Deuteronomy 11:1 Therefore thou shalt love the LORD thy God, and keep his charge, and his statues, and his judgments, and his commandments, always
Sometimes when you are reading the Bible you just have to stop and say, “Hold on! Wait a minute!” because God has repeated Himself several times. You think, “This is something to notice.” You find that in Deuteronomy 11.
Before we look at Deuteronomy 11, let me tell you two things that are important. First, discernment is important. Discernment is the ability to skillfully divide things that may otherwise look similar. My baby aspirin may look the same as my dog’s heartworm pill, but they are not the same. Second, integrity is important. Integrity is the virtue of being whole or complete, having only one you. There is not the church you and the home you; there is just one you. You are a person of integrity. We need to be able to divide what ought to be divided and keep whole what is whole.
Deuteronomy 11:1 says, “Therefore thou shalt love the LORD thy God.” The context for this verse is that God had made the family of Jacob into a nation as numerous as the stars in heaven. God had been very good to them. Then He says, “Therefore…” Verse 1 says, “Therefore…love the LORD thy God.” Verse 8 says, “Therefore shall ye keep all the commandments.” So, love God and keep His commandments.
Now, discernment is important. We divide things that should be divided, but we also should be people of integrity, not dividing that which should not be divided. Think about ice cream. Do you like ice or do you like cream? It doesn’t matter because when you are eating ice cream, the ice without the cream isn’t ice cream and the cream without the ice isn’t ice cream. It is one glorious object. When it comes to the Bible, we often divide what ought not be divided. I am thinking specifically of either loving God or living in obedience to God. There is a distinction that ought not be made. In short, don’t divide what God joins.
What if I were to say, “What is the first and great commandment”? Jesus answered that question, basically saying, “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” That is taken directly from Deuteronomy 6 and other places in Deuteronomy. Jesus said, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” Don’t divide love and obedience.
Sometimes we take love and obedience and distill them into caricatures of themselves. We distill obedience down to just mere performance. We think, “I am doing all the right things. I am crossing my t’s, dotting my i’s, and being a really good boy. I must be square with God.” On the other hand, we may think, “Maybe I’m a bad boy, but I just love God. I live like an alley cat, but I love God.” Both of those are vacuous, vacuumed out of any significance whatsoever. The Bible says that love is the fulfilling of the law. Love is doing right by God and by people.
Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” The bottom line is that you should love God and keep His commandments. In Deuteronomy there is just a hair’s breadth of distance between the two. If you love God, you are going to keep His commandments. If you keep His commandments, one of the commands is to love God and to love people. So, don’t divide what God joins. Love God, and demonstrate that by the way you heed His commands.
A second pair of things that should not be divided is what you might call the carrot and the stick. If we are trying to train a dog we might say, “Well, with my dog I use positive reinforcement.” I am all for positive, but positive as opposed to what? We want to obey God on our terms. We say, “I am obeying God just because I am such a virtuous person.” Or we say, “Look, I want to obey God to glorify God.” That is the high end of what we are doing, but in verses 8-9 God puts it in terms that seem very selfish indeed. He essentially says, “Do what I say. Obey My commands, love Me, so you will be strong and possess the land and prolong your days.”
At the end of chapter 11 He says, “I set before you this day a blessing and a curse.” In other words, the God who curses, blesses, and the God who blesses, curses. Deuteronomy 8:5 says, “Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that, as a man chasteneth his son, so the LORD thy God chasteneth thee.” The Bible says to not be weary of God’s correction because he chastens those He loves.
Many times in Deuteronomy it says, “Love God; obey God; fear God.” In this chapter you find an if/then proposition. God says, “If you obey and keep My commandments, you will be blessed. On the other hand, if you rebel and do not love Me, then there will be consequences to that.” Sometimes we neglect obedience because we are so concerned with wanting to do the right thing for the right reason. Don’t misunderstand me, I think that is important. Motives do matter. But I am simply saying, just don’t go off the ditch on either side of the road. Don’t pit carrot against the stick. God provides both.
Lastly, don’t pit God against man when it comes to this matter of loving God. Chapter 10 talks about God’s care of orphans, widows, and strangers. In verse 19 He says, “Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” I John 4 says, “If I man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” John 13-15 speaks about keeping God’s commandments and loving God and our brother. So, if I love God, I am going to love the people around me. It is too easy to say, “I love God; it is just this person who is my neighbor that I can’t stand.” I don’t have to like everyone, but I have to love everyone if I love God. If I love God, that is going to happen. Don’t divide what God joins together, love and obedience, carrot and stick, God and man.
My relationship to God should be wholesome. It should be whole, not some. I am to love the Lord my God wholly. I am to love Him with all my heart, soul, and mind, and that will demonstrate itself in my actions. Loving God and living for God go together. Don’t divide what God joins together.