Getting the Most out of God's Word (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) - Tommy Dale, Creekside Bible Church

The Need to Know God Through His Word

Privilege to be here. I'm thankful for another morning where we've been so warmly welcomed, our family has, by your church. It's a joy to be able to dig into God's Word together with you. It's a privilege, it's a challenge, because it does call me to be careful with God's Word.

And I'm excited to learn with you guys specifically about how we can continue to enjoy His Word today. So let's go ahead and open up in prayer. Father, thank you for bringing us together this morning.

Thank you for the safe travels in the snow. Thank you for the safe delivery of rosemary. Thank you for another opportunity for all of us to hear and learn from your Word. Please guide us as we work through this text.

Give me wisdom to teach your Word accurately and faithfully. And please open our ears. Help us to hear your Word, that we could apply it to our lives, that we could be blessed and transformed and encouraged and challenged by your Word.

We ask all this in your Son's name. Amen. Well, we'll continue our enjoyment of the Old Testament today. So if you all could turn to Deuteronomy chapter 6. We will be working through Deuteronomy 6 verses 4 through 9 this morning.

We're two months into the year right now. Friday, we just got into March. Has any of you made any New Year's resolutions or goals for the year? They might be goals on physical fitness, eating more healthy.

They might be about finding ways to serve in your community better, to learn a new language, to start a new ministry, to host more often in your house. For those of us that have made resolutions and goals, reality is starting to sink in on how much time and energy it actually needs for us to fulfill it.

I read an article from Forbes on some New Year's resolution statistics. A lot of people will tune out when they hear the word statistics. I'm an accounting major, so I get really excited. The top resolution to no surprise was to improve fitness.

Second was improving their finances. Third, to improve their mental health. Fourth and fifth were to lose weight and improve diet, which apparently is different from improved fitness. I don't understand that.

But then finally, at number six, we get a resolution that is not self-focused, and that's to make more time for loved ones. I think that's very telling of human nature, that it takes us to get to number six to get a world that's larger than yourself.

But it is good to set goals for ourselves. It's good for us to want to find out how we can pursue excellence. We read in the Old Testament about how God used Joseph to excel in his regular, normal work to open up opportunities to do even greater work that God had planned to benefit his entire nation.

1 Thessalonians tells us to work with our hands diligently, that our standing among unbelievers wouldn't be compromised. Wanting to better ourselves can be very worthwhile in the right balance. Now, how many of us have made it our goal to be more consistent in our Bible reading this year?

Has anyone already felt like they've fallen short of the goal that they've set for themselves? Are you feeling discouraged that you're not more intentional with it? Here it's another year and another chance to try to be more consistent.

We're two months in, and you might already feel like you failed. Maybe you should just wait the next 10 months out, try again in 2025. That same article from Forbes said that over half of people's resolutions have failed by March.

Being consistent in God's Word is a resolution that is more than worthwhile, more than worth fighting for, even in the face of failing in the past, even if it means that you're starting at the beginning of March.

I've never met a single godly man or woman that wished that they spent less time in the Word. So go ahead and challenge yourselves. Think of the most wise men and women that you've come into contact with.

Have they ever said, man, I wish I just spent less time in it? Imagine if we didn't have the Bible. How would we know who our God is, how we've fallen in sin, what he's done for us, or how he's cared for his people throughout all of human history?

How would it be any different to own a Bible or even have 10 Bibles in your house but never open them? There's an incredible quote from G .I. Packer in his book, Knowing God. He says this,. Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives, as it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesman to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square, and leave him, as one who knew nothing of English or England, to fend for himself.

So we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it. The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business for those who do not know about God.

Disregard the study of God and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life, blindfold as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. Have you ever felt like that?

Wandering this world, feeling lost or confused? We need to know our God, and it's primarily through reading his word that it's done. So how can we get more out of our reading? How can we be diligent to read God's word?

Let's read our today and see what God has for us. Moses writes,. For context, Moses is writing this book while Israel is wandering in the wilderness. Earlier in the book, in both chapters one and three, it's made known that he's not going into the promised land with them because of his striking the rock in anger toward his own people.

And so he's giving all that he knows to his people. He knows his time is limited with them. He's wanting to remind them of their absolute dependence on God, on how to worship him, how to serve him, how to love him and study his precepts.

Moses, inspired by the same spirit that every believer here has in dwelling in us, wrote about the deep importance of loving the Lord and being in his word. And here we are, thousands of years later, and equally dependent on that same God.

So how do we get more out of our reading of the Bible? How can we be more consistent and diligent? Well, first, by loving the God of the word. We'll see success in reading scripture more consistently by loving the God of the word.

The Bible isn't going to make sense to those who don't love him. 1 Corinthians 1 18 says, for the word of the cross is folly, it's foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

If we don't know and love the writer, then we cannot understand his writing. And God, the perfect author, has written his word, but it'll be absolute nonsense if we're not knowing him and loving him. The first two verses of this section that we're reading today are called the Shema, which is Hebrew for hear.

Remember, God's word and law was passed on primarily by oral recitation. Most people couldn't read so they would have God's word read to them. These verses ended up taking on a lot of cultural significance for the Jewish nation.

It's the oldest daily prayer Jews have recited, and it's recited day and night. For us as Christians, it's a great reminder where to set our hearts as we read God's word and reflect on his nature, that we open our ears and hear what God is telling us.

And Moses first shows us that to love the God of the word, we need to love him alone. Verse 4 says, Israel is surrounded by polytheistic religions. It wasn't even that long ago that Moses came down the mountainside with God's commandments in hand to see his chosen people worshiping one of these fake gods.

Moses reminds his people, our God is the one true God. There is no other like him. He is incomparable to any other nation's paltry offerings of a thousand different little gods. And you can't worship the Lord your God alongside worship of anything else.

God is rightfully jealous for our worship. The second commandment says,. If we're going to look in God's word and truly see and hear what he has to teach us, we have to know at our absolute core that he is the only God, that he stands alone.

He alone is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent. And because he is the only true God, Moses leads us to verse 5, where he calls us to love God completely. He says,. A lot of us might recognize this verse.

Jesus quotes it from the Gospels. Matthew 22 -37, Mark 12 -30, and Luke 10 -27 all share this account of Jesus. One of the scribes tries to trick Jesus into stating what the greatest commandment is. First, I think it's great whenever you read about these guys that try to get the jump on Jesus.

You're stepping up to the man who designed and sustains the blood pumping in your veins. And the very foolish brain cells that are firing off to come up with this, he's the creator. He made those brain cells.

It's not going to work out for you. And Jesus, in his perfect wisdom, answers by compiling the first four commandments, the one focused on service to the Lord, and sums them up with Deuteronomy 6 verse 5.

But what does it mean to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and might? It's not breaking the human being into different sections. You can't love God with your heart and yet dedicate your minds to other things.

It means to love God with your entire being. That in every aspect of your life, wherever you're at, whoever you're with, that you love God with your entirety. And this love is very different from a primarily emotional love, like what we're very familiar with in English.

The word in Hebrew, achava, is a love that calls for action. The same word is used in the next chapter, chapter 7 verse 8, where Moses writes, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery.

God's love here is one of action. It's not passive. And our love for God should be so overwhelming and so complete that it drives us to action. We can also see examples of this love-driven action amongst humans.

One example I have written here, in April 11, 1982, it was a Friday, seemingly like any other. Tony Cavallo was a teenager that was in his driveway fixing his 1964 Chevy Impala. Suddenly, the jack collapsed and he was knocked unconscious, pinned under the car.

His mother came over and, praying in her heart to the Lord, seemingly gathered superhuman strength. She reached down and lifted the car while the neighbor's son ran, calling for help. Later, she was interviewed, saying, I was kicking him, saying, get out, get out, while waiting for help to arrive.

She held the car up high enough and long enough for two neighbors to replace the jacks and pull Tony from beneath the car. We've been made in God's image. And so that same love-driven action he has is what we are called to have.

And that love should be directed at him first and foremost. Now, Moses follows this up with a promise in verse 6. He says, and these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. So as you learn to love God more, you'll want to know what he says more.

That makes sense. Anyone who has interest will make time to learn more about the subject. If you've ever sat down with Pastor Kofi, he can talk circles around you theologically. It's the same with my pastor.

It's because he's passionate about theology. And both him and my pastor, Pastor Lucas, have spent the time studying the subject to know the ins and the outs better. If you're a fan of any professional team in any sport, you will know about how each season is going, who the big players are on the team.

And in a much less impressive way, if you want to talk about Star Wars, I'm here for you. But that deep desire to gain understanding should be our response to God. That our love for him draws us to want to learn everything we can about him.

That we would hinge on his every word and look forward every day to when we can spend some time with him. Our devotion time is going to feel empty if we don't love him alone or love him completely. If we're going to get more out of our reading of the Bible, if we're going to have success reading it more consistently, we need to love the God of the word.

Loving the Word of God Through Speech, Memory, and Family Discipleship

And this leads us to our second point. We get more out of our reading by loving the word of God. This sounds like circular reasoning, but I think we can put ourselves into a difficult spot when we try to muscle devotions into our day.

That we see them as almost exclusively a chore that we have to do to check that off for the day. We'll never see our devotional time develop with that type of thinking. Instead of seeing it as something I have to do today, we need to reorient to it's something I get to do today.

I can often take for granted the fact that God gave us the Bible. Here we have his word right here with a couple cat scratches from my outside cats. His spirit inspired people he chose throughout history to write this, to teach us, to remind us, to encourage us, to call us out when we need it, and ultimately guiding us from salvation to glorification.

And we have a strong history of teachers that encourage us to delve deeply into his word. John Calvin said, scripture is like a pair of spectacles which dispels the darkness and gives us a clear view of God.

Billy Graham said, let the study of the Bible become central in your life, not just so you will know it but that you will obey it. And Elizabeth Elliot said, the word of God I think of as a straight edge which shows up our own crookedness.

We can't really tell how crooked our thinking is until we line it up with a straight edge of scripture. Let's learn from the wise men and women that have come before us. We need to grow a deep desire for the word and there are ways to help nurture and grow that desire.

Moses gives us some examples of what this looks like. His first instruction is to speak the word. He says in verse 7, 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, when you lie down and when you rise.

A few years ago there was a study from the University of Waterloo confirming what is known as the production effect. The production effect is the difference you experience when words are read aloud versus reading words silently.

The speaking of the words is more active than silent reading and therefore help in retaining the information in your long-term memory. In this study, participants were asked to either read silently, listen to someone else read aloud, read aloud themselves, or listen to a recording of themselves reading.

Which one turned out the best? Which one proved their memorizing the most powerfully? It was overwhelmingly found when participants read the material aloud themselves. This also explains why so much of our human history has been so well preserved before most people knew how to write because they were passed on orally.

Teachers speaking them to the younger generation and the younger generation reciting them to memory. When we read out loud or memorize passages or simply just talk about them throughout the day, God's word will settle into our minds better.

It'll be easier to recall and in moments when we desperately need God's word to encourage us or calm us, he'll be there in our mind to draw on. For those of us that are in the parenting stage, Moses has a particular challenge.

In the first half of verse 7, he challenges us to actively share God's word with our children. We want them to be prepared in this world. We know this world is corrupt and treacherous and wicked and we want our children to have God's word just as readily available as it is for us.

As parents, we try to train our children for adult life. How to speak and treat people politely, how to save money, how to interview for jobs. When I was dating my wife Rachel, I applied at the steakhouse that her sister was working at.

My dad was not great about passing things on, how to change oil, how to dress for interviews, so I showed up in sandals. I think I thought it was a good idea. Surprisingly, I didn't get the job. I'm still sore about it.

There's definitely lessons that were called to pass on and it's all the more so with God's word. What's great about speaking the word to your children is that you are being benefited as well. God's word is just as much pouring over you as it is them and you're called to teach them diligently.

That means that you're teaching God's word to your children with intention, with purpose. Again, for those of us that are still parenting kids living in our home, we need to heed that. We should be better about family devotions.

We should find opportunities to bring God's word up throughout the day, especially as it applies to whatever is at hand. It's been one of my goals this year to try to be more intentional with that scripture talking with my kids this year.

It's worth investing our time and our energy into that God can use us to drench our children in the word. The second half of verse 7 emphasizes that we are to speak God's word everywhere and at every time.

Moses says we should speak God's word when we are resting at home and when we're out and about, so everywhere we go. And we should speak it when we lie down and when we get up, so throughout the entire day.

By intentionally speaking scripture throughout the day, not only do we better instill it in our minds, but it means that scripture is at the ready no matter what situation comes up. Whether it's your child is having a moment of crisis, you're talking about God with unbelievers, you're in a stressful situation at work, you're building up a list of tools from scripture that you can lean on, be given wisdom to, be encouraged by.

In verses 8 and 9, Moses gives us another example of what loving God's word looks like, and that is that we should be surrounded by the word. Moses says, 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. Moses says that God's word should be written on your body and on your home. Now there's an interesting history to how Jews responded to being told to bind God's word on their hand and between their eyes.

While this passage was meant to be taken metaphorically, they took it literally. Devout Jews would write four passages, including the one we're working through this morning, on strips of parchment and put them in a small case.

They would then bind it on their upper arm and then on their forehead. Even though they took it in the wrong direction, it's a helpful image we can lean on. What we look at with our eyes, what we do with our hands, should be in line with the word.

Looking back on verse five, our entire being should love God. We need to protect our eyes and our bodies and, in fact, try to engage with scripture as much as we can with them. When you look on others, do you see them with the lens of scripture, seeing them as someone else made in the image of God?

Do you control what you watch or what you read? Do you keep yourself above reproach? With your hands, do you respond to situations with anger or have control over yourself? As you discipline your children, are you overly harsh or is it an opportunity for gentleness and grace?

It's a very high calling to have discipline over our eyes and our hands, that we would act out what we read in scripture with consistency. But if we are loving God with our entirety, we are more than willing to do whatever he's called us to, to worship him and to serve him.

We're also called to cover our home in the word. Now, this can absolutely mean that we actually have pieces of art or types of decorations that incorporate scripture into them. Our home has a few pieces like that and it honestly is really wonderful when you're walking through a house and be reminded of God's word, especially when you're not looking for it, but you are desperately needing it at that moment.

Also, I'm pretty sure it's like 50 of Hobby Lobby's revenue. But it can be much, much more than that. It can be that your home is just saturated in God's word, that you pray over your house, those that live in it, those that will be visiting, that you pray that God is exalted always in every room, that it would be a home that people are encouraged and lifted up in, a home where people's spirits are filled by the washing of the word, where Bible studies or biblical counseling take place.

Those homes have truly been transformed to places of worship. The home I always think of when I think of this is my in-law's house. They, my mother-in-law came up with us from San Diego. My father-in-law passed away a few years ago, but going into their house was my favorite place down there.

It was warm and inviting and encouraging and it was always saturated in God's word. My mother-in-law lives on our property now in a granny flat and even though she's only 100 feet away, you walk in and it is that same home.

We should all strive for homes to be examples of how God has transformed us and how we live out that salvation now, that it would be a place where we speak the word and act out the word. So how do we get more out of our reading God's word this year?

How can we ensure that we'll be better in our consistency in it by loving the God of the word and by loving the word of God? I really want to encourage you to try to develop your devotion time in his word this year and it doesn't need to look anything like what others are doing around you.

Some will be reading through the entire bible in a year and that is incredible. Maybe for you this year you're reading the new testament or it's a study on the gospels, the prophets, or the psalms. The goal that we're called to is to be in the word and just as each of us are individually and uniquely created, our devotions can be unique as well.

We should strive to be in the word and we should work to be familiar with all parts of it. So if this year you're spending time in the gospels, next year your goal should be to expand your knowledge in another area of scripture.

Paul wrote in 2nd Timothy 3 16 and 17, all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. That the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

We should have a desire to get to know all corners of God's word and just as we are progressively sanctified, that biblical literacy also comes with time. We have a rich gift in God's word. There we see a history of God's faithfulness to his people, how he has worked all things for his glory and for our good, how he prepared the world for the messiah coming.

It shows why Jesus is our perfect high priest, able to sympathize with us in every way and yet remain without sin. It teaches how the Holy Spirit dwells in every believer and guides us and convicts us.

There is hope and peace and joy waiting for us in God's word. So let's all work to be more diligent to spend time there with him. Let's go and pray. Father please help us to learn and grow from your word, building us a desire to want to come and spend more meaningful time with you.

You've promised that it will never return void, that when we spend time in your word we will be blessed in some way, we will grow or be stretched. Please help this year to be one where your people grow in knowledge and wisdom, that we will be known as a people that love scripture and genuinely want to be in it so we can know more about our father, our savior, and the spirit in us.

Use it to instruct us, to convict us, to encourage us. Thank you again for not leaving your people to wander this world without him, that you've entrusted us with your perfect, unchanging word. We ask all this and thank you for all this, in Jesus's name.