Deuteronomy 6: 6 -7 says, “You must commit yourselves
wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your
children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road,
when you are going to bed and when you are getting up.” The words are about teaching ourselves
and our children the commands of God.
What are those commands?
In Deuteronomy these are the top two: “Hear!” and “Love!”
God’s people are to hear that the LORD who brought them out
of slavery is the one true God.
God’s people are to Love the LORD with all that is in them.
Our job as a church today is to teach the command to hear
God. We teach the truth to
ourselves and to the next generation.
The one true God is Yahweh, the LORD, who brought his people out of
slavery in Egypt. We teach
that it was this God who came to us in the Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is the best look we have at God
and what God is like. We commit
ourselves wholeheartedly to the command to hear and live by his truth. We are disciples – learners and
followers – of Jesus. And we teach
those who come after us this same command. Jesus of Nazareth is our clearest way of knowing the one
true God. Listen to him.
We teach ourselves and the next generation to obey the
command: “Love God with all that is in you.” What do we love when we love God? We love people.
We learn to love them with unconditional love, the only kind of love
that counts. It is unselfish. It
cares about the other person’s genuine happiness without expecting to get
anything in return. “This how we know what real love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us,
and we ought to lay down our lives for one another” (1John 3:16)
At New Hope, we place the highest value on teaching
ourselves and our children and their children to hear and love God. That is why providing Bible study for
children and adults is such a high priority for us. That is why we need more space in which to do our teaching.
