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)
These words represent a very important prayer in traditional Judaism. It’s known as the Shema – which in Hebrew means, “Hear.” The name, quite obviously, comes from the opening verb. The prayer is recited twice per day, in the morning when you rise and in the evening when you go to bed.
Shema’s prime of place in Jewish religious life is no surprise. The ritual puts the Lord God at the beginning and end of your day and the prayer puts him before your attention. Taken together, the practice invites your conscious participation in God’s reality. He is God, and there is no other. This is the day he has made, and I am but one bit-player in his grand story. If these truths are to take root in our souls, they must be rehearsed.
Last time, I explored the meaning and application of the opening line of Shema for family discipleship: the LORD our God, the LORD is one. I observed that family discipleship is all about God, and that our first aim is to give God the attention he is due, thereby giving God to our children.
Now, I want to dig more practically into what Moses is calling us to do in response to our great God, how his glorious reality ought to shape our personal and domestic life. Again, I see three things: love the LORD your God, treasure God’s word, and instruct the next generation in the same.
Just as fire requires heat, fuel, and oxygen, you can imagine these three accordingly. Love for God is the heat, treasuring God’s word the fuel, and instruction is the oxygen to the fire of family discipleship. I’ll cover the first two here, and the third next time.
Love the LORD your God
You may recall these words from the Lord Jesus, who taught that this was the first and greatest commandment (Matt. 22:37-38). It is, therefore, no surprise that we find them here as Moses’ first response to the glorious reality of our supreme LORD. Love for God is the grounding and comprehensive response to God’s love for us. That is, there is no true obedience without love and there is no love without obedience. For in the words of Paul, “Love is the fulfillment of the law.”
Of course, in a sense, this is a command for everyone: for you and for your children. But don’t miss the emphasis in this context, namely, on parents. Here Moses singles out the heads of households, “You shall love the LORD your God.” In other words, before God commands us to instruct our children in the love of God, God requires us to love him.
Before God commands us to instruct our children in the love of God, God requires us to love him.
There’s no other way to say it, family discipleship starts with you/us. We cannot pass on to our kids something we don’t possess. If we hope to inspire a living and active love for the Lord Jesus, then we ourselves must first love Jesus with our whole being.
I suppose at this point you could say, “Who can say that he/she loves Jesus wholly?” All of us surely fall short of this command to love. But don’t let that lower the bar of the command itself. God really wants you to love him wholly. He expects parents to model what a love for God with all one’s heart, soul, and might looks like for their children. This really is the right and reasonable response to God’s glorious reality. He is worthy of our all your love.
Don’t misunderstand either. Loving God wholly is what living in God’s reality looks like. To love God with any less than your whole person is to live in suppression of the truth: the LORD our God, the LORD is one. Failing to love God wholly is to fail to fully press into what is most real and true. Counter to what the world would have you believe, such a life is – by biblical standards – a tragedy, the consequence of sin. Though we may only fully obey this command in the life to come, when sin and death are no more, don’t miss out on God’s invitation to participate in his reality right now by loving him with your whole self.
Love for God is the heat to the fire of family discipleship.
Treasure God’s word
By the word treasure I’m trying to capture what Moses meant by God’s word being “on your heart.” This phrase is not meant to indicate that we are merely to know God’s word, as though a familiarity with Scripture – or even committing it to memory! – is all God’s after. Rather, as Peter Craigie observes, “The people were to think on [the commands] and meditate about them, so that obedience would not be a matter of formal legalism, but a response based upon understanding.”
Such a response is one at the level of character (or virtue), the dispositions and habits of the heart. God desires his word to take root in you in a deep and sincere way, so that as situations arise you act accordingly – not as though God’s twisting your arm, but as though his commands have become your standard operating procedure. You express your love for God in obedience to his commands because they have become a part of you – they are “on your heart.” In the words of the Psalmist, “I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” (Ps. 119:11)
You express your love for God in obedience to his commands because they have become a part of you – they are “on your heart.”
Now, the way to get the word of God on your heart in this way is by thinking of it and meditating upon it. The Psalmist continued, “I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways. I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word.” (Ps. 119:15-16) The way of the blessed man of Psalm 1 comes to mind. There we read:
Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night. (Ps. 1:1-2)
Notice the contrast between the blessed man and sinners is not that he knows the law of God and they don’t, but that he “delights” in it and “meditates” on it and they (presumably) do not. This is what treasuring God’s word looks like.
Don’t miss the fact that Moses’ emphasis hasn’t shifted. He’s still talking to heads of homes. The word of God must be on our hearts first if we are to disciple our children. Without treasuring his word and making it our daily meditation, our family discipleship will be sorely lacking. But how much would it be improved if this were so? Just imagine for a moment. (Really take a moment.)
Treasuring God’s word is the fuel to the fire of family discipleship.
The witness they need
Let me wrap this up with a few questions:
Are you in love with Jesus? Has he arrested your affections? Is the Lord your God your one great love? Do you find your heart feeling indifferent to him, pulled away by the things of this world?
If you hope to impact the next generation, start there. Examine your love for the Triune God of all reality: Father, Son, and Spirit. Ask him to warm your heart with a passion for his name.
How do you feel about God’s word? Do you treasure it? What’s your engagement with it? Does your Bible build up dust from Sunday to Sunday? Are your thoughts drawn toward God’s word throughout the day, multiple times per day? Do you feel it seeping through your conscious mind into your pre-consciousness?
If you hope to impact the next generation, this is the kind of witness they need. Not a Bible thumper, but one who’s been transformed from within by the Word and words of life. Ask God to press his word onto your heart.
Though I am not Jewish, I do wonder if the Shema ought to have a greater place in my life and home. In our highly-secular, technologically-decadent, modern world, I suspect daily prayers such as this would do a world of good in reframing all of life under the lordship of Christ.
Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, where Moses goes next – the oxygen to the fire of family discipleship: instruct the next generation in God’s word…whenever and wherever you are.
More on that next time.