2 Peter 1:3-15
[God’s]
divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the
knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Thus he has given us, through these things,
his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from
the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become
participants of the divine nature.
For this
very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness,
and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control
with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection,
and mutual affection with love. For if
these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being
ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For anyone who lacks these things is
nearsighted and blind, and is forgetful of the cleansing of past sins.
Therefore,
brothers and sisters, be all the more eager to confirm your call and election,
for if you do this, you will never stumble.
For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you.
Therefore I
intend to keep on reminding you of these things, though you know them already
and are established in the truth that has come to you. I think it right, as long as I am in this
body, to refresh your memory, since I know that my death will come soon, as
indeed our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me. And I will make every effort so that after my
departure you may be able at any time to recall these things.
Deuteronomy 6
Now this is
the commandment-- the statutes and the ordinances-- that the LORD your God
charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into
and occupy, so that you and your children and your children's children may fear
the LORD your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his
commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long.
Hear
therefore, O Israel, and observe them diligently, so that it may go well with
you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and
honey, as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, has promised you.
Hear, O
Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone.
You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your
soul, and with all your might.
Keep these
words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about
them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you
rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand,
fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your
house and on your gates.
When the
LORD your God has brought you into the land that he swore to your ancestors, to
Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you-- a land with fine, large cities
that you did not build, houses filled with all sorts of goods that you did not
fill, hewn cisterns that you did not hew, vineyards and olive groves that you
did not plant-- and when you have eaten your fill, take care that you do not
forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
slavery.
The LORD
your God you shall fear; him you shall serve, and by his name alone you shall
swear. Do not follow other gods, any of
the gods of the peoples who are all around you, because the LORD your God, who
is present with you, is a jealous God. The anger of the LORD your God would be
kindled against you and he would destroy you from the face of the earth. Do not put the LORD your God to the
test, as you tested him at Massah.
You must
diligently keep the commandments of the LORD your God, and his decrees, and his
statutes that he has commanded you. Do
what is right and good in the sight of the LORD, so that it may go well with
you, and so that you may go in and occupy the good land that the LORD swore to
your ancestors to give you, thrusting out all your enemies from before you, as
the LORD has promised.
When your
children ask you in time to come, "What is the meaning of the decrees and
the statutes and the ordinances that the LORD our God has commanded
you?" then you shall say to your
children, "We were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out
of Egypt with a mighty hand. The LORD
displayed before our eyes great and awesome signs and wonders against Egypt,
against Pharaoh and all his household.
[The Lord]
brought us out from there in order to bring us in, to give us the land that he
promised on oath to our ancestors. Then
the LORD commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God,
for our lasting good, so as to keep us alive, as is now the case.
If we
diligently observe this entire commandment before the LORD our God, as he has
commanded us, we will be in the right."
Refresher Course
Deuteronomy
is the last book in the Pentateuch – the five books of Moses. For our Jewish brothers and sisters, this is
the scripture – the Torah - the Books of Instruction. While the Hebrew Bible also contains the
writings of the prophets and historical books, it is the Torah that provides
the precepts for daily living. When the
Apostolic Witness – what we call the New Testament – refers to “scripture,” it
is referring to the five books of Moses.
If for no other reason it is incumbent upon us as Christians to study
and understand Torah – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. If we do not understand these fundamental
books of the bible, we miss many of the nuances of the instruction to us in the
New Testament.
Now, the
book of Deuteronomy is comprised almost entirely of sermons – the words of the
Lord as they are spoken by Moses to the people of Israel. And, although Martin Luther was no huge fan
of the law, he said this one book of the bible
teaches people to live well according to the Ten Commandments. Luther said “there is nothing in the whole
range of the life that is not arranged here most wisely and properly.”2 Our Presbyterian father in the faith, John
Calvin, also thought Deuteronomy was a most important book. He “preached through the book of Deuteronomy
on weekdays from March, 1555, to July, 1556.
In all, he preached 200 sermons, expounding the book in [great] detail
and making applications to the social and political life of Geneva, as well as
to the personal lives of her citizens.”3
This makes
perfect sense when you realize that the Book of Deuteronomy is intentionally
directed to future generations – to those who do not have direct experience of
God’s saving power in the Exodus from Egypt.
Tradition
tells us that when the forty years of desert wandering ended, Moses gathered
the people on the plains of Moab.
Standing on the threshold of the Promised Land, Moses reminded the
people about the events at Sinai – how they had received the law from God and
how they responded to God in one voice saying they would obey the Lord. Moses reminded them of their rebellion and
how, because of that rebellion, the generation that left Egypt in the Exodus
was prevented by God from entering the promised land. Of that first generation,
only Moses, Joshua and Caleb were alive when this history was retold to the
generation of Hebrews about to enter Canaan.
Moses knew he, too, was about to die for he struck the rock to bring
forth water at Meribah – a place also known as Massah. He struck the rock
knowing it was not necessary. All he had
to do was speak the word of the Lord and the rock would have poured forth
streams of living water.
In
Deuteronomy 5 Moses restated the law – the Ten Commandments – to this new
generation. Then Moses interpreted the law to them. The message of Deuteronomy
clearly is meant to direct their future.
And, while the Ten Commandments don’t change, Moses knew that how they
would be understood, interpreted and applied would be different when the people
settled in the land.
In
Deuteronomy 6 Moses began to explain to them what the law would mean for their
future life. The pivot around which
everything in Deuteronomy revolves is the Sh’ma – Deuteronomy
6:4-5. Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil Adonai
Eloheinu Adonai echad. If you have
ever attended a Jewish service, you have heard these words: Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord
is one. Just as we recite an Affirmation
of Faith following the sermon, devout
Jews affirm their faith by reciting the Sh’ma in the morning and in the
evening. This is not merely a legal
requirement. It is “a true apprehension
that those who live under the rule of the Lord of Israel are to [establish]
their lives and daily conduct, as well as their interior direction, according
to these most important words.”4
These words
are to govern not only what we do, but how we think and who we are. As Christians, to say these very same words
every morning and every evening would be to acknowledge that it is only in God
that we live and move and have our being.5 It would be to affirm that how we behave,
what we think and who we are is governed exclusively by our God who loved us
even before we knew it.
You may have
noticed that the word echad is translated as the word “alone” in the
reading from the New Revised Standard Version, and echad is translated
as the word, “one,” in the version I just recited. Hebrew grammar makes either rendering of the
word echad entirely plausible.
You cannot
imagine what a radical statement it was to say that God is “one” in the days of
Moses. The peoples of the Ancient Near
East worshiped a multitude of gods whose demands were arbitrary and
unpredictable. And, if one god did not
satisfy your wishes, it was entirely possible you might get gratification from
another god. The problem was you never
knew which god would work best on any given day or what was required to fulfill
any particular god’s demands. If you
have ever spent half a day trying to
figure what an hysterical infant wants when they don’t have the language to
tell you, you have an inkling of how much work it was to appease the gods of
the Ancient Near East.
The people
of the God of Israel, however, affirm
belief in one God who reveals divine expectations in one set of
rules – rules that apply to everyone at all times. Our God is not manipulative – demanding one thing one day and another the
next. Our God has no secrets desires
that we must guess in order to fulfill.
To say that
our God is one is also to say our God us one in purpose and being. Our God’s entire trajectory is to bring us to
the good land that the Lord, the God of our ancestors has promised to us. Our God’s greatest desire and sole purpose is
to bring us to the place of complete reconciliation with both God and
humans. To say that God is one is to
affirm what we believe about God’s intention – it is undivided and directed
toward our good. This was just as true
when Moses spoke as it is in Christ’s work on the cross.
Now, if we
take echad to mean “alone,” what we are saying is that we pledge
fidelity to the one God above all other Gods who vie for our loyalty. It means we acknowledge the exclusive claim
our God has on us and that we give assent to our responsibilities under
the covenant God has made with us.
Perhaps you
do not think there are other gods clamoring at your door. Think again.
What are the things that consume your attention? There are the obvious passions: money, power,
prestige. The questions to be answered
may be: where do you find satisfaction? Is it food, or clothing or possessions? Where do you find your comfort? When you are upset, do you bury yourself in
the latest technical journal or do you head to the mall? What are the things that keep you from
participating in worship? What are the
things that prevent you from being actively involved in the community of faith?
I have to
say, I probably am my own favorite God most days. I would rather sleep than awaken early to
read scripture. There are times I’d
rather read a novel than prepare for a bible study. And, I am not ever as disciplined as I need
to be. My wants, my convenience and my
desires are usually what govern how I behave and consequently help define who I
am – that is, until I am faced uncomfortably with myself and my tendency to
this subtle idolatry. My wants, my
convenience and my desires are usually what govern my motives until I am
brought up short and I remember that I have promised that the Lord is my God,
the one Lord, alone. It is then that I
remember I have pledged to love the Lord my God with all my heart, with all my
soul and with all my strength and that I have committed to God’s purposes of
wholeness and reconciliation for all creation.
What is most
interesting about this second half of the commandment is that loving God is a
is a “distinctive contribution of Deuteronomic theology.”6 We do not find this prescriptive in the Ten
Commandments. The love referred to in
this commandment is not the warm, fuzzy, tickle your toes kind of love we
usually associate with the word. Rather,
is it the kind of love one partner in covenant has for another. This love is not vague. It is not abstract. “It assumes a personal, intimate, trusting
relationship” that is reciprocal. It is
the kind of love that holds a marriage covenant intact when the work nights are
long, the dinners grow cold, the roof leaks and resources are thin. It is the kind of love that is rooted in
respect and trust and hope. Covenant
love requires loyalty to the person and to the covenant in which we are engaged
– no matter how we feel at any given moment.
It is love based on what we know – not on how we feel. This kind of loyalty-love requries keeping
the Lord’s commandments and walking in the Lord’s ways all the days of our
lives.
Jesus said
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of
heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”7 Doing the will of the Father has never been
unclear. We believe in one God
who reveals the divine expectations in one set of rules – rules that
apply to everyone at all times. Our God
has no secrets desires that we must guess in order to fulfill.
We are to
love God with all our heart – with undivided loyalty and with all our soul – totally committed, even
to death. It was reported that many Jews
in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany went to the gas chambers reciting
the Sh’ma. We are to love God and
with all our might – with our substance, our wealth, our talent and our
time. To love God is to withhold nothing
from God. Nothing less will do.
The later
ministry of Jesus is very much informed by Deuteronomy and the totality of the Sh’ma. The costly summons to discipleship has the
very same demanding and absolute quality.8 Appearing in each of the synoptic gospels is
the story of the rich young man who asks Jesus what he must to inherit eternal
life. “ Jesus said to him, "If you
wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor,
and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." We are told the young man went away grieving
because he owned much.9
When another
disciple said he would follow Jesus – only he first had to bury his father,
Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go
and proclaim the kingdom of God."10 Jesus does not leave any wiggle room. We either follow him, or we don’t. And, what it means to follow Jesus is to love
God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our strength by doing
the will of the Father.
Perfect
obedience. We know it will never be
obtained; but, as Christians, perfect obedience is our quest for life.
Moses knew
he was in a life and death struggle for the hearts, commitment and imagination
of generations to come – generations that would be more and more removed from
the reality of the Exodus. We, too, live
in a life and death struggle for the hearts, commitment and imagination of
future generations. Generations that
often seem not to embrace the covenant of love and grace our God extends to
us. What are we to do?
The
beginning, middle and end of this chapter appeals to children to
remember. Remember the concreteness of
God’s plan for us and all of creation.
Remember the stories that energize the commands of God. Our job is to tell our children that our God
is one in being and one in purpose and that purpose is for our welfare and not
for harm, to give us a future with hope.
Our job is to tell our children that our loving response to God is
obedience borne of gratitude for all God has done for us. Our job is to do this over, and over and over
again.
Think about
it. When was the last time you told a
child something and it stuck on the first telling? My palm pilot flashes reminders to me several
times a day for days on end so I don’t forget the water delivery on
Thursday. How much more do we have to
repeat the Sh’ma for ourselves, as well as for our children.
When your
children ask you in time to come, what is the meaning of the decrees and the
statutes and the ordinances that the Lord our God has commanded you, then you
shall tell your children the stories of God’s faithfulness to you. How in Jesus Christ God has rescued you from
the penalty of sin. How in work of the
Holy Spirit you are able to resist the power of sin and how a day will come
when we all will rest in the land our God has promised, and we will be free
from the presences of sin forevermore.
Thanks be to
God.
