Recently, I’ve been reading a book by Trevor Hudson, a South-African pastor and friend of Dallas Willard. It’s called Seeking God. In it, he shares a conversation between him and Willard in 1993:
I was driving Dallas Willard to the airport to catch his flight home, I said to him, “Dallas, as I seek to be a follower of Christ here in South Africa, I wonder if you have a word for me.”
He was quiet for a few minutes while I kept my eyes on the road. Eventually he spoke. He simply said, “Trevor, guard your mind. The thoughts, images, and pictures in your mind matter. They shape your life.”
Then, paraphrasing one of his favorite verses from the Psalms, he added, “Make sure you keep the Lord before you always” (Psalm 16:8).
I want to pick up where I left off last time and press further into the topic of family discipleship in our highly-secular, technologically-decadent, modern world. If we have any hope of passing on the faith to the next generation, we must give God his due. In being ever attentive to his glorious reality - keeping the Lord before us, to use Willard’s phrase - we will give God to our youth.
If have any hope of passing on the faith to the next generation, we must give God his due.
Hear, O Israel
Read the passage below. Notice how it starts: Hear. That’s an attention word. So, as you read ask yourself two questions: What is Moses calling your attention to? And what is he calling you to do about it?
Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 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. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deut. 6:4-9)
If you notice, the first sentence is a statement about God. The rest of the passage, by contrast, is a series of instructions that flow from God’s reality. Thus, Moses calls our attention to the LORD God and his reality, then calls families to live in specific ways in light of God’s reality – ways that, quite intentionally, will mark us as the people of the LORD God, distinct from the world around us.
I'm going to focus on the former today and the latter next time.
Attend to what?
So, what is Moses calling our attention to in this passage? I see three things, all of which are in the statement that follows his injunction to Hear. That is, “The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”
First, the divine name: the LORD. Did you notice the repetition? “the LORD…the LORD…” By doing this, Moses focuses our attention on God’s name itself. Why?
In Juliet’s famous words, “What’s in a name?” Well, a lot. For Hebrews, a name represented who someone was: their identity, their personality, their being. This is why you see people like Jacob, Simon, and Saul getting their names changed to Israel, Peter, and Paul.
Similarly, this is why Moses petitioned God at the burning bush, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” (Exd. 3:13) And what was God’s reply? “I AM WHO I AM… Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” (3:14)
In Hebrew, “I AM” is related to the divine name we translate into English as “the LORD” (see 3:15). By this name God was communicating that he is the I AM, the one who is being itself. To quote Paul, “In him we live and move and have our being,” (Acts 17:28). Unlike creatures, the LORD is always present, always true, without beginning and without end. All things are from him, through him, and to him (Rom. 11:36).
Second, the divine partnership: the LORD our God. The very first thing Moses ascribes to this one who IS is that he belongs, and not just to anybody but to somebody (or “somebodies”?). He belongs to us, his people! The LORD our God. Does that shock you?
The very first thing Moses ascribes to this one who IS is that he belongs.
Now, God doesn’t belong to us in the sense that we own him (it’s quite the other way around!). Rather, he belongs to us covenantally as a husband does to a wife. The LORD binds himself to specific persons through covenant. That is to say, God’s belonging to us is grounded in his promise to us: I will be your God and you will be my people (see Gen. 17:7; Exd. 6:7; Jer. 30:22; Rev. 21:3).
You see, the LORD is personal. He is not the proverbial divine watchmaker. While he is transcendent and beyond understanding, he is not far off or aloof. In fact, he comes near. The LORD gladly makes himself known. But there’s more! God commits himself, setting his loyal and unbreakable love upon his people, such that he is truly theirs and they are truly his.
Third, the divine supremacy: the LORD is one. What does Moses mean that the LORD is “one”? I would suggest this speaks to his unity, exclusivity, and priority. In a word, his supremacy.
That the LORD is one means that he is a unity. God’s being is not plural, his essence is singular. There are not many “LORDs” or many “Gods”. Rather, the LORD is one. Of course, we learn through the progressive revelation of Scripture that God is, in fact, a tri-unity – three persons in one divine essence. Nevertheless, this is not a plurality of being but of person. Father, Son, and Spirit are the one LORD.
That the LORD is one also means he is exclusively LORD. That is to say, the LORD is God and there is no other. He is the one true and living God. He has neither equals nor rivals. The LORD is in a category of his own, the one LORD.
Lastly, that the LORD is one means that he is of first priority. God alone is necessary; all others are contingent. There is none before him, and all come after him. The LORD is the ideal truth, the highest good, the standard of beauty. As such, God is of utmost importance, deserving of prime place in his creatures’ hearts and lives.
The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Do you hear this? Do you feel it in your bones? Does it burn in your gut? Does it reverberate out to your hands and feet?
Heart and Home
Now, what does all this mean for family discipleship? Moses will treat that in more detail in the following verses, as will we next time. But from what we’ve heard so far, we can conclude this: family discipleship is all about God. The primary aim of family discipleship is not to discipline the kids or schedule family devotions but to give God the attention he is due. Hear, O Israel. Before we “do” any discipling, we turn our attention to him. The LORD our God, the LORD is one.
To counter the spiritual de-formation of our highly-secular, technologically-decadent, modern world, we need a God-ward heart. Anything less is a suppression of the truth.
As leaders of the family, we ourselves must be oriented in this God-ward way. We must behold the supreme LORD and love his reality, turning all our thoughts towards him and finding all our desires satisfied in him. We must see the world and everything in it with the eyes of faith, observing God’s initiative and purpose in all of God’s creation and action. Our inner dialogue must reflect the words of the hymn:
This is my Father’s world; he shines in all that’s fair…
This is my Father’s world; O let me ne’er forget, that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.
Keeping the God who is, who belongs, and who is supreme before us is nothing more than living in reality. “By keeping ourselves aware of God’s nearness,” Hudson writes, “we are not trying to artificially manufacture any spiritual experience. We are simply turning our minds towards Christ, whose presence fills all things and who is closer to us than we can ever dare to imagine.”
Keeping the God who is, who belongs, and who is supreme before us is nothing more than living in reality.
Moreover, as we increasingly possess a God-ward heart, we will be led inevitably to cultivate a God-saturated home. Such a home is a domestic cathedral of the living God, a sacred and sacramental space for family worship. Hear, O Israel is the melody that each family member learns and lives into. The LORD our God, the LORD is one is the refrain of the household, the heartbeat of life under its roof.
Giving God his due in heart and home. That’s an ancient recipe for family discipleship in our modern world.
If we hope to pass on the faith to the next generation, we must give them God. A God-ward heart and God-saturated home are essential ingredients to this task in our highly-secular, technologically-decadent, modern world. Which raises the question for each of us: Am I giving God his due? Am I keeping him before me?
By God’s grace, may we answer affirmatively, and thereby give them God.