Deuteronomy 6:4-9 ESV – 4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 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, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

How will you carry out the command to diligently teach your children to love the Lord God with all their heart and with all their soul and with all their might?

First, we must know that we love the Lord with all our heart and all our soul and with all our might. We cannot possibly teach our children something so supernatural as loving God if it is not true of us. This love must be modeled for them it cannot be a theoretical love, they are too smart we cannot fool them.

With that said let’s dive in. Jesus restated the greatest commandment in the law in Matthew 22:37 NKJV Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” What does it mean to love the Lord your God with all your mind?

When we were converted we not only received a new heart but a new way of thinking, a renewed mind, and we began to diligently seek for knowledge of the Lord our God. In fact, we are commanded in Romans 12:1 – 2 “to continually present and keep on presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice, which is the only reasonable thing to do, that we may not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of our mind.”

So again, what does it mean to love the Lord your God with all your mind? Because of the passive view of love in our culture, we don’t think of loving with our mind we think of “falling in love” like it just accidentally happens. Renewing our minds in the Word is not a passive act, it’s intentional on our part and it increases our love for God. We cannot possibly increase our love for God if we do not know Him and His Word.

R. C. Sproul says, “mindless Christianity is no Christianity at all”. To know Him with our mind is to highly esteem Him and to adore Him. The more we know Him the more we will know ourselves and the more glorious He will appear to us. The more glorious He appears to us, and the more highly we esteem Him and adore Him the more we will worship Him which ultimately leads us into greater gospel obedience, which simply means we love His ways, and this enables us to walk in His commands with true delight.

This is how we teach our children to love God with all their minds, we teach them about our good and gracious King. We show them through our gospel obedience, our delight in obeying His commands, what it means to serve and love God. We show them through our prayer life, our dependence on Him, faith in Him, our love for the Church, our love for the brethren, our love for His mercy, law, grace, His free love for us as sinners. Especially His love shown to us through the person and work of Jesus Christ. Deuteronomy 6 says, “you shall talk of the love of God with your children when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise”. We must learn to be consumed with thoughts of the Triune God. They must fill our whole minds, hearts, and affections.

Let’s learn to know the whole Christ in all His offices and teach our children why we need a Prophet, a Priest, and a King. The Heidelberg Catechism asks this question Lord’s Day 12 Question 31 “Why is He called Christ, that is, anointed? Because He is ordained of God the Father, and anointed with the Holy Ghost, to be our Prophet and Teacher, who has fully revealed to us the secret counsel and will of God concerning our redemption; and to be our only High Priest, who by the one sacrifice of His body, has redeemed us and makes continual intercession with the Father for us; and also to be our eternal King, who governs us by His word and Spirit, and who defends and preserves us in the enjoyment of that salvation He has purchased for us.”  

This one question and answer gives us the opportunity to teach not only Christ in all of His offices but the work of the Trinity and how God’s free, eternal, boundless love for us, appointed His Son, anointed with the Holy Ghost, to be our Prophet and Teacher, and to be our only High Priest to live a life we could not live and die a death we could not die.

I want to leave you with these thoughts from Romans 5 to fill your mind with the love of the Triune God for you to ponder on them over and over.

In Romans 5: 1 – 11 we learn while we were still weak, while we were still sinners, while we were His enemies God the Father demonstrated His free, eternal, boundless, bottomless, love for us by sending His Son Jesus Christ to die for us. Through Christ, we have been granted access by faith into this unfathomable grace and we stand in this grace and rejoice in the assurance of the goodness of God. Not only that but we rejoice in our sufferings, not because we enjoy suffering, but because we KNOW through experience and God’s eternal Word that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are called according to His purpose” Romans 8:28. We know that sufferings produce godliness in us, through us learning patience and perseverance in and through our trials and tribulations which strengthens the assurance of God’s love for us. A love that has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has so graciously been given to us. This ultimately leads us to rejoice in God Himself through our Lord Jesus Christ because now we are reconciled through Christ to God so that we may live now and forever delighting in communion with the Trinity and one another. Receiving love from Trinity and returning that love to others.

Paul goes on in Romans 5:12 – 21 to show us the darkness of the sin that came into the world through our first father Adam and death that spread to all men because of that one sin Adam our first father committed and “bequeathed” to us his children. There is nothing we can do for ourselves to escape the fact that we are sons of Adam the first and we are by nature sinners. However, Paul goes on to show us the remedy in Christ and the beauty of Christ!

As if he’s laying a beautiful multi-faceted diamond out on a black velour cloth for us to see it brilliantly shine. Paul juxtaposes Adam and Christ for us. For in Christ, we receive the free gift of righteousness, and this free gift is not anything like the result of Adam’s sin, which brought condemnation to all, but this free gift following Adam’s sin brought to us justification. Through Adam’s trespass death reigned in us, now through the abundance of grace poured out to us in the person and work of Christ in the free gift of righteousness, we reign in life through Jesus Christ.

There is still more good news. Paul goes on to tell us how grace abounds over sin! He says, “the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more”. There is no such thing as a small sin, all sin transgresses God’s law, but just as there is no small sin there is no sin too great for Christ to cover. The Westminster Confession says it this way. “As there is no sin so small but it deserves damnation; ^{Rom. 6:23: Rom. 5:12; Matt. 12:36} so there is no sin so great, that it can bring damnation upon those who truly repent. ^{Isa 55:7; Rom 8:1; Isa, 1:16,18”} WMC 15:4.

Do you believe there is no sin you can commit that is too great for Christ to cover? He is more full of grace than we are of sin! It’s amazing grace! Grace grace greater than all our sin! In Adam sin reigned in death but in Christ grace reigns in righteousness leading us to eternal life!

So, come and rejoice in our God. Come for the first time and repent or come for the one hundred thousandth time and repent but come and learn of His precious free love for us. Take Christ in, take Him all the way in, and then pour Him out to your precious children and everyone else around you.

Psalm 34 (Taste and See)

Song by Shane & Shane

I sought the Lord
And He answered me
And delivered me
From every fear

Those who look on Him
Are radiant
They’ll never be ashamed
They’ll never be ashamed

This poor man cried
And the Lord heard me
And saved me from
My enemies

The Son of God
Surrounds His saints
He will deliver them
He will deliver them

Magnify the Lord with me
Come exalt His name together
Glorify the Lord with me
Come exalt His name forever

Oh, taste and see
That the Lord is good
Oh, bless us here
Who hides in Him

Oh, fear the Lord
Oh, all you saints
He’ll give you everything
He’ll give you everything

Psalm 34 (Taste and See) lyrics © River Oaks Music Co., Waiting Room Music, True Bliss Music

Songwriters: Jimmy Needham / Shane Barnard / Joseph Rigney