to do with Jesus affirm that there is one God. This wasn’t the case for these original hearers. The ancient middle east was not monotheistic. All the cultures around them worshiped many gods, and we see God directly combating that sin all throughout the Old Testament, and even into the New Testament. Early Christians were even called atheists by the Romans because they did not believe in the Roman gods (plural). That’s not our context today, but it’s still our reality. We still live in a world that worships all kinds of false gods and is repulsed by the notion that there is only one truth. We just don’t use that language. People worship money, and popularity, and entertainment. They don’t call them gods, but that’s what they’ve become. They consume our time and our money. They determine how we make decisions and what we think is right or wrong. They are false gods, and they are widely worshipped. We need reminded of this truth daily, too. The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Everything We Have Is From Him. The last part of the passage we read reiterates this by talking about what they should do when they inherit the promised land, when they are blessed by God. Man, I love this passage, because this is so true for us, as well. Look at what He tells them: when you get all this stuff that you did nothing to earn or deserve, remember where it came from! Every blessing we have in life is from God. We didn’t do it. None of this is chance or because of our skills--even those skills are by God’s design.

He Has Taken Us Out Of Slavery, Too. That last verse is so great: 12 then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. And this applies to us, as well. We might never have been slaves in Egypt, but we are slaves to sin (and if you don’t believe this, try to stop sinning for one day without God’s help and see how it goes). Yet, Jesus came and died to set us free. 17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, (Romans 6:17)

2. SO HE SHOULD BE MY EVERYTHING (vs 5-9)

How We Should Love Him. This passage probably sounds very familiar. If not because you’ve read it here, because Jesus repeats it in the New Testament, and, in fact, even adds a little to it. Because of that, you might have felt like something was missing when I read these verses. Did anyone catch it? Really, each of the words used here communicate the same idea, the whole person, but Jesus adds the word mind to emphasize this. “30 And 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’” (Mark 12:30). Everything about us should demonstrate our love for God. Here’s how I usually break this down with the youth. We should love the Lord with all our:

• Mind ⇒ Everything we think.
• Heart ⇒ Everything we feel.
• Strength ⇒ Everything we do.
• Soul ⇒ Forever

What This Looks Like. After giving this charge, He then gives us some insights into what this will look like practically.

⇒Meditating on His Word. (vs 6) Look at the development from verse 6 to 9. Meditate on, then teach and be transformed by God’s Word. Before we can be changed by God’s Word, or help other people be changed by God’s Word, we have to know God’s Word. We’re meant to chew on it. We have all been in settings where we have read for a specific, temporary purpose, then disregarded the material. You don’t really need to know the information forever, just long enough to pass the test, or make the phone call, or fill out the paperwork. We can’t read the Bible like this. We need to dwell on. Meditating is basically reading it, thinking about it, and praying about it with the end in mind of getting it into our hearts.

⇒Diligently Instructing Our Children (vs 7a) I think it’s pretty great that the first thing we’re told to do after taking care to personally know God’s Word is to make sure our kids do too. I choked up last week when I talked about how big of a deal this is to me, so I’ll try not to do that today, but our babies are precious. We live in a world that throws all kinds of teaching at them, but only the Truth will save them. We have to tell them. Jesus was pretty adamant about this, too: “5 “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, 6 but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea”(Matthew 18:5-6). This is not primarily the responsibility of the church. We shouldn’t send our kids to Sunday School to learn about Jesus for the first time and hope those teachers answer all their questions about God. We are to diligently teach them the words we have diligently studied. If you’re raising kids, biological or not, they need to hear about Jesus from you first.

⇒Talking About Him...All The Time. (vs 7b) I feel like the second part of verse 7 is directly connected to this command to teach these things diligently to our children. This is done less through direct instruction and more through being so consumed by the Word of God that you can’t help but talk constantly about it. He’s your passion, so you talk continually of Him. This makes me think about my nephew Owen. Neither he nor my son know how to get only “mildly excited” about something. If they like it, they love it...and you will hear about it. Right now, one of Owen’s great loves is military history. Do you think he just stumbled upon this topic? Or, could it be the influence his history-teacher dad? Like that Aaron Shust song that’s playing on JoyFm right now, His praise should ever be on our lips. Our kids will see that. So will the world.

⇒Seeing Through His Eyes, Thinking His Thoughts, Being Driven By His Will.  (vs 8) Because of this verse, we know it became customary for some people to literally tie small scrolls to their wrists and forehead. That isn’t in itself a bad thing, but it’s also not the central point here. This imagery is picked up in the New Testament, as well. Most recognizably, we see this in Revelation with “the mark of the beast” being on people’s wrists and foreheads.   Like here, it’s not really a physical reference, but spiritual. If the Scripture is between your eyes and on your hands, it means you think and see and act according to them. You see through His eyes, strive to think His thoughts, and are driven to act because of His will. (So in Revelation, the mark of the beast is being driven by sin instead of God.) So again, Jesus isn’t a Sunday thing. He is the driving force behind everything we do.

⇒Being Unashamed. (vs 9) From what I’ve read, the original audience would do this in part because actual copies of scripture were limited, so they wrote the words wherever they could so they wouldn’t forget them. But I think the message is clear, if you have the word of God written on your gates and on your home, people who walk by will see it and make assumptions about you. We should live this way in front of the world, not just within our homes and churches.

TAKEAWAYS

1. Remember who God is
• Our everything
2. Be diligent to live your life for Him
• This has to be intentional, because it is not easy. I’m with you. I get it. Every morning, I pull myself out of bed the same way you do, and go to face a world that doesn’t necessarily encourage this kind of living. I have long days (some really long days); I encounter frustrating people; I get discouraged and worn down, too. I get it. This is not easy… but Jesus never said it would be. That’s why we have to be diligent. That’s why we need to do this together.
3. Let this overflow to those around you
• To everyone, but to your children first.

We’re going to take a moment to pray before moving into the baby dedication. Doing this dedication is not complicated, but it is serious. There is no magic in the words I’m going to read. Coming up here in no way saves these children, nor does it even guarantee the salvation of these parents. I know that might sound harsh, but we have to keep perspective. We are saved by personally giving our lives to Jesus alone. This is a chance to make a public commitment to live as parents who love Jesus personally and do all we can to teach that to our children. Let’s take time to examine our hearts before moving into this service. If there is anyone here who does not know Jesus as your personal savior, if you’ve never given your life to Him, I want you to have a chance to do that now, because nothing else is more important. Even if you are somehow involved in the baby dedication to follow, do not let that prevent you from coming to Jesus.

DEDICATION

Parents, looking back at the verses we’ve read, this is why you should be standing up here. You’re committing to love God with your whole life--everything you think, feel, and do forever, to strive to see the world through His eyes and allow Him to drive your actions, and to do so publically, unashamed of Jesus or His Gospel. You’re committing to then model this life before your children, so they grow up seeing what a relationship with God looks like. You’re also committing to raise these children in such a way that they will know what it means to be a Christian, saved by Jesus Christ. This means you’re committing to personally and diligently teach your children the truths of God’s Word which you are also committing to personally and diligently study, for you cannot teach what you do not know. This is no small task. If, however, you have come here today to make this public commitment, please respond by saying, “We do.”

I will now address the church. Raising a child is hard. Raising a Christian is even harder. We are called as the body of Christ to grow together, to bear one another’s burdens, to stir one another up to love and good works. We are called to go to all people and make disciples of Jesus Christ. This commitment starts here, with our children. We are responsible for helping every member of these families grow in their walk with Christ through both our words and deeds. If you are willing to make a public commitment to these families today, please respond by standing.

Let’s pray for these families.