OBEDIENCE: THE TEST OF GODLY LOVE.
Deuteronomy 6: 4 & 5 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength”
The Israelites had lived in Egypt for 430 years and so had seen the polytheistic nature of the Egyptians, but for them as a people that had been delivered by God from Egyptian bondage and were moving into the land of Canaan, they were to serve God alone by wholehearted commitment expressed in love to Him. Since this relationship of love for God could not be represented in any material way as with idols, it had to be demonstrated in obedience to God’s law in daily life.
Moses ensured that the people were to think about the commandments and to meditate on them such that their obedience would not be a matter of formal legalism, but a response based upon understanding (v6)
The children were not left out, parents were mandated to teach their children the commandments such that it would be subject of conversation, both inside and outside the home, from the beginning of the day.
Our Lord Jesus Christ subsumes man’s whole moral duty under two categories: love for God and love for one’s neighbours. In His discourse with a lawyer who came to Him to know which commandment was the greatest, Jesus Christ quoted Deut 6: 5 and Lev. 19: 18, (Matthew 22: 23 – 40) thereby corroborating the text above to show that the only way to show our obedience to God is by keeping His commandment.
A claim to love God is delusion if not accompanied by unselfish love for other Christians. We must show our obedience to God by keeping all He has commanded us to do in His word.
Jesus, our role model, obeyed God in every way and it is expected of us as children of God, who eagerly await a land greater than Canaan, to do away with anything that will hinder us from receiving eternal glory.
May the grace of God continue to abound for all of us so that this week and subsequent ones we shall be richly blessed in Jesus name.