6, please, Deuteronomy chapter 6.
You've heard about preachers who choose a text
and then depart from it forever.
I'm going to choose a text and depart
from it, but hopefully not forever.
I'll come back to it before the message
is over.
We'll begin in verse 4, Deuteronomy chapter 6,
verse 4.
Here, 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, with
all your might.
These words which I command you this day
shall be in your heart.
You shall teach them diligently to your children.
You shall talk of them when you sit
in your house, when you walk by the
way, when you lie down and when you
rise up.
You shall bind them as a sign in
your hand, and they shall be as frontlets
before your eyes.
You shall write them on the doorposts of
your house and on your gates.
We've been speaking in this series on that
expression, my heart, my life, my all.
The first night we talked about the logic
of Calvary, and that introduced us to four
life-changing questions.
At least the answers to those questions are
really life-changing.
Who the Lord Jesus really is?
He is the incarnate God.
What he did for us, he, the incarnate
God, died for us on the cross of
Calvary.
Who are we?
And Alan has answered that in the song
he sang tonight, so appropriate.
Who are we?
The wonder of who we are, the wonder
of how unworthy we really are.
I was thinking of that chorus, wonderful savior,
wonderful friend, wonderful life that never shall end,
wonderful place he's gone to prepare, wonder of
wonders, I shall be there.
That will be one of the greatest wonders
of heaven.
And then finally we talked about the blessings
that flow from Calvary to those who are
redeemed by precious blood.
And that led us down a one-way
street to full commitment to the Lord Jesus
Christ.
We need to respond to these four truths
that we had before us in the previous
meetings.
And frankly, the only proper response is, it
has to be everything or nothing.
It was not without reason that the Lord
Jesus said to the church in Laodicea, I
wish you were either hot or cold.
Because you are not hot or cold, I
will vomit you out of my mouth.
But he was only saying what was the
only logical conclusion to the great truth that
we have.
And that led us last night to the
subject of what is commitment to Christ.
You can read about commitment, you can read
about a subject like that in literature, you
can hear it spoken from the platform.
But if you're anything like me, there's nothing
like seeing it exhibited in a human life.
Have you ever had that expression?
Well, you read things in the Bible, and
they seem to be mystical and ephemeral.
They're often spaced there somewhere, and all of
a sudden somebody comes into your life.
And that person is living out that truth.
And you say, now I understand it.
And so we want to look at the
life of someone whose life was one of
commitment, and his name is Jesus.
The Lord Jesus was fully committed to the
will of God his Father.
As we said at the close of the
meeting last night, he's not only the author
and finisher of faith, he's also the inventor
and chief example of commitment.
And if you want to know what is
meant by that word, just study the life
of the Son of God.
When the Father looked down upon a world
of lost mankind and said, as it were,
whom shall I send and who will go
with me?
The obvious response of the Lord Jesus was,
here I am, send me.
He said, in effect, he wanted to do
the will of God no matter what the
price may be.
And he knew what the price would be.
It meant for the creator to be born
in a stable.
The law of a feed box for a
mattress would be good enough for him.
I have a hard time taking it in.
And even in later years, the Lord Jesus
knew nothing of the comforts which we take
today as being our inalienable rights.
He never knew hot and cold running water.
He never knew a shower.
He never knew an inner spring mattress or
any kind of a mattress as we know
it today.
He never knew bathroom facilities.
He didn't even have what foxes and birds
of the air have a place to call
his own.
Foxes have holes and birds of the air
have nests.
But the Son of Man had not where
to lay his head.
How touching it is to read that when
the disciples went to their own homes, Jesus
went to the Mount of Olives.
And as the hymn writer said, Thy bed
was the sod, O thou Son of God.
Thy bed was the sod, O thou Son
of God.
The Savior knew what it meant to come
into a world of sin.
It really didn't shock us too much to
come into a world of sin, did it?
We can't know the suffering that his advent
meant to him.
You know, the more godly, holy a person
is, the more exquisite is his suffering or
her suffering in the presence of sin.
You take this cultured, refined, godly Christian woman
and you take her down to Skid Row
and see some of the sights down there.
She's absolutely repelled by it and repulsed by
it.
Think of what it meant for the Lord
Jesus to come down to this world, the
Holy One who knew no sin.
Think of how exquisite his suffering must have
been.
It hurts us to resist temptation.
It hurt him just to come in contact
with it.
And in accepting the will of God, the
Savior knew that he would be despised and
rejected.
Imagine the Lord of life and glory coming
into the world, the world his hands had
made, the creatures whom he had made, and
he knew coming in just exactly what his
welcome would be.
He would be despised and rejected.
That is true.
Man of sorrows.
What a name for the Son of God
who came, ruined sinners to reclaim.
Hallelujah.
What a Savior.
In spite of it all, he would be
constantly showering blessings upon people.
That's really wonderful, isn't it?
He'd give sight to the blind, hearing to
the deaf, speech to the mute.
He would deliver the demon possessed.
And yet he would receive ingratitude and abuse.
The hymn in our hymn book, and one
of the verses of that hymn says, Why?
What has my Lord done?
What makes this rage and spite?
He made the lame to run.
He gave the blind their sight.
Sweet injuries.
Yet they at these themselves displease, and against
him rise.
The Lord Jesus knew what loneliness was, and
he was well acquainted with grief, as Isaiah
says.
He earned, and earned well, the title, Man
of Sorrows.
He would be insulted, accused of being born
of fornication, of being demon possessed.
He would be accused of performing miracles in
the power of Satan, all by his own
creatures.
But he never did think of turning back.
There was a lonely path he'd trod, from
every human soul apart, known only to himself
and God with all the grief that filled
his heart.
Yet from the track he turned not back,
till where I lay, in sin and shame,
he found me.
Blessed be his name.
Wonderful, wonderful Jesus.
He's going to hear about it for all
eternity.
Yes, when the Son said, Here I am,
send me, the future was all an open
book to him.
But he was so committed to the will
of God, that he faced it with determination.
Time and time in his earthly ministry, he
spoke of his desire to be totally committed
to God, his Father.
He appealed to the consistent testimony of the
Word of God, that he came into the
world to do the will of God.
From Genesis to Revelation, the story is the
same.
He came to do the Father's will.
Early in his ministry, he cleansed the temple
there in Jerusalem, and it clicked in the
disciples' minds, and they remembered it was said
of him, The zeal of thine house hath
eaten me up.
He was consumed with zeal for the Father's
interests, for the Father's house.
He was consumed with zeal to do the
will of God.
One day he said to the multitude, For
I have come down from heaven not to
do my own will, but the will of
Him who sent me.
Isn't that wonderful?
I have come down from heaven not to
do my own will, but the will of
Him who sent me.
When as a boy, his parents found him
in Jerusalem, after missing him for three days,
he reminded them that he had to be
about his father's business.
That's commitment, friends.
When the disciples expressed concern that he hadn't
eaten recently, he said, My food is to
do the will of God and to finish
his work.
So those who sought to kill him because
he healed on the Sabbath day, he said,
I do not seek my own will, but
the will of the Father who sent me.
No one had ever been so focused as
the Lord Jesus Christ.
Dear friends, if you want to know what
commitment is, you see it in his life
as you see it nowhere else.
The shadow of the cross was always before
him.
It was there at the Jordan when he
was baptized, when he and Pia went into
the waters of death to rise again and
thus fulfill all righteousness.
He said, I have a baptism to be
baptized and how am I straightened until it
be accomplished?
Man.
Tremendous, isn't it?
Obedience was not an occasional act with Jesus.
It was the story of his life.
There was no shrinking back.
I love that verse where they're on their
final trip to Jerusalem, and he's walking with
his disciples, and it says he went on
ahead.
What does that mean?
I think the disciples seat were made of
lead.
The Lord Jesus went on spryly, you might
say, determinately, and the disciples were lagging back,
dragging reluctant seat.
The will of God would include Gethsemane, where
he prayed.
Oh, my father, it'd be possible.
Let this cup pass from me.
Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.
Was he praying to be delivered from death?
No, he wasn't praying that.
That was the reason for which he came
into the world, but it was a rhetorical
question.
He was saying, Father, now, for the generation
that is and for all generations to come,
if there's any way of redeeming mankind other
than by going to the cross, my going
to the cross, show it now.
And there was a great silence.
That silence said, there was no other way,
no other way by which you and I
could be saved.
He was betrayed by a friend, denied by
a disciple, kissed by a Satan-possessed man,
and forsaken by those closest to him.
He would be arrested on trumped-up charges
and tried in a trial that will always
be the greatest farce in history, where the
accused is found innocent and sentenced to death
because they could find nothing wrong in him.
And yet he was sentenced to death.
The verdict was guilty.
He could have called twelve legions of angels,
but he chose to die for you and
for me.
He preferred the will of God to his
own safety.
Friends, that's commitment.
He had the power to come down from
the cross, but he had the power not
to come down from the cross.
Is that the greater power?
It was not the nails that held him
there.
It was for this cause he came into
the world.
What held him there was his commitment to
the will of God the Father.
The greatest horror would be those three hours
of darkness when he was forsaken by God.
Can you imagine what that means, to be
forsaken by God?
And when he would bear the accumulated sins
of all the world and his body on
the tree.
You and I will never know what that
means.
Never know what that means.
This is what the will of God, to
which he was committed, cost him.
And he was willing to endure it in
obedience to the will of God and out
of love for our souls.
I was enjoying that verse in Isaiah 53
this week.
They made his grave with the wicked, but
he was with the rich in his death.
That's interesting.
The word wicked there is plural.
They made his grave with the wicked ones,
but he was with the rich.
In the original, that word rich is singular.
It refers to Joseph of Arimathea.
He was with the rich in his death.
Death in the original is plural.
In his death.
That touched my heart.
Could it be death for everyone?
Death for you?
And death for me?
Accumulated death of all the people who ever
lived and ever would live.
Of course, he knew that he would rise
from the dead.
He knew that he would ascend back to
heaven and be honored with the name that's
above every name.
That at the name of Jesus every knee
should bow.
He knew that.
He knew that eventually every knee in the
universe would bow to him.
Why, that's a solemn verse, isn't it?
That's solemn.
I thought of that when I read of
the death of Carl Sagan, you know, the
astronomer who had no place for God in
his scheme of things.
I thought to myself, Carl, those knees of
yours are going to bow to Jesus.
You who have seen his greatness in the
firmament, the heavens, you are without excuse.
One day you're going to bow to my
Lord Jesus Christ.
He knew, the Lord Jesus knew all of
this, but he also knew that before the
crown comes the cross.
And before the glory comes the suffering.
He was willing to do the will of
God.
He was committed to the will of God
no matter what the cost might be.
And he left us an example that we
should follow his steps.
Whenever we're tempted to complain or retreat, we
should call on him to nerve our faint
endeavors.
The poet says, Lord, when I am weary
with toiling and burdensome seeing thy command, if
my load should lead to complaining, Lord, show
me your hands.
Thy nail-pierced hands.
Thy cross-torn hands.
My Savior, show me thy hands.
Christ, if ever my steps should falter and
I be prepared for retreat, if desert or
thorn cause lamenting, Lord, show me your feet.
Your bleeding feet.
Your nail-scarred feet.
My Jesus, show me your feet.
If you want to know what commitment really
is, just study the life of the Lord
Jesus and you'll see it there in living
color.
That brings us to our text tonight in
Deuteronomy, chapter six, verse five.
You shall love the Lord your God with
all your heart, with all your soul, and
with all your might.
Now, I want to start and go through
the Old Testament, first of all, and bring
out aspects of commitment as they're found in
the Old Testament.
It's wonderful to me how when I read
my Bible, you'll find threads that begin at
the beginning of the Bible and they go
all the way through.
And this by men who never met each
other and they never collaborated.
They didn't know each other in most cases.
And yet, for instance, that thread of worship
goes all through the Bible.
You'll be in Genesis 22, find it all
the way through.
Prayer all through the Bible.
There's no textbook on prayer like the Bible
itself.
Holiness goes all through the Bible and so
does commitment.
Commitment is a thread that goes all through
the Bible.
And here in Deuteronomy, six, verse five, you
have an early call to commitment.
And I'd like to think about it with
you for a while tonight.
An early call to commitment.
Nowhere in the Bible is the call to
total commitment more explicit and inescapable than in
the verse of Scripture.
Unless anyone thinks that this belongs to the
legal dispensation and that you can escape the
force of it in that dispensational way.
And I'm a dispensationalist too.
If you think it doesn't apply today, just
remember that this verse in one form or
another is found in three times in the
New Testament.
It's found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
One thing is added there, the word mind.
With all your mind.
And in the Gospels, it's not given as
law with penalty attached, but it's given as
instruction in righteousness for the people of God.
And so it really applies to you and
to me.
Jesus said that loving God is the first
and great commandment.
He said that.
Loving God is the first and great commandment.
And then he said that on two commandments,
that is, loving God and loving your neighbor,
hang all the law and the prophets.
What does that mean?
On these two commandments hang all the law
and the prophets.
Well, it means that it means that everything
in the Old Testament Scriptures is comprehended in
those two commandments.
And that's what happened in the New Testament.
You know, when that young man came to
the Lord, Jesus said, Lord, give me a
summary of the whole thing, the whole matter.
And Jesus said, Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind,
and strength and thy neighbor as thyself.
What a voice that is for us today.
He said that these two laws are more
than all the Hebraic system of sacrifices.
That's good, isn't it?
You know, you saw those priests going through
all the routine of the sacrifices and Jesus
said, More important than all those sacrifices is
to love God with all your heart, soul,
mind, and strength.
And if that's so, they must be more
of more than passing importance to us.
So, what is the message for us today?
Well, as I said, it's an early call
to commitment.
And even although we may not obey it
perfectly, it should still be the aspiration of
our hearts.
We should be always moving in that direction.
Even if on earth it's never an achievement
for us, it should be an ongoing process.
Notice, first of all, you shall love the
Lord your God.
I emphasize that, the Lord your God.
This is the one to whom we are
obligated with love.
He's our Lord.
He's our Maker.
He's our God.
He's our Creator.
He's our Sustainer.
He's our Savior and Preserver.
And He deserves our love.
And when He has it, He will have
our obedience.
Notice what it says.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all your heart.
With all your heart.
With all your affectionate powers.
It means that God must have first place
in our heart.
I've told that story so often, but I
love it just the same.
One time Spurgeon came to the tabernacle there,
young man, he had his fiancee in the
carriage with him there, you know, and they
came to the door and he was thinking
of the souls of people that would be
there tonight in need of Christ.
And he jumped out of the, I was
going to say the chariot, but he jumped
out of the carriage and he rushed into
the church and he left her sitting on
her seat there in the carriage.
His thought was on souls.
And when he got up there to preach,
he looked around the audience and she wasn't
there.
And after the meeting and after he had
dealt with souls and some had streamed into
the kingdom of God, which they usually did
when he preached, he made his way out
to her house.
Her parents were there.
He said he wanted to see her.
They said she was upstairs.
She was pouting.
He insisted on seeing her and finally she
came down.
He said, look, I'm very sorry for what
happened tonight.
But he said, if you and I are
going to be married, he said we should
get this straight.
Christ must have first place in my life.
And you'll have to take second place.
And later at the end of the wonderful
ministry, Mrs. Virgin said, I learned a good
lesson that night.
There was someone in Charles's life that had
first place.
My job was to take second place to
the Savior.
Dear sisters here tonight, if you've got a
husband in Christ's first place in his life,
you've got the right kind of a husband.
And gentlemen here tonight, you have a wife
and Christ has his first place in her
life.
You've got the right kind of a wife.
And you young people that aren't married, that's
the kind of a spouse to look for.
And not to be jealous of the Savior
and that love.
Don't pass over the word all here.
It's so easy to slither over that word.
It says with all your heart, all your
affectionate heart.
And in the following expressions too, it says
the same thing.
It means to love the Lord supremely.
You say, well, what would it be like
to have if I loved the Lord supremely?
Well, I'd like to take you to the
Song of Solomon.
There was a girl there and she was
madly in love.
They call her the Shulamite.
She was madly in love.
In my interpretation of the Song of Solomon,
she was madly in love with a shepherd
lover.
Not Solomon.
Solomon was trying to woo and win her
with all his blandishments and blarney.
But she had a shepherd lover.
And everything is past the natural when he's
on the scene, you know.
But anyway, I can't go into that.
She loved him.
And let me just tell you what her
love was like.
She was never more happy than when she
was in his presence.
She just loved to be with him.
Her cup was full when he was around.
And his absence really pained her.
When he was away, she longed for him
to come.
Does that make sense?
Ring bells in your heart tonight.
She talked about him with great delight.
I tell you, her tongue was the pen
of a ready writer.
And when the daughters of Jerusalem said, What's
your beloved more than another beloved?
That's all she needed.
That set her off.
And I tell you, in marvelous words that
ring on down through the ages, she extolled
the beauty of her lover.
That's what love is like, isn't it?
And she loved to talk to him.
As you read through the Song of Song,
you find her talking to him.
She just loved it.
Sometimes she talked to him when he wasn't
there.
Love is like that, you know.
She was talking to him and he wasn't
even present.
That was okay.
And she was always pleased to hear his
voice.
That's lovely.
She dreamed about him and she relished every
memory of him throughout the book.
This is so clear.
And, dear friends, there was no competitor for
her love.
Even Solomon, in all his grandeur and all
the wealth that he had, and promising, you
just follow me and you'll be wearing pearls.
Well, he didn't say that, but anyway, that
idea, you know, didn't mean a thing to
her.
All she thought about was her shepherd lover.
He was the object of her affection.
We're to love God with all our heart.
Follow the example of the Shulamite in the
Song of Songs.
We're to love the Lord with all our
soul.
What does that mean?
With all our emotional powers.
We think the soul is the seat of
the emotion.
And we all have emotional powers.
We're justified in understanding this, that we should
love the Lord with all our emotions.
We should be enthusiastic about him.
I think it's a sin not to be
enthusiastic about the Lord Jesus, don't you?
No.
Thank you.
I did that purposely to get that right.
We should be joyful when we hear him
exalted.
We should be grieved when we hear his
name called to be taken in vain.
We should be angry at anything that dishonors
the Christ of God.
When we remember him, joy and sorrow are
mingled.
Two emotions, joy and sorrow are mingled when
we remember him.
Joy to think that his sufferings are over,
and sorrow to think that our sins nailed
him to the tree.
We're to love him with all our emotional
powers.
Well, people say, I have a hard time
showing, you know, outwardly enthusiasm.
No, I like him inside.
He's okay inside, but it's just hard to
meet him.
Is that the way you are when a
Super Bowl is on?
You're holding the remote in your hand, you
know, and you see a bunch of bullies
out there on the field, men from Mars
almost, you know, and they're maiming and mauling
one another, and they grab something that's shaped
like nothing else in the universe, and desperately
try to get it across a white line,
and you're there, yay, go, you know.
This is the person that can't be enthusiastic
about Jesus.
Something doesn't matter.
Something's out of place.
I'm going to tell you, I'm jealous when
I see the stadiums, and when I see
the auditors filled with people cheering over some
worldly nonsense, and I don't hear it from
my Savior.
Love the Lord your God with all your
emotional powers.
And that isn't all.
With all your physical powers, too.
With all your physical powers.
It's good for us to remember, God doesn't
take delight in the strength of the horse.
He takes no pleasure in the legs of
a man.
That's a great book, isn't it?
He doesn't take delight in the strength of
the horse, or in the legs of a
man.
He takes pleasure in those who fear him,
and those who hope in his mercy.
Prowess in spiritual things counts far more than
popularity on the athletic field.
This is what's important.
A former athlete said, the biggest thrill of
my life was when I first scored the
decisive goal in a big match, heard the
roar of the cheering crowd, but in the
quiet of my room that night, a sense
of the futility of it all swept over
me.
After all, what was it worth?
Was there nothing better to live for than
to score a goal?
That guy had his eyes anointed with divine
eyesalve, didn't he?
Those who live for the world's honors are
selling their birthright for a bowl of chili.
That's what they're doing.
I don't want the world's honors and a
world that gave him nothing but a cross
and a grave.
Imagine giving one's best for a ribbon, a
plaque, a gold cup.
One man who lived for these things said,
the dream of the reality was better than
the reality of the dream.
Found out he was empty-handed.
Young people who want to obey the first
and great commandments can't express their resolve better
than in the words of Thomas Gill in
that little InterVarsity hymn book.
It said, Lord, in the fullness of my
might, I would for thee be strong.
While runneth o'er each dear delight, to
thee should soar my song.
I would not give the world my heart
and then profess thy love.
I would not feel my strength depart and
then thy service prove.
I would not with swift winged zeal on
the world's errands go, then labor up the
heavenly hill with weary feet and slow.
O not for thee my weak desires my
poorer baser part.
O not for thee my fading fires, the
ashes of my heart.
O choose me in my golden time and
my dear joy has part.
For thee the glory of my pride, the
fullness of my heart.
I shall love the Lord thy God with
all thy mind.
That means with all your intellectual powers, doesn't
it?
With all your intellectual powers.
You know what it means?
It means that I should take my mind
as it were, this figurative language, I should
take my mind and I should lay it
adoringly at the feet of the Lord Jesus.
For you leave it, you use it, Lord,
in any way you want to use it.
I don't want to give my best to
the unworthy world.
I want to give it to the Savior.
Thou shall love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, with all your affectionate powers,
with all your soul, with all of your
emotional powers, with all your mind, with all
your intellectual powers, with all your strength.
Just before I came away I heard of
a man and God had given him a
wonderful memory and blindfolded, blindfolded, he played consecutively
over a hundred different games of chess and
won most of them.
And I think, what a prostitution of the
human mind.
A mind that was made for the glory
of God and prostituted for a chess board.
Shall we pray?
Blessed Lord Jesus, I pray especially for the
Lord thy God with all thy heart, with
all thy soul, with all thy mind, with
all thy strength.
And teach them day to day how to
put this into practice so that their lives
might count for you and so that they
might make history for God.
I ask it in the Savior's name.
Amen.