Hear To Love God

Texts:  Deuteronomy 6:4-5; Hosea 2:14-20; I John 4:7-10

Pastor Phil Hughes, American Fork Presbyterian Church, Utah

August 27, 2023

Last Sunday we began our look at the Shema.  The Shema is the signature passage of the Bible for Jews.  Shema is the biblical Hebrew word for “hear.”  The Shema begins “Hear, O Israel.”  And what Israel is to hear (or shema) is that the Lord our God is God alone, and that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and strength.

It is common for people of Jewish faith to pray this at the beginning of every day and at the end of every day.  They are to keep these words before their eyes and in their minds.

Last week I encouraged us to find Deuteronomy 6:4-5 in our Bibles and write out the words and to put the words of the Shema where we can see them at the beginning of our day and at the end, and to take up the practice of reciting the Shema first thing in the morning and last thing at night.  We are doing this as kind of a spiritual experiment.  I hope we will say the Shema every morning and every night to see how these words form our hearts and minds and awareness of God.  Let’s take a piece of what our Jewish friends do and also affirm these important verses.

Jesus quoted the Shema and said it was the first and greatest commandment.  Think about that! There is nothing more important than you can do than to love God. These words are on the quilt that is hanging in the back of our sanctuary. Our Lord added that to love our neighbor as our self is the second most important commandment.  A spiritually formed person loves God and loves his or her neighbor.

But who is this God that I am called to love?  The Shema says to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and strength.  What kind of a God are we being commanded to love?  What is this God like?  Why should we love him? And does he, in turn, love and care about us?

This is what I hope we will get this morning: The command to love the Lord our God is merely a response to the love God has first shown to us.  Reason number one for loving God is because his love has come to you and me first. And his love for us is more than we can imagine.

It was true for Israel.  Remember that they were slaves in Egypt.  But they became Israel, the people of the Lord, because the Lord set his love on them. This is what Moses tells them:

 “The Lord did not set his heart on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other nations, for you were the smallest of all nations! Rather, it was simply that the Lord loves you, and he was keeping the oath he had sworn to your ancestors. That is why the Lord rescued you with such a strong hand from your slavery and from the oppressive hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Understand, therefore, that the Lord your God is indeed God. He is the faithful God who keeps his covenant for a thousand generations and lavishes his unfailing love on those who love him and obey his commands.”[1]

Israel didn’t do anything to earn the Lord’s love.  They were not particularly attractive.  They weren’t big time. The Lord loved them just because. Though the Shema says to love the Lord their God with all they are, this didn’t happen so well.

The long story of ancient Israel, as we find it in so much of the Old Testament, is how they didn’t love the Lord.  Israel often turned from the Lord.

One of the most fascinating books of the Old Testament is the book of the prophet Hosea.  It’s an eyebrow raising story.  God tells Hosea to go and marry a prostitute. Why?  Because the people of the Lord are guilty of adultery against him. Why?  Because the Lord sees the relationship between him and Israel like a husband and wife.  Hosea is to reenact how Israel has treated God.

So if you are a little bored with your Bible reading get into Hosea. The prophet Hosea boldly preaches to Israel that their “love” is like that of a wife who walks out the door one day and turns herself into a prostitute.  Yes, that’s pretty raw but you have to admit the image sticks in the mind.[2]

In our passage this morning God says he is going to allure Israel back to him.  She had been unfaithful, but the Lord would coax and sweet-talk her.  He was going to charm Israel, wine and dine her, and bring a bouquet of roses. And he says,

“And I will take you for my wife forever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy.  I will take you for my wife in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord.”[3]

So much of Israel’s history was about God loving them, and them leaving him.  And then God loves them, and they leave him again.  Israel finds other gods, other religions, other ways of living, instead of what God asked them to do.

And the way the prophets describe this is “adultery.”  Spiritual adultery.  Instead of loving the Lord their God in covenant faithfulness as a wife loves a husband and a husband loves a wife, Israel commits adultery against God whom they are to love. Strong language.  But this love is a strong love.  And this is what is behind the story of Hosea.

It reminds me of the lyrics to a song written in the 60’s, “Here We Go Again.”  Various artists have recorded this song over the years.  But the version by Ray Charles and Norah Jones is the one you need to download onto your listening device.[4]  No one sings it like they did. Ray Charles could put more soul and emotion into four little words than what other singers take 10 albums to do. The song “Here We Go Again” goes like this:

Here we go again
She's back in town again
I'll take her back again
One more time
Here we go again
The phone will ring again
I'll be her fool again
One more time

I've been there before
And I'll try it again
But any fool knows
That there's no way to win
Here we go again
She'll break my heart again
I'll play the part again
One more time[5]

That’s the whole book of Hosea.  That’s a song the Lord could sing over his people.  Israel would break the Lord’s heart but his love never failed for her.  Again and again the Lord, “heartsick over his people’s unfaithfulness” calls her back.[6]

The Lord just can’t give up on us.  A writer and theologian, Lewis Smedes, once said that the Lord is the sort who sticks with what he is stuck with.[7]      Here we go again. Compassion is what the Lord feels for those who go away from him.  His love is pursuing, relentless, and never gives up.

Jesus came and showed us God’s heart.  He took a seat at meal tables with tax collectors and prostitutes and people who had broken God’s heart, and whom everyone else had given up on.  He said, ‘I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

One time Jesus told a parable about two sons.  The youngest son demanded his inheritance from his father, went away and blew it all in wild living, and in his shame and desperation wanted to come home and just be a slave.  But the father, when he sees his son returning home from a distance, “…saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him…”  The father welcomes him home, brings out his best robe, a ring and sandals for his son, and throws him a party.[8]

Like the Lord was filled with compassion for Israel, like that father who had compassion for his son, so the Lord is filled with compassion for you and me. God has shown his compassion to all people through his Son, Jesus Christ.  Our failures and sins have not nullified his love for us.

So what kind of a God are we asked to love with all our heart, soul and strength?  A God who has first loved us and has not stopped. That is a major point in 1 John.

“This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”[9]

You know, there is not a lot in the Bible about us loving God.  A few times it is commanded like the Shema. There are some examples of those who loved God.  But most of the Bible is about God loving us.  My wild guess is that it is 90/10: 90 percent about God loving us, 10 percent about us loving God.  And maybe it’s because the Lord has always banked on us loving him by understanding how he has loved us.  John writes, This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us. And that he sent his own Son to pay for our sins with his own blood. And later, “We love him because he loved us first.”[10]

I heard of a man who had a very troubled life and he spent years and years running from God.  This man ran to drugs, bad relationships, and even wanted to end his life.  When he finally realized how God was with him and pursuing him even when he was at his worst, he came to a place where he said, “I guess I just have to surrender to the fact that God loves me and there is just nothing I can do about it.” And so it is with you and me.

The Shema tells us that we are to love God, but I’ve really said more about God’s love for us this morning.  That’s because loving God becomes much easier when we understand and know in our hearts how much God has loved us.  I don’ know about you, but I really have an easy time loving people who love me.

God loves us like a faithful and loving husband toward his wife, like a parent toward a child, like a God who is willing to come and give his own life in order for us to know him. God’s love for us is not something we have to or even can earn.  It is just there, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

We don’t just love God for what he can do for us.  We don’t love God for the gifts he sends into our lives.  Because if things don’t go smoothly, or we struggle, or lose, we may stop loving.  To love anyone only for what they can do for us is not a very pure love.  It is a selfish type of love. We love God for who he is.  We love the Giver, not just the gifts.

When Jesus quoted the Shema as the first and greatest commandment, he didn’t just say, “You shall love God.” No, Jesus said the command is to love “the Lord your God.”  We are not to love just some God who is unknown and undefined.  No, this is the Lord, “the God with an address, the God of Israel, the God with a recorded history and with clear claims.”[11]  This is the Lord we hear of in the Scriptures. And we aren’t going to love him until we trust him with our lives as our God.

And in the Scriptures we hear the story of a God who first loved us.  As John writes, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us…”  Our love, as we hear in the Shema, is an answering love.  God loves us first, and we answer by loving him with all we are.

You know, love was not the usual way to speak of relationship with the gods in the ancient Near East.  Fear was the common response.  To relate to God in love was a revolutionary thing. I’ll say this, God is not casual about the relationship he wants with us. The Lord our God feels.  He is jealous for his people.  He yearns for and is passionate about who we are and what we do.  We are not asked to love some distant, Great Someone, or some vague Higher Power.  We are asked to love the God who is the Lord, and who has shown himself in the face of Jesus Christ. We are to give our hearts and minds – our lives - back to the Lord in answering love.

Given the command for us to love the Lord our God, and given that God has first loved us here is the question: How much do we love God?

Do we think about ways to please the Lord?

Do we love to come to the house of the Lord and worship?

Do we pray to the Lord?  Do we know his voice and does he know ours?

Do we long to foster relationships with his people?

Do we feel pain when we do things that don’t honor the Lord?  Is our conscience bothered?  And do we seek the Lord’s forgiveness when we fall?

Do we have a giving life?  A life that serves with our time, energy, wealth, and abilities?

Do we long to forgive those who offend us knowing how God forgives us?

How do we do with loving our neighbor?

Do we hunger for God’s Word and want to know the scriptures?

Do we live with integrity in our vocation, in personal relationships, and when we aren’t in the eye of others?

Do we want to see others know and understand the message of Jesus?

Do we hunger for justice, what is right, and healing where there is brokenness, and are we willing to invest ourself in that?

Are we willing to be less so that God can be more?

We love God when we are willing to place our lives before him.  We love God when we surrender to his ways and not our own.  We love God when we seek him. We love God when we trust him.

Tonight as your head gets ready to hit the pillow and you say the Shema, “You shall love the Lord our God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength”, remember that you are calling yourself to love the Lord who has passionately and faithfully loved you first.

Prayer: Lord, your love comes to us moment by moment, in ways we can’t even see. You didn’t wait for us to love you.  You loved us first. Help us to hear this command to love you.  Jesus said this was the most important thing we could do. We really want to hear this so that we can truly love you. We pray this in the name of the one who showed your love, the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

[1] Deuteronomy 7:7-9, NLT

[2] Scott McKnight, The Jesus Creed, p.44

[3] Hosea 2:19-20m NIV

[4] The album is “Genius Loves Company”

[5] You can listen to this recording at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkkzlF1D3hg

[6] McKnight, p.44

[7] Quoted in The Jesus Creed, p.42

[8] Luke 15:20-24

[9] 1 John 4:9-10

[10] 1 John 4:19, NLT

[11] Dale Bruner, Commentary on Matthew, vol. 2, p.794