SATURDAY 17th
Deuteronomy 30:20
NIV – ‘and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life and he will give you many years . . .’
ESV – ‘. . . loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, . . .’
There are three things that follow out of the choice that is made concerning life – (see devotion from yesterday) they are that:
We love the LORD our God
We obey his voice
We hold fast
For our devotion today – We love the LORD our God.
We have probably all asked someone the question, ‘How much do you love me’ and we get the various answers back, for example, ‘I love you to the moon and back’.
When it comes to wondering how much God loves us, then we have the very clear answer in Scripture found in John 3:16 ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.’ And in 1 Jn 4:10–11 ‘In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.’ We will have heard the little yet profound illustration, ‘I asked God, ‘How much do you love me’ and he answered, ‘This much’ and he stretched his arms out wide and died.’ He didn’t love to the moon and back, he loved from heaven to earth and back!
The love of God toward humanity is unquestionable, he has proved it or demonstrated it beyond any doubt at Calvary. Penned for us in the words of the song, ‘The love of God’
The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell.
It goes beyond the highest star
And reaches to the lowest hell.
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled
And pardoned from his sin.
O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure—
The saints’ and angels’ song
I ask that you stop for a few moments and consider God’s great love for you.
Now, after considering God’s love for you, we return to the point for today, which is that ‘we love the LORD God’ and as we have asked ‘how much does God love us’, we also ask ‘how much do we love him in return’, is it to the moon and back, or more?
The Bible tells us how much we should love him, it’s here in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 6 and verse 5 ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.’ This Old Testament verse is repeated in three of the gospels, twice by the one himself who has loved us with an everlasting love, the Lord Jesus Christ, (Matthew 22:37, Mark 12:30) and once by the lawyer wanting to test Jesus, to which Jesus said ‘You go and do likewise’. (Luke 10:27,37)
Surely this brings an important challenge to us in regard to our love for the LORD God, do we truly love him with all our heart, that means whole heartedly, without any hesitation, without any reservations, without any question? Do we love him with all our soul, that means with all our being, with all that we are? And to love him with all our might or strength, that is with all that we have. Scholars tell us that the original Hebrew here in this verse which we have translated as strength or might in our English translations should better be translated as with all our resources, that is to love him with all that we own.*1
It means that in the demonstration of our love for God we should be loyal toward him,*2 it should be God above all else and before all else. This leads to our second point for tomorrow – We obey his voice.
*1 The NIV Application Commentary. Deuteronomy Daniel Block. Pages 183-184 (Zondervan)
*2 Honey from the Rock. James Robson. Page 185 (Apollos)