Undivided

Read Deuteronomy 6:1-25

It's hard for me to focus on anything for more than a few minutes. Then I feel the urge to check my phone. It's even harder to remember what God has said to me, much less put it into practice. But when Moses speaks, he makes it clear that God must have his people's undivided attention. God personally commanded Moses to teach the commands to them. Israel is to cultivate a holy reverence before God. They are to listen to what God says and must be careful not to forget what he has said. If we stop paying attention to God, we drift into disaster. In the ancient world, single gods came in local editions: Ishtar of Arbela, Ishtar of Uruk, and so on. There were many gods: the storm god Baal, or the fertility goddess Asherah. But Moses taught the Israelites to say, "The Lord our God, the Lord is one." The Israelites worshiped an undivided God who gives his people an undivided love, and it's the same God who loves us today. A people who gave their undivided attention to an undivided God were to give him their undivided worship. Christopher Wright puts it this way, "The wholeness, or oneness, of Yahweh (v. 4) is to be met with a response involving the wholeness of the human person (v. 5)." We don't segment religion into a part of our lives, or layer obedience on top of an otherwise self-directed life. Knowing God changes who we are, so that we are wholly his. Because we love God with the entirety of who we are, this commitment to God must find expression in an undivided life. We don't pick and choose which commands we like; we take the whole package. We don't keep the blessing of knowing God to ourselves; we pass it on to our children. They are to see how our trust in God shapes every aspect of our lives, and then we explain why we live as we do. Whether we are working or resting, staying home or traveling, getting dressed or doing business in the marketplace, it should be evident. John Paton didn't spend his life trying to do everything his father ever said, but to "faithfully follow his [father's] shining example." When our children ask why we live this way, we tell them about God's undivided faithfulness. Through every generation, he has delivered his people. The story starts when they were enslaved in Egypt. But God saved them, and fulfilled his promise to bring his people into their own homeland. God not only met their physical needs, but restored them to wholeness. As we keep telling this story, we know its fulfillment is in Jesus, who broke our slavery to sin, and brought us into the kingdom of heaven. Our lives were fragmented until he made us whole. Moses framed the start and end of the chapter with keeping "the commandment." One, undivided commitment. We don't have to exhaust ourselves keeping a thousand disconnected rules. Because of Christ, we have one calling: to live an undivided life for God.